“Everyone knows she’s a Marxist”: during his recent debate with Kamala Harris, Donald Trump once again used rhetoric invoking the “red scare” in the United States. The goal? To portray his Democratic rival as a dangerous left-wing extremist.
The former Republican president has in recent weeks made numerous accusations against the vice president, describing him as both a “Marxist” and a “communist.”
The one he often dubs “Comrade Kamala” nevertheless claims to be a capitalist. She does not really carry ideas worthy of the 19th century German theorist.e century or of the various radical left currents which emerged from it in the following century.
“She’s not a Marxist, she’s not a communist,” argues Thomas Zeitzoff, a professor at American University. But for the Republican camp, using such terms “is a way of saying she’s extreme,” this specialist in political violence told AFP.
Because Donald Trump is using an old mechanism from American political history: “red baiting”, which aims to provoke by waving the red flag.
Paranoia
The strategy is to “label political opponents as communists, or socialists, or reds,” “not only to denigrate them, but also to make them retaliate and perhaps paint themselves in an unflattering light,” says Barbara Perry, a professor of presidential studies at the University of Virginia.
“Communist”, “socialist”, “red”, so many terms “very connoted in this country”, marked by several waves of “red scare” at the end of the two world wars, she explains. Two periods when the country thus tended to “withdraw into itself” in the face of fears of seeing Marxist ideology spread.
In the 1950s, against the backdrop of rivalry with the Soviet Union, this resulted in McCarthyism, named after Senator Joseph McCarthy, the chief “Red-baiter and witch-hunter” in the US Congress, as Barbara Perry recounts.
This conservative, a fervent anti-communist, then warned against the supposed infiltration of communists into all strata of American society and thus created a general climate of paranoia across the country, before falling from grace.
“Red baiting has a long history in the United States, and it is interesting to see its return” today, says Thomas Zeitzoff.
The researcher also identifies a common thread between Joseph McCarthy and Donald Trump, in the person of Roy Cohn. This lawyer, advisor to the conservative senator in his “hunt for the Reds”, was the mentor of the real estate magnate and future president in the 1970s.
“Spaghetti thrown at the wall”
Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in November just a few weeks ago. Donald Trump is using “red baiting” in part to paint an unflattering portrait of his rival for Americans who don’t yet know her well.
And to explain this choice of the Republican candidate, Thomas Zeitzoff and Barbara Perry both use the same metaphor, that of “spaghetti thrown at the wall to see what sticks.” Donald Trump chose to portray her as a Marxist as he could have chosen any other pejorative theme.
But the former president still hopes to attract a certain category of voters “by accusing Kamala Harris of being a Marxist,” Thomas Zeitzoff points out, notably Hispanic and Latino voters. Among this key electorate, many come from families who fled communist countries and have very unfavorable memories of them.
Donald Trump is also targeting another category of the population, according to Barbara Perry: the elderly.
“People who remember the height of the Cold War” and who “still believe today that communism is bad.”
It remains to be seen what real effects the Republican candidate can hope for from his campaign.
In his book Nasty PoliticsThomas Zeitzoff demonstrates how the “nasty rhetoric” – insults, conspiracy theories, intimidation – used by some politicians, particularly in the United States, has proven somewhat ineffective in convincing voters around the world.
However, the upcoming elections “are really close, with really narrow margins.”
This “red baiting” by Donald Trump could therefore “persuade certain people on the fringes,” according to the researcher.