By Kenin M. Spivak
July 27, 2026

FR159797 AP

They’re baaack. “They” being communists, or for the academics, Marxists.

Hairsplitting.

Communism is the implementation of the ideology Karl Marx advanced in his 1848 thesis, “The Communist Manifesto.”

The resurgence started with intersectionality, cultural demands, and the redefinition of words like racism, gender, and homeless. Aided by funding from the Chinese Communist Party, and the growth of organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America, the far left added violence and dismantling capitalism. Today, radical leftists pursue the full communist agenda, fused with antisemitism and radical Islam.

Turn up your nose at the Red Menace, but during the 20^th century, communists killed more than 90 million of their fellow countrypersons and instigated mass famines, incarceration, and economic hardships. Though the Red Scare of the 1950s has been derided by the intelligencia, decryption of Soviet-era documents obtained in the Venona Project confirms that the substantial majority of those accused of spying for the Soviet Union during this period were indeed guilty. The Soviet Union infiltrated American unions, media, and politics.

More recently, China has taken the lead in penetrating American institutions, co-opting universities and research facilities, and supporting radical left opposition to ICE, data centers, police, fossil fuels, America’s involvement in the Middle East, and other American social and political structures. According to the last U.S. Annual Threat Assessment, China has “increased [its] capabilities to conduct covert influence operations” and will “continue to expand its coercive and subversive malign influence activities to weaken the United States.”

The FBI under both Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump agreed that “The counterintelligence and economic espionage efforts emanating from the government of China and the Chinese Communist Party are a grave threat to the economic well-being and democratic values of the United States. Confronting this threat is the FBI’s top counterintelligence priority.”

In the last month, Trump has invoked communism nearly 100 times during speeches, campaign appearances, and social media posts. He described some of the Democratic primary winners as “hardcore, godless communists” and, during July 4 celebrations, compared communism to a disease that has to be eliminated.

The mainstream media ridiculed the president, in particular denying that the DSA, a rapidly growing vortex of policy and candidates within the Democratic party, is socialist, let alone communist. DSA members include senators, representatives, mayors and soon, possibly a governor. In the 1950s, the American Communist Party had 50,000 members. The DSA is soaring past 120,000 members.

Liberals describe themselves as caring protectors of the weak. For the radical left, particularly self-proclaimed communists (and Marxists), this decalogue rings hollow. In the “Communist Manifesto,” Marx wrote:

Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. … They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.

To Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, liberating Cambodia meant subjecting Cambodians to forced labor, starvation, persecution, and 1.7 million deaths between 1975 and 1979. For Stalin, ensuring workers’ rights meant forced displacements, imprisonment in labor camps, manufactured famines, torture, and brutal purges that killed 20 million. According to the authoritative “Black Book of Communism,” 65 million Chinese died as a result of Mao’s merciless campaign to create a new “socialist” China.

The left was responsible for every major U.S. demonstration over the last 30 years, except January 6. The radical left added a violent element.

Based on extensive polling, the nonpartisan Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University concluded last year that there is “widespread justification for lethal violence—including assassination—among younger, highly online, and ideologically left-aligned users,” and that these “attitudes are not fringe—they reflect an emergent assassination culture, grounded in far-left authoritarianism and increasingly normalized in digital discourse.” In a recent YouGov poll, 25% of those who identified as very liberal said that violence is acceptable to achieve political goals.

According to a new Cato poll, which asked separately about socialism and communism, 21% of adult Americans have a favorable view of communism, with 55% holding an unfavorable view, while among those 14 to 29 (Gen Z), 37% hold a favorable view, and just 38% unfavorable. Support for communism jumps to 43% among students.

Communists believe that the state determines each individual’s opportunities based on the party’s goals and needs, such as DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), which allocates university admissions, jobs, medical treatment, and government benefits by rank on a scale of putative oppression. They believe that the state owns children – it, not parents, decides what children learn, their pronouns, how they dress, or whether they should be surgically mutilated. They suppress religion – deciding when to override religious beliefs, prohibit prayer at home or in public, or send FBI agents to infiltrate Catholic churches.

The canard that democratic socialism is not Marxism is wearing thin. Marx advocated abolishing private property, globalism, a workers’ dictatorship, reliance on experts, forced relocation of the population, that children are wards of the state, and that religion is the “opium of the people.”

The latest DSA platform similarly calls for public ownership of large corporations and essential industries; breaking down borders and ending enforcement of immigration laws and funding for the Pentagon; a worker’s “democracy” by abolishing the Senate, Supreme Court, presidency, and Electoral College; free housing and health care; abolishing most prisons; and support for Iran and Palestinians.

Daniel Greenfield, CEO of the David Horowitz Freedom Center explains that 16 of 27 seats on DSA’s National Political Committee are held by self-avowed Marxists. Both co-chairs of the DSA identify as Marxists, and self-identified Marxist movements control 62% of the DSA’s national leadership. David Jenkins, a DSA director representing the Libertarian Socialist caucus, admits, “Our goal is communism.”

Horowitz observes that there are numerous communist groups within the New York City DSA Leadership Committee, including Emerge, which draws inspiration from how “Communist parties operated in the Russian, Chinese and Cuban revolutions”; and the Socialist Majority Caucus which endorses Marx’s call for a “socialist revolution” using “state power” to replace capitalism, and aligns itself with the Communist Caucus. Most DSA members advising New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani belong to the SMC.

Megan Romer, one of DSA’s co-chairs, supports Hamas, promotes hatred of America and the police, praises America’s enemies, and celebrates communist leaders including Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara.

Red Star, which holds two DSA board seats, proclaims that “our primary goal … is to abolish capitalism and, ultimately, to achieve communism.”

The Communist Control Act of 1954 outlawed the Communist Party USA and membership in, or support for, “communist-action organizations,” which it defines as an “organization having for one of its purposes or objectives the establishment, control, conduct, seizure, or overthrow of the Government of the United States, or the government of any State or political subdivision thereof, by the use of force or violence.”

Though the CCA sounds quaintly paranoid, the reality is that domestic extremists influenced and supported by our enemies have weaponized America’s open society, disguise their intentions behind smiles and designer suits, and increasingly turn to violence. Overcoming the left’s whataboutism and snarky dismissal of resurgent communism requires inner strength, but it is essential that those who believe in America promote truth, win elections, and prosecute criminals.  The alternative is that communism will continue to gain traction, and that would be a disaster.

Kenin M. Spivak is founder and chairman of SMI Group LLC, an international consulting firm and investment bank. He is the author of fiction and non-fiction books and a frequent speaker and contributor to media, including RealClearPolitics, The American Mind, National Review, television, radio, and podcasts.