Fear Of A Red Kamala

The communist line against Democrats plays into their message that Republicans are "weird"

Donald Trump wants voters to see Kamala Harris as a communist. After the vice president announced her support for price controls, the opposing campaign quickly declared her a Marxist. “In her speech yesterday, Kamala went full communist,” Trump said last week. “Comrade Kamala announced that she wants to institute socialist price controls. You saw that never worked before … it will cause rationing, hunger and skyrocketing prices.”

The former president went on to share an AI image of Kamala speaking at a Soviet-style rally, further reinforcing the anti-communist line.

Conservative influencers love this new tactic, but it’s likely to fall short with voters. Calling something communist in the year 2024 makes most Americans scratch their heads. The red label doesn't frighten modern Americans and it comes across as far-fetched. Rather than being a devastating counter-attack to liberal assertions that Trump is a “Nazi,” the communist line helps reinforce the Democratic line that the Republicans are weird. 

Very few Americans believe a communist dictatorship is on the horizon. Over 60 percent of Americans believe it’s unlikely, with just nine percent saying it’s very likely. Even a majority of Republicans find it an unlikely prospect. Most Americans aren’t particularly horrified by Marxism. Nearly a third of young Americans have a positive view of communism, while a majority of Americans are unaware of the atrocities associated with communist regimes. 

Communism is seen as relatively harmless in our culture. It’s fringe, but not something that inspires the revulsion that fascism does. Millennials will remember the popularity of “Communist Party” shirts that showed Marxist figures literally partying. Che Guevara t-shirts and posters have always been popular and never resulted in serious consequences. The same can’t be said for Hitler t-shirts. Even when people had stronger memories of the Cold War, communism didn’t stand as a terrifying menace. In one Seinfeld episode, Elaine ends up dating a communist, which is depicted as an oddity to laugh about. The same TV series treated neo-Nazis as much more menacing when the characters interacted with those types.

Communists, unlike neo-Nazis, can operate out in the open with minimal fear of job loss or journalist inquisitions. That’s because society sees them as oddballs in the same vein as UFO fanatics. They’re weirdos, but they don’t present any threat. 

It’s another story for fascism. Thirty-one percent of Americans say that rising fascism is one of their greatest fears for their country, with nearly half of Democrats holding this delusional view. While a third of young Americans think communism is cool, only nine percent of Americans think it’s acceptable to hold “Nazi” views. That’s not even an endorsement of the ideology–that’s just the number of people who think you can exist in our society with those views. 

Even though there hasn’t been a fascist regime in nearly 80 years while communist ones (at least in name) still exist, the former frightens people more. This is due to the media and public education making fascism the greatest evil known to man. There are always new movies, TV shows, and video games with Nazis as the bad guys. There are not many video games with communists as the bad guys. Politicians and commentators love to call their enemies Nazis or fascists and have done so since the 1930s. This isn’t limited to the Left. Works by Jonah Goldberg, Dinesh D’Souza, and others that accused liberals of being fascists were massive hits among conservatives.

Like it or not, fascist is a more potent epithet than communist in American society. There’s a strong desire to counter left-wing “Nazi” smears with a powerful accusation of our own. But communist doesn’t accomplish this. Instead, it just befuddles normie Americans and gives Democrats further ammo to paint the Trump ticket as strange.

While the fascist/Nazi attack holds more power in our country, Democrats are wanting to move on from it this election. There are still liberal columnists and lawmakers calling Trump a threat to democracy. But it’s no longer the central theme of Kamala’s campaign. It’s been dialed down to just calling the Republicans weird. Democratic strategists must’ve realized the public isn’t as open to hysterics as they were in the 2010s and gone with a more restrained messaging. The weird attack appears to be working as Kamala is doing better in the polls than her predecessor Joe Biden.

The communist line from Republicans doesn’t persuade Americans to support them. It only reinforces the image that they are weird. It’s no longer a line that resonates with the public. Like the few remaining communists in modern America, warning about communism sounds kooky to people. Conservatives may say that’s a risk that they’re willing to take to wake up the public, but that’s not the way to win an election. You have to connect with the people on their level and not make them think you’re a weirdo.

Conservative influencers do, ove the communist line. Much of this anti-red enthusiasm stems from the desire to oppose something apocalyptically bad. Many on the American Right warn that we face a civilizational threat and drastic actions must be taken. Often, this civilizational threat is left fuzzy. We certainly do face existential problems, such as the Great Replacement. But it’s hard to illustrate a clear enemy with these problems in the way you can with a foreign foe who’s declared war on you. With a communist foe ready to impose tyranny on the homeland, conservatives can justify the apocalyptic rhetoric and support for radical solutions. Conservative audiences also find the communist menace an exciting prospect, making American politics more entertaining than the standard Democrat vs. Republican dynamic.

It is important to inform America of the many crimes of communism and how it’s no mere historical oddity. It’s good that conservatives want to talk about how bad communism is. However, it doesn’t connect with voters. It only titillates our own audience. 

We face a more boring enemy than communists. Kamala Harris and her ilk are ultimately just liberals. They certainly want to infringe on our liberties, such as free speech and gun rights. They definitely want to tax us more and impose more left-wing bureaucracy on the country. But they aren’t the children of Lenin and Mao. They still favor capitalism, liberal democracy, and all the official aspects of the American empire. They just want to transform America through open borders, anti-white indoctrination in schools, and higher taxes. 

That’s pretty radical, but it doesn’t rise to the grim reputation of Stalin. 

This election will depend on Trump effectively portraying Kamala as more extreme than the current president. He can do this by reviving a term that’s fallen out of favor with conservatives. Instead of calling her a communist, he should use the more accurate “socialist.” A few years ago, conservatives relished the chance to call Democrats socialists. But they seem to no longer show the same enthusiasm. Apparently, it’s more “based” to call the Democrats communists. However, the milder term is more effective and less kooky.

Socialist is a label that will stick and not strike voters as weird. A majority of voters have a negative impression of socialism and don’t view it as a relic of the past. It’s a far more present concern than communism. What else can you call Kamala’s proposals for price controls and insane tax hikes besides socialism? Liberals can’t just laugh off socialist accusations like they can with allegations of communism. Democratic propagandists will be forced to explain how imposing more government and taking more money away from citizens is a good idea. 

Trump will be Trump, so occasional shitposts and rally rants about Kamala being a communist is not that big of a problem. This is a man who joked about shooting someone on Fifth Avenue in 2016 and still won the election. He can get away with a lot. However, his campaign should not build around the anti-communist theme. It just plays into the Democratic message that the Republicans are plain weird.