The rise of socialist candidates across the United States has reignited a long-running debate over how far left the Democratic Party has shifted, with political veterans from both parties telling Fox News Digital the movement\u2019s success is the product of decades of ideological change that started with cultural institutions and that failing to confront it could have profound consequences for the country\u2019s future.
\n\u201cYuri Bezmenov, a KGB defector, warned of \u2018great brainwashing\u2019 schemes to undermine America and the West some 40 years ago,\u201d New York City Republican Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, who grew up in Soviet Ukraine, told Fox News Digital.
\n\u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing now is anything but \u2018grassroots\u2019; it\u2019s the effect of decades-long campaigns to subvert American thought and way of life.\u201d
\nThat campaign, some experts argue, is the underlying reason behind the rise of socialist candidates like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the candidates he backed for Congress last month, as well as Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, and the various other candidates who embrace socialist ideology.
\nTHE DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS ARE NO LONGER ON THE FRINGE<\/p>\n
\u201cMarxist schemes slowly mainstreamed once-fringe ideas like \u2018America is systematically racist,\u2019 or \u2018all cops are bastards,\u2019 and \u2018capitalism is evil,\u2019\u201d Vernikov explained. \u201cThe biggest culprits are the education system, which is increasingly beholden to radicalized teachers\u2019 unions, and moderate Democrat politicians who have refused to challenge \u2013 and in most cases embraced \u2013 their radical, anti-West peers. The next thing you know, we have a socialist mayor committed to the destruction of our value system and three of his cronies on their way to Congress.\u201d
\nMike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation who fled communist Cuba in the 1970s, told Fox News Digital the path to this point over the last several decades was blazed by the \u201clong march through the institutions\u201d where the \u201ccultural left took over the K-12 school system, higher education, art houses, media, entertainment, and museums.\u201d
\nNEWT GINGRICH: THE DECLARATION STILL TERRIFIES SOCIALISTS AND TYRANTS, HERE AND ABROAD<\/p>\n
Gonzalez, co-author of the book \u201cNextGen Marxism: What It Is and How to Combat It,\u201d pointed to a sweeping new White House report that concluded the Smithsonian Institution\u2019s National Museum of American History (NMAH) has become a taxpayer-backed institution of \u201cideological capture\u201d and \u201cextreme political activism.\u201d
\n\u201cPeople think America is exceptional because it is rich and powerful, which completely misunderstands American exceptionalism and the concept of exceptionalism. American exceptionalism is not at all about America being free, rich and powerful,\u201d Gonzalez said.
\n\u201cOn the contrary, America is rich and powerful because of America\u2019s exceptional nature. And that has nothing to do with being rich and powerful. It has to do with the fact that America derived its sovereignty from the concept of natural rights. They stopped demanding their rights as Englishmen and turned around and started demanding their rights as men under the concept of natural rights \u2014 that they have these rights that are endowed by the Creator with natural rights, and that these rights are eternal. Nobody has taught Mamdani this. Instead, they have taught Mamdani to hate America \u2014 that America is structurally oppressive and systemically racist \u2014 and that has been the message of these institutions.\u201d
\nSOCIALISTS LAUNCH RADICAL PLATFORM TO ABOLISH THE US SENATE IN BID TO FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORM AMERICA<\/p>\n
As concerns about the growth of socialism and communism grow, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is adopting and rolling out an updated platform that cuts at the heart of what many conservatives view as America\u2019s constitutional framework and public-safety system, including calls to abolish the U.S. Senate, replace the Electoral College, defund police departments and abolish prisons.
\nGonzalez told Fox News Digital that if he had to put a date on when the left\u2019s cultural takeover began to explode, it would be the 1980s.
\n\u201cIt started in earnest in the \u201980s because the members of the New Left that had been terrorists, like the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers and so forth, they come out of hiding and they start taking over the teaching profession,\u201d Gonzalez explained.
\n\u201cThey go into cultural areas and by the late \u201980s, you have the doctrine of critical race theory, before that, you have critical legal theory and that takes over the law schools and then it gravitates to all faculties, and then it comes to the Ivy walls in the second decade of the 21st century with Obama, Obama creates the environment for it.\u201d
\nMuch has been made in recent months about the disappearance of \u201cmoderates\u201d within the Democratic Party and some attribute that to what Gonzalez referred to as the \u201cdecimation\u201d of moderate Democrats in red and purple districts during the Obama years.
\nObama, who moved in many of the same Chicago political and civic circles as former Weather Underground co-founder Bill Ayers during his early political career, is often accused by conservatives of opening the door to the far-left of the party with his rhetoric and big government policies like Obamacare. During Obama\u2019s eight years in office, Democrats lost more than 1,000 elected offices nationwide, including 63 House seats, 12 Senate seats, 12 governorships, and roughly 940 state legislative seats, in one of the party\u2019s most severe down-ballot declines in modern history.
\nDuring Obama\u2019s presidency, as moderate Democrats were losing elected offices across the country, several high-profile left-wing movements emerged, including Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. The country also witnessed widespread protests, and, in some cities, riots, following high-profile police shootings, including the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, after the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown.
\nHow did the Democratic Party go from pragmatic bipartisan leaders in the 1980s and 1990s to the schism between socialists and moderates that exists today? Gonzalez suggested patriotism is the underlying issue.
\n\u201cI would go back to pre-Bill Clinton,\u201d Gonzalez said when asked about the last time the Democratic Party had leaders who could stand up to the socialist wing. \u201cI would say Tip O\u2019Neill, and Dick Gephardt, these are people that I strongly disagreed with when I was alive back then, I disagreed with them on Central American policy, but they loved the flag, they loved America, they loved capitalism. Tip O\u2019Neill would not have put up with Mamdani\u2019s balderdash on collectivism or seizing the means of production.\u201d
\nA Gallup poll released in late June found Americans\u2019 national pride has fallen to its lowest level in the survey\u2019s 25-year history, with just 53% saying they are \u201cextremely\u201d or \u201cvery\u201d proud to be American. The survey also found a sharp partisan divide: 93% of Republicans said they were extremely or very proud to be American, compared to 27% of Democrats, continuing a trend of widening differences in national pride between the two parties.
\nVeteran Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf told Fox News Digital the political divide in the United States now essentially boils down to two groups: those who love the country and those who don\u2019t.
\nEXPERT WHO FLED CUBA WARNS OF \u2018VICIOUS CYCLE\u2019 THAT WILL LEAD TO \u2018COMMUNISTS IN DOUBLE DIGITS\u2019 IN CONGRESS<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you hate this country, it doesn\u2019t matter whether you are a Republican or a Democrat,\u201d Sheinkopf said. \u201cIf someone hates the country, you have an obligation to do whatever you can to stop them. And the people telling you they hate this country mean they hate its residents as well. They hate differences, they hate multi-ethnic societies, they hate Western democracy, and they\u2019re going to do whatever they can to stop it. If you look at the DSA website, it\u2019s pretty clear.\u201d
\nAs far as what can be done to reverse the spread of communist ideology within the Democratic Party, Sheinkopf said Democrats need to \u201cengage in real partisanship as opposed to blabathons\u201d while focusing less on President Donald Trump and more on engaging with \u201cprogrammatic arguments\u201d on substantive issues.
\n\u201cLow turnouts benefit the enemy, the enemy are the enemies of democracy and people have to stop thinking about it as Republican or Democrat,\u201d Sheinkopf said, referencing the low turnouts in places like New York City, where socialists have seen major victories.
\nSheinkopf explained that in addition to the failures of leadership within the Democratic Party, his generation did a \u201ccrappy job\u201d warning their children of the dangers of socialism, and instead installed the \u201creligion called social justice.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat it is, is the beginning of the fall of Western civilization by its disruption and that\u2019s the idiocy that people fail to understand,\u201d Sheinkopf said.
\nA Fox News poll released in March found a record 38% of registered voters said it would be a good thing for the United States to move away from capitalism and toward socialism, up from 32% in 2022 and just 18% when the question was first asked in 2010, underscoring a growing openness to socialist ideas even as a majority of voters still oppose such a shift.
\nCommunist and socialist organizations have also become increasingly visible at high-profile demonstrations over the past year. During May Day protests in Minneapolis this spring, members of Communist Party USA and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization marched alongside other activist groups carrying communist and socialist banners while participants called for a \u201crevolution\u201d and displayed anti-capitalist messaging, Fox News Digital extensively reported.
\nSimilar scenes have played out at demonstrations in New York City, where communist organizations have openly distributed literature, displayed communist flags and promoted Marxist ideology at larger anti-Trump protests.
\nThe political shift has gotten the attention of President Trump, who earlier this month in a speech at Mount Rushmore described communism as \u201cthe greatest threat\u201d facing the United States.
\n\u201cIt is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor or even 9\/11,\u201d Trump said. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to let this happen to us. Believe me, we\u2019re not letting it happen, because communism is the enemy of free people.\u201d
\nHistorians estimate communist regimes, many of which described themselves as socialist states, in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia and elsewhere were responsible for the deaths of more than 100 million people during the 20th century through executions, forced labor, famine and political repression.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis needs to be taken very seriously,\u201d Gonzalez told Fox News Digital. \u201cMamdani tells you about collectivism, that\u2019s one of the ways you know he\u2019s a communist, he doesn\u2019t tell you what follows collectivism, the gulags follow collectivism and Marx himself tells you why the gulags follow collectivism.\u201d
\n\u201cMarx in the manifesto says when you take people\u2019s property away, they get awfully angry and they\u2019re gonna fight back and you\u2019re gonna need, \u2018despotic inroads.\u2019 This is what the English translation of the German says, despotic inroads. In other words, you\u2019re going to need to be repressive. And that\u2019s gulags. And that follows collectivism. America needs to understand there is a specter haunting America, and it\u2019s communism. They need to wake up to this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"