For much of the twentieth century, Americans believed the defeat of Soviet communism marked the end of one of history’s greatest ideological threats. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union seemed to signal the triumph of constitutional liberty, free enterprise, private property, and individual freedom over centralized government and totalitarian control.
Today, however, socialist, Marxist, and communist ideas are returning—not under the banner of armed revolution, but through elections, political organizing, education, entertainment, and social media.
Candidates who identify as democratic socialists or who are backed by the Democratic Socialists of America are winning Democratic primaries across the country. At the same time, influential online personalities are introducing socialist, Marxist, communist, and anti-capitalist ideas to millions of young Americans.
This is no longer a fringe movement.
On July 4, 2026, the Democratic Socialists of America announced that it had surpassed 120,000 dues-paying members, making it the largest socialist organization in American history. The organization has also experienced significant electoral success, helping candidates defeat established Democratic incumbents in congressional and state races.
The central issue is not whether every member of the DSA is a communist or supports violent revolution. The organization describes itself as a “multi-tendency” socialist movement, meaning it contains democratic socialists, Marxists, communists, Marxist-Leninists, Maoists, labor activists, and other radical factions.
Nevertheless, the philosophical direction of the movement is unmistakable: it rejects free-market capitalism, the West, America, the Constitution, and Israel as fundamentally unjust and seeks to shift increasing economic and political power from private citizens and businesses to the state, public institutions, unions, and collectivized political organizations.
What the DSA Says It Wants
The strongest case against the DSA does not require exaggeration. Its own published platform is sufficient evidence that, despite its denials, it serves as a godless communist front organization advancing Marxist ideology under the more palatable label of “democratic socialism.”
The DSA calls for publicly owned housing, universal rent control, public ownership of major energy and transportation infrastructure, higher taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations, a wealth tax, universal government-financed healthcare, tuition-free public higher education, cancellation of student debt, universal childcare, and a federal jobs guarantee.
Its program also calls for redirecting or defunding police funding as part of a process leading toward “fully abolishing the police and prison system.” It advocates defunding the Department of War, ending foreign wars, closing American military bases overseas, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ending immigration detention and deportation, and granting legal status to undocumented immigrants.
On Israel, the DSA demands an end to all American military and economic assistance, supports the Palestinian “right to resist,” calls for Jerusalem to become the capital of a Palestinian state, and advocates prosecuting American and Israeli leaders whom it accuses of genocide. They are Antisemitic and Anti-Israel.
Most significantly, the organization declares that its objective is to place workers in control of government through what it calls a “new democratic constitution.” That proposed system would establish a single federal legislature based on proportional representation, place the largest corporations under public ownership and political control, and contribute to the construction of socialism throughout the world.
This is not merely a proposal to repair roads, provide limited assistance to the poor, or preserve a basic social safety net. It represents a fundamental restructuring of the American constitutional and economic order of redistributing wealth.
The DSA does not simply argue that capitalism needs reform. Its members are generally united by opposition to capitalism itself. Even sympathetic examinations of the organization acknowledge that it encompasses an ideological spectrum extending from supporters of an expanded welfare state to committed communists, Marxist-Leninists, and Maoists who believe revolutionary change is ultimately necessary.
That distinction matters.
A progressive may seek to regulate capitalism. A socialist seeks to replace private ownership and market allocation with increasing collective or governmental control. A communist seeks the eventual abolition of capitalism and private ownership of productive property altogether.
The terminology may differ, but the direction of travel is toward concentrating economic power in the hands of the elite who will redistribute as they see fit.
Socialism with Better Branding
The phrase democratic socialism is politically effective because it combines an appealing word—democratic—with an ideology that has historically produced coercion whenever governments attempted to impose it comprehensively.
Its advocates argue that their program differs from Soviet communism in that it seeks to achieve socialist objectives through elections rather than violent revolution. That distinction is important, but it does not answer the central question: What happens after the government acquires control over housing, healthcare, energy, transportation, education, major industries, employment policy, and the distribution of wealth?
Communists often obtain power democratically, but once in power, they impose their totalitarian mentality and use it to weaken the institutions that made democratic competition possible.
The danger is not that the United States will become the Soviet Union overnight. The danger is that Americans will gradually surrender economic independence, private property rights, constitutional safeguards, and individual responsibility in exchange for promises of security, equity, and government provision.
Socialism is often presented as compassion administered through public policy. But compassion is voluntary. Redistribution by the state is enforced through taxation, regulation, penalties, and ultimately the coercive power of government.
Every new entitlement enlarges the government institution responsible for distributing it. Every expansion of government control increases the power of those who administer that system. The result is not the elimination of elites, but the creation of a new political and bureaucratic elite that determines who receives resources, which industries may operate, what property may be retained, and which viewpoints are acceptable.
The Candidates Carrying the Movement Forward
Among the movement’s most prominent figures is New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who openly identifies as a democratic socialist. In my opinion, his behavior and words signal to me that he is a Communist and Islamists.
Mamdani has advocated city-owned grocery stores, expanded public housing, fare-free public transportation, higher taxes on wealthy residents, and stronger government control over the economy. He has stated, “I don’t think that we should have billionaires,” and has previously used Marxist language concerning the “seizing” of productive property. He supports taxing “whiter neighborhoods” in New York City higher than other boroughs.
On foreign policy, he supports the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel, has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, and has argued that New York authorities should arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he entered the city while subject to an International Criminal Court warrant.
In Colorado, DSA member Melat Kiros, another communist, defeated a fifteen-term incumbent in a Democratic primary while campaigning for Medicare for All, universal childcare, expanded labor protections, and a substantially larger government role in healthcare and social welfare.
In Michigan, DSA-backed Donavan McKinney, another communist, defeated an incumbent congressman while campaigning on Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, expanded government housing programs, the redistribution of resources to address income inequality. and stronger federal intervention in the economy.
In Michigan, William Lawrence, a self-described socialist but in fact a communist, won his Democratic primary while advocating Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, expanded public ownership, and other policies associated with the Democratic Socialists of America.
In New York, Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier have been associated with the DSA movement’s more radical wing. Archived statements attributed to Chevalier have advocated abolishing police, prisons, and borders, as well as “seizing the means of production.” Valdez wants to implement universal rent control and end U.S. military aid to Israel. She wants Medicare for all, housing for all, to tax the rich, public ownership, to abolish ICE, end immigration detention and deportations, and provide broad protection for illegal aliens. Believes Israel is apartheid, is committing genocide, and aligns with pro-Palestinian positions
Wisconsin state representative Francesca Hong identifies as a democratic socialist and has promoted Medicare for all, universal childcare, stronger labor unions, expanded tenant protections, increased public investment in affordable housing, and higher taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations. She supports abortion rights, taxpayer-funded gender-affirming healthcare, and automatic voter registration.
Hong has also supported calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and has been sharply critical of Israeli government policy. Hong has opposed continued U.S. support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, supports legislation protecting the right to boycott Israel, and believes Israel is committing genocide.
Closely aligned with this movement is Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate in Michigan who recently won the Democratic Senate primary. Although he is normally described as a progressive rather than a formal DSA member, El-Sayed is a Communist Muslim who has championed Medicare for all, advocated a dramatically expanded federal role in healthcare, opposed continued American military assistance to Israel, and accused Israel of genocide in Gaza.
His primary victory demonstrates that these policies are gaining support beyond traditionally socialist districts.
Bill Maher Sounds the Alarm
One of the most significant warnings has come not from a conservative pastor, Republican politician, or right-wing commentator, but from longtime liberal television host Bill Maher.
Maher has warned that the Democratic Party is being “colonized” by socialist activists and has stated that the party’s direction has placed his own vote “in play.” He has emphasized that his criticism is based on the DSA’s published platform and the public statements of its candidates, rather than Republican characterizations of the organization.
During one monologue, Maher compared language within the socialist movement to Karl Marx’s principle, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” He also highlighted statements attributed to socialist housing activist Cea Weaver, including her call to “elect more communists.”
The significance lay not merely in what Maher said, but in the reaction of his Los Angeles audience. People who had assembled to hear a liberal comedian audibly gasped when confronted with the actual statements.
That response reveals something important: many Americans who vote for progressive candidates are not fully aware of the ideological program developing within the movement.
They hear promises of affordable housing, free healthcare, free public transportation, universal childcare, tuition-free college, student-debt cancellation, and economic equality. They do not always hear the corresponding demands for public ownership, revolutionary constitutional restructuring, police and prison abolition, military retreat, hostility toward Israel, and the replacement of capitalism.
The appealing promises are emphasized. The concentration of power necessary to fulfill them is minimized.
The Influence of Hasan Piker
The movement extends far beyond elected office.
One of its most influential voices is Hasan Piker, a socialist political commentator whose online audience numbers in the millions. Piker advocates replacing capitalism with socialism, promotes collective or worker ownership of industry, and frequently denounces Zionism and American foreign policy.
He campaigned for Abdul El-Sayed and reacted to criticism of El-Sayed’s victory by calling his opponents “Islamophobic pieces of s—.”
Piker’s influence is important because millions of young people now receive their political education primarily through social media personalities rather than classrooms, books, churches, newspapers, or extended historical study.
A commentator does not need to hold elected office to reshape a generation’s worldview. By presenting socialism as compassionate, fashionable, rebellious, and morally superior, influencers can normalize ideas that previous generations associated with repression and economic failure.
For many young Americans, communism is no longer connected in their minds to forced collectivization, political prisons, religious persecution, censorship, famine, secret police, or mass executions. It has instead become an internet aesthetic—a symbol of rebellion against billionaires, corporations, landlords, traditional morality, Western history, and the United States itself.
A “Toxic Stew”
Following the victories of El-Sayed and other communist candidates, Senator Ted Cruz argued that the country is witnessing what he called a “green-red convergence”—an alliance between revolutionary socialist movements and radical Islamist politics.
Cruz described the combination as a “toxic, toxic stew” and accused its leading figures of sharing hostility toward capitalism, Christianity, Judaism, Israel, and traditional American institutions. He also charged that the movement intends to abolish the Senate and rewrite the Constitution.
Senator Cruz is right. Many of us have been warning since the early 2000s about what Pierre-André Taguieff termed “Islamo-Leftism”—the growing alliance between the radical political left and Islamist movements, often referred to as the red-green axis of evil.
Revolutionary leftist organizations and Islamist movements possess radically different ultimate objectives. Marxism is fundamentally atheistic and materialistic, while Islamism seeks a political and religious order governed by Islamic principles.
Yet the two movements frequently cooperate in their opposition to Israel, Western civilization, capitalism, traditional Christianity, American power, and inherited social institutions.
This cooperation is especially visible in the anti-Israel movement, where Marxist organizations, socialist candidates, Islamist activists, university protesters, and online influencers often employ the same language of colonialism, resistance, revolution, and liberation.
Their long-term goals may be incompatible, but they presently share common enemies.
How Did We Arrive Here?
The answer lies partly in decades of ideological transformation within education, entertainment, journalism, government institutions, and popular culture.
For more than thirty years, many students have increasingly been taught to view capitalism primarily as exploitation, America’s founding principles as instruments of oppression, Western civilization as uniquely evil, and free enterprise as inherently unjust. Increasingly, they are also taught that Judeo-Christian values are not the moral foundation of Western civilization but the very source of its alleged oppression, inequality, and injustice.
Class conflict has replaced personal responsibility. Redistribution has replaced stewardship. Group identity has replaced individual moral agency. Government dependency has increasingly replaced personal liberty.
American history is now frequently presented not as an imperfect but extraordinary struggle to apply the principles of liberty more consistently, but as a continuous story of oppression requiring the dismantling of the constitutional order itself. Whoever controls what might be called the “ideas industry”—schools, universities, media, entertainment, publishing, and technology—possesses enormous influence over how young people interpret history and current events.
When students are taught what to think rather than how to think, political ideology becomes a substitute for careful historical analysis. A generation that has never experienced communism may romanticize it. A generation that did not build the institutions of liberty may not understand how easily they can be lost.
The Historical Record
History demonstrates that governments identifying with communist ideology inflicted extraordinary suffering during the twentieth century.
Scholars disagree over the exact death toll because the available estimates depend upon whether calculations include executions, deaths in prison camps, forced deportations, politically engineered famines, deaths resulting from collectivization, and other forms of state repression. Estimates range from many tens of millions to approximately 100 million deaths. Here is the fact: communist governments produced suffering and death on a staggering scale.
After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Soviet state abolished or severely restricted private ownership of major industries, imposed centralized economic control, suppressed political opposition, persecuted religious believers, established prison-labor camps, and carried out forced collectivization.
Under Joseph Stalin, millions died through executions, imprisonment, deportation, famine, and state terror. Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward produced one of the deadliest famines in human history. The Chinese Communist Party also used political campaigns, prisons, executions, public humiliation, and ideological reeducation to eliminate opposition.
In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge attempted to construct a revolutionary agrarian communist society by abolishing money, emptying cities, destroying traditional institutions, and murdering perceived enemies. Approximately one-quarter of Cambodia’s population died from execution, starvation, disease, and forced labor.
After Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba, his government nationalized businesses, restricted private enterprise, eliminated independent political competition, imprisoned dissidents, controlled the press, and drove generations of Cubans to flee their homeland.
Communism did not fail merely because the wrong individuals administered it. Its failures arose from its underlying assumptions about human nature, property, power, morality, and the state. When government controls the economy, government gains leverage over nearly every aspect of human life. When the state becomes the primary employer, landlord, healthcare provider, educator, and distributor of necessities, political dissent becomes economically dangerous. The citizen is no longer independent of the government. He becomes dependent upon it.
Socialism and the Sin of Covetousness
From a biblical perspective, the issue runs even deeper. Marxism appeals to fallen human nature because it institutionalizes one of humanity’s oldest sins: covetousness.
The Tenth Commandment declares: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.” —Exodus 20:17
Covetousness does not merely desire prosperity. It resents the prosperity, possessions, position, or success of another person. Socialist politics frequently transforms that resentment into a moral crusade. Instead of encouraging diligence, creativity, stewardship, voluntary generosity, personal responsibility, and care for the poor, it promises to use political power to redistribute what others possess.
The Bible commands generosity, but biblical generosity is not the same as government confiscation. Generosity is an act of the heart. It is voluntary, personal, moral, and accountable to God. State redistribution is compulsory and administered through political power.
Scripture recognizes private property. The commandment “You shall not steal” assumes that individuals may rightfully possess what belongs to them. The command against coveting a neighbor’s house likewise assumes that the house belongs to the neighbor and not to the collective state.
In Acts, when Peter confronted Ananias concerning the sale of his land, he said:
“While it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control?”
—Acts 5:4
The early Church practiced radical generosity, but it did so voluntarily. Believers shared their possessions because the Holy Spirit moved their hearts, not because a centralized government confiscated and redistributed their property. Biblical justice protects the poor from exploitation, but it does not sanctify envy.
Fallen Humanity and Political Utopia
Romans 8 teaches that the mind governed by the flesh is hostile toward God. Humanity naturally seeks autonomy from God’s authority while attempting to construct its own definition of justice.
This is the fatal weakness of every utopian political system. Socialism, Marxism, or Communism promise that the concentration of power in government will produce equality, or in their words, “equity,” which means equal outcomes. Yet it entrusts that power to fallen human beings. Marxism assumes that injustice arises primarily from economic structures and class divisions. Scripture teaches that injustice arises from the sinful human heart.
Changing economic structures cannot regenerate the human heart. Placing more power in the hands of government does not eliminate greed, pride, corruption, prejudice, selfishness, or the lust for control. It magnifies the damage those sins can inflict. The problem is not merely who owns the factory. The problem is who governs the heart.
Only Jesus Christ can transform the heart.
The Prophetic Direction of Human Government
Bible prophecy reveals that human government is ultimately moving toward global political, economic, and religious centralization.
Revelation 6 portrays a future economic catastrophe in which a day’s wages purchase only enough food for survival: “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not harm the oil and the wine.” — Revelation 6:6
In the future Tribulation era, the ordinary person will struggle to purchase basic food, while “the oil and the wine”—goods associated with abundance and luxury—remain protected for the elite class. The picture is one of scarcity for the masses, while the privileged elite retain access to wealth. This is precisely what centralized political systems repeatedly produce. They promise equality but establish two classes: those who administer the system and those who must live under it.
Zechariah 5 presents another remarkable vision of the future. The prophet sees the woman called Wickedness confined within an ephah basket, an ancient unit of measure associated with trade and commerce. She is shut inside the basket by a heavy lead cover. The lead cover symbolizes false weights and measures, representing corruption, fraud, and injustice within the world’s economic system. The basket is then transported to the land of Shinar—the location of ancient Babylon—where a house is prepared for it. This house is far more than a dwelling; it represents the headquarters, the epicenter, and the centralized base of operations from which this global religious and economic system will originate and be administered.
The imagery is unmistakable. The woman represents false religion, the ephah represents commerce and the global economic system, and the lead cover represents false weights and measures—an unjust and corrupt economy. Together, they portray a centralized Babylonian system of false religion, corrupt commerce, and economic deception. Revelation 17 and 18 complete the picture by revealing the final form of this Babylonian system under the Antichrist—a worldwide religious, political, and commercial empire headquartered in Babylon, from which the global economy and false religious system will be directed in open rebellion against God.
Revelation 17 and 18 complete that picture by describing an end-times political, religious, and commercial system centered in Babylon. The kings, merchants, and powerful people of the earth enrich themselves through it while the nations become spiritually corrupted and economically broke.
Revelation 13 describes a system in which economic participation becomes dependent upon allegiance to the Antichrist:
“And that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.”
—Revelation 13:17
The final form of human government will involve centralized political authority under the Antichrist, economic control, religious deception, and restrictions upon buying and selling.
This does not mean that every government program is the mark of the beast or that every socialist politician is consciously preparing the world for the Antichrist. It does mean that Christians should recognize the direction described by Scripture: humanity will increasingly surrender freedom to centralized systems promising peace, security, prosperity, and equality. The table is getting set.
The Antichrist will not initially present himself as a monster. He will present himself as a solution.
Can America Reverse Its Course?
I fear that, after decades of cultural and educational transformation, a national reversal is unlikely.
Entire generations have embraced assumptions fundamentally different from those upon which the American constitutional system was built. They have been taught to distrust private property, free enterprise, national sovereignty, the traditional family, biblical morality, the police, the military, the Church, and the historical foundations of Western civilization. Many do not view Socialism, Marxism, or Communism as a warning from history. They view it as an unrealized promise.
Elections remain important. Christians should vote, study candidates, understand party platforms, defend constitutional liberty, and participate responsibly in civic life. But elections alone cannot repair a culture that has lost its moral and spiritual foundation. Politics flows downstream from worldview. A nation will eventually elect leaders who reflect what its people have been taught to believe.
If young Americans are persuaded that freedom is oppression, private property is theft, biblical morality is hatred, national borders are immoral, Israel is inherently illegitimate, and government control is compassion, they will vote accordingly. The crisis is therefore not merely political. It is theological, educational, moral, and spiritual.
The Christian Response
Christians must not surrender to despair. Our hope has never rested in elections, political parties, economic systems, presidents, senators, courts, or governments. Our hope is in Jesus the Messiah. The same Scriptures that warn of the coming kingdom of the Antichrist also promise the glorious return of the King of kings. Jesus the Messiah will establish a kingdom characterized not by envy, coercion, corruption, propaganda, or oppression, but by righteousness, justice, holiness, truth, and peace.
Isaiah declares: “Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever.” — Isaiah 9:7
Until that day, the Church must remain faithful. We must speak the truth and not be silent. We must teach the whole counsel of God rather than cherry-pick the Scriptures we like and those we do not. We must expose ideological deception. We must defend the sanctity of human life, the family, private property, religious liberty, constitutional government, and the nation of Israel.
We must teach young people the truth about communism, socialism, human nature, and history. We must refuse both the collectivism and the idolatry of political power of the ungodly elites. Above all, we must point people to Jesus the Messiah—the only Savior capable of transforming the human heart and the only King whose government will never become corrupt.
America is at a crossroads. The return of communist ideology should awaken Christians and responsible citizens to the seriousness of this hour. But it should also remind believers that human kingdoms are temporary.
The kingdom of Jesus the Messiah is coming. And His government will never fail.
