Socialism moves into the mainstream — the warning signs are all here

For the 333 million Americans who don’t live in New York City, there are plenty of reasons not to care what goes on there. It doesn’t affect our day-to-day lives. New Yorkers democratically elected their socialist leader. It’s their bed, let them lie in it. Or as the mainstream media likes to put it, it’s probably just hyped-up right-wing hysteria.

And of course, that’s exactly how the communists in our country want us to think.

But right now may be the most important moment to push back. It’s incumbent on all of us to resist the normalization of socialism in America. Speak up now, so that what’s radical in New York today doesn’t become the norm in your neighborhood tomorrow.

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And to be clear, there are plenty of radical things going on in New York right now. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has published a searchable database listing more than 960,000 properties worth over $1 million, with the owners’ full names and home addresses attached.

He then went on X to gloat that anyone with a second home in the city worth more than $5 million should check the mailbox, because notification letters for his new pied-à-terre tax had already gone out. "You’ve got mail," he wrote.

It was clear that the mayor of America’s largest city had one goal: intimidation.

Even worse, the co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America has said as much. The goal, in Ashik Siddique’s words, is "to replace capitalism with socialism." That kind of power, he says, "is not conceded without struggle."

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That’s why Mamdani was proud to film his "Happy Tax Day" video doxxing Ken Griffin’s Manhattan penthouse. Again, the natural response might be to move on quickly. Mamdani’s video is just one billionaire’s problem, right? Wrong.

Mamdani is drawing up the blueprint for socialist tactics and the weaponization of government around the country. He’s testing what the American people will tolerate. So long as the rest of us shrug our shoulders and move on, he’s one step closer to something far more aggressive.

That’s why everyday Americans must push back in one of the most powerful but overlooked ways: by talking about it. The best way to resist the normalization of socialism is to expose it and treat it as the serious threat it is. Americans have short attention spans, and every story, no matter how outrageous, competes for clicks in our attention economy. That is exactly the kind of environment that allows socialism to spread.

If one thing is clear, socialism rarely stays put. The leaders of the DSA make it their mission to push socialism all across the country. For Mamdani and his ilk, this is a marathon, not a sprint. Contrary to what the media might lead you to believe, they have no intention of running NYC into the ground and packing up to go home. They’re here to stay, and they aren’t sitting on the sidelines.

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One of the greatest lies propagated in the media is that the Democratic Socialists are just a far-left wing of the Democrat Party. They want us to believe that communists are only on the fringe of Democrat Party politics. That might have been the case when avowed socialist Bernie Sanders was pushed out of the way for Hillary Clinton 10 years ago. But times are different now.

The socialists are now the heart of the Democrat Party, with a co-chair who muses openly about abolishing the Senate and the Electoral College and insists none of it is extreme. They might have played the supporting role in years prior, but now they’re monopolizing all the main character energy that the left has to offer.

Thankfully, those of us who love our country still have an important role to play too. Expose every socialist policy and every destructive DSA platform, and call the leaders who champion them what they are: communists. It is better to be accused of overreaction now than of complacency later.