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 just finished reading “Everything Flows” by Vasily Grossman. A must read for anybody considering voting for Zohran Mamdani for NYC mayor.
“For example, your leftists in the United States, all these professors and all these beautiful civil rights defender, they are instrumental in the process of the subversion, only to destabilize a nation. When their job is completed, they are not needed anymore. They know too much. Some of them, when they get disillusioned, when they see that Marxist Leninist has come to power obviously they get offended. They think that they will come to power. That will never happen of course. They will be lined up against the wall and shot.” Yuri Bezmenov
Noone
Nothing could be more damning about our public education than people thinking Marxism is the answer while remaining clueless about the crushing of freedom, human rights and economic misery it has delivered 100% of the time.
..just when we thought the Mamdani obsession couldn’t get any more weird than Letitia James hanging all over him saying he was the new Obama.. or AOC hanging all over him for breakfast.. along comes Yazzie touting him as ‘the one’ to completely roto router The USA.. the American Way and all her institutions.. down the drain.. lickety split.. poof! all gone.. while we all just sit back and watch…
*. Obama doesn’t exist nor mamdani. Mandella effect. It’s a path of destruction and recognizing that isn’t just watching. Tiny NYC with mamdani and James don’t exist.
*. Yes, Mayor Mamdani for the underclass.
What’s up with cryptocurrency? How bad is inflation? Trillionaires had to convert to Ethereum. It’ll last a thousand years.
*
Or wiped out at the speed of light 😉
*. ^^^ the seize production idea stems from individual farmers working together in acquiring labor, distribution etc without outside investors. Those investors may or may not include the government. These are called Co ops and exist. It’s most likely a reason for skyrocketing food prices. Food production in the US right now is a mess. Investigate the Co ops and ascertain if government money is subsidizing it which translates to the taxpayer pays for it and then buys it back. Double dip without price controls. I’m going to buy a truckload of oranges and put them in your market and then shop there and buy them back. If it were true competition it wouldn’t matter but it isn’t.
George Washington’s slaves used sickles on his plantations, and he probably kept a hammer in a shed somewhere. This is proof positive that he was a communist.
Yes, that is absolutely true. He also got into an entangling alliance with Neil de Grasse, Rorshambeau, Lafayette, and Captain Stubing.
The lawyers are at fault. They legalized monopolies. When I was young, there were more employers than employees. Thanks to lawyers enabling the heist of our means of self sufficiency, empowerment, “life, liberty, property =pursuit of happiness’, the economy is today socialist, just like the former Soviet Union. Now only a very few employers exist. This phenomena is absurd. Vile.
My parents started farming on 80 acres, we had a house for the hired man to live in! Before lawyer FDR, George Norris his protégé, created the strawman, the existence of which has ruined my entire life, it was against the law to use your neighbor, sister, child, as your chattel. Destroyed, our, my Republic, unicameral, center of all evil, poisoned our soils, Satanism =eugenic society =Treaty of Verona families: public servant=tax paid=parasite personality.
Sam Adams 50 years to stop all taxation is a necessity again.
The lawyer’s son got my scholarship, I was in the top ten but he got my scholarship when he was not in the top ten. That lawyer/banker, put dad and me out of the cattle business, specially because we always made a profit! With 1500 cattle we paid all the taxes for that school!
Then, when, Dad died bizarrely, that lawyer forgot I existed. His son had been my class mate for 8 ,eight years!. I, at University, was not notified, of claimed forced sale for taxes due. I learned of it’s sale after the fact! Denied one penny of it. $1Billlion for land, $1Billion for oil lease, per county register. Lawyers stole, my home, and livelihood.
9/28/01, I, in pedestrian -right-away, heard high pitched squeal, behind, took off running to curb. The lawyer who did it got off Scott free! Ruined my back, my company, career, forced me into homelessness, Appeals court radicles me for even thinking I had the right to walk in the pedestrian right away! In truth a certain city and an insurance company owe me $Tillions!
It is the horrid law schools who created this entire problem. ‘legal”= undermine God’s laws, “legal”= copy written by the Crown/Pope! Dark ages.
Only our Age of Enlightenment, re-empowered, can save mankind and the planet from complete ecological destruction.
Tax salaried creatures are sociopath’s. Psychopaths’, are Gates, Bezos, Buffet, our foreign controlled military, etcetera.
George Washington, stands correct “Do not get involved in foreign wars”. Had his and our founders’ teachings been respected, none of this nonsense would be going on.
The original 13th Amendment is valid and must be enforced.
Tesla, proved free energy, decades ago. Autos run on water, proven decades ago. The two legged taking creatures, who side step these facts belong behind bars.
The only means to stop this normalized treason, is to fire, fine, incarcerate all the chattel owners!
I told my 4 kids they could go to whatever college or university they wanted to but that I would help finance them only if they chose a school from my approved list. All of them chose a school from my list. All of them are politically conservative. You might call that power of the purse. Lol
Yazzie was mouthing off 300 miles from Camp Mandan where a French trapper had bought two Indian teenagers from Indians who had kidnapped while stealing horses. Basically Thomas Jefferson reunited Sacagawea with her family and got her and her son a better life.
George Washington practiced slavery.
Communism is slavery.
Therefore, George Washington was a communist.
The form of that lame attempt at a syllogism is not even close to being correct.
Yes, it is.
Assertion is not demonstration of fact. Grow up.
Telling me to “grow up” is ad hominem.
George Washington was white.
Abe Lincoln was white.
Therefore, George Washington was Abe Lincoln.
Really?
All presidents share the same presidential ghost between them. Yes.
Your analogy does not make as much sense as mine does.
Give it a rest.
This is odd. O-dumber is letting his real feeling out?
__________________
Barack Obama appeared on his wife Michelle’s failing podcast this week to give some advice to young men.
Obama encouraged young men to enjoy theater, let women pick up the bill at dinner, and said they need gay men for guidance.
There should be a deletion computer program that would delete the name obum in every computer worldwide. Turn back the clocks 8 years and everyone stay quiet until it’s aged out. Call it the mandella effect. Maybe there’d be a chance of survival then.
DustOff,
Back in the day, I went to the theater on a regular basis. Even volunteered at one theater to build sets.
I have no problem with a woman picking up the bill at dinner. It is not uncommon for some of our female friends to pick up the bill.
Gay men for guidance? Sorry, but some of gay men friends I have had in the past, they would be the last men I would be looking for guidance. They pin balled from one disaster to the next.
Why would anyone take advice from Obama?
*. Women paying for dinner? It makes them think, do I really want his company for dinner? Women will say no. I’ll eat alone. Women are cheap. It’s a good exercise for them but goes against their biology.
*. AI gone wrong, Dust. Ya can’t make a silk purse out of a pigs ear.
It is worth remembering that “Social Security is Communism” was a popular talking point of the 50’s and ’60’s.
It didn’t dampen a global liberal preference for nationalization of industries, nor did it impede a global conservative trend for military suppression of democracies.
Exaggerating any government activity into Marx’s dictatorship of the proletariat or the Puritans’ New Jerusalem tends to end intelligent conversation.
“. . . tends to end intelligent conversation.”
So then what is an “intelligent” analysis of history? That there’s nothing to learn from it? That basic ideas are irrelevant? That those past actions and ideas do *not* have consequences for the future?
Your implied view of historiography is what killed the motivation to take history seriously.
There were those in Weimar Germany who argued that appointing Hitler as chancellor was a mistake. That he would bring dictatorship to Germany. The appeasers accused them of “exaggerating.”
It is also worth remembering SS is a failed program. It made millions of people dependent on it for their retirement rather than actual savings. SS is expected to become insolvent by 2033. If I had taken that money and put it into a market index fund, I could retire by now. By the time I do retire, I expect to only get a small % of what I paid into.