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Useful Idiots
Kerby Anderson
Jonathan Turley wrote a strongly worded warning about the rise of socialism in America. The George Washington law professor reminds us that during the Cold War, Soviet communists referred to American liberals as “useful idiots.” He observes the same mindset in what he calls “a new generation of armchair revolutionaries.”
He says New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani personifies this new movement. Part of the reason for this rise is the fact that “young people lack any memory of the failure of socialist and communist systems in the 20th Century.” Later in his article, he expands on this idea. He says “young voters have no inkling of what life was like under socialist and communist governments. They were not alive when radical shifts to socialism in Great Britain and France destroyed their economies and had to be reversed.”
Mamdani has talked about seizing the means of production. He has also called for “the seizure of unoccupied luxury condos in New York to turn over to the homeless. With pledges of state-run grocery stores and other proposals, many are thrilled by the prospect of Marxism coming to America.”
Radical professors on college campuses are the other reason for the rise of socialism in America. One professor he cites calls for radicals to force the “US out of everywhere” including “Turtle Island” (which is the Native American name to describe North America). The goal is to “dismantle the settler project that is the United States for the freedom and the future of all life on this planet.” Another professor denounced the University of Chicago as an “evil” and “colonialist” institution, but still plans to remain at the college and was even made the Director of Graduate Studies.
Perhaps you can now see why he uses the phrase “useful idiots” to describe many in this emerging generation.
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