The United States of Socialism
556: The Warning Signs Are Everywhere
Good morning. Good one for you today.
Buckle up patriots.
In December of last year I dropped You’re Not Imagining It, Something Is Very Wrong in which I discussed growing political violence in the US and the rapid spread of extremist ideology.
It was one of our highest performing posts from an engagement standpoint because people were starting to take these threats seriously in the wake of the attacks on National Guard members in DC, resistance to ICE, and alarming videos calling for resistance from the Democrat party.
Today, we’re going to examine another piece of that puzzle.
The rapid resurgence of socialism in America.
This isn’t the socialism your grandparents associated with the Soviet Union or the Cold War (at least yet).
For Millennials and Gen Z, "socialism" isn't associated with the Soviet Union. It's more likely associated with healthcare in Scandinavia, minority rights, or dissatisfaction with housing costs in Brooklyn New York.
Whether that association is accurate or incomplete, it's politically important.
This time around housing, culture, and identity are becoming major catalysts and I can’t really say I am surprised. Sky high home prices, rent, student debt, and stagnant affordability make more interventionist and radical policies attractive to younger voters or people dependent on the status quo (migrants). Mamdani just seized his opportunity in New York City with the Rent Guidelines Board approving freezing rents in both one and two year leases by a 7-1 vote.
Trump responded last week by sounding the alarm on this rise of communism in which he called it the greatest threat to the U.S. “since World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or 9/11.”
And for all his shortcomings, on this he is correct. In 1971 Swedish economist Assar Lindbeck, a socialist democrat, said famously that rent control was:
“The most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing”
The issue for us is that this new push for communism is not taking place in a vacuum. It is taking place as:
Extremist fringes on both sides of the political aisle are becoming bolder
Western countries are suffering from mass migration
Our institutions are captured by foreigners
Political activists are firing up for midterms and the next election
The Supreme Court debates birthright citizenship
People want this to be isolated. People think this will all go away. They really want that to be true.
It won’t. I promise you.
It has the capacity to greatly impact you, your job, your future, your family, your kids, and your well being. It is a dark future if we do not act.
You can write me off or ignore this post today, that’s fine, but it doesn’t change what’s coming.
I sleep well at night knowing I have done everything in my power to educate as many people as possible on these threats and patterns as soon as they’ve emerged.
The bottom line is we have reached critical mass now.
The enemy is here among you and their strength is growing by the day.
They are much bolder, unrestrained by the same virtue and decency that paralyzes you from doing anything about it, and they are willing to go to insane ends to accomplish their goals, which among other things, include seizing power, taking property/assets/wealth, and killing in the name of their ideology.
Worse, your politicians have enabled them to steal from you. It is the grandest of humiliation rituals in which you are quite literally funding your own demise.
As someone with a family, I take these warning signs very seriously. It does not bring me excitement or pleasure to speak to you today about them. But this is a critical topic that requires attention. Regardless of how financial markets have performed since Covid, this threat has continued to grow right in front of us.
Today we are going to cover:
The rapid rise of support for socialism/communism in the United States
The key and dangerous role mass immigration plays in accelerating it
The societal characteristics and dynamics accelerating all of this
Where this is likely all heading and what it means for the West
If you think this story is about one mayor in one city, you’re missing the bigger picture.
To understand what’s happening today, we need to go back nearly 180 years, to a German philosopher whose ideas would eventually shape some of the deadliest political experiments in human history.
Because what’s happening in America today isn’t entirely new.
We’ve seen parts of this story before.
If we continue down this path, New York won’t be the exception.
It will be the blueprint. You will watch your job, your neighborhood, your town, your city, and the country begin to change more quickly.
And by the time most Americans realize what’s happening, the political, demographic, and institutional changes will already be too deeply embedded to reverse without enormous conflict.
We’re close.
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?
Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?...
The Organs (of the state) would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”