Incendiary language from Donald Trump and MAGA-aligned figures frames contemporary political opponents as communists, treating policy differences as existential threats. Senior officials have echoed that framing, with Homeland Security Director Kristi Noem declaring liberals "a bunch of communists and Marxists" and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller warning that "we're not going to let the communists destroy a great American city" after military deployments. That rhetoric functions to legitimize repressive, authoritarian measures and shows no sign of abating. The persistence of anti-communist tropes draws on a long twentieth-century legacy of anti-communist initiatives in the United States, with roots reaching back to early responses to political violence.
Listening to the incendiary rhetoric emanating from Trump and MAGA world, one would think the United States of today, decades after the collapse of the communist bloc, was enmeshed in an existential struggle against communism. Even before his election win in 2024, Trump claimed his opponents' economic policies were at the extremes of leftism. Kamala Harris, he said, had gone "full communist." With Trump setting the tone - and now ensconced in the White House - his minions have amplified that rhetoric as a way of justifying their repressive onslaught.
For example, Homeland Security Director, and anti-immigrant stormtrooper, Kristi Noem told the press in July that liberals "are actually turning out to be a bunch of communists and Marxists." In like fashion, Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff Steven Miller - speaking in Washington's Union Station after the military was dispatched to that city, proclaimed, "We're not going to let the communists destroy a great American city." The tenor and tone of all this show no signs of abating, as the fascistic moves and raw assertion of power continues.
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