While I can see the barbarians coming towards the gate they are not. What I do clearly see is that there are 50 radicals running for office and should they win that could change the face of our republic. The last significant attempt by communists to gain influence in the U.S. occurred during the second Red Scare from 1947 to 1954. That attempt to change America was primarily because of the influence of Senator Joseph McCarthy who claimed that communists had infiltrated the government. So, with all the talk about communism it begs the question is the same thing happening again? Are the Communists once again attempting to influence and change America through the electoral process? Lets take a look at the historical events that have previously taken place when Americans made a choice to reject communism/socialism.
Red Tides: A Century of Communist Attempts in America, and What They Tell Us About Today Activity: Every generation of Americans has faced the question: Are communists trying to take over our country? Each time, the answer has become more complicated than either side wanted to admit. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes, and the rhymes are worth understanding. Let’s take a trip through history.
1919–1920: The First Red Scare: Two years after the Bolsheviks seized Russia, American radicals founded two communist parties and openly called for revolution. A wave of strikes and a string of mail bombs, most of them planted by anarchists rather than communists, convinced many Americans revolution was coming. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer responded with mass raids. Thousands were arrested, and hundreds of foreign-born radicals were deported, including 249 aboard a single ship nicknamed the “Soviet Ark.”
Outcome: The communist movement was driven underground and shrank to a few thousand members. The raids also trampled civil liberties, and Palmer’s credibility collapsed when his predicted May Day uprising never came.
The 1930s: The Depression and the “Popular Front”: With a quarter of the workforce unemployed, communism looked attractive to some Americans for the first time. The Communist Party USA grew to roughly 75,000 members by the late 1930s. It gained real influence in labor unions, Hollywood and intellectual circles by presenting itself as “20th-century Americanism.”
Outcome: The illusion was shattered in 1939 when Stalin signed his pact with Hitler and American communists reversed their positions overnight on Moscow’s orders. Many members quit in disgust, having learned the party answered to a foreign power.
During the 1930s–40s: Espionage was at its’ Highest Levels: This was the most serious attempt, and for decades it was dismissed as paranoia. It wasn’t. Decoded Soviet cables, released in 1995 as the Venona project, identified roughly 350 Americans with covert ties to Soviet intelligence. They included Harry Dexter White, the second-ranking official at Treasury, and State Department official Alger Hiss. Spies inside the Manhattan Project, among them Klaus Fuchs, Theodore Hall and the network around Julius Rosenberg, passed atomic secrets that helped the Soviets build their first atomic bomb years earlier than expected.
Outcome: The networks were exposed and broken by the early 1950s. Hiss was convicted of perjury, and the Rosenbergs were executed. The damage was real, but the penetration was stopped.
1947–1957: The Second Red Scare: Congressional hearings, loyalty oaths, the Hollywood blacklist and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s crusade defined this era. Party leaders were convicted under the Smith Act for conspiring to advocate overthrowing the government.
Outcome: The Communist Party was effectively destroyed as a political force. Membership fell below 10,000 after Khrushchev admitted Stalin’s crimes in 1956 and Soviet tanks crushed Hungary. McCarthy’s recklessness also ruined innocent peoples lives. The Senate censured him in 1954, and his excesses discredited legitimate anti-communism for a generation.
The 1960s–70s: The New Left and Revolutionary Violence: A new generation of radicals, including Students for a Democratic Society, the Weather Underground and the Marxist-inspired Black Panthers, embraced revolutionary rhetoric. Some embraced violence. The Weather Underground bombed the U.S. Capitol in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972.
Outcome: The violent groups collapsed within a decade, rejected by the very working class they claimed to represent. Many former radicals went on to careers in universities, journalism and nonprofits. Conservatives argue this “long march through the institutions” shaped the culture far more than any bomb did. That debate continues today.
1950s–1991: The Cold War Spy Game: The Soviet KGB kept running spies like the Walker family ring, Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, and planted disinformation in Western media. Moscow secretly funded the American Communist Party until the end.
Outcome: The spies were caught. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and the American Communist Party lost its funding and nearly all its relevance.
The Scorecard: Communists in America have had some real successes. They have stolen secrets, infiltrated unions, and had influence in the arts and academia. But they never came close to taking over the government. Each time, two things defeated them: their own loyalty to a foreign dictatorship, and the good sense of American voters. The lesson cuts both ways. Ignoring a real threat, as many did with Soviet espionage, is dangerous. So is overreacting, as McCarthy did.
Is It Happening Again? Today’s landscape has three distinct parts. Lumping them together leads to bad conclusions.
First, the rise of democratic socialism. The Democratic Socialists of America has grown to tens of thousands of members and has won primaries and offices, most visibly in New York City, where an avowed democratic socialist was elected mayor in 2025. Polls show younger Americans view “socialism” far more favorably than their parents did. This is a serious political challenge, and conservatives are right to contest it. But it’s being pursued at the ballot box, in the open, not through conspiracy. The answer is to win the argument, especially on affordability, which is what most young people mean when they say “socialism.”
Second, the Chinese Communist Party. This is the real communist influence campaign of our time, and it deserves more attention than it gets. Federal prosecutors have charged people running secret Chinese “police stations” in New York and a former aide to New York’s governor for acting as an agent of Beijing. U.S. intelligence warns that Chinese hackers, a group called Volt Typhoon, which I have mentioned on the Kevin Miller Show have planted themselves in American power and water systems throughout the country. Beijing’s United Front Work Department, its global influence arm, cultivates local officials, students and business leaders. China’s goal isn’t to install a communist government in Washington. It’s to weaken America, divide us and gain the advantage in a future conflict. That is dangerous enough that we must all pay attention.
Third, the fringe. Small Marxist-Leninist groups still exist, and the original Communist Party USA still has a website but have no meaningful power.
The Verdict: Is a communist takeover of the U.S. government underway? I don’t see evidence of one. What I do see is a democratic socialist movement that must be defeated with better ideas, and a foreign communist regime in Beijing that must be met with clear-eyed vigilance which I believe President Trump has been actively engaged in.
Our history offers the right playbook. Expose espionage. Protect our infrastructure. Win elections by persuading voters and never let fear tempt us into abandoning the constitutional freedoms that make America worth defending. Every past attempt has failed because the American people, given the facts, chose liberty. Our job is to make sure they still have the facts but that has become more challenging with the left controlling so much of printed, broadcast and social media.
As I was writing, this article there news broke that Democratic Representative Hailey Stevens has just endorsed GOP’s Mike Rogers for Senate. This action should give voters serious pause to think about just how important their vote is in this election. When hate rears its ugly head as it has during this election we must look inward and decide if hate is what we really want. There are forces outside of the U.S. that are backing many of these DSA candidates that want to change our country. Tomorrow Americans will go to the polls and once again decide the direction our country will take. We have seen how many in the Democratic party have embraced Socialism and I only hope and pray that Americans see the seeds of hate and division that are being planted as they enter the voting booth tomorrow.
“We Get the Government We Deserve”
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