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Why Socialism Always Comes Back

Tom Bramble

Socialism is having a moment. Polls across the West are showing increased support for the idea, particularly among young people repelled by what’s on offer under capitalism. It wasn’t meant to be like this. In the 1980s and 1990s, every respectable university lecturer, newspaper editor, government official and politician across the West was explaining that socialism was finished.

The attacks on socialism came from many directions. The right wing, of course, is always hostile to socialism. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher argued in the 1980s that “there is no alternative” to unbridled capitalism and did her best to make it a reality. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 unleashed a right-wing propaganda barrage declaring socialism dead. Liberals, such as U.S. Professor Francis Fukuyama, backed them up.

But it wasn’t just the hard right and liberals attacking the socialist project. Postmodernist university professors, some of whom were former communists, made a name for themselves arguing that “metanarratives”, such as the idea that socialism could defeat capitalism and usher in a better society, were dangerous. This notion came to dominate university social science departments.

Others preached a “third way”, a politics “beyond left and right”, which supposedly forged a path between rampant capitalism and socialism. Tony Blair’s government in Britain used the third way as an ideological weapon to batter socialists in the Labour Party. Former leftists justified their new positions by arguing that the neoliberal offensive of the 1980s and 1990s had destroyed the working class.

But while these ideologues did their best to bury socialism, the brutal reality of capitalist society meant their efforts were in vain. Following the 9/11 terrorist attack in 2001, the U.S. invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, killing millions. Who could explain U.S. aggression? Not those who had argued that capitalism was a force for progress, but socialists who had long argued that capitalism bred war and imperialism.

The global financial crisis of 2008-09 soon followed. The crisis ruined millions of working-class lives while governments bailed out the billionaires. Who could explain economic crises and austerity? Not those who argued that capitalism led to prosperity, but socialists who pointed to the system’s inherent crisis tendencies.

The evidence of capitalism’s failures is mounting. The climate crisis, the pandemic, the housing crisis and Israel’s genocide in Gaza have created a bigger audience for socialism. Those who would bury socialism must now reckon with its re-emergence in the belly of the capitalist beast—the United States.

Cycles of development

This cycle of developments from capitalist triumphalism to socialist revival is not new.

Capitalism has a series of lines of defence that reinforce its rule. It deploys both force and fraud to justify its existence and crush its enemies. The everyday experience of life under capitalism and the powerlessness that goes with that for most of the time make systemic change seem impossible. Those who have given up on fighting the system can provide the capitalists with arguments as to why the struggle for a better world is futile.

But capitalism cannot exist without attacking the working class. It cannot exist without dragging nations into war. It cannot exist without infringing on democratic rights up to and including installing fascist dictators. And it suffers the objective limit that it also depends upon those it exploits. As Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels put it in 1848, capitalism creates its own gravediggers—the working class.

The experience of oppression and, often, the experience of struggling against that oppression explain why the best efforts of the capitalists and their ideologues often come to nothing. They say capitalism is the best possible system. But they have no credible answers for those looking for a way out of the crises, hardships and wars capitalism creates. Only socialism can provide such answers. That is why every time that socialism is declared dead, it rises once again.

Socialism in the nineteenth century

We can go as far back as the nineteenth century to see how this works. The 1840s were a period of advance for the working class in the few pockets where it had established itself. In Britain, the Chartist movement organised monster rallies of hundreds of thousands to press for the right to vote and to organise.

In 1848, the spirit of revolt extended to Europe as workers joined the throngs on the streets to demand the overthrow of the reactionary regimes across the continent. Marx and Engels fought to push the working class forward in these struggles, joining the radical movement and furnishing it with the Communist Manifesto.

By 1850, however, the working-class surge was over. The middle classes, who were supposedly allies of the working class, swung behind the old order, leaving the working class to fight alone. The workers were defeated, and reaction triumphed across Europe.

But soon, the red flag—a symbol of socialist internationalism—was once again flying as socialists, trade unionists, Marxists, anarchists and others came together to form the International Working Men’s Association, or the First International, in 1864. It supported striking workers and the demand for an eight-hour day, universal suffrage, an end to militarism, the fight for Polish independence and a Union victory against the Southern plantation owners in the U.S. Civil War.

The First International was also a forum for intense debate among the movement’s different ideological currents. Marx sharpened his ideas in the process and won a wider following for what was at the time called “scientific socialism”.

Then, in 1871, the workers of Paris showed the world working-class power in action as they formed the Commune to take over the running of the city after the capitalists and their government fled to Versailles in fear of an advancing Prussian army. The Commune set about organising production and distribution of essential goods and services through cooperatives. It made all officials and militia officers subject to election and recall and paid a worker’s wage. It declared a moratorium on rent and boosted labour rights. Socialists across Europe rejoiced at the Commune, seeing in it a revival of the spirit of 1848.

The smashing of the Commune by the Versailles government put an end to the high hopes it had aroused. In the following decades, capitalism spread across Europe and the U.S. The working-class insurrection vanished.

But as industry advanced, so too did the working class. By the turn of the century, new battalions of the working class had been created across Europe, North America, Australia, Japan and in pockets of the colonial world. And as the working class grew and began to fight for its rights, so too did socialism flourish. Everywhere, new socialist parties were winning the leadership of the working class and drawing in critical minorities of students and intellectuals. Alarmed ruling classes alternated between repression and concessions, but the tide was turning against them.

War, revolution and reaction from 1914

The outbreak of the First World War in 1914, specifically the betrayal by socialist leaders who opted to back their own ruling classes in the conflict, once more sent socialism into sharp reverse. Those leaders who remained faithful to socialist internationalism, arguing for working-class unity across borders, were a small minority in most countries.

Even in this situation, however, many workers refused to be swept away by jingoism. As casualties on the front rose along with misery in the rear, socialists who had stood against the tide began to win a bigger audience. In February 1917, Russian workers brought down the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty and, in October, established the first workers’ state.

Inspired by the Russian Revolution, working-class radicals established communist parties to fight for revolution in their own nations. Within two or three years, they had gathered hundreds of thousands in their ranks. It seemed that socialism might triumph.

The failure of the working class to seize power outside Russia led to the defeat of the workers’ state. Joseph Stalin’s new dictatorship crushed everything that remained of the 1917 insurrection. The Russian leader purged the international communist movement of any genuine revolutionaries and allowed Adolf Hitler to take power in Germany.

Capitalists in the West took advantage of the ebbing of the revolutionary wave to preach the end of socialism. Big U.S. corporations used posters, films, pamphlets, workplace newsletters and community groups to spread pro-capitalist messages. Hollywood and the mass media joined in. The ideological offensive was backed by violent assaults on union organisers and socialists. In Australia, governments, bosses, cops and courts raided union offices, spied on union activists, broke up public meetings and deported radicals.

Socialism bursts forth in the 1930s

But the working class was not done. The Great Depression and fascism reinforced for millions of workers the belief that capitalism brought only misery for their class. Socialism once again came out of the shadows. Unlike the capitalist ideologists whose only answer to the Depression was yet more austerity, socialists explained that capitalism is a crisis-prone system that cannot serve humanity.

By the late 1930s, socialism was making deep inroads. In 1936, millions of workers in France and Spain rose against their ruling classes and waged a serious fight with the capitalists and the reactionary forces they backed. Many wanted socialism.

The socialist revival was also evident in Australia in the 1930s. Socialisation Units blossomed in the ALP, demanding the immediate implementation of socialist policies. The Communist Party (CPA) made headway, winning positions in many unions. University students radicalised by the Depression and the rise of fascism joined the CPA. The tragedy was that this appetite for socialism was then harnessed to Stalin’s authoritarian project, which sent it into a dead end.

We see the same phenomenon in fascist-occupied Europe during World War Two and its immediate aftermath. Workers had had enough of what capitalism was delivering, but Stalinism choked off the prospect of liberation.

Cold War counter-revolution

The Cold War and the postwar economic boom of the 1950s and 60s included a sustained capitalist offensive against socialism. In the U.S., where the Cold War reached its zenith, repressive wartime legislation was used to arrest dozens of Communist leaders, while the House Un-American Activities Committee and FBI drove thousands from their jobs, creating a climate of fear.

The rightward turn in the West in this period was amplified by university professors, some former radicals, proclaiming the death of socialism and “the end of ideology”. They argued that the basic problems of capitalism had been solved. Workers were dismissed as bought off: “We’re all middle class now”. Socialism was labelled an anachronism.

The relative affluence of the 1950s and early 1960s served to dull the urgency of class struggle in the West for a period. But prolonged full employment fuelled working-class confidence and raised expectations.

Socialism stirs again in the late 1960s

By the mid-1960s, a new generation of young workers was demanding more. The result was a steady rise in strikes and a willingness to strike for political ends. Newspapers began anxiously to discuss “wildcat rebellions”. The left in the unions began to feel the wind in their sails. In the U.S., the Vietnam War gave a radical edge to the discontents of this younger generation. As the war dragged on, young workers and students began to turn against it.

Those who had been promoting capitalism had no answers other than to press ahead with the war. It was time once again for socialists to provide answers. Although initially small in number, socialists could explain why the U.S. and Australia were embroiled in a war against a peasant army many thousands of kilometres away. Socialists could explain the connections between the racism suffered by African Americans and the imperialist project of the U.S. and its allies in Indochina. Socialists could tie together the pressure to speed up in the factories and the war drive. Socialism once again came to the fore among young people questioning the system.

The tragedy was that no coherent revolutionary socialist organisation had been built beforehand to lead the upsurge of strikes and demonstrations in the late 1960s and 1970s. The Communist parties were still too beholden to Stalinism to play a useful role. A new revolutionary left did emerge, but it was too small and too politically inexperienced to have a significant impact.

The downturn in struggle that followed in the 1980s pushed socialism once again to the margins, only for war and economic crisis to open the door to its revival in the 2000s and 2010s. Crisis-ridden capitalism breeds resistance.

Nothing about this is guaranteed, however. We cannot simply fold our arms and wait for history to turn in our direction. In countries without socialist traditions or organisations, decades of capitalist misery need not give birth to a socialist revival; barbarism may be the only result. A socialist organisation of some form is necessary to provide the answers that young people, in particular, will be searching for.

What kind of socialist politics emerges in moments of socialist revival also matters. Unfortunately, in both the 1930s and the 1960s and 1970s, the politics of Stalinism or its derivatives dominated. Working-class independence and leadership were sacrificed in favour of some other social force, whether “progressive capitalists”, the peasantry, guerrillas, students or the most marginalised and jobless sections of society. This distorted the socialist revival and blew it off course, leaving it open to capitalist counterattack.

A new revival?

Today, we are witnessing a healthy revival of socialist sentiment, but there are limits to the current shift. Left-wing politics today generally takes the form of reformist electoral projects, which puts it at the mercy of the politicians who, like the Syriza government in Greece in 2015, sell out their base within months of taking office. Related to this, identity politics is still widespread, weakening the politics of class solidarity.

Marxists advocate a world in which the working class is in the driver’s seat. In other words, socialism means smashing capitalism. Electoral challenges can be part of that process, but we must go much further than just changing the governing party. The working class must take things into their own hands. That involves mass agitation including strikes and demonstrations, all the way through to workers taking over and running society.

We currently lack the kind of mass revolutionary parties necessary to harness and build on the new socialist sentiment. In the absence of this, we risk losing the opportunity to challenge capitalism once again. Now, as in the earlier socialist revivals, the task of building a revolutionary organisation is urgent. It cannot be put off; it has to happen now.

[Tom Bramble is an Australian socialist and journalist for Red Flag. Courtesy: Red Flag, a publication of Socialist Alternative, an Australian socialist group.]

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Why Young Voters Are Embracing Democratic Socialism

Thom Hartmann

The media is freaking out over a new Rasmussen poll that found:

“A majority of voters under 40 want a democratic socialist to win the White House in the next presidential election.”… 51% of Likely U.S. Voters ages 18 to 39 would like to see a democratic socialist candidate win the 2028 presidential election. Thirty-six percent (36%) don’t want a democratic socialist to win in 2028, while 17% are not sure. …“Among the youngest cohort (ages 18-24) of voters, 57% want a democratic socialist to win the next presidential election…”Among those who voted for Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election, 78% would like to see a democratic socialist candidate win the 2028 presidential election…“ (emphasis added)

I was on Ali Velshi’s MSNOW show yesterday morning discussing this, along with Michael Green who recently wrote a thought-provoking article about how the official poverty line in America is completely out-of-date and out of touch with the needs of most Americans. I shared a few statistics from my recent book The Hidden History of the American Dream: the Demise of the Middle Class and How to Rescue Our Future:

• When, in 1957, my dad bought the house I grew up in, the average cost of a single-family home in America was about 2.2 times the average annual wage. Today it’s more than ten times the average wage.
• When my Boomer generation was the same age as today’s Millennials, we owned a bit over 22% of the nation’s wealth; Millennials today control only about 4% of the country’s wealth (and it’s the same for Zoomers).
• From the 1930s right up until the Reagan Revolution, it was possible for seniors to live comfortably on Social Security alone; Reagan undid that with his “reforms” so today that’s nearly impossible.
• When I ran my first seriously successful business in the early 1970s, it cost me around $35/month for comprehensive health insurance for each of my 18 employees; at that time hospitals and health insurance companies were required by Michigan law (where I lived; most other states were identical) to be run as non-profits. Today, health insurance can be as much as one-fifth of a company’s payroll expense.
• When Reagan came into office in 1981, a single wage earner could support a family with a middle-class lifestyle, and fully 65% of us were in the middle class (up from around 20% in the 1930s). Today, after 44 years of Reaganomics, it takes two full-time people to achieve the same status, which triggers huge childcare expenses, which is part of why only 43% of us are middle class .

FDR’s great–and successful–Democratic Socialist experiment following the Republican Great Depression was to drive the economy from the bottom up, reversing the “Horse and Sparrow” trickle-down economics and deregulation of the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover administrations that provoked the Great Crash.

He did that by:

• Expanding the notion of the commons–the stuff we all collectively own and is administered or funded and regulated by government–to include free public education nationwide (and cheap college), old-age retirement (Social Security), and public power and transportation systems (Tennessee Valley Authority, federal support for local transit, roads and highways).
• Legalizing unions, an effort that was so successful that when Reagan came into office fully a third of us had good union jobs and, because they set the local wage floors, two-thirds of Americans had the equivalent of a union wage and benefit package.
• Establishing a minimum wage on which a single worker could raise a family of three and still stay above the federal poverty level (today’s federal minimum wage is $7.25: adjusted with the Consumer Price Index, that $1.60 minimum wage in 1968 is equivalent to about $14.90 an hour in 2025 dollars).

In the years since, we’ve continued to expand the commons by establishing national single-payer healthcare systems for low-income people (Medicaid) and retired people (Medicare), both of which came out of LBJ’s Democratic Socialist program that he called The Great Society.

Meanwhile, Republicans and a few neoliberal Democrats have pushed back against these Democratic Socialist programs that made the American middle class the first in the history of the world to exceed more than half the population.

• Reagan’s war on unions has cut our union membership down to well under 10% in the private sector.
• His gutting federal funding for education has exploded college costs to the point where three generations are saddled with over $2 trillion in debt that can’t be discharged by bankruptcy.
• Reagan’s tax cuts for the rich (from 74% down to 27%) and corporations tripled the national debt (from $800 billion to $2.4 trillion) just in his eight years; since then the four GW Bush and Trump tax cuts have, when combined with Reagan’s, produced a $38 trillion national debt so big that we now spend more on servicing their debt than we do on our defense budget or would on administering a national healthcare system.

Back in the 1940s, after the incredible success of the New Deal, President Roosevelt wanted to further expand the commons by expanding the scope of his Democratic Socialist programs. Just before he died, he proposed a “Second Bill of Rights” that included:

• “The right to a useful and remunerative job in the nation’s industries, shops, farms, or mines. (Unionization and an above-poverty-level minimum wage.)
• “The right to earn enough to provide adequate food, clothing, and recreation. (Ditto and government as the employer of last resort.)
• “The right of every farmer to raise and sell products at a return that gives his family a decent living. (Don’t manipulate farm prices with stupid tariff wars, etc., and make the government the purchaser of last resort.)
• “The right of every businessperson, large and small, to trade free from unfair competition and domination by monopolies. (Break up the giant corporations and encourage average people to start small businesses, including with loan supports.)
• “The right of every family to a decent home. (Today this would mean no more corporations, hedge funds, and foreign billionaires owning single-family homes to squeeze us dry by jacking up rents.)
• “The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to enjoy good health. (FDR favored a single-payer healthcare system like Medicare for All.)
• “The right to protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment (i.e., robust Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance).
• “The right to a good education.” (Free or inexpensive college, quality public schools in every community.)

Much to the chagrin of my Republican-activist father, my grandfather (a 1917 Norwegian immigrant) frequently and proudly described himself as a socialist. When I asked him what he meant, he always pointed me to FDR, the New Deal, and his proposed Second Bill of Rights.

And here we are again.

My grandfather’s generation saw up-close and firsthand the tax-cutting and deregulation binge of the Roaring 20’s (which were only “roaring” for the morbidly rich), and then had the lived experience of watching FDR put the country back together and create the world’s first widespread middle class.

Millennials and Zoomers today are seeing the same thing, between the Bush Housing Crash of 2008, the botched Covid Crash of 2020, and the GOP’s relentless program to drive the wealth of the nation into the money bins of the billionaires who own that party.

They see the example of most European countries, where the commons includes college (many will actually pay you a stipend to attend), healthcare, and daycare / preschool, and union density is often well above 80%. Housing is subsidized or heavily regulated, leading several to have essentially ended homelessness. Giant corporate monopolies are prohibited and local small businesses are encouraged.

Europeans call these programs Democratic Socialism or social democracy, and young Americans clearly are enthusiastic about bringing the “European Dream” to this country.

My sense is that–much like in the 1930s–a significant majority of Americans are sick of the neoliberal “let the rich run things because they know best” bullshit that Republicans, “Tech Bros,” and a shrinking minority of on-the-take Democratic politicians embrace.

Meanwhile, nobody’s sure why the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is refusing to release the autopsy they did of the 2024 election, producing speculation it may have uncovered examples of Russian and Republican manipulation of both voters and the vote, but I’m guessing the real reason is that the neoliberals who largely run the DNC saw feedback that reflected the Rasmussen poll I opened this article with.

The exploding popularity of progressive politicians from Zorhan Mamdani to Bernie Sanders, Jasmine Crockett, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez aren’t an anomaly; they’re a signpost to both electoral and governing success for the next generation of genuinely progressive Democratic politicians.

[Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and author of more than 25 books in print. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute. Courtesy: LA Progressive, a California (USA) based online news and commentary portal, founded by Dick Price and Sharon Kyle, whose mission is to provide a platform for progressive thought, opinion and perspectives on current events.]

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2025 Saw the Most Significant Political Shift Toward Palestinian Rights in U.S. History

Mitchell Plitnick

2025 started with a Gaza ceasefire that was never meant to be sustained and is ending with one that was never actually instituted. The year also saw a steady intensification of the occupation on the West Bank, and an unprecedentedly broad wave of Israeli warfare all across the Middle East.

In the United States, the transition from the passionate and self-defeating support for Israel of Joe Biden to the transactional but nonetheless still solid support for Israel of Donald Trump had negligible effect on the superpower policy that is one of the greatest obstacles to the realization of inalienable Palestinian rights.

But there is real hope we might take this year from a significant movement in the American discourse on Palestine and Israel and that this shift is finally starting to be reflected in American politics, albeit in ways far too small to match the needs of the moment.

Most notably, 2025 saw American public opinion continue its shift away from Israel.

In July, an article in The Economist, hardly a progressive publication, noted that,

Israel’s rightward political shift in recent years, and especially the protracted war in Gaza, has alienated many ordinary Americans. The disquiet about Israel that has been building for some time within the Democratic Party is now growing among Republicans, too. Younger members of both parties have shifted especially dramatically. A fundamental reshaping of one of America’s deepest friendships seems all but inevitable, with huge ramifications for the Middle East and the world.

Even the most stalwart of Israel supporters found that the political winds had shifted enough that they were forced to criticize Israel’s behavior at least implicitly. Rep. Ritchie Torres, who has made his career as an extreme opponent of Palestinian rights could not withstand the outcry from his New York City constituents at witnessing Israel’s deliberate starvation of the people in Gaza over the summer of 2025. He wrote on X, “The free world has a moral responsibility to Palestinians in distress. Flood Gaza with food.”

Torres’ implication that Israel was not allowing enough food into Gaza (at that point, they were barely allowing any, and Gaza was in a state of famine) was shocking for him. But more importantly it reflected the growing distaste for Israel among Democrats.

Nothing convinces Democrats more than polls, and many polls were showing that their constituents were growing increasingly fed up with Israel.

When Israel began its genocide in Gaza after the attack of October 7, 2023, Americans were split on Israel’s response. A Gallup Poll showed 50% of Americans approved of Israel’s actions, with 45% opposed. That number quickly changed to disapproval, but in 2025, it veered sharply, and by mid-July, 60% of Americans disapproved of Israel’s actions and only 32% approved.

The numbers were even starker for Democrats. While 36% approved of Israel’s initial response, only 8% did by July 2025.

But the shift isn’t only apparent among Democrats. While Republicans are still much more supportive of Israel than Democrats, that support is beginning to ebb, especially among younger Republicans.

Pollster Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, conducted a poll in August 2025 and found that 21% of Republicans said that U.S. President Donald Trump’s policies were “too pro-Israel.”

“The change taking place among young Republicans is breathtaking,” Telhami said.

“While 52% of older republicans (35+) sympathize more with Israel, only 24% of younger Republicans (18-34) say the same–fewer than half.”

Public opinion is finally impacting politicians

In November of 2024, Senator Bernie Sanders introduced a Joint Resolution of Disapproval (JRAD) to stop a large sale of arms to Israel. The measure failed, but 18 senators voted to support Sanders’ resolution.

Such a vote might not have even reached the Senate floor in the past, and a bill like this one would have been lucky to get any support at all. As Jewish Voice for Peace Action’s Political Director Beth Miller put it at the time,

“This is too little too late; this genocide has been going on for 13 months, but that does not change the fact that this is a critically important step.”

That vote was also significant because some of the Democrats who supported Sanders were not those one might suspect. For instance, Hillary Clinton’s former running mate, Tim Kaine of Virginia, was among those who supported the Sanders bill.

Despite the failure, Sanders tried again in July 2025. This time, his JRAD got 24 votes in support, a 33% increase. Like the 2024 vote, this still doesn’t speak well of the Senate, Congress, or even the Democrats as a whole. This vote centered on a 22-month-long genocide at that point. But, as Miller had said before, the increase mattered, and it mattered that more moderate Democrats, such as Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, joined in.

These votes, though defeats, are a huge political turning point, even though they failed to save any Palestinian lives. Israel was perceived to be involved in “war,” as unsuitable as that term might be to those of us observing what was happening at the time. And this was not a question of aid to Israel, but weapons sales. The idea of voting against arms to Israel under any circumstances, let alone a sale during perceived wartime, was an absurdity in the past. It was political suicide for all but a few politicians, and it could never have gotten more than a vote or two in support.

Even a few years ago, just whispering about conditioning aid to Israel was considered a dangerous and controversial step. In 2025, more than half of the 47 Democratic caucus members in the Senate voted to block an arms sale to Israel. Political trends can take time to shift, especially when they are supported by powerful political forces and have been entrenched for decades. This is what change looks like.

It was a remarkable turnaround, and as efforts to change American policy on Palestine continue and intensify, there is every reason to believe it is a trend that will persist.

The base of both parties are splitting over Israel

2025 saw significant momentum build in both parties for substantive change in American policy toward Palestine.

As time passed after Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election and gave the world a new, more unbalanced, and more authoritarian Donald Trump in the White House, it became clearer and clearer that Joe Biden’s and Harris’ policy toward Palestine was a key factor in alienating potential Democratic voters and thus costing her the election.

Just before Trump was sworn in, a poll from the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) and YouGov found that the top issue that caused former Biden voters to change or withhold their votes in 2024 was Gaza.

It turned out, in fact, that this was particularly true in battleground states, demonstrating that the famously poll- and focus-group-driven Democrats had either completely misread or disregarded the ideological map in the states they most needed to win.

In December, the Democrats decided to bury a post-mortem report they had commissioned on the 2024 election. They didn’t offer much of an explanation, just some word salad about needing to look forward, not back, which anyone could easily see was a naked evasion.

No doubt, there were many reasons the Democrats found for their loss that were embarrassing and reflected their own political short-sightedness and tunnel vision. But virtually every serious analysis of the loss listed not only Gaza as a key factor, but also issues tangential to Gaza, such as a sense of disconnection between candidates and the base, and the loss of young voters. Both of those problems are reflective of Democrats’ failure to heed the base on Gaza.

Republicans, meanwhile, have seen a growing chasm in their ranks. The split is coming between traditional Republican voters and more isolationist, “America First” voters.

Part of that split has played out in public in ugly ways. There is a faction of former Trump acolytes, such as Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Candace Owens who, to varying degrees, are using Palestine to channel hatred of Jews and disguise it as suddenly discovering the suffering of Palestinians. Owens, in particular, has been very open about using classic anti-Jewish tropes and outright expressions of Jew-hatred to advance her case. In her case, her open bigotry has superseded her initial attempts to connect her hate to the Palestinian cause. Carlson and Greene—both of whom have long histories of Judeophobia as well as Islamophobia, and anti-Arab racism—have not repudiated any of their earlier statements but have clung to anti-Israel statements in the current moment, rather than recalling their earlier anti-Jewish ones.

But that surface fight masks a more important development, which is the growing disillusionment of young Republicans with Israel.

In another, recent IMEU / YouGov poll, 51% of young Republicans said they would prefer to support candidates who would reduce the amount of aid we give Israel. 53% say we should not renew the annual aid commitment to Israel, and 51% oppose the idea of a 20-year enhanced agreement of the type Israel is said to be seeking now.

Some of that is surely rooted in the Jew-hate of figures like Candace Owens and the self-proclaimed neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes. But there is certainly more to it than that. Much of the rock-solid support of Republicans for Israel is based on various forms of Christian Zionism, particularly the dispensationalist belief in the role the Jewish return to the Land of Israel plays in the coming of the end times and the Rapture. But evangelicals have never been monolithic in that belief, contrary to public perception, and more of them are moving away from supporting Israel.

As Palestinian-American, evangelical pastor Fares Abraham put it in February of 2025,

“A significant generational shift is underway away from a false gospel of empire toward a faith that upholds justice, mercy and truth. Many young Christians recognize that true faithfulness to Christ cannot be reconciled with the destruction of Palestinian lives, the bombing of churches, hospitals and refugee camps or the systematic starvation of an entire population.”

This is a trend that has been visible for some time. It comes together with a rise in isolationism among Republicans, an isolationism that was evident even in the carefully chosen words of Vice President JD Vance at the recent Turning Point USA conference.

Vance said,

“99% of Republicans, and I think probably 97% of Democrats, do not hate Jewish people for being Jewish. What is actually happening is that there is a real backlash to a consensus view in American foreign policy.”

That was pretty remarkable for a sitting vice president of either party, regardless of what they might really think.

So, while it was a year of ongoing tragedy and of a familiar helplessness for people who want to end the suffering of the people in Palestine, it was also a year that saw unprecedented progress in the U.S. toward eliminating the support Israel gets for its merciless policies and actions toward the Palestinian people.

That matters. Nothing powers Israel’s apartheid and genocide like the U.S. does. It’s not easy to change American policy that has been entrenched over the course of decades, but the day of that change is finally drawing closer. 2025 provided not just reason for hope but the potential to energize the forces of change for years to come.

[Mitchell Plitnick is the president of ReThinking Foreign Policy. He is the co-author of Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics and maintains the Cutting Through newsletter on Substack at mitchellplitnick.substack.com/. Mitchell’s previous positions include vice president at the Foundation for Middle East Peace, Director of the U.S. Office of B’Tselem, and Co-Director of Jewish Voice for Peace. Courtesy: Mondoweiss, an independent website devoted to informing readers about developments in Israel/Palestine and related US foreign policy.]