Family Betrayal Is A Democrat Specialty And A Totalitarian Tradition

Family betrayal is one of the most nauseating facts of life. Many Americans are sickened when family members and former friends publicly reject them just for expressing a different point of view. That’s just the tip of a dirty iceberg.

One case in point is Caroline Kennedy’s recent public trashing of her cousin Robert Kennedy Jr. on the eve of his confirmation hearings as secretary of Health and Human Services. The scummy act was predictable and timed for maximum effect. I can only imagine that it was astroturfed by the usual suspects, including political operative David Axelrod, who posted her video by re-posting her son Jack Schlossberg’s report of it on X.

It is noteworthy and significant that Caroline Kennedy, who is famously private about family matters, felt moved to issue this searing indictment of RFK Jr.’s nomination as HHS Secy. https://t.co/fzSBAJ9AEB

— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) January 28, 2025

But Caroline’s smear video is no longer visible there because Schlossberg recently deleted his X account, likely after people got fed up with his repulsive posts. He had long gotten into the act of ridiculing his cousin, including a post in which he took perverse pleasure in mimicking Robert Kennedy’s medical condition of spasmodic dysphonia.

JFK’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg, posted a video mocking RFK Jr’s spasmodic dysphonia, a disabling neurological disorder.

Family members attacking their own family says more about them than RFK Jr. pic.twitter.com/tcDG7qQkx9

— Nicole Saphier, MD (@NBSaphierMD) January 29, 2025

You can look up Caroline’s smear video in dozens of the usual corporate media outlets that reported the stunt so immediately and simultaneously that its planning was obvious. My sentiments are in line with what a certain Deon Joseph wrote about not re-posting her screed: “I’ll give no power to your betrayal.”

Caroline Kennedy: You don’t do what you did to family. I’ve had disagreements with family, I would NEVER do what you just did to RFK Jr. Everyone has a past, people change. To me, RFK has a sincerity that has been missing in DC for a long time. I’m not even going to share what… pic.twitter.com/12xFmlun9a

— Deon Joseph (@ofcrdeonjoseph) January 29, 2025

Family Disloyalty Seems to Be a Democrat Party Specialty

Way back when, Americans agreed that family loyalty was a virtue. Not so much anymore. I think it’s fair to say that gratuitous public displays of family betrayal are part of the fallout of the Democrat Party’s programs of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) and its constant promotion of identity politics and political correctness. So many Democrat policies — economic, social, and cultural — seem devised to sow resentment and hostility. They simply cause people to be nastier toward one another, dividing us by design.

So it’s no wonder that Democrats and their media colluders have long celebrated such acts of family betrayal.

For example, the media love to use President Donald Trump’s niece Mary as their poster girl for disavowing him. Likewise, from time to time, the corporate media still parades President Ronald Reagan’s left-wing namesake son Ron to put words into his late father’s mouth. Recall also the delight the left took when Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway’s now ex-husband George Conway publicly hindered her job at the White House. Worse, they gloated when Kellyanne’s 15-year-old daughter Claudia publicly spoke out against her mother.

Honestly, I get that we are living in an age of rage but the delight of the media and critics over the Claudia Conway videos is truly sick. Both of her parents have removed themselves from the public roles to address serious issues with their minor child . . . pic.twitter.com/xjgJLoYvwO

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) October 6, 2020

Let’s not forget how the education establishment with media support — not to mention former Attorney General Merrick Garland — promoted policies designed to turn schoolchildren against their parents by first inducing gender dysphoria and then hiding it from their parents. They then labeled any parents who dissented as domestic terrorists. 

The list of examples is tragically long. In 2020, Covid czar Anthony Fauci advised Americans to avoid gatherings with their families during the holidays. The next year, he said they should skip the holidays again if family members didn’t submit to mandates such as the Covid “vaccine” injection. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz set up a snitch hotline so Minnesotans could easily inform on anyone, including family members, who didn’t comply with stay-at-home orders. In 2022 Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill to make California a “sanctuary state” for minors to get puberty blockers and surgery without their parents’ consent or knowledge.

Many of the people imprisoned for protesting the 2020 election results at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were turned in by family members like this guy who had his own father put in prison:

This guy turned his own father in to the FBI after January 6, 2021.

Now he surfaces on CNN to whine about the pardons and pose as a victim.

Is it any surprise his father can’t stand him and the rest of his family considers him a horrible son? pic.twitter.com/Xgt6C93rQ8

— Dinesh D’Souza (@DineshDSouza) January 21, 2025

Within weeks of Jan. 6, 2021, the outlet Wired proudly reported that family and childhood friends called the FBI on dozens of J6ers. That number likely spiked to several hundred in the ensuing years. Some estimate that family members turned in about half of J6ers.

Other than the disgust that we feel for those acts of family betrayal, why should we care? The answer is that the destruction of the family is a feature of tyrannical leadership. The essential ingredient for totalitarianism or any social engineering program is the isolation of individuals, especially through the breakdown of human relationships. I describe that process in detail in my book The Weaponization of Loneliness. 

History Shows That Family Betrayal Is a Totalitarian Trait

All tyrannies throughout history have depended on sowing division and distrust. All seek to regulate, control, and destroy personal relationships until all that is left is an atomized population with just one mass relationship with the government. It’s a form of dependency analogous to Stockholm syndrome, where the captive ends up bonding with the captor because there’s no one else to bond with. Stoking family disunity is key to doing this.

Josef Stalin’s reign of terror in the Soviet Union was basically a war on private lives and relationships that sowed distrust and fear throughout society. One of the most famous examples was the 12-year-old boy Pavlik Morozov, who informed on his father for helping some farmers avoid the collectivization of agriculture. Those who resisted collectivization were publicly vilified as enemies of the people.

Pavlik’s snitching led to the imprisonment and execution of his father. Later, when Pavlik was found dead in the woods, his grandparents and other relatives were promptly accused and executed. An intense Soviet propaganda campaign then glorified Pavlik as a martyr and role model that all Soviet schoolchildren were persistently taught to emulate.

Interestingly, a diehard rumor that continues to circulate is that Stalin himself was disgusted by Pavlik’s actions, saying: “What a little swine, denouncing his own father.” Whether or not Stalin actually uttered such words is irrelevant to the fact that many people find such family betrayal so repulsive that they can even imagine the mass murderer who profited from the act denouncing it. 

Later, during Communist China’s Cultural Revolution (1966-76), Mao Zedong galvanized millions of Red Guard youth to “root out” old traditions by attacking anyone suspected of disloyalty to the Communist Party. Youth all over the country tried to prove their Red Guard credentials by humiliating, torturing, and even killing anyone considered problematic to the revolution — family, friends, and neighbors.

Even today, we can see the testimony of one such man, Zhang Hongbing, who regrets turning in his own mother to be executed simply because at home she privately expressed disapproval of Mao:

The same thing happened a lot in China too.

In 1970, Fang Zhongmou, a doctor in the eastern Chinese province of Anhui, was charged as a counter-revolutionary and executed. What makes the case unusual is that she was killed after being denounced by her teenage son, Zhang… pic.twitter.com/MprJogC5Dm

— Songpinganq (@songpinganq) January 21, 2025

Sadly, those in power who see government as the solution to everything tend to see family loyalty as the “problem” to be solved. These are the social engineers who put in place policies that discourage responsible fatherhood, attack the mother-child bond by opposing marriage and childbearing, and encourage dependence on the government for everything.

They want the government to erase your child’s sex, allow the government to tell your child what to believe and how to act, and then persecute parents who object. Such government policies over the years have eroded family loyalty as a virtue to be valued. They have facilitated Americans’ tolerance for gratuitous public betrayal of one’s family members.

Even though President Trump is taking a sledgehammer to identity politics and DEI, we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking they’ll suddenly disappear. The attitudes and policies that encourage social acceptance of family betrayal are deeply embedded. And they can pave the way to a Maoist hellscape. The remorse of the grief-stricken Chinese son should be a warning to us all.

Stella Morabito is a senior contributor at The Federalist. She is author of “The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer.” Her essays have appeared in various publications, including the Washington Examiner, American Greatness, Townhall, Public Discourse, and The Human Life Review. In her previous work as an intelligence analyst, Morabito focused on various aspects of Russian and Soviet politics, including communist media and propaganda. Follow Stella on Twitter.