Exiled Cuban journalist Yoe Suárez warned attendees of the 2026 Pray Vote Stand Summit against the enticements of socialism, repackaged by hip, young politicians like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D). “It’s incredible to see such an amazing crowd of people who are willing to vote, to go to stand outside, because in Cuba, we can’t do this. This is illegal under socialism,” Suárez said. “When some politician here says, ‘the warmth of collectivism,’ that’s the warmth of collectivism.”

The urge for socialism is understandable, the panelists granted. “Wherever you have inequalities and injustice of any sort, people will think towards socialism,” observed author Os Guinness. “They did in the 19th century. They’re doing it today.” Alternatively, “some of the people that are behind this idea and following the idea have a lack of identity,” Suárez suggested. “They don’t understand who they are. They don’t. They’re trying to find meaning in the wrong things.”

“They’re trying to look for an epic narrative,” he added. “But I can tell you socialism is a fake epic narrative. The only thing at the end of the road is chaos. And you will pay the price.”

Suárez’s own native Cuba provides a cautionary tale. The “Cuban economy was a strong economy in 1959,” he began. “We were not the best of the possible worlds, but we weren’t the worst of the possible worlds as we have been now.” He and his family “fled out of Cuba four years ago, and now we are living in a great state of Ohio. … But we are thinking on all this evil that is rising in the heart of one of the big mayors, one of the two major parties here, the Democratic Party — all these socialist ideas. And we can tell you as Cubans, as expatriates, it doesn’t work.”

This is not the tale of Cuba alone, Guiness added. “I would add the pyramid of sacrifice of socialism, Communism is over 100 million. And that is enough is to say, ‘It’s evil,’ as well as, ‘It doesn’t work.’”

The recent onset of American socialism began with small steps. “The vanguard of this push … desensitizing people to socialism is … socialized medicine,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins proposed. “Everybody wants to be able to go to the doctor, and nobody’s against that. But the whole idea, I think, of socialized medicine has desensitized us to what comes behind it.”

However, Suarez could testify firsthand that a truly socialist medical system did not produce better medicine. “In a century where you have antibiotics,” he said, “some people decide … to stay at home and to take natural remedies, like if we were in the 19th century.” They “prefer to stay in their home instead of going to the hospital because they are not going to find anything there.”

“When I was a kid, I grew up hearing from the TV — sold in the hands of the state, obviously — Fidel Castro saying … ‘a better world is possible,’” Suárez recalled. “But, as someone who lived under socialism and under socialized medicine, I can tell you a worse world is also possible and under socialism is inevitable.”

The failures of Cuban socialism extend beyond medicine to all areas of life, he continued. “It’s not only a dictatorship; it’s a totalitarian dictatorship. … I was a journalist in Cuba. I was writing about political prisoners, torture, all those things that the government doesn’t like. They want good propaganda. They don’t want [bad] PR, they don’t want journalists.”

In short, if a person’s calling conflicts with the state’s objectives, “socialism … often blocks that ability for you to pursue that calling” or “the communication … of any truth that would challenge the holdings of socialism,” Perkins summarized. “You cannot speak up against the government when you have a socialist government in place.”

For the same reason, socialist regimes like Cuba’s persecute the Christian church. “The regime has been persecuting the church for decades now,” said Suárez. “They created these concentration camps … where they put Christians’ kids that were studying in seminaries or pastors, even laymen in concentration camps, in order to try to put them out of their faith. Thank God we had a great community, a Christian community in Cuba that were faithful.” Suarez cited a quote handed down from third century Christian apologist Tertullian, “the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church.”

Ukrainian refugee Pavlo Unguryan, executive secretary of the Ukrainian Conservative Movement, shared the similar experience his family endured under communism in Soviet Russia.

“My grandfather was the private farmer, very successful, but [the] KGB and Communist Party persecuted him because he was a rich man. So they take everything from his family and he became very poor,” he narrated. “But God blessed this family. And, through this tragedy, they find Jesus, find the Lord. Praise God. But from that time, we are Christians, we are evangelicals.”

“My great-great-grandparents [were] ministers in southern Ukraine,” Unguryan continued. “My grandfather was a pastor of the small Baptist church in the Ukraine. But all his life he was under persecutions of [the] KGB and Communist Party in the Soviet Union time. My parents [were] very smart people, but they cannot have a good education in university because Communist Party absolutely cancel[led] any possibilities [or] opportunities for the evangelicals to have a good education.”

In the ongoing war, Russia under former KGB officer Vladimir Putin has continued the Soviet legacy of attacking the church. “In the occupied territories … almost 800 pastors and Christian leaders have died, have been murdered by the occupying forces,” Perkins noted.

Another dominant feature of Soviet socialism was its failure to feed its own people. Unguryan cited its “three artificial famines” of 1922-23, 1932-34 [the Holodomor], and 1946-47, caused not by weather changes but by government policies of collectivism and redistribution. These famines combined to kill tens of millions of helpless individuals who suffered under Soviet rule.

Cuba has sustained similar food shortages, though on a smaller scale. “We are very worried about some promises of those politicians that are telling to people, ‘Socialism is good. Socialism could be the way to more affordability.’ Please,” Suárez exclaimed. “The lines for bread are not affordability for me. And that’s a common picture all over the history of socialism.”

“Churchill put it wonderfully,” Guinness added. “Capitalism means the unequal distribution of wealth. Socialism means the equal distribution of poverty.”

“If Cuba[ns] haven’t experienced a famine like the Holodomor … it’s because of the church,” Suárez argued. “The church in Cuba has been very active, especially in the last years, providing food — doing what the Bible says, providing for the ones who are in need, taking care of the widow, etc., etc.”

“Right now,” he added, “the State Department has a big ‘arrangement,’ let’s say, with the Catholic Church of getting aid inside of the island. The Catholic Church is moving the products all over the island to feed those who are in need.”

Because of the Cuban church’s mercy ministry, Suárez continued, “now people don’t bow in front of the state. More people are bowing in front of God, the real God.” More people are concluding that “Fidel Castro is not the Messiah. The Messiah is Jesus, because they are finding hope — and not only food, but spiritual bread also.”

Of course, the totalitarian regime cannot tolerate any alleviation in the misery of its subjects that does not come by its own hand. Suárez said a Cuban pastor told him two weeks ago that the regime was “putting a lot of obstacles for us to just feed the people who are in the streets. … If they are sharing medicines, they say, ‘You cannot do that. You have to donate the medicines to the state, and then the state will redistribute that.’ So they are really afraid of the power of people mobilizing.”

The testimony of survivors of socialism is the same world over: what are Americans thinking? “In history, there [are] almost no voices against power and oppression. … The sole voices for centuries were the prophets of the Old Testament, Micah, Amos, Hosea, and so on. We are the heirs of them. We should care for justice, too,” Guinness concluded. “America always used to be on the side of freedom. And more recently you have people who are closer to the bullies and the dictators than they are to the victims.”

“We need to restore what the revolutionaries called the ‘Black Robe Regiment,’” Guinness urged. “In other words, [you need] preachers who preach the whole counsel to inspire the church. And, secondly, you need to restore in America education, so that young Americans know what the Bible is and know what the Republic is.”

“We’re not here to be commentators on the chaos,” Perkins agreed. “We want to be those that solve the problems. And I think God has entrusted us with the understanding [and] the wisdom to be the problem solvers to pave the way forward.” Finally, he added, Christians add “the prophetic voices … of the church” and must “be willing to speak prophetically, unconnected to any particular political party.”