Red America

Trump exaggerates the Red threat but that doesn't mean it isn't there

Last month, Politico published an essay by Austin Sarat, Amherst College professor of jurisprudence and political science, titled, “Why Donald Trump Says His Enemies Are ‘Communists’.” It’s a very good piece on the history of Trump’s red-baiting tactics.

Sarat reminds us that in 2015, Trump called then-presidential candidate Bernie Sanders “a socialist-slash-communist” who was going to tax people out of everything they had. He raised the specter of communism in his 2019 address to the UN General Assembly, saying, “America will never be a socialist country.” In 2020, at a White House event honoring Cuban-American veterans of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, Trump said, “We did not fight tyranny abroad only to let Marxists destroy our beloved country.”

Sarat explains that Trump’s Red Scare tactics are not only intended to discredit his political enemies, but promote fear of China and help him in his upcoming trial over classified documents. How will it help him in the trial? Because, Sarat, says, the jury will be from Miami, home to Americans and immigrants from two communist nations, Cuba and Venezuela.

The essay then glides through a rapid lesson on Red Scare tactics in American history. You gotta read it. But here, I want to zero in on a single line:

Trump is “hallucinating” a communist threat where there is none and promoting what The Guardian columnist Richard Seymour labels “anti-communism without communism.”

Sarat explains, in this way Trump can use fear to stir up his base and position himself as the only one who can do anything about it. A familiar Trump line.

There’s just one small problem. Yes, the political right does like to make use of red-baiting to scare up support. Yes, these allegations are often exaggerated or wholly false. But that doesn’t mean no communist threat exists.

I’m here to tell you, it does.

Never mind the fact that I recently wrote a column for The Seattle Times, my former employer, about the statue of Vladimir Lenin in Seattle, after which I received a torrent of hate mail from livid communists.

Instead, let me direct you to a YouGov poll from October 2022 that included 2,100 respondents with a 2.32% margin of error.

The poll found some interesting things. And you’re not going to like it.

Roughly 40% of Americans view socialism favorably, up from 36% in 2019. Worse, 49% of Gen Zs favor socialism, up from 40% in 2019. So lots of Americans like socialism, young American even more, and the trend is growing.

But maybe it’s not that bad. After all, “socialism” can mean a lot of different things. It can also be blended with capitalism in a hybrid economy. Copenhagen is fine this time year.

True, except over one-quarter of Americans support the elimination of capitalism for socialism, including 31% of Gen Z and 35% of Millennials.

Or how about this little datapoint: 95% of people born between 1928 and 1945 believe that in order to guarantee freedom and equality, the Declaration of Independence is a better document than the Communist Manifesto. But ask people born between 1980 and 2012, and only 63% agree.

Or how about this. One-third of Americans now believe Donald Trump is the greatest threat to world peace—even more than Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un or Vladimir Putin. And remember, this poll was conducted six months after Putin started a genocidal invasion of Ukraine.

Plus, Kim Jong-un is regularly firing missiles and testing nukes and is personally responsible for the starvation of untold numbers of North Koreans. So how can so many Americans possibly believe Trump is worse? Well, maybe because 32% of Americans think Trump has killed more people than Kim Jong-un.

Basically, Trump and some of his Republican supporters tend to unfairly accuse the political left of communism as a cheap scare tactic. The left also does the same thing when it unfairly throws around the word “fascist.” That said, there are real and growing threats of communist and fascist activity in the United States.

Much of this is just growing acceptance rather than a clear and present danger. But that’s how you move the Overton window, so it’s important to stay aware.

The first step in solving any problem, as they say, is admitting you have one.