The communist comeback

Summary

Today, Explained — “The Communist Comeback”

Date: August 5, 2026
Hosts: Noel King & Sean Rameswaram
Guests: David Peisner (Rolling Stone Journalist), Morris Isserman (Historian, Hamilton College)

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Episode Overview

This episode investigates the rising talk of communism in U.S. politics. With Democratic Socialists gaining influence and an American billionaire-turned-communist making headlines for his arrest in Spain, the show explores whether America is witnessing a true communist resurgence or simply experiencing a modern-day red scare. Through interviews with journalist David Peisner (who covered the Fergie Chambers case) and historian Morris Isserman, “Today, Explained” untangles what communism is, its history in the U.S., and the realities versus rhetoric fueling America’s latest anxieties.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Political Moment: DSA Successes and Government Crackdowns

• Immediate Context: Democratic Socialists (DSA) are gaining ground, winning primary races like Abdel Al Said’s Senate bid in Michigan. Concurrently, President Trump invokes the specter of the “far left,” fueling fears of a new red menace.
• Escalation: The U.S. government’s recent request for extradition of a self-proclaimed American communist, Fergie Chambers, from Spain is cited as a notable concrete step targeting far-left figures ([00:27]).

2. Profile: Fergie Chambers, Wealthy Communist

• Background: Fergie Chambers is described as an heir to the Cox Media fortune, now a professed communist, activist, and major donor to leftist causes, including humanitarian groups in Gaza ([01:30]–[02:52]).
• Personal Evolution: Chambers’ political awakening began during his privileged upbringing in NYC, influenced by Marxist educators and readings like Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” ([03:13]–[03:45]).
• Activism: Significant involvement at Standing Rock (2015–16) motivated him toward hands-on activism and a sense of responsibility for his inherited wealth ([04:20]–[05:04]).

Notable Quotes:

• On Privilege and Responsibility:

  “Everything I've ever benefited from comes off the backs of the workers of the country broadly, especially of colonized people…” — Fergie Chambers ([04:03])

• On Motivation Post-Standing Rock:

  “The comforts I have in life and the resources I had, they are what they are. They exist. But there's a responsibility to do something about that. And it goes beyond simple charity.” — Fergie Chambers ([05:04])

• Personality: Chambers is described as “prickly” and “confident to the point of arrogant” ([05:40]–[06:07]).

  • Memorable Jab:

    "He can be kind of a dick." — David Peisner, quoted by Noel King ([05:59])

3. The Accusations & Legal Battle

• US Claims: Chambers is accused of funneling money to Hamas by funding groups in Gaza. Many of these donations, however, support humanitarian and leftist causes, prison abolition, and media projects ([07:54]–[09:00]).
• Evidence Unclear: The indictment remains sealed; Peisner emphasizes a lack of clear public evidence connecting Chambers directly to Hamas, contextualizing the move as part of a broader campaign to intimidate ideological opponents ([08:39]–[08:55]).

4. Is Communism Actually Resurgent in the U.S.?

• Peisner’s Assessment: Chambers believes he symbolizes a resurgence, but Peisner disagrees, framing Chambers as an outlier rather than evidence of widespread communist revival ([10:34]–[12:07]).
  • Quote:

    "Is socialism on the rise? Maybe. But communism, like what Fergie believes — what die-hard Marxist-Leninists believe? I think they're just so much further from mainstream kind of belief than is certainly made out by the Trump administration." — David Peisner ([11:31])

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In-Depth: History and Reality of Communism in America

Guest: Morris Isserman, Historian ([15:37] onward)

5. Defining Communism

• Communism vs. Socialism:
  • Communism, historically, advocates for total transformation of capitalist society — means of production owned/operated by the state and one-party rule, in contrast to reforms like “Medicare for all” ([15:54]–[16:41]).
  • Quote:

    “This is not nibbling around the edges. This is not Medicare for all. This is an actual huge, huge transformation of a society.” — Noel King ([16:41])

6. Historical Context

• Origins: U.S. Communist Party founded in 1919, inspired by the Russian Revolution ([17:10]–[18:06]).
• Growth During Crises: Gained momentum during the Great Depression when capitalism seemed to be failing; also attracted support as anti-fascist opposition rose ([18:10]–[18:47]).
• Political Influence:
  • Few openly communist elected officials ever; brief New York City Council representation in the 1940s, but mostly influential behind the scenes (labor movements, anti-fascist, anti-racist organizing) ([19:05]–[19:52]).
  • Membership peaked at ~75,000 vs. a U.S. population of 130 million ([19:52]).

7. Why Did Communism Fail in the U.S.?

• Repression: Two major “Red Scare” eras (post-WWI, McCarthy era) involved legal persecution, jailings, and social ostracization ([20:23]–[21:08]).
  • Heard on the Air:

    "Communists were sent to jail for advocacy, for simply saying that they favored communism." — Morris Isserman ([20:23])

• Foreign Allegiance: The Communist Party’s loyalty to Soviet policy shifts eroded domestic credibility ([21:14]–[22:09]).
  • Quote:

    “All of those turns gave the Communists a reputation as an organization that did not really exist to serve American interests, but rather to serve Soviet interests.” — Morris Isserman ([21:48])

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Communists in Today’s DSA: Myths and Realities

8. Who Are The Communists in The DSA?

• Left-Wing Factions: Groups like “Red Star” and “Marxist Unity Group.” They are openly inspired by revolutionary communism, but the DSA is not monolithic; these factions are a vocal minority ([22:25]–[24:06]).
• Their Goals: Open about wanting to build an independent revolutionary socialist party, distinct from high-profile “democratic socialist” politicians like AOC, who work within the Democratic Party ([23:41]).

9. Should Americans Be Worried? Red Scare Redux

• No Immediate Foreign Threat: Unlike the original Red Scares, today’s communists lack state-backed global power and have minimal influence.
  • Quote:

    “Who’s supposed to be the foreign threat today controlling the actions of these American communists? Cuba. Cuba can’t even keep the lights on for its own people… So I think, yeah, this is an attempt to launch a red scare, using DSA as kind of a boogeyman.” — Morris Isserman ([25:15])

• Political Motives: Isserman argues Trump’s administration is stoking fears to distract from failing policies and create an enemy. Younger Americans lack historical memory of communism as a global rival ([24:47]–[26:27]).

10. The DSA’s Future

• Factional Struggle: DSA includes both “left wing of the possible” reformists (AOC, Mamdani) and “would-be Bolsheviks.”
  • Prediction?:

    “I’m a historian. I’m very good at predicting the past and I’m terrible at predicting the future.” — Morris Isserman ([26:30])

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Memorable Quotes and Moments

• Satirical Soundbite:

  “I would be the greatest communist in history.” — (Satirical Trump impression, [00:18]) “Free rent for the rest of your life. … Living in squalor in 12 months.” — David Peisner/Morris Isserman, riffing ([00:21]–[00:27])

• On Chambers’ Character:

  “He can be kind of a dick.” — Quoted from David Peisner by Noel King ([05:59])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• DSA political wins, government crackdown: [00:02]–[01:00]
• Profile: Fergie Chambers: [01:30]–[07:43]
• Chambers’ donations and legal troubles: [07:43]–[09:57]
• Is communism resurgent or not?: [09:57]–[12:07]
• History of U.S. Communism — Isserman interview starts: [15:37]
  • Communist definition & history: [15:54]–[19:52]
  • DSA factions and “red scare” dynamics: [22:25]–[26:30]

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Overall Tone

The episode balances curiosity and skepticism, mixing moments of dark humor with in-depth history and sociopolitical context. Both guests and hosts speak candidly about political fear-mongering while clearly distinguishing between mainstream socialists and dedicated revolutionaries.

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Summary Takeaway

Despite inflammatory rhetoric and the dramatic case of Fergie Chambers, the American communist movement remains marginal. The podcast suggests current panic is more a product of political maneuvering than a response to any real revolutionary threat — “a red scare, not a red wave.”

Transcript

[Noel King]

Lenine Democratic socialists keep winning primary races in Michigan. Abdel Al Said, not in the dsa, but endorsed by them, just won a fiercely fought Senate primary. President Trump appears worried enough about the DSA to have started conflating some things.

[Morris Isserman]

I would be the greatest communist in history. I'd be right up.

[David Peisner]

Free rent for the rest of your life.

[Morris Isserman]

What they don't say is that you'll

[David Peisner]

be living in squalor in 12 months.

[Noel King]

The Trump administration has raised the specter of the far left in various ways during Trump's second term. But the recent arrest of an American communist in Spain, what year is it? At the request of the American government is a more concrete step. Coming up on Today Explained from Vox Real communist threat or new red scare?

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[Noel King]

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[David Peisner]

Well, I mean, he grew up in mostly New York City and grew up ensconced in a certain amount of privilege.

[Morris Isserman]

I came from a very prominent and wealthy US family and I ended up having a very different perception of the world than they do.

[David Peisner]

He sort of describes his kind of political education or his political awakening happening as early as really kind of middle schoolish years, when a teacher, he was going to St. Anne's School, I think it's called, which is, you know, a sort of, as Stella Schnabel, his wife, put it to me, it's for famous people's children.

[Noel King]

Yeah, that's about right.

[David Peisner]

But a teacher there had given him Howard Zinn's Of People's History of the United States.

[Morris Isserman]

There were a few kind of big ideological influences. There was a history teacher I had

[David Peisner]

who was kind of a Marxist and really sort of challenged him on his family's kind of role in kind of propping up the system we have.

[Morris Isserman]

Everything I've ever benefited from comes off the backs of the. The workers of the country broadly, especially of colonized people, whether they came from Africa or whether they came from a million other countries or whether they lived here in the first place.

[David Peisner]

And he took it to heart. He was young then, and I think between then and when he really starts getting going with his own sort of activism, which maybe you can date to about a decade, a decade ago from now, or maybe even a little longer. But he was at Standing Rock, which I guess is what, about 2015, 2016.

[Morris Isserman]

A protest in North Dakota against a

[David Peisner]

major oil pipeline continues to grow.

[Noel King]

Standing Rock is home now.

[David Peisner]

That's how much it means to me.

[Noel King]

It's home.

[Morris Isserman]

This is where everybody has come together

[Noel King]

to say, enough is enough.

[David Peisner]

And I think coming out of that, he was really charged with like, a new sense of purpose.

[Morris Isserman]

The comforts I have in life and the resources I had, they are what they are. They exist. But there's a responsibility to do something about that. And it goes beyond kind of like simple charity.

[David Peisner]

And since then, he's had a series of what he calls land projects where he would have, you know, sort of like minded friends and comrades working together. None of these land projects really, I mean, most of them ended up in sort of somewhere between disaster and just failure.

[Noel King]

What's he like as a person?

[David Peisner]

Wow, he's prickly. You know, he is a very confident. He is very smart. He is probably confident to the point of arrogant. And he can be kind of difficult to get along with.

[Noel King]

Kind of a dick. Your words.

[Morris Isserman]

Yeah.

[Noel King]

You said okay. To be fair to you, you Wrote, he can be kind of a dick.

[Morris Isserman]

Yes.

[David Peisner]

I guess I can't argue with you quoting me back to myself. Yeah, I mean, he can be. And I mean, you know, it's like he definitely walks around with the feeling that he's right about just about everything. Obviously he's grown up in a milieu where he has more money than everyone else in the room. And you can't avoid kind of coming to a conclusion that that money has given him probably some unearned confidence in his own opinions.

[Noel King]

How about his claims that he is a communist? How do you understand what. What he wants? What does he want the world to look like?

[David Peisner]

I'm pretty confident in saying what he envisions is revolution. The sort of Marxist revolution that Karl Marx and Lenin envisioned. What his version of communism is very distinct and almost at odds with what sort of gets called communism by the right being the sort of DSA and Bernie Sanders and Mamdani. Fergie hates those guys. I mean, I don't know. Hates is maybe a strong word, but he's not at all a supporter of Bernie Sanders version of socialism or the DSA's version of socialism. Those people are working within the system, and he wants to completely overturn the system. Now, what is the system? You can kind of go down a rabbit hole with that. But I think he said it over and over. You know, he wants to see the US fall.

[Noel King]

All right, so a communist with maybe a quarter of a billion dollars running around the world doing what exactly? Why does the US government want to extradite him? What's he accused of?

[David Peisner]

The US government is accusing him of essentially funneling money into Hamas. But I don't think. I think it's important to put that in context. I mean, I don't want to really legitimize what the US government is trying to do here, which is clearly part of a larger campaign to go after ideological opponents to chill dissent. Fergie is a. Is a interesting character. He's got a lot of flaws, but I don't want those flaws to sort of overshadow the larger point that I don't think that there's a whole lot of legitimacy to what the US Is trying to do here.

[Noel King]

Ok, so the US Says you are supporting Hamas. You are using your money to do it. You're telling me there is no evidence to suggest that?

[David Peisner]

I can't say that. There's no evidence to suggest that. I haven't seen the indictment. The indictment is sealed.

[Noel King]

Ah, okay.

[David Peisner]

All that said, I mean, you know, Fergie funds a lot of, within the US Things like there's a lot of leftist media projects relatively small and some are very local, pretty far left media projects, publications, things like that. You know, he's put money into bail funds. He's put money into. There's a group here in Atlanta called Community Movement Builders, which is like a black led sort of community organizing group. Abolitionist, prison abolitionist groups then. And the money that I think that the US Government claims to be most interested in is the money of his that's sort of going to causes in the Middle east, specifically in Gaza. Groups that support children in Gaza, that support political prisoners, you know, Palestinian political prisoners. Whether some of that money ended up with an organization that might have ties to Hamas, I have no idea.

[Noel King]

David, you know that we have been hearing a lot in the United States about the threat of communism. This is something that the Trump administration wants us to take seriously. And I think the knee jerk response from a lot of people is, yes, the dsa, the socialists might be ascendant in certain parts of the country, but communism, Come on, are you kidding me? Do you think Fergie Chambers is evidence that there is a meaningful communist resurgence in this country? Or is this a very wealthy outlier doing what very wealthy outliers have done since time immemorial?

[David Peisner]

Well, I think Fergie and I would disagree on this. I think Fergie would say that it is a sign that, you know, that there's some sort of communist resurgence. I just, I don't see it. First of all, I think that especially in the U.S. i mean, yes, the Trump administration has been ramping up this rhetoric against communism, against anti fascism, but the campaign against communism is at least a century old. I mean, certainly post World War II. As somebody who was born in 1973, I grew up with the communists are our enemy. This is the Cold War. There's very little education around, like what is communism versus what is socialism? Like, the DSA is very, very different from like what Fergie believes. I mean, these are wildly different. You know, a true communist believes in revolution, okay? Believes in that this whole system needs to be overturned. So I think, you know, is socialism on the rise? Maybe. But communism, like what, what Fergie believes, what die hard Marxist Leninists believe? I mean, I think that they're just so much further from mainstream kind of belief, you know, than is certainly made out by, by the Trump administration.

[Noel King]

David Peisner is a journalist living in Atlanta. When we return, is the DSA full of Communists? We're going to ask someone in the know.

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This is Today Explained.

[Morris Isserman]

My name is Morris Isserman and I'm professor of history at Hamilton College and I've written a number of books about the history of the American left, including a biography of DSA's founder, Michael Harrington.

[Noel King]

Define Communism for me.

[Morris Isserman]

Communism began as a split off from the socialist movement. It was inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, and it is in favor of a total transformation of capitalist society, with the government, the state owning and operating what communists would call the means of production, factories, transportation, and so forth. It also believes in one party rule. So for 75 years or so, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union allowed no competing parties to exist within that country.

[Noel King]

Okay, so this is not nibbling around the edges. This is not Medicare for all. This is an actual huge, huge transformation of a society. Speaker Mike Johnson recently said, 35 years

[David Peisner]

ago, Republicans and Democrats in Congress, when I was coming up and, you know, the Reagan years, they were fighting communism on a distant shore.

[Noel King]

Now it's here. Before we get to whether or not you agree with him, why don't we begin with the fact that there have been Communists in the United States of America. What is their history in this country?

[Morris Isserman]

Yeah, the American Communist Party was founded in 1919, so right after the First World War. And it was again inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, which at a time of great disillusionment for socialists around the world, because here the workers of the world were fighting each other, French workers were fighting German workers, and so forth. It seemed to point to a way the Bolsheviks came to power, remained in power, and so Communists, or would be communists in the United States, in Europe, elsewhere, said, well, if they can do it, we can do it too. So an American Communist Party was founded in 1919, small, isolated, mostly immigrants. But it gained strength in the course of the 1930s during the Great Depression.

[Noel King]

Oh, I think I have a guess as to why but you tell me why.

[Morris Isserman]

Well, because capitalism seemed to be failing and communism seemed to be the wave of the future. The other factor leading to the increase in communist influence was that fascism was rising in Italy in the 1920s, in Germany in the early 1930s. And it seemed as if there was a stark choice facing the world, either fascism or communism. And many people in the 1930s said, well, let's support the Communists to beat back the threat of fascism.

[Noel King]

All right, so Americans are drawn to communism after the Great Depression, and that makes complete sense. I wonder how powerful the draw was. And maybe the best way of determining that is by asking, did elected Communists get anything done in the United States?

[Morris Isserman]

Well, there were very few elected Communists. If you mean elected to public office, yeah. In the 1940s, there were two communist members of the New York City Council, but that was about it in terms of open Communists being elected to office. Their influence was seen more behind the scenes in the labor movement in organizing the big new industrial unions of the 1930s, organizing so called front groups, anti fascist groups, anti racist groups, and so forth. And the party was never huge. At its height at the end of the 30s, it had perhaps 75,000 members in a country then with a population of 130 million.

[Noel King]

Wow.

[Morris Isserman]

Now, its influence extended beyond its own membership, but it was still very much a minor party. Growing, but minor growing.

[Noel King]

And yet here we are in 2026, in the first half of the show, we profiled a young American who calls himself a communist. It is clear that he is an outlier. And so it seems as if communism has ultimately failed in the United States. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but if it did fail, why did it fail?

[Morris Isserman]

Well, it failed for two reasons. One reason was that it was repressed by the government pretty much throughout its existence. In the first Red Scare immediately after the First World War, and then again in the second Red Scare, which we commonly refer to as the McCarthy era, in the late 40s and through the 1950s, we've got to dig and root out the communists and the crooks and those who are bad for America. Communists were sent to jail for advocacy for simply saying that they favored communism. In recognizing a communist, physical appearance counts for nothing.

[David Peisner]

If a person consistently reads and advocates the views expressed in a communist publication,

[Morris Isserman]

he may be a communist, but it also failed because of its rather slavish obedience to the dictates of Soviet leaders. When the Soviet foreign policy changed from anti fascism, anti Hitlerism in the mid to late 30s to kind of de facto alliance with Hitler from 1939 to 1941, the American Communist Party obediently followed that line. Then again, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, and the Soviet Union swung back to anti fascism. Well, they made that turn, too. But all of those turns gave the Communists a reputation as an organization that did not really exist to serve American interests, but rather to serve Soviet interests.

[Noel King]

We know from reporting that's been done that there are people within the DSA who identify as Communists. And can you help us understand who these folks are within the organization and what they actually believe?

[Morris Isserman]

Yeah. Well, there are a number of left wing factions. There's a group called Red Star. There's another one called the Marxist Unity Group. There's three or four of them that work in coalition. They're rivals, but they also work in coalition to control, by a narrow margin, the national leadership. One of the members of Red Star is a co chair of the organization. Now, these people make no bones about their belief. I mean, they're not secret communists infiltrating. They describe themselves as being inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution or being inspired by Maoist China, or they call themselves Marxist Leninists. Red Star put out a call, I think it was in 2024 in their online newsletter saying, all Communists in the United States should join dsa. So they're quite open about it. And that comes out of a different political tradition, an antithetical tradition to democratic socialism. And they have a different ultimate strategy in mind, which is not to work within the Democratic Party as AOC is committed to do, as Zoran Mondami is committed to do, but rather they want to split and start an independent revolutionary socialist party which will run against both Democrats and Republicans, which is a strategy that has been tried an infinite number of times in the past by various groups of leftists.

[Noel King]

Okay, so how worried about these people should we be? And let me draw your attention to something that the Trump administration has been happy to draw our attention to, which is you have people like Hassan Piker on the left praising Mao Zedong, famously a guy who did a lot of very, very bad things. And so that opens the door to be able to say the left are all extreme. You know, Hasan Piker is willing to praise Mao Zedong. This should be of concern to you, ordinary American citizen. And most American citizens are somewhere in the middle. Is this a red scare or is there something to be scared about here?

[Morris Isserman]

Well, it's definitely a red scare.

[Noel King]

Okay.

[Morris Isserman]

Trump and his allies don't have a lot going for them in this election cycle. They've got an unwinnable war going on. They've got gasoline prices skyrocketing. Trump is even underwater on immigration, his signature issue. So what do you do in that situation? You create a boogeyman, or try to. And the difference is that most Americans under the age of 45, say, have no memory whatsoever of the existence of the Soviet Union as a threat to the United States. When you launch a red scare in 1919, well, there's communist Russia. When you launch a red scare in the 1940s and 50s, well, there's the Soviet Union. There's a real threat. I mean, they have missiles and so forth. Who's supposed to be the foreign threat today controlling the actions of these American communists? Cuba. Cuba can't even keep the lights on for its own people. It doesn't have missiles. It's not gonna invade the United States or its allies. So I think, yeah, I think this is an attempt to launch a red scare, using DSA as kind of a boogeyman. But dsa, again, is not one thing. It has left wing of the possible democratic socialists, who I would say include such figures as Zoran Mondami and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. And then it has, unfortunately, some would be Bolsheviks. So it's really a question of, you know, which DSA is going to prevail in the long run?

[Noel King]

Which one do you think will prevail in the long run?

[Morris Isserman]

I'm a historian. I'm very good at predicting the past and I'm terrible at predicting the future. Sure.

[Noel King]

Morris Isserman teaches history at Hamilton College and writes books about the American left. Dustin DeSoto produced today's show. Aman El Saadi was our editor. David Tadashore and Patrick Boyd engineered. And Gabriel Donatov checked the facts. I'm Noel King. It's Today Explained. Are you a pet owner? Every six seconds, a pet owner in the US gets hit with a vet bill over $1,000. Always an unwelcome surprise. That's where fetch comes in. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance for dogs and cats. According to consumeradvocate.org, you get paid back up to 90% of vet bills at any vet in the US and Canada, with claims paid back in as little as two days. Go to fetchpet.com save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet.com save.