Red scare revived as Trump leads push to attack Democrats as ‘communists’

Moments after Donald Trump rang the ceremonial opening bell on Monday, starting the trading day from the Oval Office, 232 miles north on Wall Street, the US senator Ted Cruz celebrated the president’s new savings accounts as his administration’s “New Deal”.“But instead of having government taking care of everyone,” the Republican senator declared, “Trump accounts are about making every child and every American a capitalist.”In the wake of primary election wins by democratic socialists and their close progressive allies in New York and elsewhere, Trump and his Republican allies are leading a broad push to brand Democrats as communists, using John Birch Society language that has grown dusty with disuse.While Trump often conflates democratic socialism with Communism – a well-worn Republican tactic that aims to weaponize voters’ fears of Marxism against liberal policies – he has increasingly made the accusation distinct and clear.“Communism is the exact opposite of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It’s death, tyranny, and the pursuit of evil,” Trump said, speaking at Mount Rushmore for an address marking the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. “The godless communist morality states that anything is justified to bring about inhuman visions … They don’t want good. They don’t love God and they don’t want God. They don’t love religion and they don’t want religion, and they won’t have it, but we will not let them win.”No president had rung the bell from the White House before Monday’s event, perhaps because no president had wanted to associate state power so closely with financial markets.But while Trump has ramped up his attacks against Communism, the self-styled business mogul president has overseen the most significant extension of government control over private industry since the start of the cold war, if not before.The United States government has a 9.9% stake in Intel Corporation and is the storied chip maker’s largest single shareholder. Trump redirected money from the Chips Act to rescue the firm. The government has warrants allowing it to purchase another 5% of the private company.It is only one of dozens of nationalized state investments since the start of Trump’s second term. The US has a 15% stake in MP Materials: the Department of Defense is the rare earth producer’s largest shareholder. The Department of Energy has a 5% stake in Lithium Americas and a 5% economic stake in its Thacker Pass joint venture with GM.Trump allowed the acquisition of US Steel by a Japanese firm only on the condition of a “golden share” that gives the government veto power over some industrial decisions made by the steelmaker on national security grounds. OpenAI is in talks with the administration to turn over 5% of its equity to the government.The president has wielded tariffs like a cudgel, protecting or punishing industries – and specific private firms – based on White House policy or his personal whims. Nvidia and AMD only obtained export licenses for their valuable AI chips after they agreed to pay the U.S. government 15% of their China chip revenue.Nonetheless, Trump’s anti-communist language has been echoed across the rightwing media landscape.“The party did it to themselves,” said Fox News host Jesse Watters of the Democratic Party. “They screwed up so badly and didn’t deliver a damned thing when they had power, that they had to play footsie with commies to shore up their base. They’re weak. Brand is in the toilet. And they opened the door just a crack and danger just walked in. These are cold-blooded revolutionaries who want to bury America.”New York mayor Zohran Mamdani also spoke ahead of Independence Day, criticizing wealth inequality and capitalism in his address. The right seized on it.“The barbarians are inside the gate,” said US House speaker Mike Johnson on Fox News Sunday, describing democratic socialism as “a serious threat to our whole system of government”.“This is what you expect out of the communists,” said Matt Mowers, a former White House adviser, to NewsMax. “That’s why he chose the day before our 250th celebration of our independence, in order to launch this divisive type of speech,” Mowers said. “He’s trying to tear people apart at a time when we should be united and celebrating.”Mowers lost a Republican primary bid for Congress in 2022 to former Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who in comments to Watters over the weekend ascribed the complaints of Gen Z about the cost of living to “laziness” and “silver spoons in their mouths, just getting everything handed to them”.Leavitt walked back her remarks.“Many Republicans think it’s a good development. They say it will make the midterms easier to win because Americans don’t like socialists,” said the far-right commentator Barbara Boyd of Promethean Action in a video that attempts to link Mamdani to Italian marxists who have been dead for almost a century.She is among many conservatives circulating a platform drafted by the Marxist Unity Group, a radical faction within the Democratic Socialists of America that wants DSA to break away from the Democratic Party and advocates for the elimination of the US Senate and the US supreme court.“So, how do we defeat this?” Boyd said. “Probably not, as Republicans suggest, by constantly flogging how crazy these people are, although they are crazy … We have to make the culture Donald Trump is recreating, American culture, self-conscious to our people.”