Donald Trump’s latest political stratagem is to label as “Communist” any disagreement with whatever passes as Trump’s ever-changing ideology.
Since Trump is repeating the label, we shouldn’t just dismiss it as a slip of the presidential tongue or misspeaking. He means it, and he expects voters to believe it and fear those who argue that there’s something wrong about a concentration of power and wealth in the upper tenth of a percent of Americans – a widespread polled opinion over time.
Of course, Trump seems to be targeting the few, but growing number of self-identified Democratic Socialists who have been winning elections since New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s campaign was such an overwhelming choice.
Three congressional candidates in New York City endorsed by Mamdani carried their primaries against otherwise “progressive” Democrats who have publicly supported aid to Israel. A Democratic Socialist upset a longtime Congresswoman from Colorado. One of the two Senate candidates who appear tied in Michigan is a Democratic Socialist. Graham Platner’s campaign in Maine ran aground over his personal failures, but not because he espoused more access to health care and ending political rules dictated by self-serving corporate interests.
The success of these Democratic Socialists has been as much about generational change and a desire to throw out entrenched politics of all parties as it has about specific policies.
In multiple recent speeches, Trump has warned of a “resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success.” What Trump said is, “Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor or even 9/11. Communism is the exact opposite of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It’s death, tyranny and the pursuit of evil.”
Using the Communist label is raising a bogeyman that is incorrect, even dishonest, and his broad attack on “godless” anti-Americanism is at odds with what more than half the country’s voters say is upsetting them. Just as Trump demeaned “affordability” as a made-up complaint of Democrats, or his attacks on immigration that built this country as an existential evil, or his insistence on ridding the country of regulations on corporate behaviors, Trump is not only wrong but actively misusing even the label itself for partisan gain.
What is ‘Communism’?
Communism is an ideology that advocates for the elimination of capitalism in favor of government control of the economy. Democrats, including democratic socialists, seem to favor a capitalist system where there is a fairer way to share the costs through taxes. In the last 100 years, Communism has involved authoritarian politics in the former Soviet Union and China, human rights abuse and rationing food. Democratic Socialists take the opposite view on all of that.
Dan Froomkin of Press Watch argues that the news media are being too blasé about not pointing out Trump’s historical and political errors or the delusion of the speaker.
The very meaning of the political theory of Communism as outlined by Karl Marx advocates for a society in which property is publicly owned, and individuals are paid according to abilities and needs. As a Democratic Socialist, Sen. Bernie Sanders talks about Medicare-for-all health care, and Mamdani talks about rent freezes and childcare supports, not the U.S. takeover of Venezuelan oil fields from a vassal state that Trump has orchestrated.
As a recent MS-NOW op-ed notes, while political parties always target the opposition’s most extreme positions, the word “Communist” does not even speak to generations of voters born long after the Cold War and do not see it as a haunting specter.
It is Trump who openly admires Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, actual communists, who have pursued systematic adaptations over decades to open their economies, if not their government, to more capitalistic enterprise. Trump covets their authoritarian, centralized power – a direct result of Communist ideology as it has been practiced in the real world.
It is Trump who has demanded financial interest for the government from steel and tech companies looking for favorable regulation from him; that is right out of the Communist playbook. And it is Trump who is seeking the silence of comedians and news broadcasters who air criticism of him.
Trump’s ‘Choice’
In recent years, polls show a declining approval of capitalism and slowly rising approval of whatever is being lumped into the socialism label. As always, answers depend on who’s asking and how they are asking and may have little to do with the outcome of specific election races.
And, as always, there is inherent danger into accepting any label as universal or all-explanatory. We all might vote “yes” on eliminating singular political labels that mean little.
But make no mistake. Trump sees the rise of even a few Democratic Socialists as nearly fatal to the country – even as the practical effect may be for an incoming Democratic House Speaker Hakim Jeffries to keep his Democratic House coalition united through a variety of issues, including on war aid in the Middle East.
“The communists elected in New York City recently want to completely destroy the traditional American way of life.” Communism “destroys everything,” Trump said, adding, “It’s happening right now in New York and California. You’ll live in squalor. There will be no food; there will be no housing; there will be no military; there will be no law and order; there will be no nothing. There will be no nothing. You’ll be a third world inhabitant in every way, and everyone will suffer or die.”
According to Trump, “assassinations of those who oppose them is a very important element of their ideology.” He demanded that we choose between “patriotism” and “hardcore godless communists.”
If that’s the choice Trump invites, I’m ready to vote.
Image at top courtesy of Alexander Popadin via Pexels.
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