40 Comments
User's avatar
Diana van Eyk's avatar

If it wasn't Communism, they'd find another bogeyman to scare their population with, and to justify invading other countries with.

Luke's avatar

See my comment below. Yes, they have plenty more than one option.

SW's avatar

Trump and Associates are hoping resurrecting the Commies will distract voters from their obvious failures but nobody cares about them anymore and it won’t work. The fact this is the last name on the Enemies List says more about their desperation than anything.

Jeck's avatar

The distraction is meant to divert our attention from their ongoing great reset/greater Israel project (which is not simply the middle east but the whole world). We will own nothing because they will own everything. Duh.

Mary W Maxwell's avatar

"The leader of the most murderous and tyrannical power structure on earth can’t take a stand against the real problems in our world, because the power structure is the source of those problems. So instead he has to invent fictional monsters to fight."

Say no more. Say no more. That is sufficient.

Brianna Amore's avatar

A fascist dictatorship ALWAYS needs an external or internal threat in order to keep the rubes in check and prevent any meaningful dissent. It's a tired old playbook that's well worn out and dog eared. And if there aren't any actual threats, just invent them. Works every time.

Feral Finster's avatar

Note tha, as a matter of practical politics, "communist",.like "fascist", is one of those all-purpose words meaning "anyone I don't like".

Susan T's avatar

President Trump said that “communism is the greatest threat to our country” and would lead to “the ultimate annihilation of civilization.” baa haa haa ha. That gave me a good laugh. Said by the person who is the greatest threat to the safety of the world, who does not know what truth is, who cannot take responsibility for any of his corrupt behaviour and who has an entire administration that thinks he is the "king",

Blank Blank's avatar

All of the rhetoric about "communism" is so they can use NSPM7 to arrest them all and remove them.

jamenta's avatar
1hEdited

They are attempting to bring back McCarthyism with a vengeance. "Sir, are you not ashamed?"

Joe McCarthy, the Republican Senator from Wisconsin became famous for his list of communist "subversives" in the 1950s. A made up list (205 names) that infamously targeted his political opponents, including homosexuals, Hollywood stars, and political dissidents. Joe died an early death from likely alcoholism in 1957, after being discredited, despite having ruined the careers and lives of many good Americans - including the great Charlie Chaplin.

I wonder if Americans will fall for it again?

CK's avatar

Many of the ignorant are already falling for it.

John Day MD's avatar

"Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the [Democratic Socialists of America] Party."

Adapted from Senator Joseph McCarthy's opening question to every suspect and witness at the House Commmitee on Un-American Affairs hearings in the 1950s.

unwarranted's avatar

The intellectual cowardice when HUAC was making a show of shouting them down with threats and bully tactics is really a point in American history where working people went to bed citizens, and woke up consumers. It could have been a forum for a national discussion, but the hearings just showed submissive liberals who pleaded no contest to right wing brow beating.

I think there were a few who basically told Joe McCarthy to piss up a rope, but the moment called for an anti-McCarthy, someone who knew the Constitution and its amendments, and used the hearings as a referendum on right-wing verbal thuggery.

If the intellectuals had stood up and explained why they had every right to believe as they did, and why they would continue to do so, we might actually have a real, genuine left wing in the empire. And that empire would look a lot different than it does today.

Nicholas's avatar

Can't wait for the heariings; hope those wil be televized.

Marci Sudlow's avatar

This tired old refrain will resonate with no one.

jamenta's avatar
1hEdited

I dunno. How many Americans even know about Joe McCarthy these days - except baby boomer retired yokels?

Naila Claudia Schulte's avatar

At least as I see it, our current Corporate Fascist regime might actually have more in common with Communism than Capitalism. The political and economic sides of government can be seen as one and the same when the government meshes with business by not doing its part with fair taxes and controlling greed, fraud, and rape of the common people. And the corporations, in turn, control and manipulate our lives with little input from the populace, in effect a government. None of this acts in the interests of the people, which Communism supposedly does but never did.

DEREK HANDS's avatar

It’s used on social media by propaganda bots defending the indefensible. Apartheid South Africa propaganda used it a lot against human beings calling out their sins too. Really lame and pathetic.

Nancy's avatar
2hEdited

U.S.A.‘ans, the immediate job in front of us is to do what we can to flood our Senate representatives with our opposition to the Senate companion provision to Section 219. The Senate provision is 1217. A related job is to vote out every traitorous member of the House Armed Services Committee who supported Section 219 in the House and blocked a floor vote. A problem, though, is that Committee members took a voice vote on Section 219 so there is no written record of individual votes and the members who supported the provision can’t be held accountable to the people. We do know, however, that support for the provision was bipartisan and that Democrat Adam Smith of Washington was a sponsor. Of course he’s also taken a lot of money from AIPAC. Smith is being challenged in Washington’s August primary by Kshama Sawant, a former Seattle City Council member who is running as a member of the Socialist Alternative Party. (This is different than the DSA). Sawant is a strong supporter of Palestinian rights and pushed through one of the first significant hourly wage hikes in the country as a member of the Seattle Council. The Democratic Party, with the assistance of local legacy media, has done all it can to derail her campaign. I may have misunderstood her column, but Caitlin seemed to diminish the significance of the recent primary wins of strong opponents of the Israeli-U.S. genocide (with European complicity) in NY State, Colorado and elsewhere (e.g., NJ). I believe that whatever chance we have of cutting off the funding for the genocide (and the illegal war on Iran and ethnic cleansing in Lebanon) should not be easily dismissed. Several other primaries are coming up, e.g., in Missouri, Michigan and Tennessee, pitting opponents of the genocide against establishment Democratic supporters of Israel. Go to the websites of A New Policy or Justice Democrats to see who they are. Their votes on a genocide are more important than their labels.

William Frenger's avatar

Thank you Caitlin. Not that Today's Communism is the answer, but "They" have this brainwashed American population right where they want them and don't want the plebian slaves hearing about any alternative to the Capitalist system of exploitation they have going for them now.

Luke's avatar

It’s all be a construct. Capitalism vs Communism; Race, Religion, Women vs Men, etc etc. It’s not apparent to me these points of view over the years have been exploited beyond belief. Divide and conquer; keep the masses at each other’s throats.

The Revolution Continues's avatar

"Why keep pretending Israel’s war crimes are separate from America’s war crimes."

Indeed. It takes a war criminal to recognize another war criminal. They both long to take over the other's power and use it to conquer their own real or imaginary enemies. Perhaps that's why Trump wants to hook up the US military to the IDF--he's afraid he'll need the combined power to take on the "communists." It would be laughable if the idiot didn't have the nuclear football and the Israelis have nukes that don't admit to and aren't afraid to use.

Jinc's avatar

Are you referring to anyone who warns of communism? Because no.

dale ruff's avatar

Starting with Hitler, fascists unite around their opposition to communism, by which they mean liberals, social democrats, democratic socialists, Marxists, and anyone even one inch on the left. It's the big Tent of hatred.

Democratic socialists, contrary to those confused by labels, has no fixing ideology other than promoting equality and the working class, which can begin with strong collective bargaining rights or universal healthcare and lead, because it is democratic (a concept that lacks a limit), to communism or a world of workers coops...anywhere the democratic will leads. Today, it is leading towards uniting against Trump's fascism and the failure of capitalism to make the world's rich nation livable and affordable. Where it leads, no one knows.....

So Trump will use the Nazi tactic and meanwnile,more and more, voters (the vast majority of Democrats and the young) are ignoring the old tactics and think not of Soviet Communism (where Democratic Socialists were killed as enemies) but of Norway, where a hybrid economy and a robust welfare system has led to a prosperous, free, and happy nation.

Let me put it this way: because the longest journey begins with a few footsteps, democratic socialism as an umbrella label is today taking those few footsteps to find a foothold to gain power but it should not be judged by those few footseps which are but the beginning of an experiment that has never, except for a brief period in the 30's, had any power in the US and we are brought back to the words of FDR about the need for "ferocious experimenation," a term that signals forging new paths because the old are leading nowhere but down. It is likely we will hear the accusation of communism a thousand times before November but it is today less a weapon than noise.

Jay Tse's avatar

While I appreciate your answer, aren't what you doing (in the way you represent Democratic Socialism) is simply 'reframing' the debate on Reform vs. Revolution when it comes to making changes and getting rid of Capitalism?