An alarming new poll indicates that an overwhelming majority of Americans between the ages of 16 and 38 support socialism and a plurality of them oppose capitalism.
Seventy percent of Millennials said that they are somewhat or extremely likely to vote for a socialist candidate, according to the poll, which was conducted by YouGov and the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and released on Monday.
The poll also found that 50 percent of Millennials and 51 percent of Generation Z “have a somewhat or very unfavorable view of capitalism,” an increase of eight and six percentage points from last year, according to the Hill.
Millennials are defined as people between the ages of 23 and 38 and Generation Z are those ages 16 to 22.
Only 44 percent of Generation X, 33 percent of baby boomers and 33 percent of the silent generation said they were somewhat or extremely likely to vote for a socialist candidate.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a Democratic White House hopeful, is a self-identified democratic socialist who advocates for left-wing policies like the Green New Deal, “Medicare for All” and increased tax rates on wealthier Americans.
Another front-runner in the 2020 race, progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), said that it would be “wrong” to label her a socialist.
Overall, Americans are more hesitant about voting for a “democratic socialist” than they were in 2018, according to the new survey. Fifty-three percent said they would “never” or were “hesitant” to vote for a candidate who identified as such, compared to 47 percent in 2018.
Capitalism is still viewed more favorably than other economic systems, holding relatively steady at 61 percent favorability from 2018, pollsters found.
However, the survey found that millennials do not have as many negative connotations about socialism and communism as older generations who lived through the Cold War.
Just 7 percent of baby boomers said they had at least a “somewhat favorable” view of communism.
In 2011, Rasmussen found that only 11 percent of likely U.S. Voters thought Communism was morally superior to the U.S. system of politics and economics. Overall, 77 percent disagreed and said the U.S. system was morally superior.
In the YouGov poll, only 57 percent of Millennial respondents said they believe the Declaration of Independence better guarantees freedom and inequality over the Communist Manifesto. An overwhelming 94 percent of the silent generation of Americans felt the Declaration of Independence was superior to the Communist Manifesto.
The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation says the reason younger Americans are so open to Marxist candidates is that they were never properly educated about the horrors of socialist/communist regimes.
“Shamefully, the free world never demanded a moral reckoning for the crimes of communist regimes,” says the group on its “about” page. “Those witnesses with a living memory of 20th-century Communism are passing away. And an entire generation of Americans is open to collectivist ideas because they don’t know the truth.”