Every year, when Americans celebrate Independence Day, socialists come together in solidarity to plot the overthrow of the United States of America.
This is not hyperbole, as the agenda for the Socialism 2025 Conference makes clear. The gimlet-eyed radicals who showed up in Chicago are deadly serious about ending the United States as we know it and replacing it with a dystopian nightmare.
According to City Journal's Stu Smith, the conference attendees gathered to discuss “social movements, abolition, Marxism, decolonization, working-class history, and the debates and strategies for organizing today." Mr. Smith went to Chicago, so you won't have to.
While Americans celebrated independence, radicals in Chicago plotted how to tear it all down.
— Stu (@thestustustudio) July 16, 2025
Professors, union leaders, and far-left militants.
This wasn’t fringe—it was Socialism 2025.
My latest for @CityJournal pic.twitter.com/fPnzqfMEto
Among those making an appearance at the conference was our old friend, Chicago's own Bill Ayers. The former terrorist of the Weather Underground and Obama buddy hosted several panels during the 4-day conference, including “The Blunt-Force Assault on Education: Resistance to Fascism," which included notable academics Wayne Au of the University of Washington, Davarian Baldwin of Trinity College, and Barbara Ransby and David Stovall, both of the University of Illinois, Chicago.
Those professors, as well as others who attended the conference, aren't just interested in radicalizing universities. They're also targeting K-12 students and developing programs for children of all ages.
Multiple professors endorsed using the university as a power base to destabilize the status quo and carry out their political designs. University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi noted that, while the university is “evil” and a “colonial landlord,” she teaches at one because it’s “one of the biggest employers in the city of Chicago . . . a place where I have access to thousands of people that I could potentially organize. . . . This is where I need to build power.” Similarly, Princeton University’s Lorgia García-Peña said scholars should “get the university’s money to do the work you want to do to dismantle the university within”—quickly adding, “hopefully, I won’t end up in court for saying this on the mic.”
David McNally, the Cullen Distinguished Professor of History and Business at the University of Houston, described how an insurgent mass movement might operate—for example, by making the university a sanctuary campus, abolishing campus police, eliminating tuition and grades, or even renaming the school George Floyd University
They recorded about two dozen sessions, all for your viewing pleasure.
The socialists aren't doing anything illegal. Even calling for the end of America as we know it falls well within the First Amendment protections. As long as no one is calling for a violent revolution, the socialists are well within their rights to speak.
Exclusively for our VIPs: The Death of the Public Library Has Nothing to Do With Cuts in Government Funding
However, as a sign that the socialists know they're skirting the boundaries of legality, they kinda, sorta forgot to record a few sessions. They included “Deny, Defend, Depose: Health Struggle After Luigi,” “Hope at the Edge of the Abyss: The Case for Revolution,” “Prison Made Us Militants,” “DIY Abortion,” and “Becoming Working Class Revolutionaries.”
Academic participants had their sights set on the world beyond the university. On the closing panel of the program, McNally outlined his plan to replace America’s constitutional republic with so-called “Democratic Councils,” a phrasing that invokes the Soviet system of government. Other panelists echoed this view. They included Geo Maher, a radical theorist who has taught at prominent universities, including the University of Pennsylvania; UCLA’s Robin D. G. Kelley; activist lawyer Andrea J. Ritchie; and community organizer Paula X. Rojas, who said on camera that she “was part of . . . a revolutionary movement in Chile.”
The way to counter this kind of lunacy is not to try to shut them up but rather to counter their arguments with better arguments in favor of capitalism and freedom. The problem is that elite schools feature far too many leftists who, if they don't agree with the radicals, don't believe in the American experiment enough to defend it.
It's a problem that needs to be addressed before the siren song of socialism overwhelms the youth of America.
