You Asked How Communism Could Happen Here—This Is How

When the education system trains kids to hate capitalism and fear independence, don’t be surprised when they celebrate its collapse.

Shiv Soin (far right) and youth volunteers for Mamdani’s campaign. Image credit: Teen Vogue, photo courtesy of Shiv Soin / TREEage

When Zohran Mamdani—a self-described democratic socialist—won the recent Democratic mayoral primary in New York City, he didn’t shy away from his agenda. He has openly declared his intention to radically redistribute economic power in the City of New York. He has even laughed (heartily in fact) at the notion that there’s anything wrong with seizing the means of production itself.

His policy proposals include government-run grocery stores, strict rent control, and free public transportation. He doesn’t think Billionaires should exist, and though he stopped short of saying it was his intention, he he noted that his policies would disproportionately and negatively impact white New Yorkers—raising the question of whether he considered that a side effect or a feature.

More revealing than his victory itself is the way it was achieved: with a supermajority of the usually disengaged youth vote.

According to multiple reports, including The Times and Teen Vogue, Mamdani won more than 70% of voters under 30, with some precincts reporting Gen Z support upwards of 80%. In neighborhoods like Astoria, Ridgewood, and Bushwick—home to large populations of young renters and students—his margin among younger voters was so dominant that it flipped traditionally low-turnout districts.

In Mamdani’s race, youth turnout more than doubled from the 2021 municipal primary cycle and dwarfed that of older candidates, including former Governor Andrew Cuomo. Considering that voter turnout among 18–29-year-olds is typically in the single digits—not just for primaries—these results are extraordinary.

Student-Led Organizing: TREEage

According to Teen Vogue, a student-run organization called TREEage mobilized over 1,500 high school and college students to volunteer for Mamdani. These weren’t seasoned activists—they were ordinary students hosting multilingual phone banks, canvassing immigrant neighborhoods, and knocking on more than 30,000 doors.

“We watched members and previously non-political friends post about Zohran on social media and, more importantly, sign up to volunteer and knock on doors.”
— TREEage Co-Director via Teen Vogue

One young volunteer, Isabela Buitrago, shared her enthusiasm not through a celebrity post—but with a simple, heartfelt statement:

“I would consider myself a hot girl for Zohran. … Anyone who has basic empathy for other human beings and uses their voice for good is a hot girl.”
Quoted in The Times

These weren’t passive retweets. This was real civic engagement by a generation that sees Mamdani not as a fringe candidate—but as the future.

A Generation Raised on Unrealistic Promises

From a young age, American students are steeped in the idea that to be happy, they must be fabulously wealthy. Social media defines their values—curated lifestyles, status symbols, and overnight fame. The formula for success is narrow: go to college, get a white-collar job, become an entrepreneur or influencer.

But here’s the truth: most people—of any age—aren’t suited to that path. And even fewer find it fulfilling.

Recent research supports this. A 2024 Pew study found that only 50% of U.S. workers feel “extremely or very satisfied” with their jobs. Just 47% say their work is fulfilling. A separate Gallup report placed “extremely satisfied” workers at a shocking 18%, and young workers report high levels of burnout, alienation, and disengagement.

In short: this generation was sold a dream. Now, angry that it didn’t deliver, they’re being handed only one alternative: tear down the system.

The Role of Schooling: Indoctrination, Not Education

Their disillusionment isn’t organic. Our schools—public and private alike—condition students to accept two contradictory ideas:

1. That the path to happiness lies in elite, credentialed success; and

2. That the capitalist system offering that path is inherently oppressive.

Rather than offering exposure to and analysis of all economic systems, and their effects on the economies and cultures in which they’ve been tried, they present capitalism as wholly corrupt and communism as an ideal that has simply never been tried “correctly.” Students are taught that capitalism is nothing more than unbridled greed, exploitation, oppression, racism and colonialism. Meanwhile, communism’s track record—mass poverty, censorship, genocide—is ignored or explained away.

Historical Illiteracy by Design

In over 30 years as an educator and tutor, I’ve worked with countless students headed to elite colleges. Almost none have heard of Adam Smith, Frederic Bastiat, Ayn Rand, Thomas Sowell, or Milton Friedman. Not one knew all five. Maybe two had read any of their writings.

But ask them about Angela Davis, Che Guevara, or Malcolm X, and they’ll speak with reverence. FDR is a hero, and the Founding Fathers are mostly remembered for slavery. MLK is minimized, while radical figures are elevated as revolutionary icons.

Students are consistently taught that “progress” requires constant revolution. That to be “good,” they must act, fight, and redistribute. Neutrality is immoral. Consent isn’t a factor.

This message isn’t limited to history or civics. It shows up in English, in science, and even in math. The ideology is omnipresent, and wildly popular.

They’ve Never Seen Liberty Modeled

By the time they reach college, the Marxian worldview has been repeated, reinforced, and ritualized to such a degree, most American young people can’t conceive of an argument against it.

The only students who resist this programming seem to either:

• Have parents who consistently challenge it, or

• Are naturally skeptical of collective identity and redistribution by coercion.

Such people exist, and I wish I knew how to identify them and bring them together, because I know firsthand how alone they must feel. Even in the 1980s, when I was in high school and college, I was among a tiny minority of students who were openly pro-capitalism, and we were always thrilled to discover (usually by accident) that we were of like-minds.

The real tragedy is this: I am confident there would be more young Americans willing to organize and defend capitalism, property rights, and individual liberty in general, if they had ever seen liberty modeled. Instead, most have not only never read about it, they’ve rarely experienced it, and they certainly weren’t taught to value it. They were taught it was completely normal for the state to order businesses closed, people locked in their homes, and everyone—including infants—masked at all times. They lived through one of the most extreme demonstrations of mass compliance in human history, and it reinforced the lessons they were learning in school: use of force by the state is justified by the ends, so why not make the ends social and economic equality?

How Could it Have Gone Any Other Way?

Ultimately, Mamdani’s popularity among the youth of America should surprise no one who stops to think about it for five minutes. After all, what is the status quo for education? You send your kids into a one-size-fits-all, obedience-driven institution created by statists—not to promote freedom, but to create compliant citizens. They are rewarded for submission, punished for independence, and told that group identity is everything.

Then you wonder why they come out desperate to belong, afraid to think for themselves, and ready to hand over freedom in exchange for a sense of moral belonging (and free stuff).

We need to stop asking “How could this happen here?”

It was always going to happen.

Preservation of Liberty Takes Effort

If you want to save liberty, stop asking the state to do it for you.

Model individualism. Challenge conformity. Teach your kids to think for themselves—and live it in front of them. Most importantly, get them out of any school tied to government. Public, charter, even private schools funded by government-funded vouchers and ESAS— these are pipelines to collectivism.

Liberty isn’t inherited. It’s taught. It’s lived.

And right now, it’s being replaced by a worldview that sees freedom as a threat, and state control as salvation.