A recent study by the Buckley Institute at Yale University found college students across the United States are equally divided on whether they want to live in a socialist or capitalistic society.
Humanities and education majors were the most likely of their peers to favor socialism, advocate for government-run grocery stores and say political comments they disagree with can be harmful to their mental health.
Almost half of college students believe it’s sometimes appropriate to shout down or disrupt a campus speaker they disagree with. Split down ideological lines, 60% of liberal college students agreed it was OK, while 35% of conservatives agreed.
About 40% of students agreed that physical violence can be justified to prevent someone from using “hate speech” or “racially charged” comments.
“It is clear that despite support for free speech in theory, America’s undergraduates don’t support it in practice,” said Lauren Noble, Buckley Institute founder and executive director, according to a press release. “America’s college students support shout downs and violence to stop offensive speech at an alarming rate, particularly worrying in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. And they have a concerning predilection for the Cuban and Soviet economies. American higher education is in trouble.”
Why do young people think their peers like socialism?
Over a third of students said political comments they disagree with can be “harmful to their mental health.” Broken down, 48% of progressive students, 27% of conservative students and 53% of education majors agreed.
Caleigh Kerr, a senior studying family life at Brigham Young University, told the Deseret News she sees that statistic as a “sad reality.”
Kerr referenced recent political and religious violence. “I think people feel unheard and unseen, and ideas are harder to get across because people don’t feel safe, whether that’s social safety, mental safety or physical safety,” she said.
About a quarter of university students surveyed said socialist countries like Cuba and the Soviet Union offer a better economic model than capitalist countries like the United States.
“In my very ignorant understanding of both of them, I feel like people in general want to help other people, and socialism feels like it’s giving help to people in need,” she said.
On the other hand, Kerr referenced socialist governments that have turned totalitarian, and also referenced Communist China. “Thirty million people died in a few years from starvation, even though he (Mao) said he was feeding them and the government was providing. That system also feels broken, just based on history. But then capitalism also seems broken. And so it’s like, where is the sweet spot?”
Compassion and a functioning economy
Jaxon Thurman, a BYU student and vice president of a Turning Point USA off-campus chapter, told the Deseret News that young people advocating for government-run grocery stores is evidence that young people are trying to address hard societal issues.
“It’s trying to answer a question that people are going hungry and that there’s a problem with it,” he said. “There are children, and there are families that need food.”
Thurman outlined two possible solutions: people willingly help the poor under a capitalistic society, or the government uses taxpayer money to help pay for the poor’s food.
“But I think people don’t really understand the philosophy of capitalism,” he continued. “In capitalism, all your interactions with others are voluntary. With socialism, it’s a bit extreme, and all your interactions with men are restricted and controlled and forced.”
Thurman referenced the slain Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s take on the issue. Kirk believed the focus should be put on individuals donating to churches and communities that offer help to the less fortunate rather than building up big government.
The idea of socialism vs its implementation
Christian Andersen, a BYU student and TPUSA’s event coordinator, told the Deseret News he thinks it’s important for people to have real world interactions with people who have lived in socialist societies.
During his mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Andersen met several Cuban and Venezuelan emigrants who shared horror stories with him about growing up under socialist governments.
“Venezuela and Cuba are some of the most beautiful places on Earth. They’re gorgeous. Like, there’s no reason to leave except for if you’re being oppressed,” he said.
Andersen said misinformation is the biggest reason his classmates support socialism. “Go talk to Cubans. Talk to Venezuelans,” he said. “And ask them, ‘How was your experience with socialism? I think we should do it here.’ And they’re going to tell you right away, ‘Don’t do it. It is the worst thing you could do.’”
Are words violence?
Left-leaning students are more likely to agree that physical violence can be justified to prevent a person from using “hate speech.”
Dr. Rob Jenkins, an associate professor of English at Georgia State University/Perimeter College and a higher education fellow at Campus Reform, said the origin of the belief that words are violence is found in Marxist critical theory.
“Deconstructionism basically says that words don’t have any inherent meaning. We interpret them. We come up with the meaning for them. It’s another way of saying there really isn’t any such thing as absolute truth; there’s only narrative,” Jenkins said.
In this kind of a world view, words have “incredible power,” because they have the ability to “create an alternate universe.”
In a world constructed just by words, “words are everything,” Jenkins said. “And if you understand that, it’s not that much of a stretch to say, ‘Well, hurtful words are therefore the equivalent of physical harm.’”
Jenkins added that he was “dismayed” when Attorney General Pam Bondi denounced hate speech following Kirk’s assassination. “Under the American system of law, there’s no such thing as hate speech,” he said.
Why are humanities majors particularly keen on socialism?
Dr. Jason Kerr, an English professor at Brigham Young University, told the Deseret News that humanities majors are “more attuned to see the limitations of capitalism and want to think about some alternative structure” than other students.
“I think it’s healthy for any economic system to have structures within it where people question it and challenge what they see as its limitations and weaknesses,” he said.
Jenkins added that humanities departments across the U.S. dedicate much time teaching students the positives of socialism and Marxism.
But while the European ideals of Marxism have been present in schools and universities for well over a century, “most Americans are free marketers at heart,” Jenkins said. “If you drill down with these kids who say, ‘Oh, yeah, we love socialism,’ you can ask them what they want to do with their lives.”
They respond, “Oh, you know, I want to start a company on the internet and become a billionaire,” Jenkins said, adding, “OK, that’s, you know, that’s capitalism, dude.”
The algorithm issue
After Kirk’s assassination on Utah Valley University campus, Andersen said he compared his social media feed with his friends’. “They were showing completely different things,” he said. His own feed showed posts commemorating Kirk, and other feeds on the same application showed him as “some racist that deserved to get shot.”
For people stuck chronically in their own social media echo chambers, encountering genuine representations of different points of views can be rare.
Nathan Neuhaus, a freshman at BYU and TPUSA outreach coordinator, said he sees a correlation with the rise of social media and a rise of violence.
“We have to talk about our (societal) problems,” Neuhaus said. “We have to hit it head on and be like, what is it here that is messing with people?”
Neuhaus encouraged students and young people to engage in meaningful conversation, offline.
Referencing the recent death of President Russell M. Nelson, the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Neuhaus said, “One of the things he said before he died was for us to each become peacemakers.”
Engaging in dialogue with people you disagree with is “an opportunity to become a peacemaker, to bring people together, to discuss our problems and to find solutions,” he said.
“And at the end of the day, whether we’re Republicans or Democrats, we’re all Americans, and more importantly, we’re all children of God,” Neuhaus said.