Donald Trump’s strategy to maintain a stranglehold on American democracy, Dr Jeff McMullen writes, invokes a century-old fear of communism.
HERE COMES the Red Scare in America… again!
In his 4 July Independence Day celebrations of the 250th birthday of the United States of America, President Trump showed his hand :
“Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty . It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War 1, World War 2, Pearl Harbour, or even 9/11. We’re not going to let this happen to us. Believe me, we’re not letting it happen. Because communism is the enemy of free people.”
Facing strategic embarrassment abroad and sinking popularity at home, the fear of Republicans losing control of the House of Representatives and at some risk in the Senate, the man who hates to lose needs someone to blame.
Who better than the “communists” Donald Trump claims are taking over the Democrat Party and threatening the American way of life?
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Recent primary election victories by candidates supported by New York’s democratic socialist Mayor, Zohran Mamdani , have highlighted the debate and angst within Democrat Party ranks about the appeal of socialism to younger Americans and others disaffected with mainstream politics.
Mamdani, of Indian descent and born in Uganda, became New York’s first Muslim mayor. He ran last December as a candidate for the Democrat Party, the Working Families Party and as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Mamdani's spirited oratory about a mandate for change and a new politics in America has helped other candidates running as Democratic Socialists. Progressives of this ilk have won primaries in New York, Colorado, Kentucky, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas.
This left-wing political success has given Trump his 2026 target in a volatile political climate.
Far-left Democrats, the ones Trump brands as communists, will be under constant fire in the lead-up to the mid-term elections in November.
Stand by for the White House team, led by Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller , to use some of the estimated US$400 million (AU$576 million) in the MAGA Inc Super PAC to deploy AI-generated attack ads and a barrage of social media, creating a new Red Scare.
The nationwide celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress created an opportunity for the 47th President of the United States to strut his extraordinary power and target his enemies within.
On the eve of 4 July, Trump flew to South Dakota in his new Air Force One , gifted by the Qatari royal family and costing American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars to refurbish and refit with security equipment. The President displayed typical hubris, posing with Melania Trump in front of the Mount Rushmore monument.
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Trump is fond of posting digital mock-ups of his face alongside the massive mountain carvings of George Washington , Thomas Jefferson , Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln .
We know from Regime Change, the new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan , that this President delights in the boast that he has more power than anyone in history. This includes bettering some of the world’s most feared and violent leaders, such as Attila the Hun , Genghis Khan , Napoleon , Stalin , Mao and Hitler .
According to Haberman and Swan, Trump told them :
‘These leaders “maintained power through fear... Who would ever do a thing like that? Right?”’
Before the fireworks began at the Mount Rushmore monument last weekend, Trump fired off an extraordinary salvo of his own, linking an intensified communist threat to “newcomers to our country... totally opposed to our way of life” .
“We resolve and swear for all to hear that the citizens of the United States of America will vanquish communism quickly... We will send them quickly away and we will continue to build our country bigger and better, stronger than ever before. America will never be a communist country!”
The most outrageous, attention-seeking statements from some members of the Democratic Socialist Alliance of America are aimed at younger people who are fed up with mainstream politicians. But they are a gift for Trump.
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New York’s Darializa Avila Chevalier , who has been nominated as a Democrat candidate to seek election to the House of Representatives, went way over the top on her social media posts, calling former President Joe Biden a “ rapist ” and jabbing at his former Vice President with, “ Fuck Kamala Harris ”.
Ms Chevalier has in the past praised communism , calling for the seizing of American land and means of production. She seems to have forgotten the terrible famines triggered by the policies of Stalin and Mao.
This is cannon fodder for an administration that will stop at nothing to create a Red Scare and, at the same time, try to cash in on Trump’s most popular political ploy, linking all major problems at home to anti-American types and unwanted immigrants.
Despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling against President Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship, the principal architect of the Administration’s harsh deportation strategy, Stephen Miller , says the White House will push Congress to enact new legislation and that “America’s doors are closed fully to asylum seekers” .
The next four months will determine whether widespread American discontent over the high costs of fuel, food and rent, as well as Trump’s debacle in Iran, can be minimised by all this angry distraction, a repeat performance of lie, wiggle and weave.
Trump genuinely fears a November loss in the House, as it would not only weaken his power at home and abroad. It could expose him and his cronies to investigation of what Democrats claim is systematic corruption and undermining of the role of Congress and key independent institutions.
“You got to win the midterms, because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just going to be, I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me.”
Some Americans I have consulted suspect Trump’s attempts to restrict voting on several fronts might be followed by the deployment of masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at voting booths to pounce on “new arrivals” who might vote for Democrats.
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There are concerns that the new Red Scare campaign will morph into oppression of fundamental civil rights, as happened in the past.
America’s first Red Scare after World War 1 was a state of panic prompted by a fear that the country’s labour movement would follow the socialist revolutions in Germany and Russia.
The second Red Scare, after World War 2, came from a disturbing reality. During the high tensions of the Cold War, several hundred American communists, including some high-ranking government officials and technicians working on the atom bomb, were spying for the Soviet Union.
The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan , a brilliant mind and fine historian, told me i