Much has been made over the past several days about a jarring line uttered by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani in his inaugural address last week. “We will,” the city’s first “Democratic Socialist” mayor promised/threatened, “replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”
Understandably—and rightly—most of the criticism of this line (and its speaker) has centered on its mortifying and inarguable whitewashing of the term “collectivism.” Collectivism—at least as it has been used for the last 150 years—refers specifically to the political manifestations of mass ideologies, mostly Marxist in origin, but including fascism and Nazism as well. Hence, its historical record is one of repeated failure and continual mass murder. In just six decades—from 1917 to 1977—collectivism in its various forms produced the deaths of upwards of a quarter of a billion civilian men, women, and children, from Russia to Germany to Cambodia. Add in the casualties of various wars, and the total is even larger and more abominable.
Read Full Article: https://amgreatness.com/2026/01/05/rugged-individualism-vs-collectivism-vs-community-the-truth-about-the-right/
