One in Three Millennials Says OK to Communism

Labor camps, ecological ruin, shortages of everything from aspirin to toilet paper, and the ever-present risk of that midnight knock on the door — what’s not to love about communism? At least, that’s what one out of three Millennials must think, according to a new survey conducted by Victims of Communism and YouGov.

But it gets better… er, worse. Not only did 30% of the 23-38 age cohort have a “favorable” view of communism, 70% said they’d be happy to vote for socialism. What they don’t know — actually, you’re gonna need a longer list — is what Lenin himself said: “The goal of socialism is communism.” And, it probably needs to be said, the goal of democratic socialism is socialism. It’s a slippery slope from voting yourself the contents of your neighbor’s wallet to finding yourself singing “The Internationale” with the other happy forced-laborers in a Siberian goldmine.

My first thought was that these young Americans are merely the victims of a bad education. They probably know nothing of the brutalities of Lenin’s secret police, or of the millions of Ukrainians purposely starved to death so that Stalin could have his collectivized farms. Millennials have never been taught that Cambodia’s energetic communists killed no less than a quarter of their own people. They might not know about the retributions and “re-education” camps that North Vietnam brought to the South after American forces left. Semi-capitalist China is today a wealthy country, but Millennials know little of the tens of millions of random deaths in Mao’s attempt to fully communize the country. They’ve been taught nothing, at best, about the approximately 100 million deaths attributable directly to communism.

But then I had a second thought.

We’re seeing the results of another one of Lenin’s quotes: “The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses.” The press, the universities, and even the dominant popular culture have all been co-opted by the progressive left, after a decades-long march through the institutions.

So if you’ve been taught that your victimhood group has rights superior to your own… If you’ve been told your whole life that economic progress is killing the planet… If you believe in your heart that needs and wants trump economic reality…

…well, then what’s wrong with a little communism? Hell, a lot of communism? They’ve been taught this; no wonder they believe it. Or as Lenin also said, “Give me your four-year-olds, and in a generation I will build a socialist state.”

One malinformed Millennial, one vote… one time.