Communists are alright with ME, ones with S.S. tattoos not excepted.
Posted by Ed Folsom, October 13, 2025.
Bangor voters recently elected Daniel Carson to their City Council. According to the Bangor Daily News, Carson is both a registered Democrat and an office-holder in the Communist Party of Maine. Carson’s Communist Party membership was no secret on election day, November 4. On October 1, 2025, the Bangor Daily News ran a candidate profile that pointed it out.
This in not to say that the Communist Party of Maine or its mother ship, the Communist Party U.S.A., have a large membership. Wikipedia pegs the number of people on the CPUSA’s mailing list at 20,000. But it is to say that, as few members of the Communist Party U.S.A. as there may be, voters in Bangor, Maine, chose to vote one of them onto their city council. In this little pocket of blue-state-Maine, leftist politics have moved to the next stage.
The public’s sensibilities are so eroded that the left no longer needs to deny the relationship between American progressivism/socialism and communism/Marxism. The stigma of this deadly, soul-sucking, totalitarian ideology has been erased for a critical portion of the voting public. Communism/socialism is simply viewed as “anti-capitalism,” “anti-fascism,” as good opposing evil. The progressivist turd is sufficiently sugar-coated to be swallowed whole.
A look at the materials on the websites of the Communist Party of Maine and the Communist Party U.S.A. shows what is encompassed by the “socialism” that the left is busy talking-up these days. It also shows how these leftists conceive of “democracy.” For those who think that socialism is just redistributive welfare-statism that doesn’t involve the seizure of the means of production, the CPUSA tells you straight-up what it involves.
Communism de-stigmatized.
If communism carried anywhere near the stigma it should carry for all the death, destruction, and misery it has caused worldwide, Daniel Carson would have been dead in the water the second he copped to it. But the left’s long march through the institutions has successfully de-stigmatized communism/socialism for far too many. Carson’s election is a prime example. The November 4 election of Carson’s fellow Communist Party U.S.A. member, and fellow registered Democrat, Hannah Shvets, to the Ithaca, New York, Common Council is another. The CPUSA is proud of both, and lauds them on its website for “strengthening communities and building coalitions.”
And then there’s the example of Graham Platner, Democrat, candidate for U.S. Senate. Like Carson, Platner is also a self-described democratic socialist. A few weeks ago, he faced an erupting controversy over some of his social media posts from 2020-21. In one of them, Platner declared, “I got older and became a communist,” but that comment doesn’t seem to be causing any problem among his fellow Democrats.
After the story of Platner’s controversial social media posts broke, the controversy grew with news that Platner sported a chest tattoo for the past 18 years of a Totenkopf or “death head,” worn by the Nazi S.S. troops who guarded concentration camps during World War II (You can read about the Totenkopf symbol here). But Platner is a Democrat, a democratic socialist, and a self-described communist, which apparently makes him one of the good guys to a majority of Democrats here in Maine. They have simply brushed-off the S.S. Tatoo flap. Their de-stigmatization, and even embrace, of socialism/communism has allowed Platner to de-stigmatize his own decades-long wearing of a Nazi S.S. tattoo.
What sort of “democracy” does Daniel Carson’s Communist Party seek?
The website of the Communist Party of Maine explains the type of “democracy” that prevails where they call the shots:
“Our Party’s basic organizational principle is democratic centralism. Unlike the ruling U.S. political parties, decisions in the CPUSA are made democratically with maximum member participation. Once a consensus has been reached or a vote has occurred, the decision is binding to all members. This means that members are expected to carry out all decisions and directives as determined democratically by the Party. Members are prohibited from organizing against or otherwise undermining such decisions.
Historically, democratic centralism was developed by Lenin as means to make decisions both democratically and swiftly at a time when political conditions were changing rapidly. After the October Revolution, he also saw democratic centralism as a means of prevent [sic] factionalism which was extremely detrimental to party unity.”
The Lenin referred to in the above quote is Vladimir Illyich Lenin, Bolshevik revolutionary and founding member of the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, where the Communist Party held single-party rule for more than 70 years.
Once the Soviet Communist Party reached a decision by “consensus” that decision was binding on everyone within the party. This way, there was unity, togetherness. And since there was only one political party in the USSR– the Communist Party – all those “democratic” decisions that were made by the party were binding on everyone outside the party, too, even though they had absolutely no input into the decision-making process. This is the democratic process that the Communist Party of Maine follows, the Leninist process of democratic centralism.
And yet, without any sense of irony, the Communist Party of Maine tells us it is busy “countering MAGA’s attacks on…fundamental democratic participation in the national political dialog.” When uttered by a communist, the phrase “fundamental democratic participation” takes on a wholly inverted, thoroughly leftist, meaning.
It bears repeating that the voters of Bangor, Maine, voted a member of the Communist Party onto their city council. Communists and Democrats love to speak these days of saving democracy from attack. But like Humpty Dumpty, in Alice in Wonderland, when they speak of democracy and of things democratic, their words mean just what they choose them to mean; no more, no less.
What is this “socialism” that all the lefties are flattering these days?
In addition to being a communist, Daniel Carson tells us he’s a democratic socialist. Graham Platner, in addition to saying he became a communist as he grew older, says he’s a democratic socialist. And the recently-elected mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, calls himself a democratic socialist and claims membership in the Democratic Socialists of America. All three happen to be registered Democrats, along with Bernie Sanders who has run for President of the United States as a Democrat and a socialist simultaneously. So, what is the “socialism” that these socialists endeavor to impose? Is it really just all the good stuff that you like and none of the bad stuff that you don’t? That is very unlikely.
For one thing, you probably wouldn’t like living in a system like the one Vladimir Lenin helped to cook up all those years ago. Yet Daniel Carson’s Communist Party holds Lenin and his system in high esteem.
For another thing, the Communist Party everywhere and always claims to exist to build socialism, not communism. The website for the Communist Party of Maine contains a link to an October 7 article on the Communist Party U.S.A.’s website celebrating, “with great joy today the 108th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia” – that’s the socialist revolution in Russia. The link contains the following quote from V.I. Lenin (Yes, Lenin again), referring to the Bolshevik Revolution as a “socialist revolution:”
“The socialist revolution is not a single act but a series of acts over an entire historical period.”
Communist Lenin referred to his revolution as a “socialist revolution,” not as a “communist revolution.” You might also note that Lenin’s Soviet Communist Party presided over the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, not over a Union of Soviet Communist Republics. All of this is because the economic and cultural system that communism rules over is socialism. The system necessarily involves the government seizing the means of production and communication. This seizure is a basic component of socialism versus capitalism.
Here is a quote from the Communist Party U.S.A.’s website, linked on the Communist Party of Maine’s website, explaining what socialism involves:
“In a socialist economy, things get turned right side up. The ownership and control of the means of production would be in the hands of those who do the work.”
But, under socialism, the ownership and control of the means of production always end up in the government, not actually in the hands of “those who do the work.” The government runs everything; and what a bang-up job they do of it, while making sure to erase all the factionalism by enforcing unity. Ah, yes, that’s “diversity,” “democracy,” and “inclusion” at their fullest and finest under socialism, when everyone thinks the same thoughts and voices the same sloganeered opinions.
Socialism cannot be built when the means of production are in private hands, when so many people think such varied thoughts and reach such varied outcomes. That’s why Zohran Mamdani, when he was among his own, speaking at a Democratic Socialists of America convention several years ago, was careful to remind his fellow travelers to focus on the issues they “firmly believe in,” such as “the end goal of seizing the means of production” (see here, beginning after 9:30).
In other words, go ahead and lie, beguile, and compromise as necessary to advance the cause, but don’t get lost in your deceptive machinations. Keep your eye on the important stuff, like “the end goal of seizing the means of production.” Because to these people who think only in terms of power and control, the end goal is to seize and hold power and control. And that requires seizing the means of production, comrades!
Unfortunately, there will always be an audience for this stuff. As Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote, in Demons (23 years after publication of The Communist Manifesto and 46 years before the Bolshevik Revolution):
“And you know, it’s all the result of that same immaturity, that same sentimentalism! They are captivated not by realism, but by the sentimental, idealistic side of socialism, so to speak, its religious tinge, its poetry…secondhand, naturally.”
Firsthand tends to be far less romantic, after the sugar coating has worn off the progressivist turd.
