The Rise of Communism Chic in Progressive Spaces: A Cultural and Political Shift

It’s not every day that a Twitch livestream features a lengthy reading from an essay by Vladimir Lenin, the architect of the Russian Communist Revolution. Yet that’s precisely what streamer Hasan Piker did five months ago, dedicating part of his broadcast to Lenin’s 1920 pamphlet Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder. In the text, Lenin critiques European Communists for their refusal to engage with bourgeois parliaments and labor unions, framing it as a call for strategic participation within existing systems.

Piker’s endorsement reflects his broader admiration for communist leaders, including Mao Zedong. He has also lamented America’s lack of appreciation for communism, stating, “This is the country that defeated the USSR, unfortunately.” Most recently, he echoed Vladimir Putin’s sentiment, calling the fall of the Soviet Union “one of the greatest catastrophes of the twentieth century.”

While Piker’s views are controversial, his embrace of communist ideology is not unique in progressive spaces today. The trend has been on the rise since the early 2010s, when left-wing outlets like Salon began publishing apologias for communism, such as the viral piece “Why you’re wrong about Communism: 7 huge misconceptions about it (and capitalism).” These arguments often rely on rhetorical sleight-of-hand to downplay communism’s historical failures.

By 2016, even The New Republic—once a bastion of Cold War liberalism—published an article titled “Who’s Afraid of Communism?” Author Malcolm Harris dismissed traditional anticommunism, including Hillary Clinton’s praise for NATO, and credited communism’s role in defeating Nazism. Notably absent from his argument were critical details like the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact or the joint German-Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939.

Long before Hasan Piker, far-left podcasts such as Chapo Trap House and Pod Damn America blended outrage, crassness, and militant anti-capitalism with uncritical sympathy for far-left or anti-Western regimes. Some hosts argued that if Communist regimes committed atrocities, capitalists were to blame for waging a “holy war” against revolutionary movements.

By 2018, the trend had reached mainstream youth culture. Teen Vogue, then known for mixing beauty tips with radical politics, celebrated Karl Marx’s bicentennial, praising his work for “inspiring social movements in Soviet Russia, China, Cuba,” and elsewhere. The phrasing served as a euphemism for gulags and mass killings.

That same year, a YouGov poll for the Victims of Communism Foundation revealed that while only 15% of Americans viewed communism favorably, the figure surged to over 25% among younger adults (Millennials and Gen Z).

Communism chic is not a new phenomenon in Western leftist circles. In the 1920s and 1930s, American and European intellectuals traveled to the USSR as “political pilgrims,” a term popularized by Paul Hollander’s 1981 book The God That Failed. Over time, disillusionment grew as accounts of Soviet repression emerged. The 1951 anthology The God That Failed, featuring essays by six former Communists, documented their shattered illusions after witnessing Stalin’s regime firsthand.