You’d think the fact that “communist regimes murdered about 148,000,000” people in the 20th century would permanently put to bed the debate over the alleged superiority of socialism. Yes, I know some people will say “that wasn’t real socialism.”

Estimating the number of people slaughtered or intentionally starved by socialist regimes is no easy task, as Wikipedia indicates. My quote comes from Rudy Rummel, whose estimates are reasonably reliable. Mao murdered some 77 million people, Rummel writes, which “exceeds the 61,911,000 murdered by the Soviet Union 1917-1987, with Hitler far behind at 20,946,000 wiped out 1933-1945.” In terms of total numbers of people murdered, Mao is the worst mass-murderer in human history. Mao’s ally Pol Pot murdered upwards of 3 million people, or 40% of the population of Cambodia.

Mass murder nostalgia

Yet socialism is all the rage in some Colorado circles. Among the many signs at the April 19 protest in Denver was a banner promoting the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which says “capitalism must end” and seeks “the socialist transformation of society.” The party seemingly promotes violence, saying, “Capitalism cannot be voted out of power—it will take a revolution,” and calls for “converting the private property of society to socially owned property.” A couple other banners promoted Open Road Socialism, which “is recruiting and building towards the creation of a new Communist Party based on Marxism-Leninism.”

Not all socialist groups are as radical. Democratic Socialists of America seeks “the democratic road to socialism” that “leaves behind authoritarian visions of socialism in the dustbin of history.” This is basically progressivism on steroids.

Following is Heidi Beedle’s lede from March 31: “Colorado chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) led protests against controversial speakers at two separate events last week. The Mesa County DSA led a protest against white nationalist Jared Taylor at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction on March 27, and the Colorado Springs DSA led a protest against conservative political strategist Steve Bannon.”

I agree that Taylor and Bannon are horrible people. But might I suggest that our only choices are not white nationalism and socialism? Tragically, some people have never gotten past the 20th century delusion that we must choose between fascism and socialism.

Interestingly, when Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rolled into Denver on March 21, they did not emphasize their socialist leanings. Instead, they called on people to “fight the oligarchy,” by which they meant something like rich people controlling politics.

The Sanders and AOC message certainly grows legs given that Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, spent over a quarter-billion dollars to help elect Donald Trump before heading up Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which seems to be more about eviscerating government services than achieving efficiency.

By cozying up to white nationalists, authoritarians, and cronyists, today’s Republicans certainly make it easier for “democratic socialists” to paint themselves as the less-corrupt, more-sensible alternative. But these are not our only options! The capitalist “Ayn Rand would’ve hated Elon Musk,” the Colorado-based libertarian Aaron Ross Powell points out.

Western Slope revolutionaries

The publishers of Grand Junction’s socialist newspaper seem to take more of a democratic socialist line despite the name of the publication, The Revolutionist. Corey Hutchins wrote about the periodical for his March 13 Colorado media newsletter.

The publishers seem self-consciously to aim for a kitschy feel, as with its March 2025 appeal for funds at the “peasant/student” level of $15, the “proletariat” level of $20, the “revolutionary” level of $50, the “Che Guevara” level of $100, or the “V. Lenin” level of $250.

How cute. And who cares, I guess, that Guevara was a mass-murderer and, if that’s not bad enough for these socialists, anti-LGBTQ. And Lenin initiated the Red Terror through which “tens of thousands, and possibly more than a million, people were branded ‘class enemies’ and detained in concentration camps or summarily executed,” National Geographic summarizes.

The paper names itself after another of the same title published by the Mesa County Socialist Labor Party in 1903. That earlier paper earnestly quotes Karl Marx, (wrongly) defines a capitalist as someone who exploits “one or more of the proletarian classes,” rails against the capitalist “social system based on the private ownership of the means of wealth production and distribution,” and advocates a socialist “system based upon the collective ownership” of those means.

In addition, this four-page anti-capitalist newspaper ran ads on Page 2 for Herron & Cassels Grocery, the A. L. Gourley Carpet Store on 56 Main Street, and W. H. Lee & Son Groceries. The top half of Page 3 features an ad for the Fashion Dry Goods and Millinery Great After Easter Sale, above the continuation of an article about “the woman who toils.” And all of Page 4 features an ad for the Mesa Dry Goods Co. Big Hour Sale. “Every hour throughout the day it will be Bargain Monday,” the ad proclaims.

Perhaps sensing the hypocrisy, publishers of the new version of the paper do not accept ads.

It can be tempting to poke a little fun at the socialists, but in the end socialism is no laughing matter. Socialist control erodes the knowledge and incentives necessary for the production of the goods and services on which our lives and well-being depend. Utopian fantasies of brotherly love sprouting from the barrel of a gun notwithstanding, socialist regimes necessarily tend toward totalitarianism and violence, after which the socialists who caused the carnage declare “it wasn’t real socialism.”

Ari Armstrong writes regularly for Complete Colorado and is the author of books about Ayn Rand, Harry Potter, and classical liberalism. He can be reached at ari at ariarmstrong dot com.