For decades, Americans treated communism like a dead ideology — something defeated during the Cold War and buried beneath the rubble of the Berlin Wall. Perhaps that’s why it has taken so long to recognize its steady advance within our own country. Too many assumed no one could convince people living in the freest nation on earth that their freedom was a curse rather than a blessing.

But Americans were wrong to keep their guard down for so long. Communist ideas have been spreading quietly across American institutions, old ideas repackaged into new language. Now we have to confront the fire.

Along with education, communist ideas pour into American society through entertainment and the news media. To make this ideology more palatable to a society built on individualism and liberty, activists talk about “equity,” “liberation,” “decolonization,” and dismantling oppressive systems instead of openly demanding communism.

Despite being softened in the language of empathy, these ideas remain fundamentally unchanged. They carry the same cynical worldview: Society is divided between oppressors and victims, capitalism is exploitation, traditional institutions are corrupt, and America’s history is something to be ashamed of rather than understood in full. Because this transformation happened gradually, many Americans ignored it. Each change seemed too small to justify alarm.

Yet after decades of that slow drip, we are watching a generation openly embrace socialism, excuse political violence, and treat the destruction of American institutions as a form of justice. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently delivered a speech on the matter and warned us that we can no longer pretend this is harmless — or that the threat disappeared with the Soviet Union.

(The New York Post published an extended excerpt from Rubio’s speech.)

Speaking to representatives from more than 60 countries at the State Department’s Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism, Rubio identified what he called a major “blind spot” in Western counterterrorism policy: the refusal to treat far-left political violence as seriously as violence coming from other ideological movements.

Rubio explained the double standard clearly. If a neo-Nazi plants a bomb, nearly everyone recognizes it as a hateful act of terrorism. But when a Marxist revolutionary plants one, it is often excused as an extreme act committed in the name of a noble cause.

The violence may be publicly condemned — often more for appearances than out of sincere outrage — but the ideology behind it remains protected.

That double standard has allowed radical movements to organize and escalate while anyone warning about them is dismissed as paranoid. As Rubio put it, even the idea that far-left terrorism could be a serious threat is frequently treated as a “right-wing fever dream.”

Rubio pointed to bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, attacks on police officers and the sabotage of businesses, railways and energy infrastructure. He also reminded his audience that none of this is new. Far-left organizations such as the Tupamaros, Montoneros, FARC, ELN and Peru’s Maoist Shining Path spent decades using terror to advance revolutionary causes.

What has changed is their reach. A radical organization can now raise money in one country, communicate through servers in another, and carry out an attack thousands of miles away. Rubio’s warning is that the threat has become international, while Western governments have remained divided and reluctant to acknowledge it.

But the strongest part of Rubio’s remarks went beyond political terrorism. He challenged the familiar claim that communism “sounds good in theory” but fails in practice.

Rubio argued that communism does not sound good in theory. The world it imagines is “small, flat, and gray,” he said. “The world it envisions is a world without courage, a world without creativity or ambition, a world without heroes or glory or great causes to strive towards, without — a world without miracles, without myths, without men who rise above the rest to do incredible and extraordinary things. And the world communism envisions is a world without God.”

He went on, “It is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality and justice and liberation, an overwhelming need to tear down what greater men have built, to wreck what is beautiful and what is right on behalf of people who are only filled with ugliness and have nothing else to offer the world.”

Rubio brought a rare and much-needed level of moral clarity to the subject. He went beyond condemning communism. He explained why it rejects qualities that allow civilization to flourish: faith, beauty, excellence, invention, courage, and individual ambition.

The secretary said these movements want to impose their ugliness on everyone else. But in many cases, someone first imposed that ugliness on them.

The young Americans marching against capitalism and excusing political violence were not born believing those things. They could have become patriotic defenders of liberty. But many were taught from a young age to see society through the lens of oppressors versus oppressed, and to despise the liberty with which they have been blessed. Early indoctrination turned them into loyal activists for those seeking to dismantle America from within, one institution at a time.

That is why controlling education and information has always been vital to communist movements. If you want to transform a free country, you first have to change how its children understand freedom. Teach them that freedom is selfishness, prosperity is exploitation, tradition is oppression, and achievement is privilege. Eventually, they may come to believe that tearing everything down is not destructive at all — it is justice, and needs to be done by any means necessary.

This does not mean every teacher, journalist or moderate American is part of some organized communist operation. It means ideas have consequences. When Marxist assumptions are repeated for years through classrooms, media, entertainment and major cultural institutions, they will eventually shape how people see their country.

Communist regimes have used these tactics before. Soviet governments targeted schools, churches, youth organizations and media. During China’s Cultural Revolution, young Red Guards were encouraged to attack teachers, intellectuals, religious traditions and the “Four Olds.”

Across Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe, communist leaders suppressed independent groups and separated young people from the beliefs and traditions of previous generations. Historical State Department records described this as a “struggle for the allegiance of youth.”

Hijacking education and information results in cultural amnesia. People forget what liberty required, what their civilization accomplished, and what earlier generations sacrificed to preserve it. Once that knowledge is gone, freedom can be portrayed as oppression and government control can be sold as liberation.

Rubio didn’t warn us about an old ideology. He revealed what is happening around us now. Political disagreement must always remain protected, and revolutionary violence and intimidation cannot be excused because the people committing it frame it as “compassion.”

The time to call it out is now. Call it what it is. Defend what is good, beautiful, and worth preserving. Do not allow the fear of being criticized, labeled, or ostracized to keep you silent.

If we wait long enough, speaking up may no longer be an option.