The Red Menace Returns! Or So We’re Told.

By Adam Wasserman

Communism no longer poses the kind of global ideological threat it did during the twentieth century. Yet by resurrecting the rhetoric of the Red Scare, Trump is breathing new life into one of American politics’ oldest tactics: using fear of an exaggerated enemy to justify extraordinary political power.

The Red Menace is back! In his July 3 speech at Mt. Rushmore, Trump returned to language reminiscent of the 1950s (one of his favorite times) to warn us at length about communism: “A generation after we fought and won the Cold War against the menace of communism, there is now 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… Communism is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or even 9-11… As for those who peddle Marxist lies about our heritage, tell our children that we live on stolen land or that our heroes were oppressors, they’re doing something much worse than slandering our past. They are slandering and attacking our future. Not going to let that happen.”

In Trump’s world, what exactly are these dangerous communists doing? As so often with Trump, the answer seems to be cultural. They’re “peddling lies” about America and harping on its faults. JD Vance in a recent interview on Fox warned that Democrats have been taken over by radicals in academia who hold “fundamentally a view that the United States is an evil country that must be dismantled from the ground and then built back up…communism at its core.”

In today’s real world, there is no communist nation that is seeking to spread its ideology. China? Leninist internally, to be sure, but a model of state-capitalism, not communism. The genuinely Marxist-Leninist states still standing, North Korea and Cuba, inspire no one and certainly have no adherents in the United States. The attraction of communism in the West disappeared decades ago, killed by Solzhenitsyn’s revelations, the trainwreck of Marxist economies, and the liberal West’s successful combination of growth and freedom. There is plenty of cultural leftism and democratic socialism, but the only person infatuated with creating a vanguard party to foment revolution is self-described Leninist and MAGA stalwart Steve Bannon.

So why the attempt to convince Americans the communists are back?

It creates an enemy: The term “communist” still resonates with many Americans, and certainly with Trump. We might recall that Trump’s mentor when a young man was the slimy political operator Roy Cohn, who had been chief counsel to Joseph McCarthy. Trump learned that “Communism” was a useful all-purpose accusation, invoking a shapeless evil that is highly organized, ruthless, and supported by dark outside forces. “Communists” can be characterized as bogeymen, beyond the pale, a greater threat than Nazis or Osama bin Laden. They can’t be reasoned with, only destroyed by any means necessary.

It justifies the expansion of power: If Trump wants to expand his authoritarian reach, build up the FBI and ICE to tamper with elections, or implement martial law, or arrest his political opponents, he needs a good excuse, and a “communist resurgence” fits that bill.

As the popularity of Trump’s signature issue, immigration, weakens as Americans recoil from mass detentions and ICE violence, he hopes he can make people see immigrants as not just a source of crime, but as communists infiltrating to destroy the American way of life. In this way, he can strengthen the anti-immigrant campaign. Linking communism and immigration worked in the 1920s, when the US put in place the xenophobic Immigration Act of 1924, so why not now?

It broadens the definition of the enemy: With enough repetition and obfuscation, he can expand the field of “dangerous radicals.” Anyone slightly to the left of center can be labeled a ‘communist’. Political opponents espousing normal liberal ideas on healthcare, or gun-control, or supporting wind turbines, are suddenly national security threats.

It serves his immediate goals: Trump’s immediate goal seems to be using the red menace to plump for passage of the Save America Act: “But if we terminate the filibuster as we should do and immediately vote for the Save America Act, then we will not lose an election for 100 years. We do that. We’re not going to lose an election for 100 years. The Communist Party is made up of illegal immigrants, criminals, and everybody that doesn’t want to work. Communism is a loser.”

Trump sees the Save America Act, a law designed to discourage voting by requiring a government i.d., as his political salvation. In a gambit to get it, he refused to sign the bipartisan Housing Bill strongly favored by congressional Republicans. Now he seems to think he can use popular fear of communism to add to pressure on legislators.

This is not our first “Red Scare.”

As Karl Marx himself told us, history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. We are here deep in the farce stage. America has, of course, had red scares in the past, notably after World War I and during the McCarthy period in the early 1950s. They were episodes we now look back on with embarrassment. The government over-reacted, violated free speech and civil liberties, hounded and persecuted innocent citizens. Ordinary Americans panicked, seeing Reds under every bed.

In the years after WWI, the world was facing a communist movement that had taken control of Russia, one of the world’s great powers, and was aggressively advertising its plan to spread the revolution first to Germany, a country fractured and weakened by the war and open to radical movements—and then throughout the world. A militant worker’s movement existed in most European countries and in America. The huge immigrant wave that hit the United States in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries brought with it plenty of socialists and labor organizers. It was understandable that liberal societies and business interests would be nervous.

In the early 1950s, Stalin’s USSR was leveraging its victory in World War II to consolidate control over Eastern Europe. Soviet spies and agents were active in the United States and Western Europe, where powerful Soviet-aligned communist parties seemed on the verge of taking power. Soviet-backed communist movements had gained power in China and were contesting Korea and Vietnam. Support for the USSR and communism was widespread among Western intellectuals. Again, anxiety and fear were understandable.

In both cases, fear was exaggerated and civil liberties suffered. But the fears had some basis in reality.

Such is not the case today.

Whipping up hysteria about the communist threat is a time-honored move to justify repression. Roy Cohn and Joe McCarthy would be proud. Never mind that today the threat is non-existent. Trump has demonstrated an ability to persuade his supporters of almost anything via endless repetition, absolute certainty, fear-mongering, and a subservient media.

Sounds oddly like the Marxist playbook, doesn’t it?

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