What Is Behind Trumps Accusations
President Trump has settled into a groove. Every opponent, every critic, every politician with the slightest liberal leaning is a ‘socialist’, or a ‘radical leftist’, or even a ‘communist’. This abuse of language and thought has become so routine we hardly notice anymore. But we should.
I know communism. I started a career at the CIA analyzing the Soviet Union. I watched as it invaded Afghanistan and persecuted dissidents. I saw how its people turned against the lies, the shortages, the in-your-face corruption. I followed with amazement as it collapsed into 15 separate new countries, none of which showed the slightest interest in continuing the communist experiment.
The terms ‘socialist’ and ‘communist’ have meaning. They should not be epithets you throw at anyone with whom you disagree. Real socialists want the commanding heights of the economy—the banks, the railroads and airlines, the major industries, the media and telecommunications—to be owned by the state, though some see an important role for private property and economic competition. A communist wants to abolish all private property and give the state control over the entire economy under a system of central planning. Since in our world ‘communist’ almost always means ‘Leninist’, it also includes rule by a single party, the suppression of civil society, and a suffocating police state.
There are few socialists and even fewer communists in the United States. No nationally-known politicians—certainly not Bernie Sanders or Zoran Mamdani (Trump called Mamdani a ‘communist lunatic’ after he won the New York City mayoral primary in May)—are genuine socialists, much less communists. They are social democrats, who want a stronger government role in regulating the private sector and providing services for citizens. They do not call for the end of capitalism. They do not call for suppression of political opponents. They do not call for a one-party state. They are not ‘radicals’, except in the rhetoric of today’s MAGA movement.
There are also few remaining communist or socialist states in today’s world. The ones still standing, like Cuba or North Korea, are abject economic failures whose only success has been maintaining the rule of a corrupt elite. China, still nominally communist, long ago abandoned communism’s self-defeating rejection of markets, though it remains firmly Leninist in its internal politics.
Why then does Trump continue to claim that his opponents are communists? Why does he insist that modest efforts to increase taxes on the rich, or move towards universal healthcare (the norm in almost every advanced liberal democracy around the world), or take account of racial discrimination in college admissions, are the work of ‘radical leftists’ or ‘socialists’? Why do they obsess over the threat to the US from a third-rate power like Venezuela?
The underlying purpose is unfortunately clear—to further the Trump administration’s drive to suppress its political opposition. We are seeing many steps in this direction: regular deployment of ICE, border patrol and national guard troops in blue cities; overt direction of the Justice Department to prosecute administration critics; using the Kirk assassination as a pretext to attack liberal organizations; a Presidential directive defining Antifa as a terrorist group; regular threats to invoke the Insurrection Act; and a constant drumbeat of name-calling and vituperation directed at critics. Defining the opposition as ‘communist’ puts it beyond the pale and is designed to make emergency measures, including those that skirt the law, seem justified by the urgency of the threat.
Many Americans still associate communism with the Cold War and an existential foreign danger. During the Cold War Americans often accepted the need to ‘fight fire with fire’ by supporting foreign dictators, or giving the FBI broad authority to investigate domestic radicals. Trump is trying to revive these memories. During the 2024 campaign he told reporters “All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody who is going to destroy our country.” Trump’s most ideologically committed supporters, like Stephen Miller, use ‘communist’ and ‘Marxist’ on a regular basis to characterize mainstream Democrats, liberals, judges who rule against the administration, and many others.
Trump has been successful at persuading his supporters to believe falsehoods, relying on repetition in right-wing media and the willingness of followers to defer to his judgment. Republican politicians and all those seeking a favor from Trump know that endorsing his version of reality is a necessary loyalty test. This was his pattern in re-defining the January 6 insurrectionists as ‘patriots’ deserving Presidential pardon. He appears to be counting on the same strategy to convince Americans that his opponents are communists.
Trump’s tactics, perhaps unsurprisingly, strongly resemble those of the communists he claims to be against. In the USSR, Eastern Europe, Cuba, China, North Korea and elsewhere, we saw the same pattern of demonizing the opposition, flooding the media with unsupported accusations, and requiring public endorsement of the Party line. These measures helped Leninist movements consolidate power and justify brutality against their enemies.
Steve Bannon, one of Trump’s most militant backers, once described himself as a “Leninist.” The description seems apt.
Adam Wasserman is a retired CIA political analyst with experience on failing democracies in the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. He served on the State Department Policy Planning Staff, the CIA Red Cell and the National Security Council staff. He is a member of The Steady State.
Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 340 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.