by WorldTribune Staff, July 10, 2025 Real World News

Commies of a feather …

Examples: New York City Democrat mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The so-called “fact checkers” over at PolitiFact insist that labeling Mamdani and Sanders as communists is “a red scare tactic.”

Writing for JustFacts Daily on July 10, James D. Agresti noted that PolitiFact’s fact-check, co-authored by Ella Moore and Amy Sherman, “relies heavily on the opinions of ‘experts’ and is bereft of primary sources on the doctrines of communism. It also downplays and ignores pivotal statements of Mamdani and Sanders.”

“The actual facts of this matter,” Agresti wrote, “show that the defining positions of Mamdani and Sanders accord with key elements of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, the Soviet Constitution, and the official Law of the Soviet State.”

In a June 30 report, WorldTribune.com noted that Mamdani, speaking at the Young Democratic Socialists of America Organizing Conference in June of 2021,  told the crowd his goal was to “continue to elect more socialists” and to be “unapologetic about our socialism.”

Then, the socialist listed two key goals: Boycotting Israel and “seizing the means of production.”

Sanders has said: “I believe that, in the long run, major industries in this state and nation should be publicly owned and controlled by the workers themselves.”

Agresti notes that Mamdani and Sanders reject the label “communist” and differentiate themselves as “democratic socialists,” a narrative that PolitiFact uncritically repeats.

“That argument falls apart in light of the fact that the Law of the Soviet State (1938) refers to the USSR as a ‘socialist democracy’ more than 40 times,” Agresti wrote.

A Harvard University Press book about communism explains that “the Russian Social Democrats, better known to history as the Bolsheviks, decided in November 1917 to call themselves ‘Communists.’ ”

The word “Bolshevik” literally means “one of the majority,” and Bolsheviks were members of the “Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party.”

In short, Agresti continued, “Communists’ descriptions of themselves as members of a ‘socialist democracy,’ ‘Social Democrats,’ and ‘Social-Democratic’ are virtually identical to Mamdani’s and Sanders’ descriptions of themselves as ‘democratic socialists.’ ”

The PolitiFact fact-checkers claim that, unlike communists, Mamdani “hasn’t called for eliminating democracy” and doesn’t favor “government takeover of private property and control of industry.”

The Communist Manifesto calls for winning “the battle of democracy” so that government controls all “communication,” “property,” “transport,” “factories,” “credit,” and “agriculture.”

In perfect accord with that goal, Mamdani is a self-described “proud member” of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which calls for using “democracy” to “collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation.”

“In stark contrast to Marx, Mamdani, and pre-national Sanders, the founders of the U.S. explicitly rejected ‘a pure democracy’ where a majority can seize private property and use the power of government to do most anything they want. Conversely, the Soviets demanded this and approvingly called it ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat, a new Soviet democracy for all the toilers,’ ” Agresti noted.

James Madison, the “father of the Constitution” and primary author of the Bill of Rights, emphasized in the Federalist Papers that “such democracies” are “incompatible with personal security” and have “been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths.”

Madison stated near the outset of the Constitutional Convention that their mission was to “frame a republican system” of government to protect the rights of individuals from the will of the majority. In accord with this principle, the founders created a democratic constitutional republic with strong checks on the power of government in order to “guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part.”

On healthcare, Agresti noted “there is no daylight between Mamdani, Sanders, and the Soviet Constitution on the issue.”

Mamdani has written, “We need to abolish private insurance, institute single-payer & nationalize the medical supply chain immediately.”

Sanders has called for “Medicare for All—not some, or a few, or most” but “ALL.”

Sanders has also asserted dozens of times that “healthcare” is a “right,” a claim rooted in the Soviet Constitution, which declares a “right” to “medical” care.

Spurning the right to keep and bear arms in the U.S. Constitution, Mamdani posted to X in 2022: “We need to ban all guns.”

That position is further to the left of the Soviet Union, which had very strict gun control but not a total ban.

The Soviet Constitution praises the “overthrow of the landlords and capitalists” and declares that “the bulk of the dwelling houses in the cities and industrial localities, are state property.”

Mamdani starred in a 2021 video for the Gravel Institute in which he called for the full government takeover of housing.

The Soviet Constitution mandates “public enterprises in collective farms and cooperative organizations,” and the Law of the Soviet State explains that the “Soviets began to control the activity of various organs concerned with food supply and to employ revolutionary measures (of confiscation and requisition) in the struggle with speculation, and so forth.”

Mamdani has vowed to “create a network of city-owned grocery stores” that won’t “pay rent or property taxes.”

Agresti noted: “Beyond the broad affinity of Mamdani and Sanders for communist policies, they are also quick to impugn the U.S. and its largely free market economy, even though it provides the highest average standard of living in the world. …

“Mamdani and Sanders haven’t endorsed darker aspects of communism mentioned in the Law of the Soviet State, like ‘depriving the bourgeoisie’ of the ability to vote, outlawing ‘freedom of speech’ for ‘the foes of socialism,’ and having ‘the exploiter classes in the country’ ‘liquidated.’

“Only by twisting and ignoring the doctrines of communism and the words of Mamdani and Sanders can PolitiFact conclusively assert that they are not communists. Instead, the facts are clear that Mamdani and Sanders have embraced many fundamental aspects of communism detailed in the Communist Manifesto, the Soviet Constitution, and the Law of the Soviet State.”

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  Like Soviets, Mamdani and Bernie Sanders insist they are ‘democratic socialists’