It’s starting to sound like we’re in the middle of the Spanish Civil War.
For those of you who forgot, the Spanish Civil War was the great prequel to World War II, in which the combatants were proxies for the communists and the fascists. Stalin’s Soviet Union supported the former, Hitler’s Germany aided the latter.
President Donald Trump and the GOP have decided to run against “communism” in the coming midterms. In his Fourth of July speech, Trump referenced the communists in our midst nearly a dozen times. “Our warriors did not fight communism on battlefields across the world, only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America,” he said. “We’re not going to let it happen.”
A few days prior, the president argued that the communist menace here at home amounts to “the biggest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, September 11th.”
Before you claim the right started it, we should note that we are years (or even decades) into a long-running effort to label Republicans, conservatives and especially Trump as “fascists.” Numerous books and countless op-eds and magazine articles have been written in support of this claim. In October 2024, then-Vice President Kamala Harris was asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, “Do you think Donald Trump is a fascist?”
Harris responded, “Yes, I do. Yes, I do.”
Of course, the right-wing habit of calling the left “communist” and the left-wing habit of calling the right “fascist,” hardly started with Trump either, so let’s restrict ourselves to the current brouhaha.
Democrats and various news outlets have pushed back on Trump’s communist charge, contending that even the most hard left Democrats in the news — mostly members of the Democratic Socialists of America — are not communists, but merely democratic socialists, of the sort popular in Europe and Nordic countries. “Democratic socialists are willing to have themselves voted out of power,” historian Michael Kazin told ABC News following last year’s election. “They believe that once you have a democratic socialist society, people will like that society, but if they don’t want to keep it, then they can go back to a more capitalist society.”
Kazin is right about the difference between social democracy and communism. But I don’t think that settles the argument as much as a lot of people think.
The DSA website is chock-a-block with positive references to Karl Marx. Within the DSA network are organizations such as the “Liberation Caucus,” “Red Star,” the “Communist Caucus,” the “Marxist Unity Group” and so on. They don’t merely offer positive references to Marx, Mao, Lenin, et al., but affirmatively cite them as authoritative voices. I particularly enjoyed the section “Common Misconceptions About Mao.”
If all these people are just Swedish variety “social Democrats” why is it impossible to find DSA references to foundational Swedish social democrat Hjalmar Branting, but easy to find references to Marx and Mao?
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has called for embracing “the warmth of collectivism.” Congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier, who recently won a Democratic primary in New York, has in the past praised numerous communist dictators and lamented that her local bookstore didn’t offer the collected works of Stalin. She deleted past social media posts along these lines and now insists she’s merely a democratic socialist.
Avila Chevalier might even be telling the truth. But I ask you: If a Republican candidate had a paper trail of being a dedicated, well-read and doctrinaire Nazi but disavowed this past only to run for office, would you take their word for it?
Also: Would news outlets run cover for them explaining the differences between outright Nazism and softer forms of “democratic fascism.”
It’s a stupid question — and we know the answer, because the right has a similar problem. Not all of those books and articles about the right’s flirtation with fascism is paranoid. Numerous Republicans have played footsie — or even had dinner — with avowed Hitler fan and occasional Holocaust-denier Nick Fuentes. Mark Robinson, the GOP’s 2024 gubernatorial candidate in North Carolina, once described himself as a “Black Nazi.” Vice President JD Vance has run cover for GOP staffers who texted “I Love Hitler.” The Jan. 6 riot was certainly fascistic.
Here’s my hot take: Everyone making allowances for Nazism or communism should be ashamed of themselves.
But here’s more practical advice. If you’re a journalist, stop providing cover for one side. And if you’re a fairly normal center-left Democrat or center-right Republican, worry less about the idiots and radicals in the other party, and start doing something about the ones in your own.
This Spanish Civil War stuff is mostly embarrassing cosplay. Most Americans reject the extremes, but if people won’t call out extremism in their own party, they’re not actually against extremism.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His X handle is @JonahDispatch.
