My family lived through socialism. Most Democrats are frighteningly wrong about it.

A Gallup poll conducted in August 2025 found that 66 percent of Democrats view socialism favorably. Only 42 percent of those same Democrats viewed capitalism favorably. 

At protests across American cities, demonstrators have carried Soviet flags, the hammer and sickle on red cloth, as symbols of resistance. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani have built careers on the promise of what they call “democratic socialism,” drawing crowds of young Americans who see that word not as a warning but as a hope.

I am not going to answer them with statistics or economic theory. I will instead tell them my family’s story.

In February 1951, in the village of Bebnisi, in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, 14-year-old Shota Gelashvili had fallen asleep over his German language textbook. He had a test the next morning at Bebnisi Secondary School. The book lay open beside him in his bed.

At 2 a.m., soldiers of the Soviet secret police burst into his house. They told him, his father, his two sisters, his visibly pregnant mother and his 100-year-old grandmother to dress quickly, make no sound, and come with them. There was no time to gather belongings. The soldiers searched the room and pulled Shota’s German textbook from his bed. They passed it from hand to hand, then gave it to the commanding officer. They acted as if a schoolboy’s grammar book confirmed what they already believed.

The family was loaded onto a cattle car with hundreds of others. Many people were beaten with rifle butts. For three days, the train did not move while more families arrived from villages across Georgia. Inside the sealed wagons, people hung clothing across one corner to create a makeshift toilet. A young man, maddened by thirst, at one point jumped from his wagon to reach water from a stream — soldiers........

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