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?
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.
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”.
Trump continued:
“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!”
Beware the Reds! Beware the Reds!
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.
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.
Said Trump back in January:
“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.
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 in an interview for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation back in the 1970s that the great folly of the anti-communist McCarthy era was that it neglected necessary counterespionage and over-reacted in oppressing civil liberties.
There is a tragic parallel here. President Donald Trump invokes the new Red Scare as America’s enemy while simultaneously earning a reputation as a positively power-crazy authoritarian.
He has divided the American nation like never before since the race riots of the 1960s and the fierce struggles of the Civil Rights era. Congress has been sidelined and the Supreme Court, stacked with Republican appointees, has made this President immune from prosecution while carrying out his official duties.
Most of the world sees that the real scare in America is the uncertainty over what Trump might do with the two and a half years remaining of his Presidency.
Look at the damage so far:
- Trump’s tariffs;
- his own goal in making war on Iran;
- decapitation of Venezuela’s government;
- cosiness with Russia’s President and stubborn undermining of Ukraine’s resistance to Putin’s invasion; and
- designs on Greenland, the Panama Canal, Cuba and even Canada.
This and more have enormously weakened trust in U.S. global leadership.
Yet this will not deter Donald Trump. His agenda now is focused on revenge and humiliation of his political rivals. He believes that he will be powerful in or out of office.
Trump wants a prominent place in world history, not only for the last 250 years.
The 47th President of the United States wants exactly 47 new Maple trees planted in his honour in Lafayette Square opposite the White House.
Designs for a grand Washington arch and a brutalist ballroom are expressions of a self-styled Gilded Age in which Donald J Trump can pose with a king-sized megaphone, drowning out criticism and hailing himself as one of the greatest men of all time.
Why not? He is the American President!
Trump bragged:
“At 250 years, America is the oldest republic on Earth. We are the freest people on Earth. We have the most righteous and enduring Constitution on Earth. We are the strongest and most powerful country on Earth. And by the grace of God, the United States is the most successful, most accomplished, most exceptional nation ever to exist in human history and it is great to be your President.”
Dr Jeff McMullen AM is a journalist, including for Four Corners and 60 Minutes, author and filmmaker, and recipient of the United Nations Media Peace Prize.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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