Report: 37 Percent Of Young Americans Favor Communist Manifesto

According to a 2020 citizen engagement report by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, almost 37 percent of young Americans view the Communism Manifesto favorably.

In Rod Dreher’s Live Not By Lies he write, “The Czech novelist Milan Kundera drily observes that nobody today will defend gulags, but the world remains full of suckers for the false utopian promises that bring gulags into existence.”

Communism is a threat to liberty, especially religious liberty. Just ask Father who escaped Nazi Croatia only to then be oppressed under Soviet Czechoslovakia. Only Father Kolakovic recognized the coming darkness and prepared his church through mock interrogations and surveillance tactics training. He was so prepared that by the time of the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d’état, his secret church was operating for 5 years.

It may not be a surprise then to learn that 40% of Americans have a favorable view of socialism. But the idea that 37% of Gen Z and Millennials have a favorable view of the Communist Manifesto is alarming. The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation releases an annual report titled, “U.S. Attitudes Toward Socialism, Communism, and Collectivism”.

The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) today released its fifth Annual Report on U.S. Attitudes Toward Socialism, Communism, and Collectivism. The report, polled by internationally recognized research and data firm YouGov, synthesizes data from 2,100 representative U.S. respondents ages 16 and older, and the margin of error is plus or minus 2.32%.

Another finding of the report is 63% of Gen Z and Millennials believe the Declaration of Independence better guarantees freedom and inequality over the Communist Manifesto.

2020 Annual VOC Report Findings

According to the site these are the key takeaways from their annual report for the year 2020.

40% of Americans have a favorable view of socialism, up from 36% in 2019. Socialist sentiment is increasing among younger generations with Gen Z’s favorability at 49%, up from 40% in 2019.
Over a quarter of Americans (26%) support the gradual elimination of the capitalist system in favor of a more socialist system with a surge in support among younger generations (31% of Gen Z and 35% of Millennials).
18% of Gen Z and 13% of Millennials think communism is a fairer system than capitalism and deserves consideration in America.
30% of Gen Z has a favorable view of Marxism, up 6% from 2019, compared to 27% of Millennials, down 9% from 2019.
Over one-third of Americans (39%) are likely to support a member of the Democratic Socialist party for office with greater support among younger generations (51% of Gen Z and 44% of Millennials). 16% of Gen Z and Millennials are likely to support a member of the Communist party for office.
63% of Gen Z and Millennials (compared to 95% of the Silent Generation), believe the Declaration of Independence better guarantees freedom and inequality over the Communist Manifesto, a 6% increase for Millennials from 2019.
One-third of Americans (33%) believe Donald Trump is the biggest threat to world peace over Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un, Nicolás Maduro, and Vladimir Putin, a 6% increase from 2019.
32% of Americans think that Donald Trump is responsible for the deaths of more people than Kim Jong-un.
Nearly two-thirds (64%) of Americans say they are unaware that the Chinese Communist Party is responsible for more deaths than Nazi Germany.
47% of Americans believe Xi Jinping of China is more responsible for COVID-19 becoming a pandemic than Donald Trump; however, a higher proportion of Gen Z believes that Donald Trump is more responsible (39%).
Over a quarter (26%) of Americans think climate change is the number one threat to national security over the rise of the People’s Republic of China or Russian expansionism. The greatest concern for climate change is seen among younger generations (38% of Gen Z and 30% of Millennials).
Over half of Gen Z (51%) think that America is a racist nation with a long history of discrimination.
Only 44% of Gen Z thinks that the American flag most accurately represents freedom.
Americans increasingly distrust the government to take care of their interests, with 87% saying they trust themselves over the government and their community (a 7% increase from 2019). This is especially the case in younger generations, with only 6% of Gen Z and 5% of Millennials trusting the government to take care of their interests, down 8% and 11% from 2019, respectively.
12% of Gen Z and 10% of Millennials think society would be better off if all private property was abolished and held by the government.
53% of Americans think a good government should favor the freedom of its citizens over the safety of its citizens.

The Horrors Of Communism

Stalin killed millions ever since his involvement in the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge killed In just four years an estimated 1-2 million people, almost a quarter of everyone in Cambodia at the time the Pol Pot came to power. Mao Zedong starved millions to death with the Great Leap Forward project in China.

Mao Zedong 1963 (Wikipedia/Public Domain)

Pol Pot’s Genocidal Communist Dictatorship

Like neighboring Vietnam, Cambodia was a French Colony at the time. And like Vietnam, many idealistic young people in Cambodia were attracted to Communism as a way to both secure their independence and order the new state once they achieved it.

Sar was no exception. And in many way’s his life mirrors that of Ho Chi Minh, the leader of North Vietnam. Like Minh, Sar spent time in Paris and eventually returned to his native country to take a leading role in Cambodia’s communist party. It was during his struggle against Cambodia’s government, that he adopted the name Pol Pot as a nom de guerre.

With the fall of South Vietnam and the withdrawal of American forces from the country, Pot seized the moment to establish his own communist dictatorship in Cambodia with the help of the Vietnamese.