Communism

At the Socialism 2025 conference in Chicago, mainstream academics called for revolution.

While the rest of the United States celebrated American independence on July 4, a rogues’ gallery met in Chicago to discuss how to dismantle our constitutional republic. The event, Socialism 2025, was billed as “a four-day conference bringing together thousands of socialists and radical activists from around the country” to discuss “social movements, abolition, Marxism, decolonization, working-class history, and the debates and strategies for organizing today.” Held every Fourth of July weekend, this conference, which meets in person and livestreams to YouTube, is “a place where activists share lessons from their struggles—from Palestine solidarity campaigns to the fight for gender liberation, from striking workers to the struggle to stop the destruction of the planet, the fight against racism, migrant justice, and more.”

More than his good looks, charm and great social-media game, the biggest reason that Zohran Mamdani may become New York’s next mayor grows from his focus on the city’s affordability crisis, most of which is tied to high housing prices.

Mamdani’s ‘cost of living’ campaign – offering rent control, free buses, childcare and city-owned supermarkets – seems to some leftist pundits a potential road back to power, under the guise of the burgeoning YIMBY (‘yes in my backyard’) movement that seeks to lower rental prices through massive housing construction.

In one of the most ironic editorials I’ve ever read, the editors at the Chicago Tribune are warning the residents of New York City not to elect Zohran Mamdani because as they say, they’ve “seen this movie before” and “the ending isn’t pretty.”

The “no s**t Sherlock” expression comes to mind.

Toronto will have learned this lesson by next year’s election, I hope.

The first of May for most people means flowers and springtime, but for Communists it’s May Day, a time to wear red, scrawl something on a poster and shout at people at a big rally.

And perhaps block traffic.

May 1st was long ago appropriated by communism as its worldwide holiday and, unfortunately, the civilized world has yet to take it back. The latest murders by Marxist regimes bring the death toll from communism ever closer to 100 million, but there are still marches in celebration of the ideology everywhere, including American cities.

h/t DS

Easter’s coming up and you can be sure that many young Canadians, fresh off of their first semester at university, will ruffle their relatives’ feathers at the Easter dinner table with glowing tales of this wonderful, beautiful, new thing they’ve discovered: Socialism.

On Dec. 26, 1991, the upper house of the Soviet legislature officially voted to end the empire that was the Soviet Union. The day before, Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s last ruler, announced his resignation, and Russian leader Boris Yeltsin had the Russian tricolour raised over the Kremlin. Geopolitically, the event’s historical significance rivaled Napoleon’s abdication on June 22, 1815, after the Battle of Waterloo, and the end of the Nazi-led German empire on May 8, 1945. All three events marked the end of a hegemonic challenge to the global balance of power. For the subjects of the Soviet Union, December 26, 1991, meant the end of an evil empire that rose from the ashes of the First World War.

The transformation of the medieval world into the modern world came about with the idea that man could and should transform his lot in life. The liberal individualism of the Enlightenment however was soon countered by reactionary movements, feudal and socio-feudal, seeking to put the genie of individual autonomy back in the box through collectivist movements.

Among the most prominent of these was what would eventually be called socialism. While early socialist movements had been a radical Christian heresy emphasizing communal living, these experiments invariably failed on a local level, leaving behind a trail of wrecked lives.

Ahn Nguyen fled Vietnam with her parents when the communists took over in 1975. They lost their home and land but considered themselves fortunate to be able to start over again in Canada.

She then met her husband, Tien, and 35 years ago the family began fishing for elvers — tiny translucent baby eels netted in Maritime rivers and shipped to Asia where they are grown for food.