Opinion | The G.O.P.’s New Red Scare

“Communism.” “Communism is a loser, and it always will be.” The president has spoken at several occasions about the dangers that communism poses to Americans. “It’s like a cancer, you got to cut it out. You got to cut it out fast.” And this is totally bizarre. “This is a full-blown communist revolution.” “We’re fighting communism on our own shores.” Things are not looking good for the G.O.P. in November. “These are numbers that Republicans do not want to see going into a midterm election.” One might think that you would try to do something to show that you are working on the economic issues that Americans say that they really care about. But you would be wrong. “Communism is on the ballot this November.” What they’re trying instead is a little bit of a Red Scare. “These are hard-core, godless communists.” They’re running against communism. “This is the most serious threat to our country since its existence.” The State Department recently put out a report alleging a decades-long plot by Cuba to inculcate communism on American shores. “You’ll live in squalor. There will be no food. There will be no housing. There will be no military. There will be no law and order. There will be no nothing. You’ll suffer and die. This is what happens.” In places like New York, Americans have elected democratic socialists. “When they say, ‘social democrats, we’re social democrats,’ it sounds so nice. It’s not nice. It’s a very dangerous term.” But democratic socialists aren’t communists, first of all, and second of all, their democratic socialism looks an awful lot like New Deal liberalism. Like something that’s very much part of the American political tradition. “This entire race was about the question of affordability.” It’s clear that when the administration and its allies say “communism,” they kind of just mean anyone to the left of Ronald Reagan. But nonetheless, it’s worth taking a little bit seriously the claim that communism is on the rise, and it’s not. It is true that more Americans have a positive view of socialism. And that has a lot to do with the profound failures of capitalism over the last 20 years. Americans who remember the financial crisis. Americans who are looking at, again, rising prices, at a labor market that’s difficult to break into if you’re young. Food insecurity. They’re looking at these things and saying, “I don’t know if capitalism is great for us.” So much of the Trump administration seems to be an effort to recapitulate things from the past as almost like a magic incantation that if you say them the right way, you’ll get the same effects. “Make America great again.” And I have a feeling that Trump who came up under the tutelage of Roy Cohn. thinks that if you just do a Red Scare, you’ll get voters behind you. “In this committee, activities may well determine whether this nation will live or die.” But the Red Scare was a particular response to a particular era, and even then, it wasn’t that politically successful for the people who initiated it. “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” And here, it’s not going to do much good for Trump. The fact of the matter is, is that, a, there isn’t some communist wave coming to take over America, and b, the president’s political woes, like the Republican Party’s, has everything to do with the failure of this administration to do anything it promised to do, and instead to focus on its narrow preoccupations. If Republicans lose in the fall, it’ll ultimately be because they, rather than stand up to the president, rather than try to salvage something from this administration, decided to roll over and do whatever Trump asked. “We are not descended from fearful men —” If they lose, they’ll just be suffering the consequences of their own actions, or perhaps better put, their own inactions. “— not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.”