From the election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City to the anti-Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) protests in Minneapolis and St. Paul and the violence of Antifa on streets of America’s great cities, the radical, anti-American Communist left is on the march in the United States. The Democratic Socialists of America is on the rise with DSA-backed Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Melat Kiros in Colorado, Janeese Lewis George running for mayor in DC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's "Squad" and their stated intention to takeover the Democratic Party.
These elections and incidents compel Americans to wonder what is happening to their country, and why is this happening. Americans need to recognize that it is a revolutionary time in America. The ideological unrest Americans experience is clear; America’s politics are not what they were, not by a long shot. Traditional American politics, Democrats versus Republicans, has been supplanted by a titanic battle between a Communist left and the MAGA right.
There is an acute and worsening ideological division in the United States, and the country is in a period of upheaval. On one side, Americans work to preserve the principles, ideas, institutions, and values of the American Revolution of 1776. But the Spirit of 1776 is under attack because on the other, there is the Spirit of 1917— the year of the Bolshevik revolution is alive and well in American politics. Historically, Communists advance their policy of what they call “revolutionary defeatism”—the worse, the better. They work to make things worse in America, not better.
The worse things are in the U.S., the more divided, more violent, the more fractious, the more abysmal the economy, the more immigrants, the more H-1Bs to replace Americans, the more people transitioning to destroy themselves—the better as far as the communist left is concerned. The more demoralized Americans, the uglier and dysfunctional their cities, the more anemic and shattered their identities as Americans, the weaker the United States, the more fragmented Western civilization, the closer they are to destruction and so more beneficial for the Communists.
American identity has become a battlefield. Identity matters because identity is the entelechy of the country. American identity is America—its people, land, ideology, culture, and history—and threats to it are the most important national security matters the country confronts. In fact, national security depends upon American identity. The contest for American identity is the Founding Fathers versus the Bolsheviks, James Madison versus Vladimir Lenin.
Which side will win this ideological conflict for the soul of America? For Americans and for Western civilization, there is no greater issue. Americans have been fighting Communism for a hundred years, but today Americans are at risk of losing that long war.
Americans must recognize the size of the threat. Communism was the shared ideology of the U.S.’s cold war foes: the Soviet Union (1946-1991) and currently the People’s Republic of China (PRC). As President Donald Trump has stated, Communism is the most pernicious and most formidable enemy, foreign and domestic, America has ever faced. It is the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and of the modern Democratic Party in the United States.
Communists have the worst ideas but are the best at advancing them—and imposing them on the rest of us. The U.S. has been slow to respond to the advance of Communism, but the fight against Communism is not a new one for Americans.
Year after year, Communism has advanced and now is experiencing a renaissance among America’s youth, as Mamdani’s victory shows. Communist ideology remains enticing—it possesses a powerful appeal for the political left. It is so potent because it has been supremely successful at delivering on its promise of tyrannical power to a small, elite group that can seize and maintain state control, employ the harshest of measures to keep power, and justify its tyranny by claiming that it is “progressive,” when it fact it is monstrously retrogressive. Communism is an efficient model for totalitarian control that has been successful at seizing power in the past, as it is today.
But the appeal is not only for the elites who would rule. At the popular level, it is enticing because it promises emancipation, the excitement of rebellion, the overthrow of an established order, revenge against purported oppressors, and the possibility of realizing a millenarian aim: a better and brighter future.
Americans had better get smart about Communism, and quickly. Not perceiving Communism as a hyper-aggressive ideology has been a massive mistake that has allowed Communists to weaken American identity at home and permit the growth of the PRC’s power to the point where it now rivals the United States.
Importantly, it was not an error made by Americans in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Then, Americans were cognizant of Communism’s dangers at home and abroad. It was the principal national security policy impact for most of the twentieth century and is for this one as well.
Americans have the power to defeat Communism. The stronger American identity is, the weaker is Communism. The more powerful Western civilization is, the more Communism’s lies and deceit is exposed.. A renaissance of American identity is needed to defeat Communism and save Western civilization.
The CCP and the Communist movement in the United States are fundamentally incoherent and illegitimate. Americans must capitalize upon this incoherence and illegitimacy, while advancing American identity to cause both the final defeat of Communism and a renaissance of American identity and of Western civilization. The American people will vanquish Communism. Boldly and proudly asserting American identity and Western civilization are the keys to winning the war against Communism.
Bradley A. Thayer is an American Freedom Alliance Fellow and the author of America’s Hundred Years’ War: How to Win Against Communism.
