Why Smart Young Americans Are Falling for Communism
And Why It Looks So Different This Time
They’re the smartest, most connected, and most educated generation in human history, yet also the most despairing.
They can learn quantum physics on YouTube, yet can’t afford rent. They can text anyone, anywhere, anytime, yet say they’ve never felt more alone. They’re anxious, medicated, and exhausted by a world that feels out of control: climate, economy, identity, you name it.
So when someone like mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, the smiling socialist from Queens, New York, talks about free groceries, free buses, and free childcare, it doesn’t sound radical. It sounds like an offer of rescue.
Older generations were shocked and appalled by his sudden rise in popularity. Many shook their heads and asked: “How could they fall for communism again?” But they forget what it’s like to be young and searching for purpose, especially in a new digital world that’s lost its sense of meaning.
Communism Doesn’t Look Like It Used To
My grandparents fled communism twice: first from Russia, then from China. My parents-in-law fled the same ideology in Czechoslovakia.
The communism they escaped was visible: soldiers, propaganda, murder, and fear. Physical control.
Today’s version looks like compassion. It wears a smile. It speaks the language of equity and inclusion.
It doesn’t promise to seize your farm; it promises to cancel your debt.
It doesn’t call for revolution; it calls for “fairness.”
That’s what makes it more dangerous because it doesn’t look dangerous at all.
And it’s spreading through a culture where many no longer even know what the word socialism means.
What Socialism Is and What It Isn’t
“Socialism” once meant something concrete: collective or state ownership of production to enforce equality.
“Communism” was the endgame. A world without private ownership, where the state fades because everyone lives as one in peace and harmony. A “heaven on earth” created by those who want to “play God”.
But over time, those meanings dissolved and:
Schools stopped teaching what socialism actually was.
Language softened to the point where “democratic socialism” sounds harmless.
History blurred to the point where younger Americans associate socialism with fairness, not famine.
So now, “socialism” means virtually anything from free college to condemning government or capitalist corruption, to just being nice. And when words lose meaning, people they get confused. They lose vigilance. They stop standing up. And they stop asking hard questions.
That’s how every “new experiment” in socialism began: with good intentions and moral confusion.
Most people don’t even realize that China, the world’s largest communist state, calls itself a “democratic socialist system.” It’s run by the Chinese Communist Party, a one-party surveillance regime, and the world’s worst human rights abuser, and yet it uses the same vocabulary of fairness and equality that American socialists now repeat.
If we’re using the same word to describe both China’s dictatorship and New York’s proposed rent freeze, free buses, and free childcare for all, maybe the confusion isn’t accidental.
The DSA: An Ideology, Not a Party
Zohran Mamdani, isn’t just a Democrat, he’s part of the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA. The distinction is important whether you live in New York or not.
The DSA describes its mission this way:
“We are democratic socialists because we reject an authoritarian state and favor democracy—in both politics and the economy. We believe that working people should run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few.” ~ Democratic Socialists of America
That may sound reasonable at first glance. But read it closely. It isn’t a policy platform, it’s a moral creed.
The DSA isn’t structured like a traditional U.S. political party that trades in compromise, data, and incremental progress. It’s an ideological movement, guided by belief, not evidence. It’s not designed to include a broad coalition of differing views or negotiate competing interests the way a traditional party does. It’s designed to reshape culture itself over the long term, to shift moral language, redefine values, and make its worldview feel like common sense rather than political choice.
It’s driven more by faith than by reason. It is based on the belief that if people like them ran the system, they could fix it. That is idealism disguised as governance. And that’s why it resonates with the young.
In a world of despair, it tells the youth they can be the saviors.
That’s a powerful message, yet a dangerous one. It’s a message designed to indoctrinate, not to educate.
Image: A screenshot from Zohran Mamdani’s main campaign video, which has a 6-second shot that deliberately emphasizes a five-pointed red star—the symbol of socialist ideology for the past century—on the back of Zohran’s white tunic as his stands on a street in New York City.
The Long March Through the Institutions
In the 1960s, a German activist named Rudi Dutschke coined the phrase “the long march through the institutions.”
He meant that socialism could win over nations by slowly reshaping culture—schools, media, art, faith, and language—until people stopped noticing the change.
Leftist intellectuals like Herbert Marcuse, a German-born Marxist thinker and “the Father of the New Left” helped teach and apply that strategy to America’s institutions, describing it as “working against the established institutions while working in them”.
Same goal. Different method.
And it worked.
Over decades, socialism has rebranded as empathy. Now, many Americans who would never dream of calling themselves communists proudly call themselves “democratic socialists.”
They don’t realize it’s the same ideological seed just planted in softer soil.
This Is More Than a Social Trend
In their youth, our older generations sought belonging—to find their place in society that they were coming to understand.
This generation of youth is different. They are seeking reasons to live at all.
They’re living through an existential crisis:
Youth suicide rates have never been higher.
In Canada, the government has received requests for assisted suicide from children as young as twelve, and they’re considering offering it to them.
When life feels that empty, ideology is a replacement for meaning, for purpose. It isn’t just politics, it’s salvation.
Socialism offers that: a moral framework, a simple villain (the rich, the system), and a promise of redemption through equality.
It says: Your pain isn’t your fault. The system did this to you. And if we rebuild the system, you’ll finally be free.
That’s more secular gospel than a political message. And it works when it is filling a void that used to be filled by faith, family, mental freedom, and purpose.
Why the Old Warnings Don’t Work
Telling a 20-year-old that communism killed 100 million people won’t reach them when they already feel like life isn’t worth living.
Milton Friedman, economist and Nobel laureate prepared us that we would have to play our part for each future generation:
“The battle for freedom must be won over and over again. The socialists in all parties… must once again be persuaded or defeated if we are to remain free men.”
He was right. But persuasion isn’t just about logic. It’s about meaning. We can’t out-argue socialism with data or intellect. We have to out-inspire it by showing that freedom, responsibility, and creativity give life deeper purpose than any government plan ever could.
Going Forward
Freedom alone isn’t enough anymore, especially for the youth. It has to mean something. And that meaning begins with the one thing socialism always promises but never truly delivers: human connection.
When people feel unseen, ideology is seductive.
Mamdani’s smile isn’t powerful because it’s political, it’s powerful because it’s human. It makes people feel seen.
That’s the same hunger that algorithms exploit, that politics manipulates, and that too many of us forget to feed in our daily lives.
The real answer isn’t more politics or a new ideology. It’s relearning how to be human again—a handshake, a hug, a conversation that isn’t scored for likes or for outrage.
It’s building community by choice, not by coercion. Growing compassion without collectivism. Seeking truth and honesty without manipulation or indoctrination.
We already have algorithms pretending to be our friends. We don’t need politics to become another substitute for human connection.
And we certainly don’t need more social experiments to prove another inevitable socialist failure. We need to move on after learning from a century of failed attempts.
Young people aren’t crazy for wanting a better world. They’re desperate for a reason to care but they’re looking for it in all the wrong places. If we want to help them, we have to start where politics can’t go: with real human warmth.
Because the only thing stronger than ideology is still the human heart which is as immeasurable as it is powerful. And which has seen man through the darkest of times and has never let us down.
What are your thoughts?
Click and comment below to join the discussion.
🔒 Darker Details: Faith Without God
We’ve all heard Marx’s line about religion being “the opium of the people,” but almost no one knows what he actually meant or how socialism quietly took its place. In this week’s Darker Details post, I break down how modern socialism has become a kind of secular faith: complete with sin, salvation, and prophets, but no forgiveness.
👉 Read the full post here (for paid members)
Till next week, stay calm, stay strong, and stay human ❤️
~ Kay
PS. If you know anyone looking for human connection or reminders of human value, send them a link to my 1-Minute Wonder podcast. Daily reminders of what makes us human.
Interesting.
However, I make a general note that they can't write a proper sentence. They can't cook. They cannot do simple math without a calculator. They cannot read a map. They cannot identify food in its most natural form. They can't comprehend most of what they read. Need I go on?
Is it their fault? No.
But without immediate reward, they feel empty. And when emptiness turns to desperation, any pied-piper offering hope will do. For the parents it is Trump. For the kids it's Mandami.
Sure us older folk can point fingers at the youth. But ask the vast majority of their parents to explain Marxism and any of its various forms, and they are equally lost.
We are raised to be non-thinkers. We are groomed to become lifelong, emotional responders to the stimuli around us. And with each passing generation it gets worse. At some point we hit rock bottom and either accept perpetual enslavement, or we revolt and remove the criminal parasite class from the entire landscape. No Quarter Given.
Thank you for this excellently brief and really root cause analysis. I'll be restacking it. I've felt helpless to the spell young people are under. This beautifully describes the trap so we can know the solution. I'm childless but have 8 grown nieces and nephews who I have hardly any contact with and therefor zero influence. My only thought I could come up with is get aware parents to encourage their kids to talk about this. The young might listen to others their age. My nieces and nephews have been so programmed to equate my age with something really negative and worthless.