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Thirty-seven years after the Berlin Wall fell, socialism is gaining popularity among Americans with no memory of life behind the Iron Curtain. History, however, tells a very different story.

Earlier this month, the US House of Representatives voted 220-192 to approve a resolution condemning socialism. Only eight Democrats joined the Republicans in voting for the measure.

The resolution read in part:

Whereas socialist ideology necessitates a concentration of power that has, time and time again, collapsed into communist regimes, totalitarian rule, and repressive dictatorships… [Socialism] has repeatedly led to famine and mass murders, and the killing of over 100,000,000 people worldwide…

It then turns to the rise of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and the DSA policy positions such as voting by noncitizens and incarcerated criminals, abolishing the US Senate, and replacing the two-party system. It then denounces socialism in all its forms, declaring it incompatible with American values and the US Constitution.

Is this a solution in search of a problem? Hardly.

According to the Brookings Institution, 282 candidates ran with some level of DSA endorsement in the 2026 election cycle; so far, 123 have won their primaries.

The rise in socialist candidates comes as a generation that never saw the Iron Curtain increasingly sees socialism as nothing more than a government-provided safety net. But history warns that when government becomes powerful enough to guarantee equality, the safety net can become a net from which there is no escape.

What We Forgot about Socialism

I remember when Americans didn’t have to debate whether socialism worked. We watched people escape from it.

In 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, I was working with the US Department of State managing one of its Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program sites. Within months of the fall of the wall, we began training police officers and other security officials in the United States from former Eastern Bloc countries. I vividly recall greeting one of the groups and taking them to the grocery store on the way to the dormitories where they would be staying.

When they entered the Albertsons, they froze. Some of them began to cry, and I asked the interpreter what was wrong. He said they had never seen so much in one place, and they asked who was allowed to come into the store. I said whoever wanted to, but that there were stores like this all over. They said they had been told Americans were living just like them, waiting hours each day for a loaf of bread or whatever was available.

Totalitarian systems don’t merely control economic production; eventually they must control information, because people inevitably begin asking why the promised equality has produced scarcity.

To many young Americans, socialism doesn’t mean empty shelves, bread lines, government propaganda, and repression. It means Social Security, socialised medicine, free college, and a bigger safety net. But for the government to have the economic power to provide so-called “free stuff,” it must possess the coercive power and authority to impose the promised economic outcomes. History shows that the equality socialism ultimately provides is equality of misery.

Thirty-seven years ago, people who had lived under socialism came to America and wept when they saw an ordinary grocery store. Today, a generation with no memory of the repression behind the Iron Curtain increasingly votes for candidates promising socialism.

The problem isn’t that socialism has changed. The problem is we’ve forgotten what socialism is and where it leads.

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Republished with thanks to The Washington Stand. Image courtesy of Unsplash.