{"id":19072,"date":"2026-07-27T18:16:35","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T13:16:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=19072"},"modified":"2026-07-27T18:16:35","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T13:16:35","slug":"why-the-trump-right-is-freaking-out-about-third-worldism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=19072","title":{"rendered":"Why the Trump right is freaking out about \u201cthird worldism\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"zephr-anchor\">\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">The American right has a new enemy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.state.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Cuba-Report.pdf\">a new report on Cuba<\/a>, the State Department argued that Havana has become \u201cthe beating heart of a new and distinct kind of Marxism\u201d \u2014 which the State Department calls \u201cThird Worldism.\u201d Cuba is spreading this doctrine, per <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/SecRubio\/status\/2079190191160348777\">Secretary of State of Marco Rubio<\/a>, with the explicit intent of fomenting revolution in America.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Here, the Trump administration is following conservative influencers \u2014 who in recent months have become increasingly preoccupied by the \u201cthird worldist\u201d threat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--block-placement _13j8zv42 _13j8zv40 duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<div class=\"duet--article--highlight _10sa9oml _1a70pe0\">\n<div class=\"_1a70pe6\">\n<ul class=\"duet--article--unordered-list _10sa9omi uyby7v0 pn04iq1 _1a70pe7\">\n<li class=\"uyby7v1\"><span class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup\">Both the Trump State Department and leading right-wing influencers are increasingly warning about \u201cthird worldism,\u201d an allegedly dangerous doctrine that they claim is gaining prominence on the left.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"uyby7v1\"><span class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup\">Much of this is overheated rhetoric, an attempt to develop a new master concept to replace \u201cwoke\u201d as the left-wing boogeyman and smear left-wing politicians like Zohran Mamdani as anti-American.<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"uyby7v1\"><span class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup\">But there\u2019s also something real here: a small-but-rising strain of leftist foreign policy thinking that valorizes America\u2019s enemies, up to and including jihadist militant groups. This group isn\u2019t dominant on the socialist left, but could create problems for them down the line.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">\u201cThe Left is moving from \u2018woke\u2019 to Third-Worldism,\u201d Chris Rufo, perhaps the right\u2019s leading activist, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/christopherrufo\/status\/2069781882578067639\">recently wrote<\/a>. \u201cThird-Worldism is a more serious threat to life, liberty, and property.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Ben Shapiro, one of conservatism\u2019s leading media voices, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=gQB7njp43fE\">declared in April that<\/a> \u201cthe future of the Democratic Party is radical third worldism.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">And Reihan Salam, the president of the influential Manhattan Institute (which employs Rufo), <a href=\"https:\/\/sapirjournal.org\/fixing-america\/2026\/islam-in-america\/\">has warned that<\/a> \u201cThird Worldism, left unchecked, won\u2019t remain on the radical fringe\u201d \u2014 citing New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani as the chief example of a third worldist in power.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">All of this may be news to Mamdani and other Democrats, who virtually never use the term to describe their own views. So what are Rubio, Rufo, and Shapiro talking about? And is there any truth in the various claims about rising third worldist influence?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">The answer is more complicated than it might seem.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Conservatives are using \u201cthird worldist\u201d a lot like the terms \u201cwoke\u201d and \u201ccritical race theory\u201d before it: as an ill-defined concept that serves as a clearinghouse for various right-wing grievances and can be used as a slur to discredit and demonize the left.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Yet at the same time, they\u2019ve actually put their fingers on something real. Among a very specific and visible sub-section of the socialist left, a set of views that can be reasonably termed \u201cthird worldist\u201d are rising in prominence. For progressives outside this camp, deciding what comes next will require engaging with the right-wing critique directly and not dismissing it as a smear.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p><h2 class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup\">What \u201cthird worldism\u201d means, on both the left and the right<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">The term \u201cthird world\u201d itself <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1080\/23801883.2023.2166558\">originated in a 1952 article by the French thinker Alfred Sauvy<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">The capitalist West was the \u201cfirst world,\u201d and the Communist Eastern bloc \u201cthe second.\u201d Most countries outside of North America and Europe were, at the time, aligned with neither bloc \u2014 making up the \u201cthird world.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">For this reason, the earliest ideology that fits the term \u201cthird worldism\u201d was not Marxist, but rather efforts like the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.globalsouthstudies.org\/keyword-essay\/belgrade-the-1961-non-aligned-conference\/\">Non-Aligned Movement<\/a> to build global solidarity between post-colonial states who were trying to avoid being dominated by the two competing world powers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">But Communist regimes in the Global South \u2014 most notably, China and Cuba \u2014 became inspirations for a distinctively Marxist spin on third worldism that emerged in the 1960s and \u201970s.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">This theory held that the locus of revolutionary activity had shifted to 1) armed revolutionaries of the Global South and 2) militant movements within the capitalist world led by oppressed minorities. Out with the Communist Party USA and the Soviet Union; in with the Black Panthers and the Viet Cong.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">This broad worldview had many ideological influences \u2014 ranging from Mao\u2019s Little Red Book to the French psychiatrist Frantz Fanon\u2019s <em>The Wretched of the Earth<\/em>. Some leftist writings, like the Weather Underground manifesto <em>Prairie Fire<\/em> or the well-known pamphlet <em>The Mythology of the White Proletariat<\/em>, are clear examples of what might be termed \u201cthird worldist\u201d thought.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--block-placement _13j8zv41 _13j8zv40 duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<div style=\"position:relative\">\n<div class=\"_10sa9omj\">\n<div class=\"\">\n<div style=\"background-image:none\" class=\"duet--media--content-warning _1wmfnm10\">\n<div class=\"duet--article--image-gallery-image _1hhpe710\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1.256049\" id=\"dngyOmltYWdlOjQ5NjU3Nw==\"><a class=\"_1hhpe711\" href=\"https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/gettyimages-515103262.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0,0,100,100\" data-pswp-height=\"2769\" data-pswp-width=\"3478\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"><img alt=\"A press conference at the Diplomatic Hotel held by a delegation of white American Revolutionaries who went to Cuba to meet representatives of the Provisional Revolutionary government of South Vietnam.\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ssnpw50\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-image:url(&quot;data:image\/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' %3E%3Cfilter id='b' color-interpolation-filters='sRGB'%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'\/%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values='1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1' result='s'\/%3E%3CfeFlood x='0' y='0' width='100%25' height='100%25'\/%3E%3CfeComposite operator='out' in='s'\/%3E%3CfeComposite in2='SourceGraphic'\/%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'\/%3E%3C\/filter%3E%3Cimage width='100%25' height='100%25' x='0' y='0' preserveAspectRatio='none' style='filter: url(%23b);' href='data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mN8+R8AAtcB6oaHtZcAAAAASUVORK5CYII='\/%3E%3C\/svg%3E&quot;)\" sizes=\"(max-width: 639px) 100vw, (max-width: 1023px) 50vw, 700px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/gettyimages-515103262.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=256 256w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/gettyimages-515103262.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=376 376w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/gettyimages-515103262.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=384 384w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/gettyimages-515103262.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=415 415w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/gettyimages-515103262.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=480 480w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/gettyimages-515103262.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=540 540w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/gettyimages-515103262.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=640 640w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/gettyimages-515103262.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=750 750w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/gettyimages-515103262.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=828 828w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/gettyimages-515103262.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=1080 1080w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/gettyimages-515103262.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=1200 1200w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/gettyimages-515103262.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=1440 1440w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/gettyimages-515103262.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=1920 1920w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/gettyimages-515103262.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2048 2048w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/gettyimages-515103262.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400 2400w\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/gettyimages-515103262.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"\/><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><figcaption class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup pn04iq2 _1dh7zmha\">A press conference at the Diplomatic Hotel held by a delegation of white American Revolutionaries who went to Cuba to meet representatives of the Provisional Revolutionary government of South Vietnam.<\/figcaption><cite class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup pn04iq2 _1dh7zmh5\">Bettmann\/Getty Images<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">But on the whole, this kind of third worldism is frustratingly tricky to pin down. It has no authoritative spokesperson, no text or movement that clarified its core principles in any detail. It is a label attached to ideas from the outside, as often by those ideas\u2019 enemies as by their allies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">\u201c\u2018Third worldist\u2019 is almost a pejorative [term] you would use on the left,\u201d said Bhaskar Sunkara, the president of The Nation magazine and author of <em>Blueprint: How Socialism Can Work in the Real World<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">The Trump administration and its allies are basically arguing that people like Sunkara are trying to trick you. Whatever the modern left\u2019s protestations, their actual views are still basically pretty similar to those of Cold War American radicals who apologized for the Khmer Rouge. Only in this case, the most admired Third World militants are now jihadists rather than Communists.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">The most influential work in this vein comes from Zineb Riboua, a fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute think tank. She sees third worldism as a joint product of anti-American governments, including Cuba, and leftist intellectuals in American universities. Its recent prominence, in her view, is a function of October 7 and the Gaza war \u2014 which allowed third worldist logic to fuse \u201cseamlessly with the decolonial language\u201d that became popular during the woke era.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">\u201cIn this viewpoint, a terrorist organization like Hamas comes to be seen as the armed expression of a national liberation struggle,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hudson.org\/politics-government\/third-worldist-logic-zineb-riboua\">Riboua writes<\/a>. \u201cThe question ceases to be what Hamas actually did and becomes what Israel is presumed to represent. And because Israel is positioned as the forward post of American imperial power, defending Hamas becomes, almost automatically, a moral gesture directed against the United States itself.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">But Riboua does not stop with foreign policy. In her view, third worldism has become a kind of \u201cuniversal ideology\u201d that is \u201capplied to everything from university hiring and border policy to museum curation.\u201d When leftists talk about \u201cdecolonization,\u201d she argues, they are really talking about the planned demolition of America from the inside.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">\u201cThe ideology asks a country to accept that its power is a historical accident awaiting either correction with a sort of new Red Terror or annihilation,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zinebriboua.com\/p\/naming-the-threat-third-worldism?r=jdg8r&amp;utm_medium=ios&amp;triedRedirect=true\">she writes<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">This, for the right, represents the left\u2019s emerging \u201cpost-woke\u201d animating doctrine. While the 2020-era left was interested in policing conservative speech on social issues, it is now interested in acquiring political power and using it to tangibly transform America\u2019s policy and political institutions along Marxist and third worldist lines. It is \u201ca vicious, lowest-common-denominator leftism that imports anticolonial resentments to the metropole,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/UnderSecPD\/status\/2079190181043945802\">writes Sarah Rogers<\/a>, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">The effect, ultimately, will be to transform the American governing model into something that more closely resembles that of a \u201cthird world\u201d country: corrupt, lawless, violent, and chaotic. The language they use to warn of this can be unmistakably racialized.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">\u201cMamdani wants to plunder New York like the Somalis plundered Minnesota,\u201d Rufo writes. \u201cLegal or illegal, it\u2019s all piracy, looting, and expropriation. Pure third-worldism.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p><h2 class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup\">What the right gets wrong about third worldism \u2014 and what it gets right<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">By the time we get to \u201cZohran Mamdani is a pirate,\u201d it\u2019s clear that the analytic train has gone off the rails. Third worldism is no longer being used to define a specific and recognizable approach to geopolitics, but rather a pure insult with ugly racial insinuations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Indeed, while Mamdani is certainly a socialist with pro-Palestine politics \u2014 he announced this week he looked into arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but lacked legal authority \u2014 there is no evidence to suggest he is an anti-American Hamas admirer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">As mayor, his governance has focused primarily on quality of life and cost of living issues. And far from couching his arguments in the language of anti-American revolution, Mamdani\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nyc.gov\/mayors-office\/news\/2026\/07\/remarks-as-prepared--mayor-mamdani-delivers-address-marking-amer\">recent address on July 4<\/a> was a classically patriotic text, whose praise for American soldiers and meditations on our \u201cgrand experiment in self-governance\u201d sound far more like Lincoln than Fanon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--block-placement _13j8zv41 _13j8zv40 duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<div style=\"position:relative\">\n<div class=\"_10sa9omj\">\n<div class=\"\">\n<div style=\"background-image:none\" class=\"duet--media--content-warning _1wmfnm10\">\n<div class=\"duet--article--image-gallery-image _1hhpe710\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1.499813\" id=\"dngyOmltYWdlOjQ2NzQ1NA==\"><a class=\"_1hhpe711\" href=\"https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/11\/gettyimages-2244564751.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0,0,100,100\" data-pswp-height=\"2667\" data-pswp-width=\"4000\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"><img alt=\"Zohran Mamdani, then-New York City mayoral candidate, during an election night event at The Brooklyn Paramount Theater in Brooklyn, New York, on November 4, 2025.\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"fill\" class=\"_1ssnpw50\" style=\"position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-image:url(&quot;data:image\/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg' %3E%3Cfilter id='b' color-interpolation-filters='sRGB'%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'\/%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values='1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1' result='s'\/%3E%3CfeFlood x='0' y='0' width='100%25' height='100%25'\/%3E%3CfeComposite operator='out' in='s'\/%3E%3CfeComposite in2='SourceGraphic'\/%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'\/%3E%3C\/filter%3E%3Cimage width='100%25' height='100%25' x='0' y='0' preserveAspectRatio='none' style='filter: url(%23b);' href='data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mN8+R8AAtcB6oaHtZcAAAAASUVORK5CYII='\/%3E%3C\/svg%3E&quot;)\" sizes=\"(max-width: 639px) 100vw, (max-width: 1023px) 50vw, 700px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/11\/gettyimages-2244564751.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=256 256w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/11\/gettyimages-2244564751.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=376 376w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/11\/gettyimages-2244564751.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=384 384w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/11\/gettyimages-2244564751.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=415 415w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/11\/gettyimages-2244564751.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=480 480w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/11\/gettyimages-2244564751.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=540 540w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/11\/gettyimages-2244564751.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=640 640w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/11\/gettyimages-2244564751.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=750 750w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/11\/gettyimages-2244564751.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=828 828w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/11\/gettyimages-2244564751.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=1080 1080w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/11\/gettyimages-2244564751.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=1200 1200w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/11\/gettyimages-2244564751.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=1440 1440w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/11\/gettyimages-2244564751.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=1920 1920w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/11\/gettyimages-2244564751.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2048 2048w, https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/11\/gettyimages-2244564751.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400 2400w\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/11\/gettyimages-2244564751.jpg?quality=90&amp;strip=all&amp;crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&amp;w=2400\"\/><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><figcaption class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup pn04iq2 _1dh7zmha\">Zohran Mamdani, then-New York City mayoral candidate, during an election night event at The Brooklyn Paramount Theater in Brooklyn, New York, on November 4, 2025.<\/figcaption><cite class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup pn04iq2 _1dh7zmh5\">Adam Gray\/Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">The attempt to lump Mamdani into a scary, foreign-sounding category recalls nothing more than the efforts to rebrand other left-wing ideas \u2014 like \u201ccritical race theory\u201d \u2014 into millstones to hang around Democrats\u2019 necks. Rufo was the intellectual force behind the CRT panic, back in 2021, and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/realchrisrufo\/status\/1371540368714428416\">admitted at the time<\/a> that his intent was political warfare rather than rigorous analysis. By coming up with a catch-all term for problematic left-wing politics, they could apply it not only to the real \u201ccritical race theory\u201d \u2014 which were largely abstruse academic texts \u2014 but also ordinary Democratic policy or generic liberal ideas.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">\u201cWe have successfully frozen their brand \u2014 \u2018critical race theory\u2019 \u2014 into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThe goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think \u2018critical race theory.\u2019 We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Read in this light, the right-wing allegation that third worldism is supplanting woke is more confession than anything else. From McCarthyism to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.unpopularfront.news\/p\/little-red-scare-20\">the Reagan era<\/a> and on through Newt Gingrich warning of Barack Obama\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/newrepublic.com\/article\/77973\/dinesh-dsouza-british-kenyan-anti-colonial\">Kenyan, anti-colonial<\/a>\u201d worldview, the right has deployed fearmongering about foreign subversion as a central tactic to delegitimize its opponents and rally the base. The sweeping allegations about the entire Democratic Party being overtaken by third worldism represent a fusion of this old Red Scare blueprint with the new Rufo tactics of mimetic-conceptual warfare.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">\u201cThere\u2019s really nothing new here,\u201d said David Austin Walsh, a historian of the right at the University of Virginia. \u201cThird worldism is a term that\u2019s being utilized to describe the exact same thing as what was meant by \u2018the international Communist conspiracy\u2019 back in the 1950s and 1960s.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Yet Walsh, who is himself a DSA member, also acknowledges that there\u2019s a nugget of truth here. Much as the Communist Party USA <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/07\/03\/opinion\/communist-party-usa-soviet-union.html\">actually was a Soviet cut-out<\/a>, there are people and factions on the American left that actually fit the description of \u201cthird worldism\u201d advanced by Riboua and her fellow travelers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">The most obvious example is Hasan Piker, the streamer and provocateur who has become a lightning rod in debates over the Democratic Party\u2019s direction.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Piker has repeatedly expressed admiration for the Chinese Communist Party, despite its vicious authoritarian tendencies, and said he would vote for Hamas \u201c1,000 times\u201d over Israel. My colleague Eric Levitz <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/politics\/486091\/hasan-piker-democrats-israel-china\">described his worldview<\/a> as \u201ccampist,\u201d an old leftist term for someone who aligns themselves with any government that opposes the American-led bloc, and one that I think is a bit more precise than \u201cthird worldist.\u201d But Piker\u2019s fascination with anti-American militancy and terrorists \u2014 he once gave <a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/video\/viral-hot-houthi-pirate-from-tiktok-interviewed-by-hasan-piker-rising-reacts\/9340577\/\">a fawning interview to a Houthi fighter<\/a> on stream \u2014 suggests that third worldist is at least a reasonable descriptor.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Another example is Neville Roy Singham, a Chicago businessman who sold his consultancy for $785 million and has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to leftist causes around the world. Singham, who was known to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/08\/05\/world\/europe\/neville-roy-singham-china-propaganda.html\">monologue to his employees<\/a> about the virtues of Che Guevara, is at the center of what <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/08\/05\/world\/europe\/neville-roy-singham-china-propaganda.html\">the New York Times describes<\/a> as \u201ca lavishly funded influence campaign that defends China and pushes its propaganda.\u201d Though he funds American leftist organizations like Code Pink \u2014 in fact, his wife, Jodie Evans, is its cofounder \u2014 he currently resides in Shanghai.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">There is also a third worldist activist current. The International Caucus of the DSA, one of many sub-organizations within the leftist faction, has celebrated the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/international.dsausa.org\/cuba-solidarity\/2025-dsa-cuba-delegation\/\">achievements<\/a>\u201d of Cuba\u2019s authoritarian government and <a href=\"https:\/\/nathannewman.substack.com\/p\/the-sane-nyc-dsa-vs-the-crazy-national\">whitewashed Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine<\/a> (which, again, is more precisely campist than third worldist). Students for Justice in Palestine, the leading pro-Palestine campus activist group, <a href=\"https:\/\/nymag.com\/intelligencer\/article\/protests-chicago-democratic-national-convention-palestine-israel-settler-colonist.html\">praised the October 7 attacks<\/a> as \u201ca historic win for the Palestinian resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">And this tendency could be gaining its first representative in Congress. Darializa Avila Chevalier, a DSA candidate who recently unseated a multi-term House incumbent in a Democratic primary in New York, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2026\/06\/29\/politics\/darializa-avila-chevalier-communism-tweets\">has accused<\/a> Black and Latino men of \u201cfetishizing ugly colonizer women\u201d and retweeted a message praising Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il Sung, Che Guevara, and Fidel Castro. While her public statements are more limited than those of Piker or the DSA IC, there\u2019s at least reasonable grounds for believing that she\u2019s cut from the same cloth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p><h2 class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup\">The left\u2019s third worldist problem<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">So what to make of all this?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Right-wingers like Riboua are picking up on real trends in leftist ideology, ones that are reflected to some degree in its institutional infrastructure. And interestingly, the leftists I spoke with conceded that there were some things to worry about here. Arash Azizi, a socialist historian at Yale University, said that this \u201cnegative third worldism\u201d was a \u201cserious trend\u201d on the broader left. Sunkara was more skeptical of the term \u201cthird worldist, but he did express concerns with the DSA IC\u2019s tendency to forget \u201cfirst principles\u201d \u2014 by which he meant core commitments to democracy and anti-authoritarianism. He also critiqued pro-October 7 statements on the left as \u201cantiquated, ineffective, and morally questionable.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">At the same time, it is concomitantly clear that people on the right are overstating the significance of the problem.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Views that might accurately be called \u201cthird worldist\u201d are controversial <em>inside<\/em> the left and even within the DSA. And the left does not currently dominate the Democratic Party, despite a handful of primary victories this cycle. To say that third worldism has conquered the Democrats, or even that third worldism is the new \u201cwoke,\u201d is to get miles ahead of the evidence.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">Putting those two conclusions together yields a more precise diagnosis: that third worldist views are, by virtue of the DSA\u2019s electoral success, becoming a more prominent part of the broader left coalition even as its reach remains limited overall.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">While Mamdani cannot reasonably be described as a \u201cthird worldist,\u201d he operates in coalition with people who are. He <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=T7ThzwqHprA\">filmed chummy videos with Hasan Piker<\/a>; his endorsement rocketed Darializa Avila Chevalier to her primary victory. Like any political faction, the socialist left depends on alliances between sub-groups who have real and meaningful differences in worldview and approach.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">When talking about this, Sunkara tried to disassociate the broader left from the third worldist subcurrent by analogy.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">\u201cIt would almost be like me saying \u2018the Republican Party is programmatically committed to white nationalism\u2019 as opposed to saying \u2018the Republican Party sure does have some vocal white nationalists around,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cThe difference is key.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"duet--article--article-body-component\">\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _10sa9omi itxwjq1 itxwjq0 pn04iq1\">But of course, the Republican Party\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/politics\/475199\/ice-shooting-renee-good-trump-white-nationalist-memes-dhs-dol\">relationship with white nationalists<\/a> <em>has<\/em> been a significant political problem \u2014 and a moral one. However Democrats ultimately decide to handle these ideas floating around progressive circles, the process starts with acknowledging that they\u2019re real.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The American right has a new enemy. In a new report on Cuba, the State Department argued that Havana has become \u201cthe beating heart of a new and distinct kind of Marxism\u201d \u2014 which the State Department calls \u201cThird Worldism.\u201d Cuba is spreading this doctrine, per Secretary of State of Marco Rubio, with the explicit&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/platform.vox.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/gettyimages-802512056.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C16.27372884078%2C100%2C67.45254231844&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-political-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}