For those who've been watching the outbreak of "revolutionary" Marxism on America's "elite" campuses and wondering what it is about wealth, privilege and access that spawns so many "blue collar heroes" among the nation's upper crust?
It's nothing remotely new.
Lenin was the son of a modestly prosperous government bureaucrat - a position of immense privilege in a nation of agrarian peasants.
Fidel Castro's father was a rags-to-riches story - allowing him to raise his illegitimate son Fidel on the sugar plantation amid the pretty considerable wealth he'd built, along with a Jesuit-school education and a law degree.
Che Guevara? While his father wasn't exactly responsible with his money, the future emblem on the t-shirts of thousands of Minneapolis barristas grew up in and adjacent to a culture with resources far beyond the typical Argentinean of the time.
Of course, there is the odd socialist here and there who has the roots to match the hype; before Bernie Sanders became a modestly wealthy guy with three houses and as close to a "firebrand" as an 80-something guy can be, he grew up in fairly straitened circumstances.
But as the American working class moves to the populist right, it's not an anomaly that America's strident left appears to be centered in the Ivy League and the institutions that Ivy Leaguers move on to after they graduate; it's more of a historical pattern.
Alexandria "Sandy" Ocasio-Cortez may be the least cloying example. When she first rose to prominence in 2018, she wrapped herself in her "Alex from the Block" bartender from the Bronx image - notwithstanding the fact that she had a degree from Boston University, had interned with Ted Kennedy, and was bartending while looking for her next staff job after working on Bernie Sanders' barely-failed 2016 campaign. The emergence of her not-overly-hardscrabble high school background in recent weeks brought further questions to light about AOC's Bronxiness:
On Tuesday, State Assemblyman Matt Slater jumped into the online clash between AOC and President Donald Trump, after the liberal progressive called for Trump's impeachment over his approval of airstrikes on Iran without congressional authorization.
After the discourse led users to show off her alleged old home in Yorktown Heights - supposedly now valued at over a half a million dollars - Ocasio-Cortez responded to allegations she grew up 'privileged.'
'I’m proud of how I grew up and talk about it all the time! My mom cleaned houses and I helped. We cleaned tutors’ homes in exchange for SAT prep,' she wrote to social media.
And, as with Fidel Castro - kudos to the parents. Their priorities were admirable! But it doesn't mean the "Alex from the Block" schtick isn't a costume.
But at least with AOC, there's some recent family memory of blue-collar life.
Hope Walz - the daughter of former VP candidate and Minnesota governor Tim Walz - has become quite the social media influencer among Generation Hogg.
And a bit of a political theorist as well; here, she's commenting on, and ridiculing the notion of, the economic effects of Zohran Mamdani's primary victory in the NYC mayoral race:
Tim Walz’s daughter Hope goes on another insane rant in support of Mamdani’s plans to implement socialism in NYC.
— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) June 27, 2025
She says just raise taxes on the top 5% to pay for the stuff he promised.
Hope lies and says the top 5% won’t leave NYC. Many already left over the last decade. pic.twitter.com/ii9poVDGaK
The money pullquote:
"All that has to happen is the top couple percent that exploit all of us down below have to pay their fair share, and then everyone gets to live better"
"All the rest of us".
Now, Governor Walz did in fact grow up on a farm, and worked in a factory and served in the National Guard before going to college.
But Hope Walz was five years old when her father was sworn in as as the Congressional representative for Minnesota's 1st Congressional District in 2006. She was seventeen when her father was sworn in as Governor. If Hope Walz can remember a time when her family didn't have power, privilege and access - much less "being exploited like all the rest of us - it has to be a very dim one.
Which brings us to Zohran Mamdani, who's not just a socialist, but a Socialist, with a couple ladles of Marxism on top.
Marxist. I meant what I said. So did Zohran:
This is not terrible AI, it's a real message from the current frontrunner for NYC Mayor to his socialist comrades.
— MAZE (@mazemoore) June 30, 2025
"The end goal of seizing the means of production."
I can't believe this is actually happening. pic.twitter.com/KNxQV2QCX7
In this video, Mamdani goes full-bore third world:
Zohran says his worldview is inspired by the 3rd world while eating rice with his hands pic.twitter.com/FDaQfcNSJv
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) June 29, 2025
Eating rice with his hands while "identifying" as someone who "grew up in the third world?"
Especially given that Mamdani's father's job was removing debris from the Ganges river and his mother was a street clearner...
Just kidding. Mamdani grew up with some decidedly first-world advantages and privileges: his father is a "postcolonial studies" professor at Columbia, and his mother an acclaimed filmmaker.
Talk about "code-switching".
