Below is my column in The Hill on the rise of American armchair revolutionaries, particularly among young, affluent college graduates. It is part of the “radical chic” fostered from higher education to Hollywood for citizens who have no memory of the failures of socialism and communism in the 20th Century.
Here is the column:
During the Cold War, Soviet communists reportedly referred to American liberals as “useful idiots.” Although the origin of the quote has been challenged (and attributed to both Lenin and Stalin), it captured many of the adherents of communism after World War II. From higher education to Hollywood, dilettantes on the left embraced Marxism with little real understanding of the philosophy or its implications.
We are now seeing the rise of a new generation of armchair revolutionaries who are calling for everything from the overthrow of the U.S. government to the seizure of factories and homes.
Democratic New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani personifies this new movement of young people lacking any memory of the failure of socialist and communist systems in the 20th Century.
Mamdani is perfect for this rising movement of Latte Leninists and trust-fund baby Trotskyites. The privileged son of a radical Columbia professor and a Hollywood producer, Mamdani went to the elite Bowdoin College, which charges over $70,000 annually in tuition. He is part of the “radical chic” of American higher education, where extreme views are fully mainstream.
Mamdani shows the appeal of mouthing Marxist manifestos as manifest truths. It is Marxism-lite — promises of everything from rent control to making “Halal eight bucks again.”
In one speech before the Young Democratic Socialists of America conference, Mamdani even stated matter-of-factly how one of the goals is to “seize the means of production” in America.
“Right now, if we’re talking about the cancellation of student debt, if we’re talking about Medicare for all, you know, these are issues which have the groundswell of popular support across this country,” he said. “But then there are also other issues that we firmly believe in, whether it’s [boycott-divestment-sanctions against Israel] or whether it is the end goal of seizing the means of production, where we do not have the same level of support at this very moment.”
Mamdani offers few details of what it would mean to seize all industry in this country or how such a system would work in the United States after failing in literally every nation where it has been attempted.
He has also called for the seizure of unoccupied luxury condos in New York to turn over to the homeless. With pledges of state-run grocery stores and other proposals, many are thrilled by the prospect of Marxism coming to America.
Polls show increasing support among young people for socialism and even communism. That is reflected in the New York primary, where Mamdani received significant support from wealthy and young college-educated voters.
Like Mamdani, these young voters have no inkling of what life was like under socialist and communist governments. They were not alive when radical shifts to socialism in Great Britain and France destroyed their economies and had to be reversed. They did not see the collapse of the Soviet Union or the move toward capitalism by China to avoid economic meltdowns.
Yet, as Mamdani stated, the radical left has to wait to seize such powers until it has “the same level of support at this very moment.” Unfortunately, socialist programs can produce the very dire conditions that lead to even greater consolidation of state controls and power.
Notably, most of Mamdani’s proposals would violate the Constitution or bankrupt the city. For example, efforts to seize multimillion-dollar luxury condos would constitute unconstitutional takings unless he was prepared to buy the units at their market value — a virtually impossible proposition.
Such considerations are rarely raised, let alone resolved, in radical conferences. Earlier this month, University of Minnesota liberal arts professor Melanie Yazzie joined others for a “teach-in” in which she delighted the audience with calls for the overthrow of the country by “people who come from nations who are under occupation by the United States government.”
She added, “it’s our responsibility as people who are within the United States to go as hard as possible to decolonize this place because that will reverberate all across the world. Because the U.S. is the greatest predator empire that has ever existed.”
That includes forcing “[the] U.S. out of everywhere,” including “Turtle Island” (the Native American name used to describe North America). Yazzie insisted that “the goal is to dismantle the settler project that is the United States for the freedom and the future of all life on this planet. It very much depends on that.”
Yazzie is an example of how most faculties in this country now run from the left to the far left. Applicants who espouse center-right viewpoints are often rejected as lacking “intellectual rigor” or depth. However, you cannot be too far left to secure a position in many departments that do not have a single Republican or conservative.
Take University of Chicago Assistant Professor Eman Abdelhadi, who used her recent appearance at the Socialism 2025 conference to denounce the University of Chicago as an “evil” and “colonialist” institution. Nevertheless, she insisted that she wanted to remain at the evil institution — not for its intellectual community, but to “organize” and “leverage” to build a political coalition.
Keep in mind that the faculty not only decided that Abdelhadi was worthy of a faculty position in the university’s Department of Comparative Human Development, but then also made her the Director of Graduate Studies.
For some, the calls of professors like Yazzie to “dismantle” the U.S. constitute the ultimate virtue signal. Like demands to seize factories and homes, the willingness to burn down the system is a cheap and easy way to establish your bona fides as one of the enlightened — something to brag about with your other 20-something fellow travelers as you order your $7 latte on the way to your Hyrox workout.
Lenin once mocked many in the West as idiots who would “transform themselves into men who are deaf, dumb and blind [and] toil to prepare their own suicide.” What he never imagined was how some would still be transforming themselves decades after the revolution failed.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the best-selling author of “The Indispensable Right.”
I see the current attraction for socialism and communism as the natural evolution of a party that identifies with the left. The ultimate goal is a one party state which seems to be what the Democrat Party has been pursuing for the past couple of decades. The party first expunged from its ranks moderates who still supported the Constitution and the foundational institutions that protected individual freedom by recognizing limits on government. The Dems have discarded those principles and eroded those institutions that stand in their way. The judicial branch is one of the last remaining barriers impeding their progress. We can see in the judges they have chosen for lifetime appointments and the open attacks on SCOTUS by their leadership what they have in mind for the future. They openly undermine civil order and simultaneously call for abolishing of law enforcement. They opened our borders to the world at great political cost. The motivation was obviously not altruistic. The party seems to be having difficulty finding a message that will resonate with the voters so they might regain power again. The real problem is they cannot speak the truth of what they seek for the country and after the experience of the last few administrations, the majority do not believe anything they say. Those that seem to be rising in the party are those that speak plainly about their goals which frightens the majority of the electorate.
DamnedNanny is a f*ck1ng, intellectually lazy, idiot. Unfortunately, there is a plethora of NYC voters who fall into the same classification. Other thoughts: capitalism has produced better real-world results for most than alternative systems because it has historically created jobs that largely benefited the masses of workers. However, the takeover of the corporate world by international banksters has been eroding that result, and that erosion is accelerating. AI promises to advance that dynamic by leaps and bounds. How long can the voting masses be expected to support a system that deprives them of any reasonable chance to improve their lot, no matter how strong the philosophical arguments for that system might be? Is it time to revisit the concept of corporate personhood foisted upon us by that noted limerick writer Oliver Wendell Homes?
Ultra-Based Tucker Carlson vs. the Banks
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2025-07-18/ultra-based-tucker-carlson-vs-banks
“Tucker Carlson at Turning Points:
“At some point, the basic economics really matter and they matter because not that it’s bad that rich people are getting richer. It’s bad that everyone else is getting poorer. And it’s especially bad that young people can’t afford homes.””
While not a binding legal document, the DoI established universal principles by which all forms of government should be measured for legitimacy. Baked into that is the only true purpose for government: securing individual unalienable rights. Our so called “great experiment” was never about the legitimacy of those rights, but the legitimacy of form of government.
While we’ve tinkered around trying to make this union “more perfect”, other countries have experimented with Marxism, Communism, and Socialism and the data is in: none of those three are compatible with the full traditional understanding of unalienable rights.
Perhaps it’s just me, but any advocacy for any form that has proven incompatible with our founding principles should be immediately disqualifying for public service.
*.
DoI- declaration of Independence, thank you, Olly.
Thank you.
Forget about $7 lattes. Mamdani, Yazzie and the cadre of intellectually impaired Marxists infecting the Left in Hollywood, academia and the Fourth Estate need to just relax, find a comfortable recliner…, and indulge in a few Hemlock Margaritas. Problem solved.
The transition of a pampered teenager to financial independence starting at age 22 comes way too late. Earlier in our nation’s history children were expected to work. Yes, for some unethical adults, the promise of free labor was a strong temptation, and as they exploited children by overworking them and exposing them to dangerous tasks. The child labor laws were warranted, but as is the case with reforms, overcorrected to the point where 12-16-year-olds are denied the opportunity to learn and earn in the adults-only workplace.
When I was 12, we collected newspapers to recycle, so we could afford to buy camping gear.
Now, I routinely take in student interns (age 16) for my math-CS education startup. After a 30-hour unpaid stint, they can be promoted to paid interns (if they demonstrate a solid work ethic).
If we want to put a dagger in the heart of faux-socialism, let’s create safe, inspiring internships for teens as young as 13. The laws exist in most states to prevent unfair exploitation (altho it’s questionable whether they are being diligently enforced). These laws permit internships where the primary activity has a strong learning component, and where it is illegal to impress an intern into coercive control.
Take your kid to work 1 day a year is not enough. We need to acclimate young and mid-teens to earning $ (legally), and enjoying the process of establishing economic freedom. If we’re not willing to bring them along into our free-market economic system in a positive setting, what do you expect?
*. Yep, there were some teen interns working a California weed field. Who says kids can’t work. Fine upstanding citizens that we are.
” The child labor laws were warranted…”
I’m not convinced. When I was young, those laws were routinely ignored in certain settings. I sent to work at 13 for a dairy-oriented convenience store manager who was very exploitative, and, overall, pretty much of a colossal a-hole. The job really sucked, but the lessons learned were invaluable, and I’m convinced that I have made better decisions for the rest of my life than I would have done without that experience. Sheltering youngsters from reality should be the province of parents and their judgement.
Want to see (literally) a dramatic illustration of the difference between communism (N. Korea) and relative capitalism (S. Korea)? Look at this nighttime satellite photo of N. and S. Korea.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Korean_Peninsula_at_night_from_space.jpg
Now imagine Mamdani winning, and the lights of NYC going dark.
Sam,
If that is what they want to vote for, I say elections have consequences.
There seems to be a competition between college professors to see who can be the most outlandish in order to get attention. Why are libs in such need of public attention?
An
Why are libs in such need of public attention?
__________________
Can you say O-bama
One word: narcissism
*. Low self esteem
There are some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.-Former Marxist and high school dropout Dr. Thomas Sowell, who was cured of his Marxism by working for the US Dept. of Labor.
that was Orwell/
It’s more sinister than that. These elites know that there is a privileged class in all communist systems, and they fully expect to occupy it. The fate of the proletariat is irrelevant.
True, I think. These particular ‘elites,’ however, are members of what should be called the ‘intellectual booboisee.’ They spend so much time posturing as courageous revolutionaries, they haven’t had the time to read a book. They could, for example, read one about Stalin’s purge trials, where intellectuals and dissenters were executed for their views. Our current armchair thinkers are laughable fools who are also historically illiterate.
Yes. And it’s why we should refer to these “elites” as our very own intellectual booboisee. If they weren’t so busy posturing as brave revolutionaries, they’d have more time to read a book or two. They could start with Conquest’s book on Stalin’s purge trials. Intellectuals did not fare well. Our current crop of armchair revolutionaries are historically illiterate fools.
Some of what Mamdani is proposing may seem unconstitutional, but government can destroy the value of something with laws and policies until they can buy it up cheap. Newsom is doing this in CA, in the areas that got burned out. They deny all permission to rebuild, and then one day just buy the whole area under Eminent Domain for a penny on the dollar.
andrew
I wonder how many folks who lost their homes to this fire.
Voted for this insane stuff?
“Newsom is doing this in CA”
California at this point has been almost completely reduced to a population of nothing but loony-tunes. There a proposed state law that appears about to pass (requested by San Jose) that will require markets to pay a municipality $650 for every shopping cart stolen by a homeless person that reclaimed by a municipality and returned to the store. I’m not certain that the Babylon Bee could make up anything this ludicrous. Based on my limited research, that appears to be about twice the replacement cost of a cart to a store, when purchased in even modest quantity. I didn’t see anything about a requirement on the store to repurchase such a cart instead of buying a new replacement, but I’d bet that will be the next step once these idiots see that Plan A face-plants. Gruesome and other California pols are creating a state-of-the-art syllabus in “How to Chase (Tax-Paying) Businesses Away”…
California legislation would fine stores for theft of their shopping carts
https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/ca-bill-would-fine-stores-theft-their-shopping-carts
“The California Senate and now a key Assembly committee have passed a bill that would allow cities to charge businesses up to $650 for returning shopping carts stolen from them. The measure, Senate Bill 753, was introduced at the urging of the city of San Jose, which faces major homelessness and budget crises.”
For both Marxism and Capitalism, greed is the prime motivator. For Capitalists, it’s the greed for more money. From this come laws, schools, and social structures that support it. For Marxism, it’s the greed for arbitrary power over others. From this come laws, schools, and social structures that support it. In most cases, not all, greed for money can be satisfied with sufficiency. On the other hand, greed for arbitrary power feeds on itself by generating new laws without limit, right down to minutiae.
Most people with some experience in life understand this at a gut level, the exception being students who think power will only be used for good. And now we are living this debate once again.
Never has the well-known phrase “Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it” applied more appropriately than to these idiots who ignore the history of the past century and a half. Ask older residents of Poland or Czechoslovakia how Communism was. Go to Cuba. Don’t go to North Korea. Get the point?
I don’t think they’ve forgotten history at all. People like Mamdani simply want to run things and make themselves rich, powerful and famous. Since their followers are ignorant fools, spouting the discredited slogans of yesteryear works.
The history of failure of leftist thought, initiatives, actions, and government is willfully, purposefully, and maliciously omitted from public, private, and parochial education around the world.
Children come into the world helpless. The family operates as a bubble of local communism. Independence and freedom are to be learned gradually as a child grows and matures. It’s way too late to turn 22-year-olds loose as free agents into the labor economy. The transition process should begin 10 years earlier, so the teenager is rewarded for taking responsibility as much as can be reasonably handled. And I don’t consider being a social media influencer “taking responsibility”.
The vast majority of Democrats probably don’t support Mamdani’s policies in their own voting districts. A small percentage might but not most Democrats.
We shall see come election time.
But, I’m not placing any bets. It’s NY folks.
Don’t kid yourself. I have conversations with Democrats often and find them to be utopian, ignorant of even recent history, completely sparkled-headed about human nature, incurious and could not care less about data and evidence. Bad combo.
Immigrants who came through Ellis Island many years ago came to America at great personal cost. There were no cell phones to call home, and postal mail took weeks or months to reach recipients. The death of loved ones was learned often weeks after they died. It was a lonely existence in a “new” world, vastly different in many ways from the one they left. But there was one thing in common: each of these immigrants wanted to be an American. They embraced the changes as improvements in their lives and sought to learn our language and our ways.
That is not how immigrants arrive here today. They come bringing their rituals, cultural preferences, and traditions and demand that we support them. They reject being American and simply want to live, work, and raise families here but as if they were home, wherever home may be. This leads to cultural clashes as some of these practices cannot be harmonized. The prize of citizenship has little meaning because it carries little benefit. The fixes are simple, but we need to have the political will to implement them. Trump’s immigration policy is a good start. The fact that our politicians don’t like it, but the people overwhelmingly do, is proof of this thesis.
The most strange part of all. These new comers want to bring the same rules they left behind, to the USA.???
I just don’t get it
To Dustoff: You will “get it” once you realize that they are a sustaining part of the useful idiot crowd.
Yes, but it’s not so much the rules as their enemies. There’s an old axiom of governance that when formal systems break down, people come to rely on and use informal systems. Many of the countries from which these immigrants come have weak formal systems, and so the people rely on bribery, coercion, and other “informal” means of getting what they need and want. They grow up distrusting and avoiding the “formal” systems because they don’t work for them. Then, they come here and immediately hate our formal system for the same reason. Of course, all of this is misinformed ignorance, but we must tolerate it until perhaps the following generation or the one after it breaks out of the family’s ignorance cocoon.
“new comers want to bring the same rules they left behind…”
This seems to be a nearly universal human trait, although I also don’t understand it. People in the US constantly and consistently relocate from a state with repressive economic and social policies, to one that is more free on both counts, then proceed to vote in policies in that new state that mirror those that they fled (Arizona, Colorado, etc). And even a very substantial number (if not a plurality) of the “Ellis Island” era immigrants to whom JJC refers embraced collectivism once they were established here.
“Like demands to seize factories and homes . . .” (JT)
Mamdani and his collectivist cohorts are a dramatic example of the principle: Controls breed controls.
For decades, democrats have demanded government control of industry — of everything from where and what you can build, the number of hours you can work, the wages you are paid, the benefits you must pay, the suffocating permits you must secure, the snail darters you must bow to, the type of energy and appliances you’re allowed to use . . .
And now the final nail of that control mania: Let’s have total government control, i.e., totalitarianism.
Sam
Look what Calif is doing with all these burn out homes.
Slum villa along the coast.
Yuck!
“Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana
How many schools teach history today?
Wise
How many schools teach history today?
_________________________
I’m in my mid 70’s and I see little of it.
If you have no idea of your past, then the future could be dim.
I fear for my kids and yet glad I don’t have to see this through. I have become my grandfather.
Prof. Turley’s claim has a nub of truth, but he overstretches and over-states his thesis in what is, for him, unusual excess.
G
Did you even read what Turley wrote?
I’m guessing not. Just another fool who can’t wait to make a dumb retort.
Try again.
Prof. Turley: Tells the truth.
“. . . but he overstretches . . .”
The appeasers in Weimar Germany said exactly the same thing.
Do you know what came next?
Gstreet
All professor Turley is doing is following Maya Angleou’s advice.
When someone tells you who they are – beleive them the first time.
Though in this case that is more like the 50th time.
John Say,
Well said.
Most people are ignorant; never bothering w/ history [EX: they should study how Hungary was taken over by Commies in the early 50s-more people died from Communism than almost any other upheaval in the 20th Century] God help us under these parasitic fools.
I would just omit the word “almost” when you state “more people died from Communism than ALMOST any other upheaval in the 20th century”. The only other major upheaval that killed millions was the Nazis and the Soviets, Chinese, Cambodian and Vietnamese “upheavals” killed more than them. If you even throw in WWII it is still communism that killed more people.
That’s one way to make housing affordable.