There have always been communists, fascists, conspiracy theorists, and kooks on the fringes of American politics. Social media has exposed the general public to these extreme views over the last two decades in a way that was unprecedented before the internet, but in 2025, the crazies on both sides took a massive step out of the basement and into the mainstream.

The Left never recovered from former President Barack Obama’s heel-turn toward a politics centered on racial grievances or from the mainstreaming of Marxist economics brought about by Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020. After Israel went to war against Hamas following Oct. 7, large swaths of the Left became obsessed with the conflict.

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