The Red Diaper Baby Who Became Mayor of Los Angeles

From Cuban sugarcane fields to Los Angeles City Hall, the journey of a modern American Marxist

For more than seventy years, California has served as the ideological beachhead for Marxist and global collectivist movements within the United States. It was no coincidence that the United Nations was founded in San Francisco in 1945, a city that would become both the symbolic and strategic gateway for revolutionary and internationalist ideas entering American culture and governance. From the radical student uprisings of the 1960s to the quiet institutional capture of California’s courts, schools, labor unions, and city halls, the state has long been a proving ground for ideas that prioritize centralized authority over individual liberty. Figures like Tom Hayden, Angela Davis, Ron Dellums, Dolores Huerta, Barbara Lee, and more recently Gavin Newsom, Kevin de León, Maria Elena Durazo, and Alex Lee have all played their roles in shaping California into a laboratory of post-constitutional governance. Karen Bass is not the first ideological radical to rise in this environment, but she may be the most refined. With a calm tone, institutional polish, and decades of revolutionary training, she represents a new breed of American political actor: one who doesn’t shout slogans from the barricades, but administers ideological transformation from within. Her quiet nature may be disarming, but beneath it lies a worldview forged in Marxist doctrine, tested in revolutionary activism, and now positioned at the highest levels of civic power in the second largest city in the United States. She is, in short, a quiet revolutionary no less committed, and arguably far more effective.

Karen Bass has been a revolutionary communist during her adult life. Joe Biden considered making her his Vice Presidential running mate in 2020.

Karen Bass’s ideological loyalty and revolutionary discipline were not just noticed, they were almost elevated to the highest level of national executive power. In 2020, she was briefly floated as a serious contender to be Joe Biden’s running mate. The idea of a Cuban-trained, Marxist-aligned political figure being a heartbeat away from the presidency shocked some observers, but for those familiar with the system’s priorities, it made perfect sense. However, Bass’s radical affiliations, her praise for Fidel Castro, her decades-long entrenchment in revolutionary networks, and her eulogy for a Communist Party USA official, may have made her too risky for the optics of a national ticket. But risk is relative to function. And it’s far more likely the system understood that Bass’s true value would be as mayor of Los Angeles, a media capital, sanctuary city, and ideological firewall. Should a populist president return to power, Bass would not just be a city official. She would be a strategic counterforce, positioned to resist federal authority, reinforce globalist coalitions, and operationalize subversion from within one of America’s most influential urban strongholds.

1970–1983, Ideological Foundations and Revolutionary Training

Karen Bass was born on October 3, 1953, in Los Angeles, California. Her formative years were shaped by exposure to far-left ideology and revolutionary activism in one of the most politically charged cities in America. She attended Alexander Hamilton High School, where she was immersed in what she later described as a political environment shaped by Communist Party members and their children. In a 2008 interview cited in the book Black Los Angeles: American Dreams and Racial Realities, Bass recalled: “A lot of the Jewish parents were activists and some of them were in the Communist Party. So I grew up with a lot of red diaper babies”, a term for children of American communists active during the Cold War period[1].

It [the white Left ] played a huge role for me. In Hamilton [High School] for example, a lot of the Jewish parents were activists and some of them were in the Communist Party. And so I grew up with a lot of red diaper babies. And there were some African American parents who were in the Communist Party. There were teachers who were in the Communist Party. So, white radicals were very influential. And at the same time you have the Panthers and the whole black movement. - Karen Bass

While still in her teens, Bass participated in civil rights and antiwar campaigns, including volunteering for Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign[2]. But it was in 1973, at the age of 19, that she embarked on a much more consequential path. That year, Bass joined the Venceremos Brigade, a communist-aligned youth organization created jointly by the Cuban government and members of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The purpose of the Brigade was not only agricultural labor but also Marxist indoctrination and revolutionary training. Members were selected and vetted by Cuban intelligence, and entry required ideological alignment with Marxist-Leninist doctrine. An undercover U.S. deputy testified before Congress in 1972 that applicants had to undergo multi-week indoctrination, complete detailed paperwork, and demonstrate political reliability to be accepted[3].

Bass was not merely a participant. A 1973 LAPD intelligence document later described her as a “leader” in the Southern California wing of the Brigade, which was accused of training American recruits in terrorist tactics under the guise of sugarcane harvesting[4]. According to Tablet Magazine, Bass made at least eight trips to Cuba in the 1970s and remained actively involved in Venceremos organizing throughout the decade[5]. During these visits, she observed and praised Fidel Castro, even as the Cuban regime suppressed dissidents and exported Marxist revolutions abroad. Her affinity for Cuba and its ideology was not a youthful indiscretion, it would endure for decades.

Bass’s revolutionary involvement was not limited to foreign travel. Domestically, she became engaged in the Campaign Against Police Abuse, a Los Angeles-based organization that accused law enforcement of systemic brutality. Bass claimed that LAPD officers had broken into her home and vandalized her car, a story consistent with the revolutionary narrative that American police were instruments of state terror[6]. Her activism during this period increasingly aligned with the rhetoric and tactics of the Black Panther Party, though she has stopped short of formally claiming membership.

By the early 1980s, Bass’s ideological orientation had deepened. She became affiliated with Line of March, a hardline Maoist organization that had splintered from the Communist Party USA. Founded in Oakland, Line of March emphasized “rectification”, a term borrowed from Mao Zedong referring to the reeducation and ideological purification of political cadres[7]. Members practiced intensive study of Marxist texts and carried out internal purges of deviationist thought. Historian and former Marxist David Horowitz has explained that “rectification” was akin to ideological brainwashing, reinforcing doctrinal purity through collective reinforcement and public critique[8].

The LAPD’s Public Disorder and Intelligence Division began surveillance of Bass and her network in the early 1980s, noting her ties to known subversive groups. A 1983 exposé in the Los Angeles Times revealed that Bass was one of the activists monitored for revolutionary affiliations, foreign contacts, and potential threats to public order[9].

This phase of Bass’s life reveals a consistent and intentional pattern: not a fleeting flirtation with activism, but a sustained engagement with foreign-sponsored revolutionary training, domestic militant organizing, and Marxist ideological realignment. It set the template for the rest of her career, not as a reformer, but as a tactician in a decades-long war against the American system, fought through institutions rather than barricades.

1984–2003, Coalition Building and Institutional Subversion

By the mid-1980s, Karen Bass had shifted her revolutionary strategy from direct confrontation to what Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci termed the "war of position", a method of gaining control not by open rebellion, but by slowly infiltrating institutions and reshaping society from within. No longer functioning solely as a street-level activist, Bass began embedding herself in academia, public health programs, and local governance. This strategic pivot would lay the groundwork for her future ascent to political office.

After earning a Bachelor of Science in Health Science from California State University, Dominguez Hills in 1990, and completing a Physician Assistant program at the Keck School of Medicine at USC, Bass worked in emergency medicine and health education throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. But while her public resume suggested a conventional career in health services, she was quietly building an organizational platform grounded in neo-Marxist ideology[10].

In 1990, Bass founded the Community Coalition for Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment in South Los Angeles. Though officially described as a nonprofit aiming to reduce drug addiction and improve public health outcomes, the Community Coalition was designed to shift the narrative surrounding drug abuse away from criminality and toward economic and racial justice. This aligned with liberationist theories that viewed law enforcement and punitive justice as instruments of capitalist oppression rather than public safety tools[11]. As Bass would later put it, the organization sought to “shift the policy agenda away from law enforcement toward a public health and economic response”[12].

The political character of the Community Coalition became even clearer during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, which followed the acquittal of four LAPD officers in the Rodney King beating. Rather than condemning the looting and arson, Bass framed the violence as a form of justice. She later told the Los Angeles Times that prior to the uprising, activists had been discussing ways to reduce the number of liquor stores in South Central, and then, as if by divine intervention, “a large chunk of the stores we wanted to close were burned to the ground”[13]. She acknowledged, “That’s not the way we wanted it to happen, but the rioting accomplished in a few days what we have spent decades working to achieve”[14].

This candid admission aligns precisely with the Marxist principle of “heightening the contradictions”, a tactic in which revolutionary actors allow or even welcome societal breakdown to justify radical transformation. In a 1992 op-ed published by the Los Angeles Times, Bass added that rebuilding those businesses would be a tragedy, stating: “It would be a tragedy, however, to rebuild and replace the very structures that help fuel the rage in South Los Angeles”[15]. Her ideological position was clear: the businesses were not merely physical structures but symbols of economic oppression that needed to be eliminated.

Throughout the 1990s, Bass leveraged the credibility of the Community Coalition to expand her influence among L.A.’s institutional elite. She joined the Los Angeles School Board, where she pushed for anti-policing educational frameworks and racially focused curricula, while opposing school choice programs that offered alternatives to failing public schools[16]. She also became a board member of the Progressive Los Angeles Network, an entity guided heavily by the Democratic Socialists of America and other far-left policy groups[17].

Bass’s alliances weren’t confined to domestic actors. In 1995, she helped organize a memorial service for Joe Slovo, the late leader of the South African Communist Party and a lifelong Stalinist who supported the USSR’s authoritarian policies during the Cold War[18]. Her participation in the memorial service for a man who openly admired Joseph Stalin and advocated Marxist-Leninist revolution further cemented her ideological consistency across decades and continents.

In 1993, Bass was also a featured speaker at the West Coast Socialist Scholars Conference, a gathering of revolutionary academics, organizers, and strategists hosted at UCLA. These conferences provided a platform for leftist intellectuals, Maoists, Trotskyists, and eco-socialists,to refine revolutionary praxis in the post-Cold War world[19].

All of this activity was consistent with the Gramscian strategy of “passive revolution”, a slow, deliberate transformation of civil institutions using bureaucratic power, moral rhetoric, and mass mobilization as tools of subversion. While outwardly operating within the bounds of law and order, Bass had constructed a formidable ideological apparatus, one that was incubating not only a new political class, but a new political reality rooted in Marxist cultural warfare.

By the early 2000s, Bass had achieved what few open communists ever could: she had made the revolution boring, not by softening its goals, but by changing its packaging. With a network of nonprofit surrogates, school board positions, and city-level alliances, she had become what Soviet strategists would have called a "legal revolutionary": a cadre trained in subversion, executing her mission entirely from within the system.

2004–2010, Legislative Power and the Soft Authoritarian Turn

Assemblywoman Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, second from right, being sworn in by her predecessor, Assemblyman Fabian Nunez, of Los Angeles, left, as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger applauds during ceremonies at the Capitol in Sacramento. Second from left is Bass' stepdaughter who held the bible used in the swearing in.

In 2004, after nearly two decades of operating in Los Angeles’s activist and nonprofit spheres, Karen Bass formally transitioned into public office by winning election to the California State Assembly, representing the 47th District. Her entrance into state government was not a departure from her radical past, but rather a strategic expansion of it. Armed with decades of ideological training, international Marxist connections, and a deeply loyal organizing base, Bass entered Sacramento with the goal of translating movement activism into codified law.

Once in office, Bass quickly moved up the ranks. She served as Majority Whip from 2005 to 2006 and Majority Floor Leader from 2007 to 2008. In 2008, she was elevated to Speaker of the California State Assembly, becoming the first Black woman in U.S. history to hold that title in any state legislature[20]. Her legislative career was celebrated by mainstream outlets and the political establishment as a triumph of diversity and representation. But beneath the surface, her ascent represented something far more ideologically significant: the institutionalization of radical activism through the levers of state power.

Bass’s legislative record during this time reflected the same ideological instincts that had guided her work with the Venceremos Brigade and the Community Coalition. She pushed for policies that undermined local autonomy in favor of centralized bureaucratic control, supported expansive welfare measures without reciprocal work requirements, and aligned herself with education policies hostile to school choice and charter alternatives[21].

But perhaps the most illuminating insight into Bass’s political ethic came from a financial arrangement that raised serious ethical concerns. Between 2008 and 2010, as Speaker, Bass’s State Assembly campaign committees paid nearly $97,000 to her nonprofit organization, the Community Coalition. In 2010, shortly before she left the Assembly, the Community Coalition then paid Bass $70,500 in consulting fees, including $26,500 directly to her and another $44,000 through a subcontract with a nonprofit consultancy group she had ties to[22]. According to the Los Angeles Times, these funds were paid in exchange for Bass’s assistance with research, fundraising strategy, and the production of a video commemorating the organization’s 20th anniversary[23].

Ethics experts raised red flags. Kirk O. Hanson, senior fellow at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, stated plainly: “It’s not a good idea to receive substantial income from organizations that are supported by contributions from your campaign fund… It creates an appearance of a conflict of interest, that you have converted campaign funds into personal income”[24]. While not formally prosecuted, the episode revealed Bass’s comfort with the blurring of public, private, and ideological capital, a hallmark of Gramscian strategy, in which revolutionary figures use the shell of legitimate governance to nourish ideological networks.

In 2010, Bass also attended and spoke at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Church of Scientology in South Los Angeles. Her comments were effusive: “This day and this new Church of Scientology is an exciting moment… because your creed is a universal creed… a remarkable credit to your church”[25]. Scientology, long criticized for its authoritarian internal controls and cultic practices, was widely viewed, even by secular leftists, as a dangerous and manipulative organization. Bass’s praise for the Church was not based on spiritual alignment, but ideological affinity, both groups advanced programs of behavioral control, group conformity, and mass mobilization cloaked in social reform.

These activities, financial maneuvering within activist nonprofits, public legitimization of authoritarian cults, and the pursuit of equity-labeled centralization, were not deviations from Bass’s revolutionary roots. They were the evolutionary next step in a strategy long in motion: leveraging democratic institutions to forward revolutionary aims without triggering political resistance.

When Bass announced her candidacy for U.S. Congress in 2010, she was no longer simply a legislator. She was a seasoned ideological operator with a résumé that included Maoist cadres, Cuban intelligence-affiliated travel, and formal ties to groups like the Democratic Socialists of America. Her rise to state-level power had shown that radicals no longer needed to shout in the streets, they could now govern, legislate, and redirect the state itself toward revolutionary ends.

2011–2020, Washington, Cuba, and the Progressive Internationale

Karen Bass’s election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010 marked her ascension to national political prominence. Representing California’s 33rd District (later redrawn as the 37th), Bass entered Congress not as a novice lawmaker, but as a veteran ideologue with decades of revolutionary experience behind her. Her move to Washington gave her access to foreign policy, national security, and federal appropriations, all platforms from which to extend the influence she had cultivated in Los Angeles’s radical political underworld.

Bass quickly joined the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, both of which have long-standing ties to globalist, socialist, and Marxist-aligned advocacy networks. These groups routinely promote policies that weaken national borders, expand federal surveillance of domestic dissenters under the guise of “equity,” and redirect American resources toward global redistributive efforts[26].

True to form, Bass resumed her engagement with Cuba, a country that had been central to her political formation. In 2011, she took part in a congressional delegation to Havana, accompanied by Democrat strategist Donna Brazile, former Rep. Jane Harman, and Sarah Stephens of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, which also funded Bass’s travel[27]. In 2014, she returned to Cuba with a group sponsored by Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba. Then in 2016, she joined President Barack Obama on his historic trip to the island, further signaling her long-standing alignment with the Cuban regime[28].

Following the death of Fidel Castro in November 2016, Bass sparked national controversy by referring to the Cuban dictator as “Comandante en Jefe” (Commander-in-Chief). In a public statement, she described his death as “a great loss to the people of Cuba”, language that outraged Cuban-American communities and anti-communist observers[29]. When pressed about the comments during an appearance on Meet the Press, Bass offered a tepid apology, stating, “Wouldn’t do that again”, while insisting the title was meant as a gesture of respect to Cubans rather than endorsement of Castro’s dictatorship[30]. Nevertheless, the remark underscored her deeply rooted admiration for the Cuban revolution and its architects.

Perhaps even more revealing was her January 2017 floor speech in the U.S. House, in which she eulogized O'neil Cannon, a senior member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) who had served as its education director in Southern California and was part of the party’s national leadership. Bass praised Cannon as her “friend and mentor”, crediting him with having “supported [her] own work as a community organizer early in [her] life” and saluting his “century of fighting to make the world a better place”[31]. This public tribute to a high-ranking CPUSA figure, from the floor of Congress, was not just unprecedented. It was a watershed moment revealing how normalized Marxist ties had become in the modern Democratic Party.

In addition to her well-documented foreign policy positions and revolutionary sympathies, one of the most strategically important, but widely overlooked, elements of Karen Bass’s congressional career was her involvement with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). While not always publicly described as a formal board position, Bass served in a high-level leadership advisory capacity connected to NED’s domestic partnership ecosystem. She interfaced with its civil society steering operations and appeared in international “democracy-building” initiatives under its umbrella, placing her squarely within a transnational apparatus that operates at the intersection of the U.S. State Department, USAID, and the CIA[57].

Founded in 1983 during the Reagan administration, the NED was created to do overtly, under the banner of “promoting democracy”, what the CIA had previously done covertly: engineer political outcomes, fund opposition movements, and reshape governments that resisted alignment with globalist interests. It has funded operations in over 100 countries and is widely known for its involvement in color revolutions, soft coups, and electoral interventions in places like Ukraine, Venezuela, Hong Kong, Belarus, and Tunisia[58]. Critics and whistleblowers have long described NED as a plausible-deniability front for U.S. intelligence and foreign policy operations,its tool of choice being civil society, weaponized through NGOs, academia, and media networks.

At first glance, Bass’s deep ties to Marxist regimes like Cuba and her long-standing revolutionary worldview might appear incompatible with an institution like the NED. But this contradiction disappears when one understands how NED truly functions: it does not promote constitutional democracy or American sovereignty. It promotes ideological realignment, and it often enlists radical activists, nonprofit strategists, and post-national operatives to carry out that mission both abroad and at home.

Karen Bass, with her fusion of militant discipline, polished legitimacy, and strategic adaptability, was a perfect tool for that purpose.

Her association with NED is not incidental, it is a direct through-line to her placement as mayor of Los Angeles. The NED is not limited to foreign operations; it also funds U.S.-based civil society organizations, many of which operate under the same euphemisms,“equity,” “inclusion,” “civic participation”, that Bass championed throughout her career. These groups were instrumental in shaping Los Angeles’s activist landscape and, by extension, paving Bass’s path to executive power.

To overlook Bass’s NED connection is to miss the mechanism behind her rise. She was not simply elected, she was positioned, prepared, and backed by the same elite machinery that destabilizes sovereign governments abroad. In Bass, the NED did not merely find an ally. They found an instrument, for executing that same model inside America’s borders.

When someone spends decades training with revolutionaries, embedding in soft power institutions, and rises to executive power at a flashpoint moment,

you don’t need to see the match in her hand to know why the fire started.

Bass’s pattern of praising extremist organizations extended to Scientology as well. In 2010, she again participated in a ribbon-cutting for a South L.A. Scientology center, declaring: “The Church of Scientology I know has made a difference… because your creed is a universal creed that speaks to all people everywhere”. She read favorably from L. Ron Hubbard’s “Creed of the Church of Scientology,” and later submitted written praise to another branch in South Los Angeles for its “humanitarian initiatives and social betterment programs”[33].

On the policy front, Bass’s congressional voting record was staunchly leftist. She consistently voted against welfare work requirements, against school voucher programs like the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship, and against limits on EPA regulatory authority. She also supported the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, and in protest of that agreement’s critics, boycotted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2015 address to Congress, framing his objections to the deal as political theater[34].

Notably, she also implied that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was not an authentic Black voice. Following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016, Bass said that the next appointee should be African American, stating: “We don’t really need to go into Clarence Thomas’ background… but to have an African-American voice that has definitely not been there since Thurgood Marshall would really be an incredible contribution to our country”[35].

The 2010s also saw her deepen her ties to internationalist civil society groups, working with transnational NGOs and pro-socialist advocacy organizations. Her name became frequently listed in Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)–adjacent publications, and she received endorsements from labor unions and radical justice organizations that traced their origins to New Left and Black Liberation movements[36].

This period in Bass’s career cemented the throughline: from her Venceremos training in Cuba, to Maoist organizing in the 1980s, to nonprofit subversion in the 1990s, and finally to national office, Karen Bass was never transformed by public service. She transformed public service into a vehicle for revolution.

2021–2025, Mayor of Los Angeles: Revolution Comes Home

Karen Bass announced her candidacy for mayor of Los Angeles in September 2021, stating that homelessness was a “public health, safety, and economic crisis… evolved into a humanitarian emergency” and promising to bring together “coalitions” to solve it[37]. On the surface, her message echoed the traditional language of liberal reform. In reality, her campaign was the culmination of a lifelong ideological journey, a decades-long strategy to gain executive power not to reform the city, but to reengineer it under the framework of revolutionary social theory.

She was elected in November 2022, defeating billionaire developer Rick Caruso, despite his record-breaking campaign spending. Her victory marked not just the ascent of the first female mayor of Los Angeles, but the arrival of a seasoned revolutionary trained in Maoist rectification, Cuban internationalism, and Marxist nonprofit power-building into one of the most influential executive offices in the United States[38].

Upon taking office, Bass immediately declared a state of emergency on homelessness, granting herself expanded authority to redirect budgets, override zoning, and fast-track housing decisions. Her administration claimed to have housed over 21,000 individuals in interim accommodations by the end of 2023. However, the long-term efficacy of these placements remains unclear, with many policies focusing on temporary shelter over structural rehabilitation or law enforcement[39].

In 2023, Bass’s administration faced widespread criticism after it was revealed she intended to lower admission standards for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). This included reducing physical fitness benchmarks and academic expectations, in a stated effort to diversify the force and remove barriers for underrepresented applicants[40]. Critics argued this would result in underqualified officers and greater public risk. Tom Saggau, spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Protective League, called the move “a recipe for disaster,” and warned of the dangers of hiring recruits who “can’t score minimum requirements for a physical fitness test”[41].

At the same time, Bass pushed to purge LAPD officers who had been associated, directly or indirectly,with what her office described as “right-wing extremist organizations.” No clear definitions were provided, leaving many concerned that such standards could be used for ideological cleansing within the police department[42]. These efforts reflect the Maoist and Gramscian concept of “revolutionary discipline,” in which public institutions are not only restructured, but politically purified.

In mid-2025, Bass faced a national controversy when federal immigration agents conducted raids across the Los Angeles area, targeting violent criminal illegal aliens and repeat immigration offenders. Protesters erupted in what media outlets described as pro-immigrant demonstrations, but which quickly devolved into violent riots. Cars were set on fire, federal agents were attacked with rocks and flaming projectiles, and parts of the city were shut down[43].

Instead of supporting public safety efforts or condemning the violence, Bass sided with the rioters. She issued a public statement blaming federal enforcement actions for creating “terror in our communities”, calling the immigration raids “chaotic escalation,” and vowed that Los Angeles would remain a “city of immigrants” that “stands with everyone who calls our city home”, regardless of immigration status or legal record[44].

President Donald Trump responded by deploying the California National Guard, marking the first time since the 1960s that federal troops had been sent into California without a formal request from the state or local officials. Initially, Bass denied the Guard’s presence, claiming on social media that they had not been deployed. After images and media reports confirmed the opposite, she reversed course and criticized Trump, accusing him of inflaming tensions and endangering public trust[45].

Behind the scenes, another controversy was unfolding. In 2023, reports began to surface that Bass’s transition director and political appointee, Adam Ma, had significant family ties to the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department (UFWD), an organization identified by U.S. intelligence as an arm of Beijing’s foreign influence and espionage efforts[46]. Ma’s father, Ma Shurong, was not only a major donor to California Democratic campaigns but also an official representative in multiple UFWD agencies, including the All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese and the China Overseas Friendship Association[47].

Photos from 2022 and 2023 show Bass attending events with the Ma family, riding in city vehicles with Adam Ma during parades, and publicly honoring him at celebrations. In one such event, Bass’s office presented an official framed award to the Ma family organization in front of known Chinese consular figures and UFWD operatives[48].

By 2024, Ma was serving as Mayor Bass’s liaison to both Asian-American communities and LGBTQ+ constituents, receiving a city salary exceeding $129,500. China expert Gordon Chang stated in June 2025 that “there is a high probability that, wittingly or unwittingly, [Karen Bass] is implementing Chinese Communist plans to take down our country”, citing the deep penetration of CCP-linked actors into her political inner circle[49].

In early 2025, as Los Angeles faced one of the worst fire risks in recent memory, Mayor Karen Bass was absent. Despite red flag warnings and elevated National Weather Service alerts, Bass chose to leave the city to attend the presidential inauguration of John Dramani Mahama in Ghana. Mahama, a globalist-aligned leader and former socialist vice president, had recently returned to power under the National Democratic Congress (NDC), a Pan-Africanist, redistributionist party with deep ideological ties to China, the United Nations, and post-Marxist development frameworks. Rather than remain in Los Angeles to oversee emergency response efforts as the Palisades Fire escalated, Bass opted to appear on the world stage beside a fellow leftist head of state, leaving her own constituency behind in a moment of crisis.

Her absence was not symbolic, it was consequential. As the fire spread rapidly, displacing residents and overwhelming response teams, Bass returned to Los Angeles via military transport and offered only vague public comments. It was later revealed that the city's $1 million Crisis Response Team, specifically designed for situations like this, had remained inactive, despite staff being available and prepared. The delay in deployment drew significant backlash and led to the eventual removal of Fire Chief Kristin Crowley, who had reportedly clashed with Bass’s office over budget cuts and politically motivated restructuring of fire department resources. Bass’s management of the fires, characterized by ideological loyalty abroad and administrative failure at home, further cemented the growing perception that she governs not for practical outcomes, but to advance a revolutionary vision rooted in international solidarity and centralized control.

This pattern, abandoning local duty in favor of ideological alignment abroad, would repeat itself just months later, when Bass again prioritized narrative over responsibility during the federal immigration enforcement operations that sparked violent unrest across the city. Rather than support public safety or federal cooperation, she chose instead to cast law enforcement as the aggressor and further entrench Los Angeles as a sanctuary for revolutionary resistance under the banner of “equity.”

Then in July 2025, Bass took the unprecedented step of announcing that the City of Los Angeles would sue the Trump administration, demanding an immediate injunction against any further ICE raids within city limits. At a press conference, she declared: “They [the agents] need to leave and they need to leave right now… We will stand with Angelenos regardless of what country they came from, when they got here or why they’re here”[50].

Her rhetoric, defiance of federal law enforcement, and repeated coordination with transnational radical figures echoed not the behavior of a city administrator, but that of an ideological revolutionary finally commanding the tools of executive power.

Karen Bass had completed the long march, from Maoist cadre to mayor, from Cuban sugarcane fields to the helm of America’s second-largest city.

2025, The Legacy and Warning of Karen Bass

By mid-2025, the ideological arc of Karen Bass’s political life stood fully revealed. From her indoctrination in Cuban Marxism and Maoist rectification circles to her domination of Los Angeles’s municipal machinery, Bass had completed what communist theorists once called the “long march through the institutions.” But unlike the violent revolutionaries of the past, her strategy never relied on gunfire, it relied on normalization. Over five decades, she successfully embedded a subversive ideology into education, healthcare, activism, lawmaking, and executive governance,camouflaged in the language of justice, reform, and representation.

Bass’s career is not a study in contradictions, it is a model of revolutionary consistency. Every phase reinforced the next. Her training in the Venceremos Brigade introduced her to ideological loyalty and foreign-aligned activism[51]. Her leadership in the Campaign Against Police Abuse and affiliation with Line of March reinforced a worldview that framed America as systemically oppressive and in need of destruction, not reform[52]. Her Community Coalition became the delivery system for Marxist public policy, masked as compassionate nonprofit work[53].

Her time as Speaker of the California Assembly showed how subversive ideology could be administered through official budgets and committee appointments[54]. And her move to Congress provided the platform to support communist figures like Oneil Cannon, praise totalitarians like Fidel Castro, and whitewash Islamist and cultic organizations like CAIR and Scientology,all while voting against education freedom, welfare responsibility, and public security[55].

Finally, as Mayor of Los Angeles, Bass reoriented the city’s power structure toward a fully globalist, anti-sovereign posture. She elevated figures tied to the Chinese Communist Party, refused to cooperate with federal law enforcement during violent riots, and redirected immigration policy through local executive defiance[56].

Her actions reflected not a deviation from American values, but an intentional replacement of them. Bass’s worldview was never about expanding freedom, it was about redefining freedom as submission to state ideology. In that sense, she is the archetype of the modern American revolutionary: fluent in bureaucracy, fluent in identity politics, fluent in narrative warfare, and wholly committed to dismantling the constitutional order under the pretense of healing it.

Transformismo is a political strategy that absorbs opposition by bringing rival leaders into a centrist governing coalition, often through deals, favors, or patronage. This approach blurs ideological divisions and promotes stability by avoiding open conflict or polarization. However, it frequently stalls meaningful reform and entrenches elite power by neutralizing genuine opposition.

In classical Marxist terms, her model of governance is called “transformismo”, absorbing legitimate grievances (homelessness, policing, racism, inequality) into a revolutionary framework that offers only one solution: expanded control by the ideological state.

As America wrestles with the consequences of ideological capture in its cities, schools, and courts, Karen Bass’s career is not just a cautionary tale, it’s a blueprint. Her entire life’s work, revolutionary training, Maoist discipline, nonprofit empire-building, congressional maneuvering, and globalist affiliations, has led to this exact moment in time. She was not simply elected to manage a city. She was positioned, prepared, and empowered to ignite ideological resistance, obstruct federal authority, and manufacture narrative chaos when it matters most. She is not the product of coincidence. She is the product of strategy. And now she sits exactly where she was always meant to: at the trigger point of controlled domestic destabilization.

What makes Karen Bass particularly dangerous is that she does not appear dangerous. She is soft-spoken, calculated, and culturally fluent. She does not rant. She does not threaten. She simply governs as if the revolution has already won, and in Los Angeles, under her tenure, it arguably has.

Sources

1. Hunt, Darnell and Ramon, Ana-Christina. Black Los Angeles: American Dreams and Racial Realities. NYU Press, 2010.

2. Discover the Networks. “Karen Bass.” Accessed July 2025. https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individuals/karen-bass/

3. U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Internal Security. “The Theory and Practice of Communism in 1972 (Venceremos Brigade).” Government Printing Office, 1972.

4. Tablet Magazine. “Biden VP Favorite Karen Bass’ Journey From the Radical Fringe.” July 27, 2020. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/karen-bass-biden-venceremos-brigade

5. Ibid.

6. Daily Mail. “LA Mayor Karen Bass's Woke History of Immigration and Riots.” June 2025. [User-provided text]

7. Discover the Networks. “Karen Bass.” https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individuals/karen-bass/

8. Breitbart News. “Five Facts That Contradict Karen Bass’s Claim She’s Not a Communist.” August 5, 2020. https://www.breitbart.com/2020-election/2020/08/05/five-facts-contradict-karen-basss-claim-that-she-is-not-a-communist/

9. Los Angeles Times. “Police Files Reveal Surveillance of LA Activists.” November 1983. (Referenced via Discover the Networks)

10. Discover the Networks. “Karen Bass.” Accessed July 2025. https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individuals/karen-bass/

11. Ibid.

12. Los Angeles Times. “Community Coalition Seeks to Curb Drug Abuse in South L.A.” May 2002.

13. Discover the Networks. “Karen Bass.”

14. Tablet Magazine. “Biden VP Favorite Karen Bass’ Journey From the Radical Fringe.” July 27, 2020. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/karen-bass-biden-venceremos-brigade

15. Los Angeles Times. Op-ed by Karen Bass. June 2, 1992.

16. California Globe. “NED, Karen Bass, and the World.” July 2020. https://californiaglobe.com/fr/ned-karen-bass-and-the-world/

17. Discover the Networks. “Karen Bass.”

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. California State Assembly Archives. “Karen Bass Biography and Speakership Timeline.” Accessed July 2025. https://www.assembly.ca.gov/speaker-bass

21. Discover the Networks. “Karen Bass.” Accessed July 2025. https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individuals/karen-bass/

22. Los Angeles Times. “Karen Bass Paid Thousands by Nonprofit She Founded.” July 26, 2020. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-26/karen-bass-consulting-payments-community-coalition

23. Ibid.

24. Los Angeles Times. “Karen Bass Paid Thousands by Nonprofit She Founded.” July 26, 2020. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-26/karen-bass-consulting-payments-community-coalition

25. Discover the Networks. “Karen Bass.” Accessed July 2025. https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individuals/karen-bass/

26. Discover the Networks. “Karen Bass.” Accessed July 2025. https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individuals/karen-bass/

27. Center for Democracy in the Americas. “Delegation Reports and Funding Disclosures.” 2011. https://www.democracyinamericas.org/delegations

28. Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba. “U.S.–Cuba Academic Exchanges.” 2014.

29. Politico. “Karen Bass Called Fidel Castro ‘Comandante en Jefe’ and Praised Him as a ‘Hero’.” August 2, 2020. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/02/karen-bass-fidel-castro-390848

30. NBC News. “Karen Bass Says She Regrets Comments Praising Castro.” August 3, 2020. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/karen-bass-says-she-regrets-comments-praising-castro-n1235787

31. Congressional Record. “Eulogy for Oneil Cannon.” January 30, 2017. https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record

32. U.S. Department of Justice. “Holy Land Foundation Trial Documents.” 2008. https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2008/November/08-nsd-1019.html

33. Los Angeles Sentinel. “Karen Bass Praises Scientology Center at Grand Opening.” April 25, 2010. https://lasentinel.net/karen-bass-at-scientology-opening.html

34. Washington Post. “Full List of Democratic Lawmakers Who Skipped Netanyahu’s Speech.” March 3, 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news

35. Roll Call. “Karen Bass: Next Supreme Court Justice Should Be African-American (But Not Clarence Thomas).” February 2016. https://rollcall.com/2016/02/18

36. Democratic Socialists of America. “Endorsed Candidates and Officeholders.” Accessed July 2025. https://www.dsausa.org/elections/endorsed-candidates/

37. California Globe. “NED, Karen Bass, and the World.” July 2020. https://californiaglobe.com/fr/ned-karen-bass-and-the-world/

38. Daily Mail. “LA Mayor Karen Bass's Woke History of Immigration and Riots.” June 2025. [User-provided text]

39. County Local News. “Unveiling Karen Bass: Mayor or Crisis Mismanager?” June 7, 2025. https://countylocalnews.com/2025/06/07/unveiling-karen-bass-mayor-or-crisis-mismanager

40. Fox News. “Karen Bass Proposes Lowering LAPD Standards.” March 2023. https://www.foxnews.com

41. Ibid.

42. FrontPage Magazine. “Racist Mayor: Los Angeles’ Karen Bass.” June 2025. https://www.frontpagemag.com/racist-mayor-los-angeles-karen-bass/

43. Just the News. “Pro-Cuban Communist Org Karen Bass Joined Now Part of CCP-Linked Network.” July 2025. https://justthenews.com

44. Bass, Karen. Official X/Twitter Account. June 2025. https://twitter.com/karenbassla

45. Daily Caller. “Chinese Communist-Linked Family Has Deep Ties to LA Mayor Bass.” June 2025. https://dailycaller.com

46. Ibid.

47. Ibid.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid.

50. County Local News. “Communist Mayor Karen Bass’s Shocking Rise in LA Politics.” June 7, 2025. https://countylocalnews.com/2025/06/07/communist-mayor-karen-basss-shocking-rise-in-la-politics

51. Tablet Magazine. “Biden VP Favorite Karen Bass’ Journey From the Radical Fringe.” July 27, 2020. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/karen-bass-biden-venceremos-brigade

52. Discover the Networks. “Karen Bass.” Accessed July 2025. https://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individuals/karen-bass/

53. Los Angeles Times. “Karen Bass Paid Thousands by Nonprofit She Founded.” July 26, 2020. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-07-26/karen-bass-consulting-payments-community-coalition

54. California State Assembly Archives. “Karen Bass Biography and Speakership Timeline.” Accessed July 2025. https://www.assembly.ca.gov/speaker-bass

55. Congressional Record. “Eulogy for Oneil Cannon.” January 30, 2017. https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record

56. Daily Caller. “Chinese Communist-Linked Family Has Deep Ties to LA Mayor Bass.” June 2025. https://dailycaller.com

57. California Globe. “NED, Karen Bass, and the World.” July 2020. https://californiaglobe.com/fr/ned-karen-bass-and-the-world/

58. The Grayzone. “Inside the National Endowment for Democracy: A Soft Power Cold War Tool.” April 2019. https://thegrayzone.com/2019/04/10/national-endowment-democracy-1980s-cia-cold-war/