It’s between the Organized Crime Democrats and the Bolsheviks, and the Bolsheviks appear to be winning.

[Mid-morning update]

“My family fled socialism, and then I voted for Bernie Sanders.”

At NYU, we believed that unconstrained capitalism and “trickle-down economics” were causing the calamity of inequality in the U.S., and it was our moral duty to fight back by promoting social justice and progressive values. We learned about the Iraq war, the Abu Ghraib scandal, and why the U.S. was to blame for the recent right-wing dictatorships in Argentina and Chile.

But this narrative didn’t square with what I knew about Venezuela’s recent history. In 2002, the military had briefly removed Chávez from power; I was taught at NYU that the U.S. government had engineered the failed coup out of fear that Chávez would cut off access to our oil. But my mother had been in the room when members of the Venezuelan media were discussing the possibility of a Chávez overthrow. The U.S. ambassador emphatically told everyone present that the Americans wouldn’t support a coup. Perhaps Latin American history wasn’t as simplistic as I was being taught.

I became acutely aware of how many of my NYU classmates were obsessed with race and identity, and how they believed that silencing Republicans was more important than protecting free speech. It reminded me of how Chávez had shut down the free press (with support from the American and European left) on the grounds that they were a propaganda tool of the oligarchy.

My NYU classmates characterized those who disagreed with them as deserving total exclusion from polite society. They shouted down right-wing speakers. Anyone considered a Republican, or Republican-adjacent, was socially ostracized. I met rich kids who called themselves “antifa,” and heard protest chants like, “How do you spell racist? NYU!” As a Venezuelan in exile, I could see what they couldn’t: U.S. democracy, capitalism, and the rule of law had afforded us unimaginable wealth, freedom, and security.

Also: “You’ll never encounter a Venezuelan in the U.S. who supports Chávez—except in academia. The same is true of Cubans.”

This is an excellent example of the degree to which the Marxists have taken over education, and higher education in particular, and why this is probably the greatest threat to the Republic.