I wish every American college student could have seen what I saw. I wish they could have stood where I stood and watched families separated by ideology. I wish they could have spoken to defectors who risked everything — not for capitalism, not for wealth, but for freedom. I wish they could have looked into the eyes of people who had lived under communism and heard the same word repeated again and again: “Freedom.”

There is nothing fashionable about mass graves.

The Brutal Reality Behind the Ideology

There is nothing progressive about firing squads, informant networks, political prisons, or children taught to betray their parents to the state. Yet today, in the United States of America, I watch young people ignorant of history chant slogans and wave flags tied to ideologies that have produced more death and human misery than any other political system in modern history.

Communism did not fail because it was misunderstood. It succeeded exactly as it was designed to, through false narratives, lies, and unfulfilled promises.

The Bolshevik Revolution Was Never a Popular Uprising

I often remind people that the Bolshevik Revolution was not a popular uprising. It was a minority of Marxists who seized power and forced communist oppression onto the Russian people and Eastern Europe for decades.

Witnessing the Berlin Wall — A Concrete Reminder of Oppression

I served as a U.S. intelligence officer during the Cold War. I was stationed in West Berlin when the Berlin Wall still stood, much like a prison wall surrounding and separating West Berlin, a small island of freedom, from communist-controlled East Germany. A concrete scar that ran through the city, guarded by men with orders to shoot to kill their own people for trying to leave. This is attested to by the many small wreaths and crosses along the wall inside West Berlin, memorializing Germans murdered by East German border guards for doing nothing more than trying to escape to the freedom of the West.

I wish every American college student could have seen what I saw.

I wish they could have stood where I stood and watched families separated by ideology.

I wish they could have spoken to defectors who risked everything — not for capitalism, not for wealth, but for freedom.

I wish they could have looked into the eyes of people who had lived under communism and heard the same word repeated again and again: “Freedom.”

The Dangerous Fantasy Sold to Young Americans Today

Instead, many young Americans today live in a fantasyland, being fed a sanitized, dishonest fairy tale. They are told socialism is about “fairness and equality.” That communism is about “justice.” That Maoism is somehow revolutionary chic. They wear T-shirts with the image of the 1960s Cuban communist revolutionary Che Guevara emblazoned across the front. (Che was a psychotic killer who executed homosexuals for the sheer joy of it.)

The lie of communism has killed over 100 million people in the last century.

A Century of Horror — From Gulags to Killing Fields

From Stalin’s gulags, to Mao’s Great Leap Forward, to Pol Pot’s killing fields, to Castro’s prisons, to North Korea’s labor camps — communism leaves the same trail every single time: famine, fear, silence, torture, and death.

And yet, here we are again.

False Prophets in a Free Society

Figures like Mamdani and others of his generation present themselves as moral prophets, lecturing Americans about justice while openly flirting with ideologies soaked in the blood of the people they claim to care about. They speak comfortably from the safety of a free society while advocating systems that would crush that freedom instantly.

These are false prophets. Liars.

They do not warn you that under communism there is no free speech — because political dissent is treason. Freedom of expression cannot be allowed because it poses a threat to the very system they intend to impose.

They do not tell you there is no equality — there are only party elites who live privileged lives compared to everyone else.

They do not tell you there is no justice — only obedience.

Thought itself is controlled by the state.

Strategic Subversion Masquerading as Rebellion

What they also do not tell you is that many of the organizations pushing this radical ideology are well funded, well organized, and actively supported by adversaries of the United States. This is not grassroots rebellion — it is strategic subversion. For decades under the former Soviet Union and Communist China, and continuing to the present day, covert influence operations have been used against young, impressionable minds.

I worked against it overseas. Now I see it being welcomed inside our own borders.

The young Americans chanting these slogans believe they are rebelling against “the system.” In reality, they are being used — useful idealists for hostile powers who would love nothing more than to see the United States weakened from within. Once these idealists are no longer useful, they will be cast aside by the ruling elite, since idealism itself poses a threat to totalitarian governments.

How Communism Really Arrives

Communism does not arrive wearing a uniform.

It arrives wearing a smile, a slogan, and a promise.

And maybe a Che T-shirt.

And then it takes everything.

America’s Imperfections Do Not Justify Totalitarianism

If you think America is flawed — good. That means you are paying attention. We can always do better. But the answer to imperfection is not an ideology that criminalizes thought, erases history, and replaces liberty with state worship.

I have seen up close what happens when communism wins.

It creates fanatics blinded by an obscene ideology.

It does not liberate the poor.

It does not empower the worker.

It does not create justice.

It only creates victims.

The Verdict of History Is Clear

America does not need to be torn down to be improved. And those who urge you to burn it all in the name of fashionable radicalism are not brave revolutionaries — they are repeating the most dangerous mistake of the twentieth century.

History has already rendered its verdict. Communism, no matter how you spell it, has always failed.

The question is whether this generation is willing to listen — or is doomed to follow the same path as earlier generations that held the human spirit in bondage.