- By Marc Sandalow | Special to The Examiner
- Jul 5, 2026 (SFExaminer.com)
Branding political opponents on the left as communists is a century-old American tradition.
From the Red Scare of the 1920s to the McCarthy era of the 1950s, labeling someone a “commie,” Marxist or “pinko” is a tried-and-true method of stirring nationalistic passions.
When 68 people were arrested at San Francisco City Hall in 1960 for trying to attend a congressional hearing on “un-American” activities, they were quickly vilified as communists.
“I only wish every American could have been in San Francisco and could have seen what I saw there,” the late U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond said of the protests that greeted the House Un-American Activities Committee.
“It reminded me of a bunch of howling wolves to see the communists and the communist led-people with thwarted minds, and misled people — college professors, students and others — being led by communists and being sucked into that movement.”
In fact, not one of the protesters arrested that day was a communist, nor were any convicted of crimes (among them was Albert Einstein’s granddaughter, Eveylyn, who — like many of the protesters — was a student at UC Berkeley).
Propaganda, however, does not require truth.
This past week, with his popularity at an all-time low, his party facing potentially devastating losses in November’s elections, and perhaps concern that his new term “Dumocrats” isn’t having much effect, President Donald Trump resurrected the “communism” attack in hopes of scaring voters about the Democratic Party.
Trump told religious leaders at the Faith and Freedom Coalition that his top priority was “to stop this horrible threat of cancer that’s permeating our country called communism.”
A few days later, he told reporters in the Oval Office that communism is the “biggest threat to our nation … maybe since our founding. That includes World War I, World War II, Sept. 11. It includes the Pearl Harbor attack.”
And where does the president see the red menace rising, posing a greater danger perhaps than the Civil War, the Great Depression or Covid-19?
It’s the election of social democrats such as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nithya Raman, the latter of whom placed second in the Los Angeles mayoral race and will face incumbent Karen Bass in a November runoff.
“These are not social Dumocrats — these are hardcore, godless communists,” Trump said. “This is the most serious threat to our country since its existence, in my opinion, 250 years ago. They use the word social democrat because its sounds so nice, but it’s really communism you’re talking about.”
No, it’s not.
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Communism is an economic system in which the public, rather than private entities, owns all resources and the means of production. Communists favor a classless society, in which profit motives and other capitalist notions are replaced by communal ownership.
Social democrats are capitalists who call for regulating private ownership, distributing profits more equitably, and providing widespread access to education, housing and healthcare.
Mamdani has called for strict rent control and programs to expand home ownership. Social democrats in Congress, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have proposed a Green New Deal to rein in carbon emissions, not a government takeover of the energy sector.
The one political leader who has openly boasted about public ownership of private companies is none other than Trump. Earlier this year, he bragged about the U.S. government taking a 10 percent ownership share of chipmaker Intel in exchange for a subsidy to promote its products. He said the government was taking a “golden share” of U.S. Steel as part of Japanese firm Nippon Steel’s purchase of the company. He has talked about similar arrangements with OpenAI and Anthropic.
It’s not what Karl Marx had in mind, but it’s a lot closer to communism than what Democrats have proposed.
Trump might believe communism is evil, but — true to form — he boasts that if he chose to become a communist, he’d be very good at it.
“I’ll be honest — I think I’d be the greatest communist in history” he said last week. “It would be so easy.”
Why? Because it involves making false promises, he said, such as promising free rent and free food — not to be confused with his pledges to cut energy bills in half or end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours.
And just in case the label has lost any of its sting in the 100 years since the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin took control of Russia, Trump spelled out in easy-to-understand terms what happens if such candidates win.
“Communism is very easy to sell, but you’ll start living in squalor,” Trump said. “There will be no food; there will be no housing; there will be no military; there will be no law and order. There will be nothing. You’ll be a third world [nation] in every way, and everyone will suffer or die.’
In 1948, as Senator Joseph McCarthy was building momentum, President Harry Truman warned that reckless cries of “communism” threatened the country more than they protected it.
“There is nothing that the communists would like better than to weaken the liberal programs that are our shields against communism,” Truman said.
Marc Sandalow has been writing about California politics from Washington, D.C., for more than 30 years.
