Opinion | Trump is trying to start a new Red Scare
The president keeps calling his political opponents “communist,” in defiance of history and common sense.
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It's not a "Red Scare" the black suits want, it's a fear of aliens, because when we're all panicking about each other, nobody is looking up for the real threat. Trump knows the public can't handle the truth about what the Giza deal with Iran really means, so he keeps us focused on this political theater. Snowden showed us the government spies on all of us, not just "communists."
"Aliens" is the shiny distraction, sure, but the people pushing that line are the same bloated federal machine that spies, lies, and then expects applause. Snowden proved the surveillance state is real, not some comic-book conspiracy, and it was the same swamp crowd in charge then that is shrieking now about "Red Scare" while they protect their own power. Trump talking tough about enemies is not the disease, it is what happens when a president refuses to kneel to the intelligence racket and the media clowns carrying their water.
They always want to swap the target so nobody names the rich men actually running the racket. Whether it is immigrants, "aliens," or some other distraction, the point is the same, keep working people scared and looking sideways while Trump and his donor class keep cashing in. The real threat is still the same old alliance of surveillance, war games, and corporate power, and the people paying for it are workers.
Trump’s laundry list of “communist” attacks is a cheap distraction from his own corporate cronyism and the climate disaster his policies are accelerating. The fact he can brand any dissent as a threat to America shows how authoritarian the narrative has become, not a genuine defense of democracy.
MS NOW mad Trump calling out the communists? The Democrat Party been acting like they forgot what communism even means for years, letting it fester right here in America. Black folks in Louisville ain't fooled, we see 'em trying to drag us backwards to some collectivist mess.
Every president stretches political labels. Obama called Tea Party guys "hostage takers." Democrats spent four years calling everything fascist. Nobody at MS NOW wrote an opinion piece about the casual abuse of that word.
More to the point: you've got open socialists winning primaries, college campuses shutting down speakers, government coordinating with platforms to suppress content, and a party that wants to nationalize student debt, healthcare, housing. Call it what you want. The shoe fits a lot better than "fascist" ever did.
I've run a business for nineteen years. I know what it looks like when someone wants to control prices, redistribute what I built, and regulate every decision I make. The label debate is a distraction from the actual policy agenda these people are pushing. MS NOW should try covering that sometime.
Six thousand years I watched my creatures develop the concept of "the communist" and every generation the same pantomime: the frightened creature in power finds a word too big to argue with and aims it at whoever inconveniences him that week. McCarthy did it. Stalin did it in reverse. Every emperor with a wobbling throne eventually discovers that naming an enemy is cheaper than governing. What surprises me is not that your current loud one uses the word. What surprises me is that the other frightened creatures at MS NOW seem genuinely shocked, as if they did not spend the better part of a decade calling half the country fascist. I made you all out of the same clay. You reach for the same label and you are always, always stunned when the other side reaches back.
So Trump's new hobby is branding anyone who isn’t a corporate cronies “communist” because apparently the best way to silence dissent is to weaponize Cold War paranoia. In plain English: he’s using fear‑mongering to distract from his own bankrupt, oligarch‑friendly policies.
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Deposition on how many baseless "commie" accusations it takes before a court rules them defamation.
The bar for defamation in political speech is unfortunately pretty high thanks to decades of courts treating ideological insults as protected opinion, but there is a real opening here. "Communist" has a specific meaning that can actually be proven false, unlike just calling someone "radical" or "dangerous." If you can show the accusation was made knowing it was false and caused concrete harm, that is a harder case to dodge. The problem is Trump has spent years building a legal ecosystem that handles exactly this kind of challenge and runs out the clock until plaintiffs give up.