And Why It Looks So Different This Time.
By Kay Rubacek, an award-winning filmmaker, author, and podcast host. After being detained in a Chinese prison for advocating for human rights, she has dedicated her work to promoting human value and facing communist regimes in their modern forms. Her forthcoming book is “Staying Human in the Age of AI.” She has also contributed to The Epoch Times since 2010. Note: All underlined words are links to documentation. This is one of my most important posts ever! Don’t miss merlin’s last paragraph BOTTOM LINE Parting Shot Over the Bow….
“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.
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.
merlin’s BOTTOM LINE: Parting Shot Over the Bow….
Listen, the above from Kay is well & good, and needs to be said, but beware, it is not enough! And I well understand, how the human heart by itself is so easily deceived. (Jeremiah 17:9) “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” I too was deceived and lulled complacently for decades, but once I surrendered to the gospel of Jesus Christ, to His compelling & enlightening path, being personally & intimately called (and not merely by algorithms either), both convicted & forgiven of my sin, then transformed & empowered, such that we are instantly justified, continually sanctified, eventually GLORIFIED INTO HIS PRESENCE! All absolutely & infinitely beyond any earthly political or church culture kingdom comparison! And now, as His Ambassadors, we must speak His truth! And dare I say, collectively or individually in our sheltered community enclaves, we’re often failing miserably. I know, for too long I’ve been a hypocrite, merely culturally engaged, like the Pharisees legalistically checking boxes! But, once Christ’s love is in our Hearts & Minds, confirmed by our living in obedience to Him, everything will change in our communities and the world.
Lest We Forget in memory of JFK’s inaugural address with a twist, “Ask not what your country can do for you–ask rather, whom God would have you love in His kingdom today!”
And that my friend, is light years beyond an Irrational Act of Generosity!