Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

What Makes A Person Become A Communist?
Manhattan Contrarian ^ | 6 Jul, 2026 | Francis Menton

Posted on 07/07/2026 5:56:44 AM PDT by MtnClimber

This year’s primary season features the rapid ascent within the Democratic Party of the faction going by the name “Democratic Socialists of America.” Despite the gratuitous co-opting of the label “Democratic,” it is by no means clear that the DSA faction would continue open elections once they had achieved enough power to end them. Instead, the DSA adopts the hardest of hard-line socialist positions on every issue.

I previously reported in my June 24 post that the DSA candidates in New York had accomplished nearly a clean sweep of all the Democratic Party congressional and state legislative primaries in which they had participated. Since then, a DSA candidate has knocked out a 15-term incumbent progressive Democrat in a safe Democratic district in Colorado. And The Washington Examiner reports on June 25 that DSA candidates have succeeded in some 30 down-ballot primary races in “Oregon, California, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Utah, Maryland,” as well as New York.

So who are these people calling themselves “Democratic Socialists”? I’ve spent some time researching the biographies of these successful candidates. Remarkably, there is a pattern that repeats time after time, with only slight variations. Your budding Communist ideologue comes from a family that has recently achieved modest or even substantial (but not extreme) success in the free market economy; and then a member of the next generation goes away to school at some “elite” institution, often on scholarship, studying some subject where leftist orthodoxy is pervasive (African Studies, Middle Eastern Studies and Sociology are typical examples). The scion then either remains in school indefinitely, or leaves school but disdains the private economy and dabbles in political organizing or other left-wing not-for-profit endeavors. Combine this sort of background with a sense of entitlement, and the result is a bitter, angry, resentful young person, with no understanding of the blessings of freedom or of the private economy, completely ignorant of human history and convinced that the socialist/communist program will quickly lead to utopia.

Let’s take a few examples.

Zohran Mamdani. His family arrived from Uganda (of all places) via South Africa when young Zohran was seven. The father became a professor of left-wing claptrap at Columbia, while the mother became a relatively successful film director. In other words, Zohran is nothing close to “working class.” Young Zohran then went away to fancy Bowdoin in Maine, where he majored in “Africana Studies.” He then spent around a decade without ever having a real job, dabbling in political campaigns, “organizing,” pretending to be a rapper, and claiming to be “oppressed.”

Darializa Avila Chevalier. After graduating near the top of her high school class in Florida, Ms. Avila Chevalier got a scholarship to Columbia in 2014, where she repaid the generosity of her sponsors by joining the anti-Semitic Students for Justice in Palestine, and the co-founding Columbia University Apartheid Divest. Twelve years later, Avila Chevalier continues to be a “graduate student” in Sociology at CUNY. Although she claims to have spent at least some time as an “investigator” for a public defender organization, almost everything in her Wikipedia biography consists of organizing and leading protests of one sort or another, and it appears that her lifestyle has been supported for the last twelve years mostly to entirely by scholarships and fellowships (likely taxpayer-funded).

Melat Kiros. This is the 29 year old woman who just won the Democratic primary for the Colorado congressional seat covering Denver. Her family immigrated from Ethiopia when she was an infant. According to her campaign website, her father went to pharmacy school in the U.S., so presumably is a pharmacist now. Kiros went to private colleges (Washington College in Maryland) and law school (Notre Dame). She landed a job at elite Sidley & Austin in New York, and then promptly got herself fired in 2023 for writing an anti-Israel screed. She has spent the last three years as a graduate student at the University of Colorado Denver.

Mamdani, Avila Chevalier, and Kiros (and the other DSA candidates) follow in well-worn footsteps of many famous predecessors — all of whom seem to have very similar biographies. Consider:

Pol Pot. I wrote a post about this guy back in 2021. From that post:

Pol Pot (birth name: Saloth Sar) was born in 1925 to a relatively wealthy farming family (Kiernan: “In later years the family would have been ‘class enemies.’”) with some 30 acres of land and six buffalo. One of Sar’s cousins was a dancer in the royal palace, and became one of the King’s principal wives; then one of his sisters moved into the palace and also became a royal consort. By the age of six, Sar too had moved into the royal palace, and after that was sent to top French colonial schools of the time. In his early twenties, they sent him off for further education in Paris. Big mistake. That’s where he took up the trendy Communism of the day. What later became the Khmer Rouge inner circle — in addition to Pol Pot, it was the Thiounn brothers, Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary and Son Sen — were all his pals from his days as a student in Paris.

Lenin. Although Lenin’s paternal grandfather had been impoverished, his father was a striver who (according to Wikipedia) worked himself up to Director of Public Schools for a Russian province, and got himself awarded a hereditary title of nobility! Lenin went off to Kazan University, where he promptly began associating with the radicals of the time.

Karl Marx. The story of Karl Marx, creator of Communism, is no different. He was the son of a prosperous lawyer, Heinrich Marx, but had a huge sense of entitlement and was angry and resentful that he should have to work to make a living. Here is a famous quote from a letter that Marx’s father wrote to him in November 1837:

"Frankly speaking, my dear Karl, I do not like this modern word, which all weaklings use to cloak their feelings when they quarrel with the world because they do not possess, without labour or trouble, well-furnished palaces with vast sums of money and elegant carriages. This embitterment disgusts me and you are the last person from whom I would expect it. What grounds can you have for it? Has not everything smiled on you ever since your cradle? Has not nature endowed you with magnificent talents? Have not your parents lavished affection on you? Have you ever up to now been unable to satisfy your reasonable wishes?

Really, it’s hard to say it better than Heinrich Marx said it. These “socialists” are a crop of spoiled and ignorant losers who “quarrel with the world because they do not possess, without labour or trouble, well-furnished palaces with vast sums of money and elegant carriages.” At the moment, that seems to be the key to electoral success in primaries within the Democratic Party. Let’s only hope that it does not translate to general election success.


TOPICS: Society
KEYWORDS: ignorance; leftism; lustforpower; roomtemperatureiq; stupidity

Click here: to donate by Credit Card

Or here: to donate by PayPal

Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794

Thank you very much and God bless you.


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-69 next last
To: MtnClimber

Right now I’d say it’s the desire for revenge on Trump and anyone who voted for him. The enemy of your enemy is your friend, or something like that. Modern Democrats have no problem cutting off their noses to spite their faces, they’d destroy the nation just to see anything Trump not get their way.
And they seem to believe they will be above the rules and laws of communism, those rules would only apply to us as they party with the elites.


41 posted on 07/07/2026 7:31:12 AM PDT by jughandle
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

Ask a young socialist commie what position they will have in their communist paradise. Will they be a bus driver? elevator operator. steel plant worker? Machine operator? Office accountant?
All will say they will take positions in the Party of power telling others what to do.
In their words, they are like Cousin Eddie, not doing actual work but holding out for MANAGEMENT POSITIONS.
No different from Hitler or Marx as both hated physical labor.


42 posted on 07/07/2026 7:32:34 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar (REOPEN THE CLOSED MENTAL HOSPITALS! Closed in the 1970s, murders by crazies sky rocketed!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

Democratic Socialists of America = Dazis


43 posted on 07/07/2026 7:34:36 AM PDT by Farmerbob
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

At their core, people who embrace communism seem to have similiar personality disorders. They are narcissistic, have no tolerance for others, are distainful of their culture and are not capable of love.This disorder has been observed and documented since history and literature has been recorded. It leads one to the opinion that this behavior is dictated by a gene that results in a set of neuro pathways that results in this mental state. Such people are a disaster for civilization.


44 posted on 07/07/2026 7:57:07 AM PDT by allendale
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber
worthless and lazy bum entitled to other people's money is a start.

"Why should I work when I can just go steal it from someone else?

45 posted on 07/07/2026 7:59:31 AM PDT by going hot (Happiness is a momma deuce)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber
"You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s."

Communism is a form of government. The desire for it comes from envy and hence coveting, which is part of the innate sinful state of mankind.

46 posted on 07/07/2026 8:00:44 AM PDT by fruser1
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

Brainwashing


47 posted on 07/07/2026 8:03:00 AM PDT by SteveinSATX (Anti-liberalism 24/7)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

They get to them in the schools when they are young and stupid.


48 posted on 07/07/2026 8:05:25 AM PDT by dznutz
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: kosciusko51

Two old books on this topic:

https://www.amazon.com/ENVY-Theory-Behaviour-Helmut-Schoeck/dp/0865970645

https://www.amazon.com/Anti-Capitalistic-Mentality-Ludwig-Von-Mises/dp/1169831389


49 posted on 07/07/2026 8:08:15 AM PDT by cgbg (Four seconds is all it takes to beat the brainwashing.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

A lazy ass and a lazy mind seems to be the common denominator.


50 posted on 07/07/2026 8:24:11 AM PDT by virgil (The evil that men do lives after them )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: wafflehouse

there are only two kinds of politicians.

-Stupid
-Evil

(although the categories are not mutually exclusive)


51 posted on 07/07/2026 8:50:54 AM PDT by FrozenAssets (You don't have to be crazy to live here, but it helps)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: Kudsman

exactly. they want stuff without working for it.
I have a nephew who is in his 50’s, 2 useless Master degrees, he hates anybody who has a dollar more than he does.
Because he deserves it, because of his degrees.
His job has zero to do with his degrees, btw.


52 posted on 07/07/2026 8:51:03 AM PDT by ronniesgal (can FR please get a "like" button and a "block" button? Please.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: Vermont Lt

It would be cool to have those stamps.


53 posted on 07/07/2026 9:00:01 AM PDT by telescope115 (Ad Astra, Ad Deum…)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 40 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

The point of a gun.


54 posted on 07/07/2026 9:01:37 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: TTFX

The minimum wage is an anti communist feature. With the cheap labor express demanding unbridled immigration a floor on wages MAKES TOTAL SENSE..


55 posted on 07/07/2026 9:05:06 AM PDT by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

A person becomes a communist to camouflage his lack of work ethic.


56 posted on 07/07/2026 9:28:45 AM PDT by HIDEK6 (God bless Donald Trump )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber
A desire to kill people but lacking the balls to do it yourself because you are a coward at heart.

That may be a bit simplistic but not by much. You talk to them for a while and it quickly becomes clear they have no idea what or how their system would work beyond, take other people's stuff. To those that cry about how that is not "killing people" if you take people's stuff it is going to have to be by force, (IE killing people) and they will resist because once you have taken people's stuff, they tend to die.

Take a look at every "socialist" system on planet earth, there is a pile of dead people. And they keep adding more and more people to the pile the longer it goes on. That is not a bug, that is a feature.

57 posted on 07/07/2026 9:29:10 AM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear (The tree accused of killed Sonny Bono was planted.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Bon of Babble
I wish you people would stop conflating "capitalism" with free enterprise.

"Capitalism" is a pejorative invented by communists.

58 posted on 07/07/2026 9:33:44 AM PDT by HIDEK6 (God bless Donald Trump )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 38 | View Replies]

To: FrozenAssets

LOL


59 posted on 07/07/2026 10:29:14 AM PDT by wafflehouse ("there was a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon" -Alice's Restaurant Massacree)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 51 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

What causes it?

A no-brainer: 65 years of total federal control of public education, and the communist wannabees who became “teachers”...


60 posted on 07/07/2026 10:45:44 AM PDT by SuperLuminal (Where is rabble-rising Sam Adams now that we need him? Is his name Trump, now?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-69 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson