evidence: He has not hesitated to reaffirm his praise and support for governments that crushed civil liberties and brutalised their populations. Even after some of his more cringeworthy endorsements of Stalinist regimes were reported in the press, Sanders refused to apologise or express any contrition. He has been enamoured of the communist regime in Cuba ever since Fidel Castro seized power in 1959. [...] This could not be written off as youthful naiveté. Sanders was far from a teenager or credulous student when he went as a revolutionary tourist to Cuba, Nicaragua and, in 1988, the Soviet Union, where he praised the Moscow Metro and expressed hope that after "a dismal history" the USSR could move "forward into some of the early visions of their revolution". [...] While there is no evidence that Sanders is a Marxist-Leninist, his long-ago political alliances and contemporary nostalgia for repressive regimes and circumventing the rule of law suggests that his political surge portends a future struggle for the soul of the Democratic Party.