The featured image is a poster for Warren Beatty’s great 1981 film Reds. I’ve long argued that it should have won the Best Picture Oscar. Reds was an excellent look at post-Great War America and the First Red Scare, which was initiated by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and run by a young man on the make, J. Edgar Hoover. It was inspired by the advent of the world’s first communist state, the Soviet Union. The First Red Scare was a grotesque overreaction to the facts on the ground in Russia. There was no red menace.
The Second Red Scare took place after World War II. It was inflamed by Stalin’s conquest of Eastern Europe and Mao’s takeover of China. The atomic spy cases added fuel to the fire sparked by Republicans such as Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy. That drunken liar lent his name to the “reds under every bed” hysteria known as McCarthyism. The Second Red Scare was a grotesque overreaction to the facts on the ground in Eastern Europe and China. There was no red menace.
The Third Red Scare involves an attempt by MAGA Republicans to whip up hysteria over the DSA’s recent primary wins. GOPers insist on calling them communists because they don’t know what they’re talking about. This comparison of DSL-types like AOC and Mamdani to Stalin and Mao is a grotesque web of lies spun by a desperate president and his cohort. They’re social democrats a la the left wing of the UK’s Labour Party, not Warsaw Pact style communists.
Repeat after me: There is no red menace.
The Kaiser of Chaos recently made some comments that are inflammatory and stupid even by his low standards:
As I said in my recent address at Mount Rushmore recently, I don’t know if anybody saw it. It’s such a beautiful place. The communists want to take it down. They can try taking Mount Rushmore down. They want to blow it up. They want to take it down. They shouldn’t be up there. These people are crazy. But communism is, in my opinion, communism is the single greatest threat to our country and its history, including even World War I and World War II, Pearl Harbor, 9/11. I think it’s the greatest threat that I’ve ever seen to our country. These people are stone cold crazy.”
Projection thy name is Donald. Who’s crazier than the man who thinks his head should be added to Mount Rushmore?
The idea that anyone wants to blow up Mount Rushmore is mere provocation. It’s red meat for the dwindling MAGA base many of whom have finally realized that Trump has lied to them for a decade. The Epstein Files coverup, the flailing economy, and the Iran War have eroded the MAGA base to the point where Trump’s approval ratings are where they belong: in the terlet.
As to this attempt to whip up anti-communist fervor on the right, it’s an act of desperation based on fiction. That does indeed describe much of the MAGA canon but this is particularly far-fetched and unconvincing. It’s unclear if any MAGA maggots are searching for reds under their beds, but the number is likely as miniscule as the Insult Comedian’s IQ. It’s another insult to the intelligence of Trump voters by their dear leader: nobody likes being patronized.
Repeat after me: There is no red menace.
Speaker Yellowbelly DBA Mike Johnson has leapt on to the Third Red Scare bandwagon:
This philosophy has led to the murder of tens of millions of innocent people in the 20th century alone. It is a nightmare and is a trail to certain death. And that’s why we’re speaking in such stark terms, because we need America to wake up. Thirty-five years ago, Republicans and Democrats in Congress, the Reagan years, they were fighting communism on a distant shore. Now it’s here.”
This is the most egregious kind of bluster and bullshit that’s rooted in Johnson’s fears of being consigned to the ash heap of history in Leon Trotsky’s memorable phrase. Do Johnson and Trump even know who Trotsky was? I’m sure they don’t know he was played onscreen by Richard Burton:
It all comes back to the movies with me. The Assassination Of Trotsky isn’t in the same league as Reds but what’s not to love about suave Frenchman Alain Delon wielding a pickaxe? I do, however, wonder if Trump and Mike Johnson’s shrill language is inspired by this red baiting 1984 potboiler:
It wouldn’t surprise me a bit. The Eighties were Trump’s heyday, after all.
I considered using a question mark on today’s post title. The rhetorical question is one my favorite rhetorical devices. But I went to that well on Tuesday with my Hegseth post, so I opted out. Now that I think of it, rhetoric is what the Third Red Scare is all about. The previous incarnations were partially fact based but this one is strictly fact free.
MAGA wants you to be afraid of reds under the bed.
Repeat after me: There is no red menace.
The last word goes to King Crimson:
Just when I got used to the idea that commies were the big threat, they said it was the hippies.
Just when I got used to the idea that hippies were the big threat, they said it was the feminists.
Just when I got used to the idea that feminists were the big threat, they said it was the drug dealers.
Just when I got used to the idea that drug dealers were the big threat, they said it was the gays.
Just when I got used to the idea that gays were the big threat, they said it was the immigrants and the blacks and the drag queens.
Now I got used to the idea that immigrants and blacks and drag queens were the big threat, they said it was the commies.
Are there any hippies left?