Kenneth Glad
Political language once associated with earlier ideological battles is returning to national debate. A historian says the frequency and timing of the message deserve scrutiny.
Donald Trump and several prominent Republican voices have recently portrayed communism as a threat to the United States.
According to HuffPost, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States “doesn’t want to be a communist country,” adding his voice to a wider series of Republican warnings built around the same ideological theme.
The White House delivered a similarly emphatic message in an official post, declaring: “The United States of America will NEVER be a communist country.”
A House Republicans account reinforced that position with its own pledge to stop communism, further extending the message across different parts of the party.
Trump has also used the label in more dramatic terms. HuffPost reports that he claimed communists wanted to blow up Mount Rushmore, invoking one of the country’s most recognizable national monuments while portraying the alleged threat as both political and symbolic.
Taken together, the statements differ in tone, but they point in the same direction. Each presents communism not as a distant ideology, but as a danger that Republican leaders say must be actively resisted.
Repetition shapes the warning
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University historian whose work examines fascism, authoritarianism and propaganda, interpreted the statements as variations on a common political theme.
“The new party line is to associate Communists with every crime, every offense. Create a sense of Communist threat to justify a right-wing crackdown. Old playbook used with coups and Fascist takeovers,” Ben-Ghiat wrote, according to HuffPost.
Her argument is not that the remarks prove formal coordination among Republican officials. Instead, she maintains that similar claims from influential figures and official accounts can strengthen one another by repeatedly presenting the same ideological danger.
Ben-Ghiat also connected the rhetoric to the approaching midterm campaign. She warned that describing communism as a national-security threat could help justify a political crackdown before voters decide most federal congressional contests in the November 3 general election.
Her concern centers on how a broad label can be attached to crimes, political disputes and perceived enemies until it begins to appear more immediate or widely accepted. Slight changes in wording allow the same allegation to travel through speeches, government messages and partisan social-media accounts.
The debate therefore extends beyond conventional Republican opposition to communism. Ben-Ghiat is questioning whether the repeated language is being used to construct a domestic threat that could later support stronger government action.
Source: HuffPost
