This week, Seattle and New York swore in socialist mayors in what many are portraying as a new era for the Democratic Party and the nation. Of course, it is only “new” for the young voters who have no memory of the economic and political meltdowns of socialist and communist governments in the late 20th Century. Nevertheless, many of them were thrilled as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani declared at his inauguration that he would introduce the city to “the warmth of collectivism.”
The wind blowing from the West to the East coasts is familiar to many of us who lived through the 1970s and 1980s. In my forthcoming book, I discuss this shift toward socialism as a new generation replicates the same failed policies that marked a long line of collectivist catastrophes.
The current rhetoric and divisions are strikingly similar to the conditions that brought socialist François Mitterrand to power in France in 1981, promising a “rupture with capitalism.” It was a heady time for armchair Marxists. He was sworn into office just weeks after the election of an unknown socialist as mayor of Burlington, Vt. named Bernie Sanders…