“Meet me at the book burning” – R.E.M. “Exhuming McCarthy”
In years past, I had created a cast of characters in my head, many of them exaggerated versions of politicians and pop culture figures. To what end, I don’t know, but I guess if I was ever hired on as a writer for Saturday Night Live, I’d have plenty of material at the ready. One of those characters was an old cantankerous fart who shouted “COMMUNISM!” in response to anything he didn’t like.
I would come up with dialogues for these characters, largely to amuse myself, while I’d be out driving around. One such routine included the old gent at Whataburger decrying a price increase on his breakfast, which of course merited a shout of “COMMUNISM!” at the young lady taking his order. Same thing when the pharmacy wouldn’t honor his prescription plan, or if the neighbor’s children were too loud while throwing the football around. Communism was everywhere in the mind and eyes of this fictional character (who I never even really named).
However, there’s nothing fictional about the performance politics playing out in real time as the midterm elections loom closer. We the People are once again finding our intelligence insulted by our high and mighty masters. Instead of a focus on rising costs of groceries, gas, healthcare, housing, etc., etc., President Donald J. Trump and many in the Republican Party leadership have decided to revive that old standard bogeyman in American politics: that communism is lurking around every corner.
This time, they’ll have us believe that their rival cult, the Democrats, are infested with communism. Mr. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said as much recently, claiming that “extreme Marxist” ideology has taken over the policy, as did House majority leader Steve Scalise, who claimed a Bolshevik-style takeover had occurred with the Dems.
As a student of history, my mind keeps treading back to the 1950s and the Red Scare while listening to these blowhards. Most Americans these days don’t have any memory of that crazy period in our history, but in the early 1950s, from about 1950 to 1954, Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy spearheaded a widespread public paranoia of communist influence on American life.
It was an extremely problematic witch hunt, and McCarthy’s anti-commie crusades left behind a legacy of paranoia, blacklists, ruined careers and accusations that, most of the time, relied on fear instead of actual evidence. Through the lens of history, we judge McCarthy and his political brand harshly because it encouraged We the People to view one another with suspicion, instead of addressing real problems, and it seems like that history is trying to rhyme here in 2026.
I have friends who are die-hard Democrats, just like I have many friends who are devoted Republicans. Never once have I thought of any of them as being communists, or fascists, respectively, but as Americans who care about the country and actual problems.
Communist regimes – REAL, actual communists – as seen by governments such as the former Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, or Mao Zedong’s Red China, or more current, North Korea under Kim Jong Un, have all shown historically repressive regimes where millions of human beings have suffered under forced collectivization, censorship, imprisonment, famine and political purges. Millions of citizens under these systems have been denied freedoms that, let’s face it, many of us as Americans take for granted, and there is nothing admirable about governments that imprison dissidents, silence journalists or place absolute power in the hands of one person.
It is ironic, in a sense, that the GOP seems to be ramping up a new Red Scare when President Trump has often praised contemporary autocrats, such as Kim Jong Un or Vladimir Putin. While Russia is no longer communist in an economic sense, it has become an authoritarian state under Putin, and China, under President Xi Jinping, whom Trump has spoken fondly of, is governed by the Chinese Communist Party.
It sends a confusing message, to say the absolute least. If communism represents an existential threat because it empowers brutal dictators and suppresses liberty, then expressing admiration for authoritarian strongmen is quite a contradiction, and one that cannot be ignored.
Meanwhile, back in the land of We the People, average American challenges have little to nothing to do with Cold War-era witch hunts revived. Families worry about medical bills, the affordability of childcare, student loan debt, infrastructure issues and whether their children will inherit a stronger economy than what we have now. Older Americans worry about the preservation of Social Security and Medicare, and none of these concerns are solved by politicians accusing their opponents of harboring communist sympathies.
Campaigns built around exaggerated ideological fears always seem tempting, and even exciting, to some voters because they simplify complex issues into emotionally satisfying narratives, and it is easier for a politician to declare that shadowy radicals are threatening America than it is to explain how to reduce healthcare costs or to drive down the cost of goods.
America has successfully confronted genuine communist adversaries before, and the Cold War ended more than 30 years ago. Today’s geopolitical landscape is far more complicated and nuanced than a simple contrast between capitalism and communism, and Americans deserve actual leaders who understand those complexities instead of trotting out tired talking points and nonsense that some voters only recognize from history books, if at all.
The fast-approaching midterm elections allow a window of opportunity for debate on genuine policy differences, and how actual policies can benefit We the People. Reasonable people can disagree over taxes, immigration policy, foreign policy, environmental regulation or how large the government should be, which is fair within a constitutional democratic republic, but reviving McCarthy-era nonsense contributes nothing beyond division and distraction.
Intelligent, patriotic Americans have every reason to reject the brutality of actual communist dictatorships and will, hopefully, continue to do so, but they also have every reason to recognize that invoking the specter of communism at every political disagreement is not a governing philosophy.
The new Red Scare is nothing more than a ham-fisted campaign strategy that will not solve any of today’s problems, and to those who perpetuate it, the law of unintended consequences will, no doubt, bite them where the sun doesn’t shine. Most voters, after all, are looking for solutions and not scapegoats.
