Socialism Is the Left’s Chatbot

Seeking explanation for socialism’s American ascent, modern technology is this archaic ideology’s perfect analogy. Socialism is a chatbot. It tells people, especially the Left, what they want to hear and refines its message to continually better do so.

It is no secret that socialism’s acceptance by America’s Left has exploded. For the first time in our history, socialism is having a meaningful impact on our electoral system.

Not long ago, even being labeled a liberal was a political liability in America. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) seemed little more than a poseur when he declared himself a Democratic Socialist; then in 2016, he took Hillary Clinton the distance in the Democrats’ presidential primary.

In the intervening years, Democratic Socialists were elected to Congress as Democrats. In 2025, Democratic Socialists won mayoral elections in New York City and Seattle as Democrats. In 2026, more have been nominated and are likely to win election to Congress. According to a recent Gallup poll, 65 percent of Democrats have a positive image of socialism.

This rise is astounding. It is not only so for socialism in America, which had virtually no meaningful socialist history here before, but for socialism itself.

Socialism is nothing new. It had ample history before its most famous prophet, Karl Marx, and Marx himself would now be 208 years old if still alive.

Its hoary history is surprising, given its lack of success. It has failed across centuries, continents, and cultures.

There are many elements to this failure.

Marx’s idea of economic predestination —that socialism would evolve from capitalism as its final stage —is wrong: Instead, it has been imposed by political means—external military enforcement, revolutions, and elections where power, once granted, is never relinquished.

Marx’s belief that the proletariat (working class) would lead it is wrong: Instead, its leaders are routinely middle-class adherents who take the mantle of working class for themselves — America’s new socialist movement is almost entirely this.

And, of course, Marx’s economics, on which he based his entire socialist theory, was wrong: Every socialist experiment has floundered on its inability to support itself.

Yet nearly two centuries and countless failures later, America’s Left are enthralled as though they have found something new and that all socialism’s previous failures had not happened. For America’s new socialists, the common sense caveat, that when something sounds too good to be true it invariably is, does not apply to a system so spurious that only intellectuals could believe in it. And for today’s socialists, past is conveniently dismissed as prologue.

This leaves the rest of us searching for an answer to the simple question: How is socialism finally gaining political traction in America?

For an answer, skip forward two centuries from Marx’s birth and through socialism’s history to today’s technology. Socialism is today’s political version of an AI chatbot.

Chatbots are souped-up software programs. They use AI to replicate human responses. But they don’t stop there. Their AI learns from users and continually refines responses to them. This give-and-take — or rather “give-and-fake” — creates an ever more enticing, and ensnaring, interaction between human users and their artificial interlocutors.

The numbers show just how enticing chatbots can be. Pew Research Center found that the percentage of Americans who say they use ChatGPT has more than doubled in just three years: from 18 percent in 2023 to 44 percent in 2026. The young are far more likely to be enticed, with 1 in 3 adults under age 50 saying they use chatbots daily versus less than half that percentage for those over 50. What’s more, 20 percent of those aged 18-29 use it for emotional support, and one in three of those use it for companionship.

For its part, socialism is an ideologically generated political system that tells its adherents what they want to hear. Like chatbots, socialism continually changes its message. Listen to New York City’s Democratic Socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani promise away about what the “warmth of collectivism” will mean — rent control, free buses, government-run grocery stores and childcare, and more — and you will quickly see the parallel.

Like chatbots, socialism entices, promising something for nothing: Others will work as hard for you as they do for themselves. It creates dependency: Government will provide for you. It is dehumanizing: Responsibility is taken away from the individual. Ultimately, it is enslaving: Once given all power, government will not willingly return it to individuals.

At the root of both chatbots and socialism is the innate belief that a “superior intelligence” can better order your life than you can. And all this belief requires is a detachment from reality.

J.T. Young is the author of the recent book "Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left" from RealClear Publishing. Follow him on Substack.

Editor's Note: The Democrat Party has been infected by socialism, and it's spreading FAST. Democrats are claiming there's nothing to worry about, but we know the truth.

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