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When President Donald Trump speaks of communism and communists it is clear that he is merely sounding the political bugle of the time, especially as mid-term elections are around the corner and in perhaps a nervousness that the Grand Old Party may lose control of the House of Representatives, the Senate or both.
In fact, political pundits have been pointing out that President Trump’s message is more of sounding the alarm bells for the elder Americans to get out and vote pointing to a threat to their ways of life than the youngsters who do not seem to be worried or scared of socialists and communists.
“Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty. It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or even 9/11” the President said in an event at Mount Rushmore on July 3. The day after, before a cheering crowd at the National Mall in Washington DC, President Trump vowed that “America will never be a communist country.”
Even moderates in the Grand Old Party are apprehensive of the good ole days of “Red Baiting,” but not this Commander-in-Chief or his trusted lieutenants. “This is not your grand daddy’s Democratic Party. These are communists,” the White House Press Secretary has been quoted. President Trump could not have been clearer: “You can be loyal to Karl Marx, or you can be loyal to America… You can be a communist or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both.”
It is not for the first time that America is being introduced to communism as a part of its political discourse. For close to four decades since the end of the Second World War, Americans have been inundated with various theories of the impact of being “soft” on communism. But the debate and talk of those yesteryears had the backdrop of the Cold War and emergence of two communist states in the international system—the then Soviet Union and China. The political spectrum of the United States, especially the institution surrounding the Presidency, was obsessed with one word: “lost.”
Presidents sitting in the Oval Office who were so accustomed to hearing the phrase “Who lost China, Korea” were terrified of “losing” Vietnam and hence were forced to prolong an agony in a faraway land that ultimately led to the loss of nearly 60,000 soldiers and billions of dollars, chasing a mirage. The ghost of Joseph McCarthy who haunted American institutions in the 1950s looking for “communists” led to the famed “Domino Theory”—that if one country in Asia falls to communism, all of Asia follows and eventually communists swimming the Pacific and landing in the beaches of California!
But in all the din of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, politicians and Presidents forgot the simple fact of the need to have something on hand before losing it. And even before getting fully involved in Vietnam, Presidents in Washington knew of the hopelessness of the task: having to shore up corrupt, economically and morally bankrupt regimes in Saigon, all in the fear of going down in history as the one who “lost” Vietnam to communists. However, there is a major difference in the environment of 2026; and something that politicians in Washington DC are too well aware of: that younger Americans and the Gen Z not frightened or even worried about communism and socialism. According to a recent poll, 38 percent of Americans under the age of thirty have a favorable view of communism with 53 percent of Gen Z respondents holding a similar perception of socialism.
Within the Democratic Party, the Democratic Socialists seem to be giving the jitters to the elders in the establishment given the kind of inroads that faction has made in state politics and in the national primaries for this November 3 election. New York is not seen as the only stronghold of the Democratic Socialists who now seem to have spread their wings in states like Pennsylvania, Illinois, California and Colorado finding their numbers through such issues as health care and increasing taxes on high income earners and large corporate houses. The younger generation of Americans are also perhaps of the thinking that Communism is able to hang on in some political system not by way of any superior economic way or life but through a politically brutal and repressive system.
Clearly, the threat of communism that President Trump is talking about is quite different from what America was introduced to through history and political science textbooks. In one sense the fragmentation of the Democratic Party is bound to be of concern to the Democrats as the party is perceived as being fractured along the Liberal- Conservative- Center- Progressive- Left- Radical Left lines and hence may be unable to stay united to fight Republicans in the two Chambers if voted to power.
President Trump and the Grand Old Party can only take comfort with the thought that the present generation of Democrats will not take directives mechanically from the ruling establishment. The days of Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi, Minority Senate Leader Chuck Schumer or Minority House Leader Hakeem Jeffries are long over.
The warning signs are also flagged for the Conservative Republicans who are harping on “Communism” as some sort of a scare tactic. Or as a columnist pointed out what President Lyndon Johnson did when the hawkish Republican Senator Barry Goldwater accused him of being soft on communism: an advertisement featuring a little girl picking petals in a countdown to a nuclear holocaust. That mushroom cloud is still a memory that will not go away.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed in this article/column are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of South Asian Herald.
