A SPECTRE seems to be haunting the US president. A few days ago, Reuters calculated that Donald Trump had invoked communism 81 times in his utterances and outbursts over the past two weeks. This included citing it as a bigger threat to America than both the world wars and 9/11. He has kept it up since then. Just this past weekend, he declared on his Truth Social platform: “I would often say in Speeches, and otherwise, America will never be a Socialist Country, and I was 100% correct, the Dumocrats skipped Socialism, and went all the way down to Communism. AMERICA WILL NEVER BE A COMMUNIST COUNTRY!”
Interpreting Trump’s rants has become a full-time occupation for some, and there’s an emerging consensus that the Republican Party descended yet again into its anti-communist comfort zone after a bunch of candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) won last month’s primaries, with the phenomenon echoed from Wisconsin to California.
The DSA is not ‘communist’ by any stretch of the imagination, but the word ‘socialism’ no longer inspires fear among growing segments of the American electorate. A decade ago, thanks mainly to Bernie Sanders, it briefly became the most googled word in the US. Many among those who looked it up apparently didn’t find the definitions or explanations offensive or undesirable. No wonder the Democratic Party establishment, dedicated to neoliberalism on the economic front and a neoconservative worldview, twice thwarted Sanders’ chances in the presidential primaries. Bernie might actually have trumped Donald in 2016, unlike Hillary Clinton, who has lately rightly been pilloried for backing Trump’s ridiculous plans for Gaza.
Speaking of which, it is hard to overestimate the effect that the Israeli genocide has had on the consciousness — and conscience — of American voters, some of whom have realised that their tax dollars were paying for some of the most abominable atrocities witnessed in the 21st century. One doesn’t need to be a socialist or a Marxist to be appalled by the slaughter of infants. As Francesca Hong, the DSA candidate running for governor of Wisconsin, puts it: “Voters understand that a politician unwilling to fight against the massacre of children abroad (which we’re funding), they won’t stand up for folks back home.”
Republicans have again retreated into their anti-red comfort zone.
That’s not communism, it’s common sense. Public opinion in the US has been shifting against its leading Middle Eastern partner in crimes against humanity. Like its American counterpart, the Israeli regime no longer bothers to disguise its fangs. America’s 20th-century history shows that its reactionary politicians have relied on red scares before, notably following each of the world wars. Trump, who is old enough to remember the McCarthyite era, was mentored by Roy Cohn, the obnoxious lawyer who helped to send Ethel and Julius Rosenberg to the electric chair in 1953. The trouble for Trump is that the threat that could be conjured up while the Soviet Union still existed is hard to repeat. Anyone under 40 is unlikely to recall that particular bogeyman, and China’s emergence as an economic challenge has been based on what could be described as capitalism with Confucian characteristics. Besides, it’s an enviable success story, while Vladimir Putin’s Russia is worshipped as a role model by the religious right in Trump’s diminishing base.
At the same time, the Republicans can hardly afford to focus on a tanking economy or detested foreign policy as potential vote-winners. The DSA, on the other hand, has the example of Zohran Mamdani to proffer. Unlike most other politicians, the New York mayor has sought, with some success, to implement his electoral promises. This does not involve throwing up barricades or storming any variant of the Bastille, but improvements in transport, housing, childcare and affordability. Who could possibly object to such initiatives amid the worst levels of wealth disparity in a nation where class differences have expanded since the Reagan era, with little relief from the Clinton and Obama presidencies that followed.
Polling evidence suggests that the latest effort to conjure up a red scare might resonate with the MAGA core but tends to be disdained by the independent voters who make all the difference in elections — particularly the young who have no memory of the Cold War. The Trump regime, not surprisingly, continues simultaneously to make various other efforts to thwart the prospects of fair contests in the November midterms, including gerrymandering and the removal of officials who might question its antics. There is no prospect of a nationwide progressive earthquake, but even small tremors here and there would provide scope for the kind of hope that both the Republican and Democratic establishments wish to strangle.
Published in Dawn, July 15th, 2026
