NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

We have already seen many articles and interviews from the American right (and no doubt will in the foreseeable future) that bemoan the likely downward spiral New York City will face with the election of proud communist Zohran Mamdani. History tells us their predictions will almost certainly be correct, but this response won’t address the root problem concerning the rise of Marxism in the United States, something that has been in the making for decades. The path forward will require Americans to understand and contend with the influence of Marxist indoctrination at a societal scale.

In a 1984 interview, Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB agent, spoke openly and plainly about the threat posed by Communist efforts to undermine the institutions, social fabric, and values of the United States through means of ideological subversion. “It’s a great brainwashing process which goes very slow, and it’s divided into four basic stages, the first one being demoralization,” stated Bezmenov. In America today, we are past that first stage, having entered the second, that of “destabilization,” as the Soviet defector put it.

What Bezmenov alluded to amounts to the full-scale ideological capture that has been waged in recent decades on our country’s institutions: the courts, Congress, academia, certain organized labor, and so on. For example, the folks who didn’t support Mamdani were typically folks without multiple degrees who are working-class. They were everyday New Yorkers who were better insulated from the left’s attempts at subversion. Mamdani’s backers were in fact the “highly educated,” the affluent, and the transplants who think they know best how to run a Potemkin village. His victory in New York City is but the latest example of the prevalence of left-wing radicalism throughout consequential institutions in our society.

Sound familiar? Lenin’s “useful idiots” are the catalyst for the ideological subversion of America. This is why the left in American politics today has become so radical. They have not been educated; they have been indoctrinated and have become beholden to seemingly benign or altruistic progressive values, but which, when carried out to their logical ends, are designed to divide and destroy.

MAMDANI WARNS OF ‘WITHERING FAITH’ IN DEMOCRACY TO DELIVER FOR WORKING CLASS

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., react on stage during a “New York is Not For Sale” rally at Forest Hills Stadium, in the Queens borough of New York City on Oct. 26, 2025. (Reuters/Eduardo Munoz)

The powers that be within today’s Democratic Party have in fact come to personify these “useful idiots.” Of course, the modern Democratic National Committee is no longer the party of President John F. Kennedy. Consider, that a communist will be the next mayor of the Big Apple. It writes like bad, lazy fiction.

The priorities of the Democratic Party are in fact jeopardizing U.S. national security, creating fiscal unsustainability, fostering division, and, in turn, sowing chaos. This is precisely the point — the amorphous and sometimes vague nature of these issues conceals the true goal of left-wing subversion, which is to seize power. In nearly every case, the “cause” is not really the “cause”; it is simply window dressing for the destructive and ultimately deadly ideology of communism.

The decades-long campaign of agitation on a host of discordant issues, also reflected in the equally discordant coalitions that make up the Democratic Party’s presumable base, has been aimed at demoralizing and distracting American society to a point where it cannot respond effectively to the left’s takeover.

Those familiar with how the left operates will no doubt be familiar with this “long march through the institutions.” They have laid the groundwork for the destabilization of our institutions by spreading propaganda and an ideology that cloaks its true intent — to seize power.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINION

Why does that matter? It means our adversaries, just as the Soviet Union intended, destabilize our country and ultimately normalize this strain of communism smack-dab into the American mainstream. For all of the presumed wariness of adversarial foreign influence, the past half-century of ideological capture is proof that it yields results. The American right would do well to heed these warnings lest it lose the recently consolidated momentum it has fought so hard for in recent years.

The American experiment in self-government is in jeopardy. Our governmental institutions and the rule of law are at risk as Americans lose faith in both. President Donald Trump has recognized this from day one, reflected in his unabashed propensity for exposing the radical left in the public square for all to see.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

At the very least, patriotic Americans of all stripes should look into the groups driving the assault so as to deprive the radicals of their infrastructural and organizational support. This means following the money and continuing to reclaim the narrative. Listen to Bezmenov’s interview and hear what’s at stake from the KGB itself.

After all, our American values and institutions of government can only stand so long as we actively defend them. The left will, of course, condemn anything of this nature as neo-McCarthyism, but with their playbook so clear, what else can we expect?

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM REP. PAT FALLON

Rep. Pat Fallon, a Republican, represents Texas’ 4th Congressional District.