The Biggest Public Attack British Economists Ever Made on a Sitting Government

Trust the Experts! Even when they're wrong!

Left wingers have never forgiven Thatcher for postponing the UK's decline

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The Biggest Public Attack British Economists Ever Made on a Sitting Government

 

On 30 March 1981, 364 economists from across British universities signed an open letter to The Times declaring that the government's anti-inflation strategy had "no basis in economic theory or supporting evidence." It was drafted by Frank Hahn and Robert Neild at Cambridge after Howe's March budget. The signatories included a future Governor of the Bank of England.

 

What They Demanded

 

The letter said Thatcher's policy would deepen the recession and threaten Britain's social and political stability. It called for the rejection of monetarism in favor of "alternative policies." In 1981, that meant the postwar Keynesian formula: more public borrowing, looser money, and state support for failing industry. Thatcher refused to reflate.

 

Britain Was the Sick Man of Europe

 

By 1979 Britain had spent a decade falling behind every major European economy. Inflation hit 24 percent in 1975. The Callaghan government took a $3.9 billion IMF bailout in 1976, the largest in the Fund's history at that point. The Winter of Discontent of 1978-79 left rubbish uncollected and the dead unburied as public sector strikes paralyzed the country. The top marginal tax rate stood at 83 percent on earned income and 98 percent on investment income. The 364 wrote no letter against this.

 

What Thatcher Actually Did

 

She rejected the Keynesian demand that Britain borrow and spend its way out of the recession. The top marginal income tax rate fell from 83 percent to 60 percent in 1979 and to 40 percent by 1988. The basic rate fell from 33 percent to 25 percent. Exchange controls were abolished in October 1979. British Telecom, British Gas, British Airways, and British Steel were sold to the public. The Employment Acts of 1980, 1982, and 1984 broke the unions' power to shut the country down.

 

Britain Began Recovering in 1982

 

GDP turned positive in 1982 and grew for the rest of the decade, peaking at 5 percent a year by 1988. British GDP per capita was growing faster than France's, Germany's, or Italy's, reversing decades of relative decline. The recession the 364 said would deepen ended within twelve months of their letter.

 

The Productivity Gap with Germany Closed for the First Time in a Generation

 

In 1979, West German output per hour worked stood 40 percent above Britain's. By 1989 that advantage had fallen to 17 percent. UK manufacturing output per worker rose roughly 78 percent over the broader period. Britain stopped losing ground to Europe and started catching up.

 

The Industries the Economists Said Couldn't Survive Were Replaced by Something Larger

 

On 27 October 1986 the Big Bang deregulated the London Stock Exchange. Fixed commissions ended and electronic trading began. Within a decade London had reclaimed its position as a top-tier global financial center. The capital the 364 said would vanish reorganized itself around higher-value activity.

 

They Never Retracted. They Were Promoted.

 

No collective retraction was ever issued. The signatories who later addressed the letter defended it as substantively correct, arguing the recovery happened despite the policy rather than because of it. Mervyn King, one of the 364, became Governor of the Bank of England. Stephen Nickell joined the Monetary Policy Committee.

 

The most prominent failed forecast in postwar British economics produced no professional consequences.

 

The Same Pattern Repeated in 2023

 

In October 2023, 108 economists including Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman signed an open letter warning that a Milei victory would cause "devastation" in Argentina.

 

He won. Monthly inflation fell from 25.5 percent in December 2023 to roughly 2 percent by mid-2025. Poverty dropped from 52.9 percent in early 2024 to 28.2 percent in the second half of 2025.

 

The Mechanism Repeats Because Nobody Pays for Being Wrong

 

A credentialed body issues a collective denunciation. Major outlets treat the letter as expert consensus. The policy succeeds anyway. No retraction follows, because the professional cost of being publicly wrong about a major economic prediction inside academic economics is approximately zero.

 

Thatcher Is Hated Because She Was Right

 

The results vindicated her and condemned her critics. People who build their identity around a vision of the world do not abandon that vision when the data contradicts it. They attack whoever the data vindicates. Her record is what their careers were built against. That is why the hatred has not faded in forty years.

The Other Right to Choose: Reversing the Trudeau Immigration Fiasco

Left wingers see mass migration as a way to destroy the West. 

The article doesn't talk about how using immigration to pay for the welfare state is an unsustainable ponzi scheme. 

The Other Right to Choose: Reversing the Trudeau Immigration Fiasco

"Back then Canada, despite being a “land of immigrants”, used economic criteria to choose whom it took in. It’s a useful reminder given how intense the national debate over immigration has become... the longstanding pro-immigration consensus among Canadians has evaporated. Immigration proponents respond by doubling down, accusing almost any opponent of being racist.

The fight is playing out all over the Western world, with politicians of different stripes juggling public discontent with dissent in their own ranks...

Until 2015, Canada actually had a system that worked exceedingly well, what one New York Times contributor described as “Canada’s ruthlessly smart immigration policy.” The reputation lingers; even today, some U.S. commentators on the right remain under the impression that Canada’s immigration system is rigorous, effective and far better than their own. Those of us who had a hand in its management back then can confirm it wasn’t easy or seamless even when it worked well. But it was far better than most. In a breathtakingly short time, however, this “model” system was blown up by the federal Liberals who, as National Post columnist Tristin Hopper put it, took immigration “to cuckoo town.”

The Trudeau government’s shocking mismanagement, if not deliberate dismantling, threatens Canadians’ short-term wellbeing, our future prosperity and our identity – all at once. Bombshell developments occur almost daily, like the March Auditor General’s report revealing massive “non-compliance” (i.e., fraud) and problems with “integrity controls” (i.e., incompetent oversight) in the foreign student visa system. All this has forced a debate over whether immigration is really just about economics and whether Canadians actually have a say about what our country will be...

Although the proportions shifted somewhat over the years, since 1980, more than half of Canada’s immigrants have been subject to points-based admissions, about 30 percent have been sponsored relatives and 15 percent have been refugees. 

As devised in 1967, the points system provided “an objective way to assess…prospective immigrants while at the same time upgrading the [average] skill level of new arrivals.” Implicit was the recognition that immigration would serve the needs of Canadians and our economy. The criteria, the weighting and the “pass mark” could be adjusted with changing priorities and market demand.

Canada’s system was quickly emulated by Australia in the 1970s, New Zealand in 1991 and the UK in 2008. And as already alluded to, it generated admiration and even envy in the U.S. A 2006 U.S. Senate assessment of our system determined that, while simply increasing the total number of immigrants “lowers the average skill level of arriving immigrant cohorts,” boosting economic-class immigrants does attract people who are more skilled, qualified and able to contribute economically. Emphasizing specific skills was also found to be effective at matching prospective immigrants to Canada’s economic needs.

In short, Canada’s points system worked as intended. Education was the attribute most linked to the best outcomes, followed by language fluency. The system ran successfully for about half a century, with points criteria used for most of the 9-million-plus immigrants Canada took in during that time. Immigration accounted for over 60 percent of the country’s population growth from 1967 to 2016.

This excellent system was rapidly overturned by the Justin Trudeau government. Annual immigration targets were raised by 54 percent from 260,000 in 2015 to 401,000 by 2021. While most of these immigrants were still in the economic classes, far fewer skilled workers were taken after the Covid-19 pandemic. Trudeau’s government also hoped to ramp up family class immigrants to 25 percent of arrivals but, for once, fell short.

University of Waterloo economist Mikal Skuterud highlights the 2021 bypassing of the points-based ranking of applicants’ human capital, to make permanent residents out of applicants with record-low scores. In the same year, the Liberals again bypassed the system to quickly admit 90,000 “essential” (i.e., low-skill) workers.

This fast-tracking not only upended longstanding policy but may actually have violated previous Liberal legislation. The Jean Chretien government’s 2001 Immigration and Refugee Protection Act stipulated that every applicant had to be evaluated by an immigration officer. The constant flow of applications and finite number of staff meant that, five years later, the Conservative government of Stephen Harper inherited a 600,000-application backlog. It took 10 years to whittle that down by about 60 percent, underscoring the time required for basic vetting. Despite their 2020 plan calling for “adding resources” and “streamlining processes,” it’s hard to see how the Liberals could balloon arrival numbers without reducing standards and oversight.

How the Trudeau government really blew things up, though, was by facilitating the explosion of non-permanent residents – temporary foreign workers (TFW), foreign students, etc. By late 2024 this cohort totalled over 3.2 million people – equivalent to everyone in Greater Vancouver – or 7.5 percent of Canada’s population.

Historically Canada has needed periodic infusions of TFWs in limited numbers, for example in agriculture and tourism. But Trudeau seemed intent on making these a permanent and ever-growing, open-ended feature. Neither temporary nor limited, then. And it showed: youth unemployment zoomed upwards and currently fluctuates around 15-20 percent.

Overall reliance on non-permanent residents has grown dramatically and their areas of employment have spread far beyond the service sector that traditionally sought this class of immigrant. They now extend to professional and technical fields, the health care sector, manufacturing, even finance and real estate. This begs the question: can’t Canadians do these jobs anymore?

Employers seeking TFWs theoretically must prove that no Canadian is available to do the work in question, via what’s called a “Labour Market Impact Assessment”. But our national idiosyncrasies can result in awkward situations. In 2008, for example, owners of a PEI fish-processing plant pleaded with our minister’s office to hire TFWs from Ukraine because “no locals could be found.” Despite unemployment on the island being almost 12 percent, islanders could be exempted from seeking work, and remain on social assistance, for various reasons, including “family obligations”.

International students have become another labour pool and a major source of revenue for universities, their numbers exploding to around 1 million by 2023 – about three times the number in 2015. On average, they now pay over seven times the tuition Canadians do, and universities are cashing in – the University of Toronto deriving over 70 percent of tuition revenue from foreigners. Somnolent federal oversight has allowed upwards of 50,000 foreign students to be here illegally.

Eyebrow-raising aspects of the Liberals’, shall we say, expansive attitude toward immigration include Trudeau’s memorable assertion during the 2015 election, “The Liberal Party believes that terrorists should get to keep their Canadian citizenship.” Similarly, there’s his view that “a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian” – including countless people granted citizenship who’ve never even been here.

This couldn’t contrast more with the Harper government’s approach. In 2009, longstanding loopholes in the 1947 Citizenship Act were closed, including almost all of the so-called “Lost-Canadian” cases – people who had fallen through the cracks of the old law, a complicated collection that included “war brides” who married Canadian soldiers in the Second World War, and descendants thereof who assumed they were Canadian citizens. Our reforms added much stronger citizenship criteria, emphasizing the individual’s demonstrable attachment to Canada. Consequently, Canadian citizenship was extended only to the foreign-born children of Canadians, excluding grandchildren and on down the line.

In 2023, an Ontario judge overturned this legislation based on, what else, Charter rights. She ruled it unconstitutional to treat someone born of Canadian parents abroad differently from native-born Canucks – i.e., a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian. Despite this potentially extending citizenship to generations of foreigners, the Trudeau government chose not to appeal. Now untold numbers, whose forebears emigrated ages ago, or just stopped in Canada for a cup of coffee, are citizens – like the estimated 108,000 “Canadians” apparently residing in the Middle East. It could also include an astounding 10 million Franco-Americans, descendants of long-ago migrants to the New England states who may be only dimly aware of any familial connection to Canada.

Formerly, aspiring citizens had to demonstrate an “attachment to Canada” by actually living here for four years. The Trudeau government reduced this to three and eased language requirements for older applicants, channelling Yann Martel’s vision of Canada as the “greatest hotel on earth”...

We currently have as many as 500,000 “undocumented” people, i.e., illegal aliens, living here. Amongst the “documented” are 28,000 failed refugee claimants and others awaiting removal... they have multiple appeal options before they are, if ever, deported. This includes “ties to Canada” – often themselves derived from excessive, several-year-long delays in hearing claims, enough time to have a child in Canada and get them into pre-school. 

The nation’s over 12,000 certified immigration consultants and untold hundreds of Canadian immigration lawyers can help you with the appeals. Courts are often themselves highly solicitous, with judges and even prosecutors frequently going out of their way to lower sentences for serious crimes, or issuing outright acquittals or dismissals, so as not to imperil the defendant’s immigration prospects. This game has gotten too much for some, however, with judges in Quebec and Ontario recently taking the unusual step of publicly reminding prosecutors that their job is to go after criminals, not help them avoid deportation.

There are also currently almost 300,000 unprocessed refugee claimants – the largest number being from India, a rule-of-law democracy not consumed by civil war. Added to those is the annual flow of asylum-seekers, some 172,000 in 2024, compared to just 16,000 in 2015, the Harper government’s last year. Claims doubled in 2017 alone, shortly after Trudeau tweeted his soon-notorious global invitation to all comers. These “irregular arrivals”, plus the 77,000 taken through the annual humanitarian stream, totals almost a quarter-million people.

Now the bills are coming due. Health-care costs alone have quintupled to about $1 billion annually, projected to reach $1.5 billion by 2030. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has highlighted such “deluxe” free services as physiotherapists, mobility and hearing aids, home care, long-term care, etc. – all things Canadians can’t get or wait years to access. In response, the Liberals have reiterated their support for these services, Immigration Minister Lena Diab citing “humanitarian, constitutional and international obligations.” She even echoed Trudeau, asserting that “terrorists have a right to be citizens.”

Meanwhile, vetting of claimants is also off the rails. A blockbuster study by the C.D. Howe Institute released in February shows refugee acceptance rising to 80 percent from barely 40 percent in the early 2010s. Ireland, Sweden and Germany are at 30, 40 and 59 percent, respectively. Astoundingly, the study found that over 25,000 claimants had been approved without even a face-to-face interview.

Astounding because it’s clear that many such claimants are economic migrants, if not entirely bogus. Until our department imposed visa restrictions on Mexico in 2008 (subsequently lifted under Trudeau), scores of asylum seekers were simply stepping off jets at airports, while whole families arrived at the border in new SUVs. Not to mention the bands of Roma (Gypsies) from Czechia flying over for free healthcare and accommodation – until they were deported. We sincerely wanted to help some of the roughly 6 million people living in refugee camps worldwide – but instead had to deal with Guatemalan hairdressers deplaning in Toronto.

By contrast, within the Mark Carney government today lurks that same support for boundless “migration” common to much of the Western elite. Migration advocates are hard-pressed to explain, or refuse to state, what the “right number” to take in is, or if there even is one. A UN worker, from Israel of all places, once told one of my staffers that, “Let’s face it, Canada has an essentially unlimited capacity to take migrants.”

The problem with this view is the sheer number of people who want to come. And come they will if given the opportunity. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security recently estimated that as much as 8 percent of Nicaragua’s entire population may have entered America illegally during Biden’s Presidency.

This is a global phenomenon. A 2024 Gallup survey unsurprisingly identified an increasing desire to migrate. Thirty-seven percent of respondents in sub-Saharan Africa, 28 percent in Latin America and 26 percent in the Middle East said they wanted to move permanently to another country – upwards of 900 million people. Their top destination, no surprise, is the United States, 18 percent would go there, but Canada is second at 9 percent. That means over 80 million people want to come here, right now. And that’s only from those three regions.

Clearly, some of these people are genuine refugees. And a few others may have compelling professional, family-related or other reasons to move here. But most are simply seeking “a better life”. Like my family was. The question is, can we even debate how many we should take, where they should come from and whether we’re still allowed to pick those most likely to make a net contribution to our country?

Much like Godwin’s Law, which holds that social media exchanges rapidly descend into comparisons to Adolf Hitler, there ought to be an axiom for the migration debate – let’s call it Heinrich’s Law – that anyone questioning the value of continuous migration will be called racist. That’s why immigration has often been described as a political “third rail” – instantly electrocuting the political career of anyone who deviates from the consensus. Reaction to Alberta Premier Smith’s referendum proposal – with not just the usual local but international leftists shrieking about the “white supremacy” of Alberta’s “far-right leader” – and the federal Conservatives’ critique of the current system are cases in point.

Spotlighting the costs associated with vast numbers of asylum-seekers was deemed by the Liberals as “punching down” on the “most vulnerable” and, of course, racist. Andrew Coyne accused Smith and Poilievre of “blaming immigrants” for the strain on housing affordability/availability and social services. This despite the fact that credible non-partisan organizations like the Bank of Canada have put hard numbers behind what Canadians grasp intuitively or observe anecdotally.

Canadian unions, nominally representing Canadian workers, have joined the pro-migration crew. Of the estimated 2.8 million temporary migrants currently here, about 2 million will soon lose their status. In response, one union group proposes “a political workers movement [fighting] for the interest of all workers regardless of citizenship status.” [Emphasis added] The labour activists maintain that all 2 million “should have their permits extended and be given a ‘path to permanent residency.’”

The consensus is Laurentian-wide. Did you cause an accident killing 16 hockey players and maiming more? Retired Liberal ministers have your back. Do your kids need daycare while you await your refugee hearing? The Supreme Court of Canada says you have the same rights as citizens, and taxpayers foot the bill.

But you can rely on academia to offer the most, shall we say, pointed views on immigration, as with expatriate American Jason Stanley. The University of Toronto American Studies professor believes that “dismantling structural obstacles to immigration should be a primary political goal” and growing Canada’s population will allow us to “flex soft power, drawing a clear distinction between [us] and [our] fascist, xenophobic and white supremacist neighbour.”

Migration advocates seem to believe that, while there’s a rainbow of cultures with myriad diverse attributes, they are somehow qualitatively equivalent and vary only in degrees of goodness. Diversity is our strength because there’s no downside, at least none we can talk about. Try doing that and you’re subject to Heinrich’s Law. That’s the state of the debate in Canada.

By contrast, some Europeans are diving into Professor Stanley’s pit of xenophobia. The Continent has been positively flooded by migrants, totalling an astounding 87 million by 2020, or 12 percent of Europe’s population. A mathematician at the University of Amsterdam has calculated that non-Western migration to the Netherlands has been costing Dutch taxpayers €17 billion ($27.5 billion) per year since 1995. If the influx continues, the annual tab will soon reach €50 billion ($81 billion). The study found that only immigrants with a bachelor’s degree or higher were even net financial contributors over their lifetime; the rest, the large majority, were a drain.

The reliably liberal Economist magazine has reported some recent analyses of migration’s impact. The UK’s Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) found that high-wage migrants would be lifetime net fiscal contributors, even if they later claimed a pension and used health-care services until the age of 100. Low-wage migrants, by contrast, would cost British taxpayers over £1.5 million each.

Czech researchers, the article also reported, concluded that every one percent rise in migration to Germany causes a three percent rise in house prices (where’s Andrew Coyne?). And Mette Frederiksen, the centre-left prime minister of historically very pro-immigration Denmark, where immigrants make up 16.3 percent of the population, bluntly declared that open borders make it “impossible to have a sustainable society, especially if you have a welfare society.” U.S. data from 2016 show that each immigrant having less than a high-school education, and each of their descendants, constitutes a net drain of US$163,000 in 2026 dollars, while a postgraduate contributes over US$565,000.

A separate analysis of employment in Denmark over 2010-2024 shows that even second-generation immigrants from non-Western countries lag behind Danes and immigrants from Western countries. The Danish government has consequently beefed up its integration policies, including a mandatory “work obligation” for those receiving social benefits, plus enhanced language requirements and community engagement by newcomers.

Still, most old-line European politicians talk change but don’t change. Not so long ago, they were lining up to repudiate their own migration policies: Germany’s Angela Merkel, “Multicultural [society] has utterly failed” (2010); France’s Nikolas Sarkozy, “The multiculturalism concept is a failure” (2011); the UK’s David Cameron, “State multiculturalism has failed” (2011); France’s Emmanuel Macron, “France will never be a multicultural country” (2019).

Revealingly, though, Macron also believes “white privilege” is real and has said, “There is not a French culture. There is a culture in France, and it is diverse.” One may disdain the French, but no French culture? And while they were all talking, migration continued apace, and integration of newcomers remained a rosy idea. After she trash-talked “Multikulti”, Merkel let in over 1 million asylum-seekers from the Middle East in 2015 alone, with Germany’s total migrant population since swelling to 15.8 million.

The probable results are described by researchers like George Mason University economist Garett Jones, who cites data showing how immigrant outcomes vary dramatically by source country. In Canada, second-generation Argentines, Brazilians and Indians do better than Colombians and Haitians. Statistics Canada shows similar variations in second-generation educational attainment.

Jones’ recent book tracks how immigrants’ values – like savings rates – and their views on trust toward government regulation and personal responsibility persist in their adopted countries. These views extend to as much as 50 percent of the second generation, and even beyond. In Jones’ view, “full assimilation is a myth.” Instead, countries should select for desirable values or, as he boils it down, “If you bring people in from frugal countries, you can make your country more frugal.” His overall advice on immigrant selection: “You better shop wisely.”

These conclusions make intuitive sense and support Canada rebuilding robust, points-based migrant intake using strict criteria. It also implies that Smith and Poilievre are onto something. Smith’s referendum questions seem eminently sensible. Should immigration into Alberta be lowered to a “sustainable” level? Should the province prioritize immigrants who can make a real economic contribution? Should those without permanent residency have free and equal access to all provincially funded programs, or pay something out of their own pockets? Should a temporary resident have the same access to every job opportunity as a citizen? And so on.

Poilievre similarly wants to slow population growth and tie intake numbers to economic indicators. “We need to have a growth rate that is below the growth in housing, health care and employment,” he says. For reference, prior to 2015 Canada’s annual population growth averaged 1.1 percent while its economy averaged 1.8 percent annual growth, including the downturn after the 2008-2009 financial crisis. In 2023 the population grew by 3.2 percent. The economy? 1.1 percent. The Conservatives have also proposed substantive amendments to tighten the porous asylum system under the Liberals’ border security legislation, Bill C-12, while supporting its passage.

Still the debate, such as it is, falls mostly along predictable lines: mainstream Conservatives preferring imperceptible social change and “progressives” wanting deliberate, dramatic transformation, stuff they can rub in conservatives’ noses... African-American writer Coleman Hughes believes deeper cultural concerns underlie what are framed as economic arguments. In conversation with author Lionel Shriver, Hughes notes that progressives are inconsistent, promoting “change” but opposing specifics like gentrification of neighbourhoods.

Hughes’ calm, measured analysis touches on the real social strife that has erupted over migration, whether it’s in Minnesota or Europe. The UK, for example, took a flat 250,000 immigrants per year until 1990. That more than doubled by the early 2000s and reached almost 1.5 million in 2023 alone. In 2024, 37,000 asylum-seekers crossed the Channel in “small boats”. Officials fear confronting immigrant-related crime, like the so-called “grooming gangs”, or violence at the ongoing pro-Hamas demonstrations after October 7^th, 2023. But those who, like comedian John Cleese, remark that London doesn’t “feel English” anymore are pilloried. Simply noting facts online, like the services and hotel stays provided to migrants, brings fines or imprisonment.

Shriver herself, whose latest novel tackles migration, believes the progressives’ view has more to do with their own moral self-image than with immigrants. They see migrants as “patriots-in-waiting”, despite themselves often hating their own country. Shriver similarly questions the belief that migration is somehow inevitable, that immigrants will “just come, like the rain.”

On the contrary, she says: we can choose...

People are cranky about immigration, but the focus remains almost entirely on economic aspects, and even here there’s no consensus on the seemingly obvious question of whether more people chasing essentially the same number of houses drives up prices.

There are several well-reasoned recent studies that outline how to improve our current immigration. By contrast, the Carney government’s attempt at reform via Bill C-12, the Strengthening Canada’s Immigration System and Borders Act, is too little, too late. As critics point out, while Liberal talking points tout the “new government” taking action, it was the same party and in many cases the same individual politicians who created the mess we’re in now. How could they possibly enact profound reforms?...

A shrinking population appears off the table given our cradle-to-grave expectations and our social programs’ appetite for tax dollars. Except perhaps for Quebec. La Belle Province apparently prefers the Japanese model of “cultural preservation” with lower immigration. But Quebec’s birthrate of 1.3 will mean a declining population and, over time, less political clout. Who will pay for their social services is not mentioned, but one might guess. 

Many groups advocate increasing our population, whether to buoy the economy, placate diaspora communities or increase “diversity”. Some are no doubt culpable for the Liberals’ disastrous policies. The “Century Initiative”, a group of self-described “prominent Canadians” (i.e., Laurentian and/or Liberal), grabbed headlines saying Canada should grow to 100 million people by 2100. Proposing growth is fine, but to what end? Attracting the best immigrants just as birthrates in our main source countries also crater will be even more difficult. And the process is self-reinforcing; we’ll need the best to stay competitive in attracting and keeping newcomers.

Remaining attractive also means preserving what draws immigrants now. It means understanding that these conditions didn’t occur by chance, they had something to do with the people and culture that built it. And that a vibrant, innovative economy relies on the rule of law, a high-trust society and social cohesion. These in turn depend on a common culture and shared values which – note to progressives – are a lot more than mere “tolerance” (i.e., indifference). Preserving all that, if only to attract and keep newcomers, will mean, as controversial as it is to some, excluding individuals or groups with entrenched beliefs or cultural practices that undermine it...

Immigration serves Canadians and our children first and foremost, not primarily the possible future immigrants or their extended families, let alone the utopian abstraction of open borders with unlimited migration...

But the political minefields around such reform have already been laid. The Left believes our system – the very fact that we even choose – is a “moral failure,” that the “sorting systems” set up by wealthy nations “filter out the most useful people while condemning the rest to destitution.” But our gut instinct, that we can’t let in everyone and that not all newcomers are created equal, is confirmed by the various studies.

Regions with the most qualified applicants will fare better, resulting in source-country admission disparities. Cue up the accusations of “systemic barriers” and prejudice. Back in my day, our Liberal opposition already claimed we hated Chinese when admissions from Hong Kong dropped slightly...

Agreeing on and preserving whatever pixie dust makes Canada attractive to immigrants now and got us here in the first place is an incendiary topic. Academic ideologues view talk of “common values” as “code words” meant to sustain “unequal social hierarchies.” Preservation of “Canadian heritage” and “Canadian values” is thought to have a “racial subtext.” And if you believe that “white Eurocentric culture in Canada…perpetuates colonial power dynamics,” you might not like points-based immigration. Sadly, threads of such thinking extend right to the Liberal government benches."

Links - 25th September 2026 (2 - Socialism)

Does anyone else feel like "working-class culture" is just coded masculinity? : r/Socialism_101 - "I consider myself a democratic socialist and care deeply about workers' rights, unions, universal healthcare, and improving material conditions for everyone.  That said... I get incredibly uncomfortable around a lot of blue-collar workers.  I was recently at a family gathering where several of my cousins, who work in construction and trucking, were talking loudly about football, trucks, hunting, and making jokes that probably wouldn't fly in progressive spaces. They weren't even talking to me, but I felt on edge the entire time.  Maybe it's because so many trades are dominated by conservative men, but I just associate that whole culture with aggression. The yelling, the swearing, the macho posturing. It honestly intimidates me.  People always say "the working class is the backbone of society," but if I'm being honest, I have a much easier time connecting with baristas, nonprofit workers, graduate students, and people in creative fields than I do with mechanics or roofers.  I know this probably sounds elitist, and I feel guilty because I believe in class solidarity. But every time someone says we need to spend more time organizing among tradespeople, my first reaction is that I'd rather not.  Does anyone else struggle with this? How do you reconcile believing in socialism while feeling deeply uncomfortable around the kinds of people socialism is supposedly for?"
Time to replace the hammer and sickle with a keyboard and pen

Joshua Reed Eakle 🗽 on X - "Marxism is so depleted it's insane. No ambition, no new answers, no adjustments. Just 1917 forever. A Bolshevik infinity. We must imagine Sisyphus seizing the means of production."

Ken Gardner on X - "One of Ayn Rand's very best observations, which has aged like fine wine:  "Socialism is not a movement of the people. It is a movement of the intellectuals, originated, led and controlled by the intellectuals, carried by them out of their stuffy ivory towers into those bloody fields of practice where they unite with their allies and executors: the thugs.""
sg on X - "Neither Marx nor Engels came from the working class, and certainly weren’t serfs or peasants."
Ken Gardner on X - "And we are seeing it today. DSA is basically young college-educated radicals, many of whom haven't done an honest day's work in their entire lives. <Many of them seem unemployable, tbh.>"

‏ً on X - "Genuinely, I DO NOT like the concept of capitalism. I don’t want to work my job every day. I want to make art. I want to be in my garden. I want to feel something."
Hon. Vickie Paladino on X - "Spoiler Alert: Socialism does NOT mean you don’t have to work.  I have no idea how these idiotic children got the idea that socialism equals never having to work.  Capitalism didn’t invent the concept of a job or a boss or bills or responsibilities. It just found a better way to organize them.   But rest assured, socialist countries have still have all of the above. You don’t just get to decide to be an artist or dancer or whatever.   It’s actually insane that any of this needs to be explained."

Meme - "Communists when they get assigned to Alaskan coal mines instead of teaching lesbian dance theory from a free luxury condo"

Meme - "r/communism101
How is labor properly incentivized in higher-stage communism
How did Marx think society will function in the higher stage of communism when private property and classes are abolished, theres no wage labor and commodity production or even money to compensate. What incentivizes me to become a pilot instead of a street cleaner, my love for planes or humanity? How can there without wage labor be a difference in outcomes for a pilot vs cleaner"
"People that will actually live in a communist society will neither think nor behave like you, much like you do not think or behave like people living in a feudal society."
This is why gulags and re-education camps are such features of Communism

Tankie of the Lake | Facebook - "Liberal believe that the Soviet invasions of Poland and Finland are "gotcha's" because they genuinely believe that the only acceptable response to fascism is to do nothing.  The Nazis where conquering Poland, the Soviets stopped them from taking all of it. Finland was an axis power, and they only finally removed the swastika from their Air Force insignias in the 21st century.  Liberals demand that existing socialists states must be blameless saints while they built a system that handed the nuclear codes to a dementia riddled fascist pedophile."
Left wingers are making stuff up again as they always do. Of course the tankies in the comments are pretending the MR pact was exactly the same as the Munich agreement (as if Stalin wasn't caught by surprise by the German invasion)

History Betrayed - "The Soviet-Finnish Winter War (1939–1940) is often portrayed in Western history as a simple story of Soviet aggression against a small democratic nation. But the actual situation was rooted in the strategic reality facing the USSR before World War II fully erupted. The Finnish border sat dangerously close to Leningrad, one of the Soviet Union’s largest industrial and population centers. As Nazi Germany expanded across Europe and collective security collapsed, Soviet leadership viewed the existing border as militarily indefensible. The USSR initially sought territorial exchanges and buffer zones through negotiation, offering Finland land elsewhere in exchange for moving the border farther from Leningrad. Finland rejected the proposals, fearing Soviet domination. War followed. Early Soviet offensives were disastrous, with Finnish forces using terrain, winter conditions, and mobile tactics to inflict massive losses on the Red Army. But once Soviet command reorganized and concentrated overwhelming artillery and manpower, the balance shifted decisively. Finland eventually signed peace, ceding territory but preserving its independence. When Germany invaded the USSR in 1941, Finland later joined the war against the Soviets alongside the Germans, reinforcing Soviet fears that the northern approach to Leningrad was a major strategic vulnerability. The war demonstrated both the weaknesses of the early Red Army and the brutal security calculations shaping Europe on the eve of the largest war in human history. #worldwar2 #ww2 #winterwar #history #historyfacts"
Is there any communist aggression tankies won't justify? Whitewashing communist crimes is indeed a betrayal of history

Diego Angulo on X - (Translated from Spanish): "As a former sympathizer of the Left, today I want to show you 10 questions that leftists always dodge because they don't know what to answer:
1. Why does no one risk their life to escape to a socialist country, but rather the other way around?
2. If Socialism is so superior to Capitalism, why does it need violence instead of simply convincing people?
3. If the market is so irrational, why does the State need market prices to make decisions?
4. If the worker creates all the wealth, why does productivity change so much based on the available capital and technology, and not so much based on the hours worked?
5. If the end of Capitalism is approaching, why does it survive all crises and give the impression that it strengthens over time?
6. If the entrepreneur contributes nothing, why has it never been enough to simply gather workers to create companies?
7. If you distrust entrepreneurs, why do you trust politicians so much?
8. If the State must correct all the market's failures, who corrects the State's failures?
9. If business profit is undeserved, why would a public servant's salary be fully justified?
10. If Capitalism is exploitation, why do people participate in it and want to participate even when they have other alternatives?"

Axios on X - "GOP reboots the Red Scare as young Democrats embrace socialism"
Greg Lukianoff on X - "Disappointed to see this using the “conservative pounce” formulation.  I’m Gen X. All of us, including liberals like me, were there when we watched a nation filled with brilliant people put its best minds to making socialism work. It was an unparalleled disaster — not just economically, but environmentally, and certainly from a human rights perspective as well.  The fact that we now have people on both the right and the left who think Lenin was on to something, or that “real socialism has never been tried,” is mind-blowing. It represents a massive generational failure of our K–PhD system. They didn’t learn the history, philosophy, or economics that would have prevented them from falling for the same midwittery that too many of our grandparents fell for.  Sure, it sounds nice. Utopia always does. But it was a colossal disaster that we must not repeat.  So no, Axios. The news isn’t that the GOP is sounding the alarm. It’s that more genuine liberals aren’t."

Madeline Pendleton on X - "Deciding which non-capitalist ideology you like is the easy part, fun even. Unlearning all the capitalist propaganda you were fed about the world is the hard part bc it means admitting you were wrong about everything. A lot of people do the first but not the second."
Cathy Young 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 on X - "This dingbat reminds me of the time my mom (then 5-6 years out of the USSR & teaching music at an American university) started telling a colleague about her & her family's experiences with Soviet medicine and he told her she was channeling American propaganda 🤣🤣🤣"

Students For Liberty | Facebook - "Angela Davis Made Political Imprisonment Her Life's Work.
She edited If They Come in the Morning in 1971 while facing capital charges. She wrote Are Prisons Obsolete? She co-founded Critical Resistance in 1997. She built the modern language of prison abolition in the United States, and she built it on a principle that sounded absolute: no human being should be caged for their beliefs. Before she was an abolitionist writer, Davis was a UCLA philosophy professor and a Communist Party USA member. In August 1970, guns registered in her name were used in a California courthouse raid that killed a judge and three others. She fled, made the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, and spent sixteen months in jail on charges of kidnapping, conspiracy, and murder. During that time, "Free Angela" committees were organized across the Soviet bloc. East German schoolchildren sent her postcards by the hundreds of thousands. Moscow made her a global cause. In June 1972, a jury acquitted her on every count.
The Principle Was Supposed to Be Universal.
She walked out of jail owing a debt to a global movement that had made political imprisonment its cause. The claim she carried forward was supposed to apply to every regime that kept a dissenter in a cell. A prisoner in California and a prisoner in Prague were the same category of injustice, whatever flag flew over the courthouse.
In August 1972, a Letter Arrived from Prague.
Jiří Pelikán, former director of Czechoslovak Television and a lifelong communist, wrote to Davis in the pages of the New York Review of Books. Soviet tanks had crushed the Prague Spring four years earlier. His own party comrades were now in Ruzyně prison for the crime of defending socialism with a human face.
He Named the Prisoners One by One.
Milan Hübl, historian. Jaroslav Šabata, psychologist. Karel Kyncl and Jiří Hochman, journalists. Most had been jailed by other communists. Pelikán asked Davis to visit Ruzyně, to speak for men imprisoned for the same reason she had been. He ended the letter: "I assure you, Angela, that not only I but many other people are waiting for a reply."
No Reply Ever Came.
There is no evidence Davis read the letter, and none that she answered it. The champion of political prisoners had received a plea from a communist reformer jailed by communists, and she chose silence. Silence in her case was itself a position.
The Pattern Kept Repeating.
In 1975, Solzhenitsyn told the AFL-CIO labor federation in New York that when Czechs had appealed to Davis, she answered that the prisoners "deserve what they get." In 1991, Alan Dershowitz described giving Davis's office a list of Soviet Jewish refuseniks jailed for wanting to leave the USSR. Her office replied, by his account, that these were opponents of socialism who belonged behind bars.
Meanwhile She Accepted the Honors of the Jailers.
In 1979 Davis flew to Moscow to accept the Lenin Peace Prize from the government that ran the Gulag. In East Germany she was celebrated by Walter Ulbricht, embraced by Erich Honecker, granted an honorary doctorate at the University of Leipzig. Rudolf Bahro, the East German dissident socialist rotting in a Stasi cell, never received a single public word from her.
The Abolitionist Would Not Abolish the Gulag.
A prison abolitionist who selects her prisoners is no longer abolishing prisons. She is redistributing them. The cages Davis wanted torn down were the cages built by regimes she opposed. The cages built by regimes she admired were beneath her attention, and the prisoners inside them were beneath her advocacy. A principle that applies only to your enemies and never to your allies is not a principle. It is a weapon. The men in Ruzyně, the refuseniks in Soviet cells and labor camps, and the dissident socialists in Honecker's Germany paid the price for the difference."

Mildly Interesting Stuff That You Might Like | Facebook - "In 1936, George Orwell traveled to Spain to fight fascists, but the people who nearly killed him were his own communist allies. At the time, Orwell identified strongly with the radical left and had joined the POUM (Workers' Party of Marxist Unification), an anti-Stalinist socialist militia in Barcelona. He believed he was stepping into a utopian workers' revolution where class structures had been abolished and true equality was taking root. His romantic ideals were violently shattered—not just by the fascist forces of Francisco Franco, but by his own nominal allies. In May 1937, Soviet-backed communists systematically turned on their leftist counterparts in Spain. Orwell witnessed firsthand the brutal suppression, manufactured propaganda, and purges directed by Moscow against the very people who were supposed to be fighting on the same side. He barely escaped Spain with his life, fleeing across the border while many of his comrades were imprisoned or executed by Soviet secret police. Before his time in Spain, Orwell was largely sympathetic to the communist experiment in Russia, viewing it as a flawed but perhaps necessary step toward a more equitable society. After surviving the betrayal in Catalonia, his perspective completely inverted. He recognized that totalitarianism, regardless of whether it draped itself in fascist or communist rhetoric, relied on the destruction of objective truth and the absolute suppression of individual liberty. This firsthand brush with ideological betrayal fundamentally transformed Orwell's worldview. He documented his disillusionment in his memoir Homage to Catalonia, and the experience shifted his focus toward a targeted crusade against authoritarianism. The direct exposure to Soviet tactics in Spain directly inspired his masterworks, Animal Farm and 1984. Without his firsthand experience in the trenches of Catalonia, the modern vocabulary for describing oppressive governments might never have been written."

Is anyone else completely disillusioned by the actual “proletariat”? : r/CapitalismVSocialism - "I need to vent, because I’m honestly vibrating with anxiety and frustration right now.  So, I identify as a socialist. I read theory, I support unions, and I genuinely believe in dismantling capitalist structures. But lately, I am finding it harder and harder to advocate for the actual members of the working class, because, let’s be honest, so many of them are completely steeped in toxic masculinity and reactionary, anti-progressive attitudes.  I was at the local café down the street from my apartment this morning, trying to get some grading/reading done before logging into my remote job. It was raining, so I had my umbrella. I also happen to carry a canvas tote bag from my university's literature department.  Two construction workers in high-vis vests came in. They were incredibly loud, taking up way too much physical space, and completely ignoring the unspoken social contract of quiet morning spaces. I was already feeling a bit overstimulated.  As they walked past my table, one of them looked at my tote bag, then at my umbrella, and said, entirely unprovoked, “Hey buddy, careful with that umbrella, don’t want it getting caught on your purse."  His buddy chuckled and they just walked on to get their coffees.  It was a "joke," I guess. "Playful" teasing. But it felt so deeply coded in gender policing and fragile heteronormativity. I just froze. I didn't say anything because, frankly, they were twice my size and I didn't want to escalate a situation with people who clearly don't understand basic boundaries. I just stared at my laptop and felt my face get hot.  Here’s the thing that gets me: I spend my free time fighting for their healthcare. I vote for policies that would literally give them better wages and safer working conditions. Yet, if I tried to explain the concept of intersectionality or gender-neutral language to them, they’d probably just laugh in my face or call me a slur.  How are we supposed to build solidarity with people who actively despise our values? I’m starting to feel like the actual proletariat has zero interest in progress. They don't want a socialist utopia; they just want to eat meat, drive giant trucks, and make fun of people who read books.  I’m just so tired of being the only one trying. Anyone else struggle with this?"

Meme - ""Holodomor wasn't violent because it was faceless bureaucrats and 7 degrees of separation" -Arya Winningson"
Arya Winningson: "yeah I would not describ that as violence. All infliction of suffering or pain is not violence. Violence is a specific type, a subset"
Words the left disapproves of are violence. Violence the left approves of isn't violence.

Meme - "Socialists say I should stop confusing socialism with communism. I say they should I stop confusing my money with their money."

Meme - Project Liberal @ProjectLiberal: "Leftists will call everything but this a genocide."
"Life expectancy. The period life expectancy at birth, in a given year.
China's "Great Leap Forward!" Also known as "Really bad weather!" *4 year drop in world life expectancy*"
DSA Watch: "Hasan Piker: Mao Zedong is one of the great leaders of this world"
It's only genocide when it pushes the left wing agenda

lily on X - ""Stalin would've killed you" If the party decides that is the right action ill gladly take the bullet"
Yuri Bezmenov's Ghost on X - "Here, a demoralized person's loyalty shifts entirely to ideology, embracing party decisions over personal values or self preservation. They've been conditioned through long-term subversion to accept even death for the cause, viewing it as a noble, ultimate act of devotion."

Jack on X - "They killed Charlie Kirk because he was their biggest threat. They could never beat him in a debate. Here is a resurfaced clip of him exposing Hasan Piker for not actually wanting socialism and living in a complete act….
KIRK: "Why don't you give 95% of your money away and go live on a commune?”
PIKER: "Do you really think that's how it works?”
KIRK: "Why not? Go live what you preach. I live what I preach. I am a free market capitalist. I employ people. I took a risk. I have my own startup business. Every single day, I practice what I preach."
"He wants other people to contribute to what he considers to be a good idea. What he considers will make the world a better place."
"You have the freedom to go live as a socialist. Go do it, Hassan. What's stopping you?"
An absolute mic drop moment."

Meme - The Modern Marxist: "The USSR was a democracy. China is a democracy. Cuba is a democracy. The US is NOT a democracy. If you disagree with this, I implore you to actually look into the political systems of these countries"
The fourth positionist: "North Korea is also a democracy."
The Modern Marxist: "Agreed"

/his/ - Rejoice, our favorite /his/ comic is going to Chin - History & Humanities - 4chan - "Acktually, while in theory communism is supposedly to attract the the poor workers, in reality their target audience dont give a fuck and the people most attracted to it are spoiled children of upper middle class families or psychopathic thugs and criminals, both of whom didnt work much in their lives.
All the communist leaders who successfully take over countries are failsons of the upper class:
>Karl Marx
Dad was an upper middle class lawyer, mom was from a wealthy merchant/future industrialist family, his family owned many vineyards and lived in spacious 10 bedroom home.
>Lenin
Dad was a noveau riche nobleman. Had a privileged upbringing in a huge house with servants and attended elite schools before flunking out
>Mao Zedong
Dad was prosperous merchant, owning 20 acres of land (huge by Chinese standard), the richest guy in his village. Was able to send Mao to good schools and support him throughout his studies which he eventually dropped out
>Che Guevara
Born to upper-class parents, dad is a well-to-do architect and businessman, mom is from a rich landowning family. Big houses in multiple provinces, went to good schools, took holidays all over Latin America.
>Fidel Castro
Son of a prosperous sugar plantation owner in Cuba with hundreds of servants and workers. Went to the best schools
>Ho Chi Minh
Son of a land-owning Confucian bureaucrat. Went to the best French colonial school before dropping out
>Pol Pot
Son of aristocratic landowning family with ties to the Cambodian monarchy. Went good local schools and went to France for college"

Meme - "Marx is an idiot."
"Have you read Marx?"
"No" -> "Goes to show"
"I've read the Manifesto" -> "Well, that's just a pamphlet"
"I've read Das Kapital" -> "You have to study Marx for years before understanding him."
"I've read his letters" -> "You need to separate the author from his works."

Meme - Stalin: "THERE IS NO I IN TEAM. BUT THERE IS A U IN GULAG"

The DSA Platform vs. Mao's Original Platform: A Side-by-Side Reading Plus Guangxi: A Case Study

Insurrection Barbie on X

The DSA Platform vs. Mao's Original Platform: A Side-by-Side Reading Plus Guangxi: A Case Study

The DSA's 2025-2026 program was ratified this year. Its authoritative text is public at platform.dsausa.org. Mao Zedong's founding platform — the Common Program of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference — was adopted on September 29, 1949, and served as the constitution of the People's Republic of China until 1954. Below is a side-by-side comparison of the two:

Both frame politics as a war between "the working class" and "the capitalist class." The DSA platform says: "We stand against the capitalist class and the politicians that serve their interests" (DSA Program). Mao's platform: China's revolution unites the working class and peasants against "imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism" (Wikipedia / Common Program).

Both demand a new rewritten constitution. DSA: "Our goal is to put workers in charge of the government through a new democratic constitution" (DSA Program). Mao's Common Program itself was the new constitution, replacing the pluralist 1946 Constitution of the Republic of China.

Both call for a single unicameral legislature. DSA: "proportional representation in a single federal legislature" — meaning the abolition of the U.S. Senate (DSA Program). Mao's Common Program established the National People's Congress as "the highest body of state power" — unicameral by design (Wikipedia / Common Program).

Both eliminate independent judicial review. DSA: "Limit the Court's power of judicial review which it uses to effectively create and abolish laws outside the legislative process" (DSA Program). Mao's Common Program subordinated all courts to "democratic centralism" (Wikipedia / Common Program).

Both nationalize the "commanding heights." DSA: "the largest corporations are put under public ownership and democratic control" and "public ownership over major transportation and energy infrastructure and natural resources" (DSA Program). Mao's Common Program: "development of production through socialist relations of production," with the state prioritizing "the state-owned economy" while tolerating small private enterprises in a "mixed economy" transitional phase (Wikipedia / Common Program).

Both defend America's geopolitical adversaries against sanctions. DSA: "End economic sanctions that impact the sovereignty of countries whose governments act independently of the United States, such as Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran" (DSA Program). Mao's Common Program based its foreign policy on "respect for mutual sovereignty" — the identical rhetorical formula he used to justify supporting Kim Il-sung's invasion of South Korea and every anti-Western regime that followed (Wikipedia / Common Program).

Both demand reduced U.S. military capability. DSA: "Greatly reduce the U.S. military budget, close overseas bases, and bring troops home" (DSA Program). Mao dissolved the Nationalist army and reoriented Chinese military doctrine around anti-imperial "self-reliance."

Both weaponize "fascism" as an expandable enemy label. DSA: "Only a party that fights for working people can win the battle against fascism" (DSA Program). Mao's Common Program aimed to eliminate "feudal, compradorial, and fascist ideologies" — a category eventually used to justify killing 240,000 shopkeepers in the 1952 Five Antis Campaign (Wikipedia / Common Program).

Those are just the highlights.

Here is the objection I will get from from the lovers of the common good utopia on the left: "That's ridiculous. The DSA is not Mao. It's Scandinavian social democracy. You're being hysterical."

Every Marxist-Leninist party that has ever taken power on a moderate platform has purged its coalition partners and begun killing within a decade. Every single one. There are no exceptions.

The Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh on April 17, 1975, in coalition with King Sihanouk and moderate Cambodian nationalists. Within 72 hours they had forcibly evacuated the entire two-million-person population of Phnom Penh at gunpoint into the countryside. Currency was abolished the same week. Wearing eyeglasses became evidence of being an intellectual, punishable by death (Britannica / Khmer Rouge). Within four years they had murdered 1.7 to 2.2 million of their own people out of a population of 8 million which was the highest percentage of a nation's own population killed by its own government in modern history (Museum of Communist Terror, Wikipedia / Killing Fields).

Fidel Castro told Herbert Matthews of the New York Times in 1957, on the record: "I have said clearly and definitely that we are not communists." His 26th of July Movement's public platform was the restoration of the 1940 Cuban Constitution, free elections within 18 months, and freedom of the press. He seized Havana on January 1, 1959. Eleven days later the first mass firing squads began operating at La Cabaña fortress, and they were personally supervised by Che Guevara. The free elections promised in 18 months were never held. (Britannica / History Will Absolve Me, Cuba Archive).

Lenin's Bolsheviks ran on "Peace, Land, Bread" and in the November 1917 election for that Assembly the freest election in Russian history the Bolsheviks came in second, with 24% of the vote. When the Assembly convened on January 5, 1918, Lenin let them meet for 13 hours and then dissolved it at gunpoint. It never reconvened. The Red Terror was announced September 5, 1918, just ten months after the coup. By 1923, five million peasants, the same peasants that were promised "bread" were dead from the Russian Famine which was largely caused by forced grain requisitions from the Bolsheviks who had promised them land (Britannica / Russian Revolution).

Hugo Chávez told voters in 1998: "We are not going to expropriate. We are not communists." He then won 56% of the vote and within eight years his government had shut down the country's largest independent television station, packed the Supreme Court, and rewritten the constitution. Within fifteen he had expropriated 1,168 companies. By 2018 the country had 130,000% hyperinflation. By 2024 GDP had collapsed 78% and eight million Venezuelans — a quarter of the population — fled the country (Funds Society, SECO 2025 report).

Daniel Ortega returned to power in Nicaragua in 2006 as a reformed democrat who had accepted pluralism. In 2018 he killed at least 355 protesters (BBC). By 2023 he had stripped 222 political opponents of their Nicaraguan citizenship and deported them to the United States, including priests and former revolutionary comrades. In 2023 he sentenced Bishop Rolando Álvarez — a Catholic bishop — to 26 years in prison (Human Rights Watch). Catholic convents were shut down; the Missionaries of Charity were expelled; the Jesuit University of Central America was confiscated by the government.

Mao's own timeline is the most instructive of all. The Common Program was adopted October 1, 1949. Land Reform executions began within one year and killed up to five million landlords by 1953. By 1957, when Mao invited intellectuals to critique the Party in the "Hundred Flowers Campaign," half a million to 1.3 million people were arrested and sent to labor camps (Britannica / Anti-Rightist Campaign). By 1962 the Great Leap Forward famine killed 30 to 45 million people. By 1968, in Guangxi, the Party was organizing cannibalism.

They all started as moderates.

The Great Leap Forward alone killed more human beings in four years than every American war in the history of the United States combined, times thirty. The Great Leap was caused by a room full of central planners in Beijing who believed they could out-think markets, farmers, and physics. So they ordered peasants to melt down their cooking pots and farm tools into backyard steel furnaces which made 99% of the resulting steel unusable (MME Revise source booklet). Then they ordered the extermination of sparrows because sparrows ate grain. One billion sparrows were killed by citizens banging pots until the birds dropped dead from exhaustion. Without sparrows, locusts exploded and a 2025 NBER study calculated that the sparrow extermination alone caused approximately 2 million deaths (NBER).

Mao's own words to his own staff, on the record were: "50 million may have to die … you can't blame me when people die" (Hudson Institute).

Strangely, the American college graduate has never heard of the Great Leap Forward and instead has been told that the Cultural Revolution was about "excesses" rather than mass genocide. The university they attend assigned them The Communist Manifesto but never assigned The Black Book of Communism (Harvard University Press). See that's the book that documents the 94 million deaths attributable to communist regimes in the 20th century. All of whom by the way started as noncommunist moderate socialists. The Black Book of Communism is one of the most heavily peer-reviewed works of political history published in the last thirty years. It is also, unavailable in the modern American university curriculum.

In case the facts presented above are not enough, let's review what happened on June 18, 1968, in the Chinese province of Guangxi. In a 1983 internal investigation of the Chinese Communist Party itself, and further documented in Donald Sutton's academic study The Ritual and Culture of Cannibalism in Wuxuan, Guangxi, archives told one of the most horrifying stories I had ever read.

Wu Shufang was a teacher who taught geography and she spent the spring of 1968 as the target of a series of "struggle sessions" — the Cultural Revolution's signature ritual, in which she was dragged to a stage, forced to wear a dunce cap listing her crimes, made to kneel, and beaten while a crowd shouted denunciations. Her crime was that she came from an educated family and belonged to the "stinking ninth category" of class enemies.

In the end her students beat her to death on the morning of June 18.

Then the student leaders forced four of her fellow teachers to carry her body to the river and they forced one of the teachers — a colleague, who had shared a classroom with her — to slice her open so they could remove her heart and her liver. The remains were carried back to school and then seventy or eighty students ate her flesh in the school kitchen (Sutton, Time magazine, 1993).

Another group of students, in a smaller ceremony, cooked additional parts of her body in an earthenware pot in the private lodging of the vice head of the county Revolutionary Committee. Four of the students actually ate the meal in his presence.

A third group of students barbecued her flesh on a walkway outside classrooms 31 and 32 (Sutton).

This happened at a public high school in the middle of the afternoon. It happened while the "moderate" institutions of Chinese socialism — the neighborhood committees, the workplace units, the student associations, the local party branches — were all operating exactly as designed.

Wu Shufang was one of at least 421 named human beings eaten in Guangxi Province in the summer of 1968 (Wikipedia / Guangxi Massacre). Song Yongyi's archival work documents cannibalism in 27 of Guangxi's 40 counties — two-thirds of the province (Radio Free Asia interview with Song Yongyi).

Here are some of the others:

Zhang Boxun, primary-school teacher, Huangmao Street, same day, June 18, 1968. Denounced as a rebel-faction sympathizer. Tried to jump into a river to escape a struggle session. Caught. A militiaman named Guo Lixiang cut out his heart and liver with a five-inch knife. His flesh was cooked in an earthenware pot at the local government's Foodstuffs Depot. Over 80% of the unit's members ate the meat — some under duress (Sutton).

Two children, ages 11 and 14, Pubei County. Their father was beaten to death for belonging to the "fifth category" of class enemies. The local officials said, according to the primary-source record: "It is important to eradicate such people." The children were killed and eaten (RFA / Song Yongyi).

Liu Xiulan, 17 years old, daughter of a landowner. Gang-raped by nine people, who then cut open her belly and ate her liver and breasts. Her entire family was wiped out (RFA / Song Yongyi).

Gan Dazuo, Datuan village. Castrated and disemboweled while still alive by his own clansmen. His last recorded words: "Wait 'til I'm dead, then cut" (Sutton).

Chen Guorong, May 14, 1968. Ambushed by an 11-man militia. Killed with a large knife. His liver was cut out and shared among 20 participants as a night meal (Time magazine).

Five people in Shangsi County, October 1968. Militia leader "cut open the bellies of five people, ripped out their livers, cooked them and sat down together to eat them. The next day, they killed four more people and ripped out their livers, which they shared with the other people on the production brigade, who all got to taste a mouthful each, to symbolize the dictatorship of the proletariat" (RFA / Song Yongyi).

Every one of these deaths was carried out by "the revolutionary masses" against people the local Communist Party had labeled "class enemies," in a province with no famine (Bitter Winter). This was not desperation. There was food. This was cannibalism as political ritual.

The 1983 official CCP investigation of Wuxuan County alone found:

56 victims had their hearts and livers cut out.

18 victims were consumed completely — "down to the soles of their feet."

13 victims had their genitals eaten.

7 victims were cut up while still alive.

In Binyang County, every family was required to send a member to the eating hole to eat human flesh (Sutton). In one Wuxuan work unit, two young girls whose political standpoint was suspect were forced to eat the flesh to prove they were on the right side (Sutton).

"Cannibalism enabled the ringleaders in these obscene acts to distribute the blame among fellow participants and thereby protect themselves" (Sutton).

The eating was administered as a loyalty test and refusing to eat people meant you would be the next target. What starts as "the largest corporations are put under public ownership and democratic control" ends, in every historical instance, with the population being compelled to participate in mass murder so that nobody can safely testify against the party. That is the endgame of every ideology that believes there is no legitimate safeguard between the individual and the state — no independent institutions, no protected property, no countervailing courts, no free press, no sovereign local jurisdiction, no owner of anything the state cannot take. In that arrangement, the party runs out of external enemies within a decade, and the machinery it built to destroy them starts destroying the party's own founders, the party's own coalition partners, and finally the party's own supporters.

Of the estimated hundreds of thousands killed in Guangxi and the 421+ documented cannibalizations:

15 people were prosecuted for cannibalism, with sentences up to 14 years.

91 Party members were expelled — none was severely punished.

The provincial party boss who orchestrated the entire campaign, Wei Guoqing, was never punished. He rose to the CCP Politburo, served as Director of the People's Liberation Army's General Political Department, and died peacefully in 1989. On October 24, 2024, Xi Jinping's government reburied Wei Guoqing's ashes with full military honors at Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery — the CCP equivalent of Arlington (Radio Free Asia, 2024).

The current Chinese Communist Party the same party the DSA idolizes buried the man who supervised the cannibalism of 421 human beings, with full military honors, less than two years ago.

In 1981, 43% of the world's most extremely poor people lived in China. Mao had been dead five years and his planned economy had killed 65 million people, produced brittle backyard steel, starved the countryside, cannibalized the schools, and left the population as poor per capita as sub-Saharan Africa.

Then, in 1978, Deng Xiaoping restored private property in the countryside, deregulated prices, welcomed foreign capital, and allowed markets to reallocate labor and goods.

By 2020, China's share of world extreme poverty was less than 1%.

Roughly 800 million human beings were lifted out of extreme poverty (World Bank Poverty and Inequality Update, Fall 2025, Aeon on the World Bank's own data).

Every socialist experiment in history has produced starvation, tyranny, mass killing, and emigration. Every mixed-market economy in history has produced feast, freedom, and immigration. There are zero counterexamples. Not one. Ask a DSA member for the socialist country they would move to.