On the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, Donald Trump made a speech beneath South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore. “A generation after we fought and won the Cold War against the menace of Communism, there is now a resurgence of the Communist menace in our land—including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life,” said the president.

According to Trump, or the White House Director of Speechwriting Ross Worthington and Director of the Domestic Policy Council Vince Haley, “Communism is a mortal threat to American Liberty. It is the Greatest Threat to our Country including World War One, World War Two, Pearl Harbor, or 9/11.”

Trump Apes McCarthy

If the notorious anti-communist Senator Joseph McCarthy were alive, he would likely approve of Trump’s rhetoric. “You can be loyal to Karl Marx, or you can be loyal to America. You can be a Communist, or you can be a Patriot. You cannot be both.”

So on the eve of this 250th anniversary of American Liberty, we resolve and swear for all to hear that the Citizens of the United States of America will vanquish Communism from our shores, and send it into exile once and for all. America will never be a Communist country!

Did Trump say his government will “exile” communists, the “worst people,” or simply outlaw a political philosophy he disagrees with? Although McCarthy did not have the authority to deport communists, his aggressive anti-communist crusade directly led to thousands of Americans losing their jobs, being blacklisted, and being targeted for legal action by other government bodies. Trump may attempt a similar purge.

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025—underwritten by the Coors family, Koch Industries, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, the Scaife family, the Bradley family, and the industrialist Barre Seid—advocates for a stronger unitary executive and a MAGA consolidation of power. “China, globalists, political and academic elites, the left, socialists, communists—for Project 2025 it is all just one enemy,” writes Jerry Harris for Convergence.

Republicans, concerned about a potential Democrat takeover of the House and Senate in the forthcoming midterm elections, have branded their adversaries as anti-American communists. As Trump and the Republican Party attempt to link Democratic policies with communism, political and historical experts highlight that such representations are misleading.

Progressive Democrats typically advocate for democratic socialism, which endorses universal healthcare and a comprehensive social safety net, in contrast to fundamental communist tenets such as the elimination of private property, the establishment of a classless society, or a dictatorship of the proletariat. Democratic socialists are more focused on reforming financial capitalism rather than completely dismantling it. They are not, as Trump would have it, doctrinaire communists.

West Virginia Rep. Riley M. Moore believes Democrats have embraced “communism and Islam on the eve of our 250th anniversary,” while former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, lectures us that “Socialism takes power from you. They take care of the powerful. They take care of the guys with connections. And they rip off the rest of us,” a remark more attuned to the globalist financial elite than Marxists.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, while delivering remarks at a “Faith and Freedom” event held in June, warned that a presumed socialist takeover of the Democrat party is a “serious threat to America… There’s mini-Mamdani’s popping up all over the United States… they’re running as open Marxists and communists.”

Fox News warns “communism is here” in response to Zohran Mamdani urging New Yorkers to lower thermostats during a heat spell. “First they tell you how cold to keep your room, then how much sex you can have,” chided Jesse Watters, the resident comedian at the MAGA network. Watters and the MAGA evangelists no doubt consider the late President Jimmy Carter a communist. During the energy crisis of the late 1970s, Carter advised Americans to set their thermostats to 68 degrees Fahrenheit during the winter months.

Trillionaire Elon Musk urges the enactment of legislation to prevent the supposed communist threat to America. He calls for the invocation of the Communist Control Act, declaring that communism has the “highest death count of any philosophy.” It is estimated that communism is responsible for approximately 168 million deaths from 1900 to 1987. The vast majority of the deaths occurred in Mao’s China and Stalin’s Soviet Union.

China now operates under a system referred to as “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” which incorporates market reforms and private enterprise. It is a hybrid system that can no longer be defined as following Marxist communism. Russia ended communism in 1991 and is now described as a federal democratic state, but in practice, it operates as a highly centralized system dominated by President Vladimir Putin.

Surveys indicate a large percentage of younger Americans hold favorable views of socialism and communism. In particular, 62% of individuals aged 18 to 29 have a positive perception of socialism, while 34% of the same age group express favorable opinions about communism, despite media representations and educational discussions frequently highlighting the risks associated with communism.

The primary reason a large number of younger Americans hold a negative view of finance capitalism can be attributed to a uniquely brutal job market, AI eliminating entry-level jobs, high levels of student debt, and disillusionment with the so-called “American Dream” of prosperity and economic security that remains out of reach for millions of Americans.

Nevertheless, a majority of Americans do not view socialism positively. Among the so-called “silent generation” (individuals born between 1928 and 1945), 72% expressed a negative opinion of socialism. Additionally, 58% of Baby Boomers also share an unfavorable perspective.

Trump, State Capitalism, and Mussolini

Trump denounces anachronistic communism and its abuses, and yet he advocates for a version of nationalism and authoritarianism that is fascistic in character. His approach to financial capitalism has been characterized as advancing state capitalism, a concept embraced by fascist regimes like that of Mussolini. Bret Devereaux, a professor at North Carolina University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences, draws a comparison to Umberto Eco’s essay Ur-Fascism (Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt), and concludes Trumpism “satisfies all 14” characteristics of fascism.

Both fascism and socialism demand the state control private sector economic activity. Trump’s state capitalism, according to The Wall Street Journal, is a “hybrid between socialism and capitalism in which the state guides the decisions of nominally private enterprises.”

Trump’s economic intervention is bolder and, like Biden, cloaked in “national security” language. Examples abound. To approve Nippon Steel’s $14.9 billion acquisition of US Steel, Trump secured a “golden share,” granting him (or a designee) veto power over major decisions—functionally, a controlling stake.

The War Department is allocating $400 million of taxpayer money to acquire a 15 percent ownership in MP Materials, a California-based company that extracts rare earth minerals. This agreement positions the government as the largest shareholder of the firm. Additionally, Trump established an export control agreement that permits Nvidia and AMD to sell AI chips to China, provided they remit 15 percent of their revenue to the federal government.

In a related development, the Trump administration revealed its plan to acquire 10 percent of Intel’s stock in return for $9 billion in federal grants that the technology firm was expected to receive under the CHIPS Act. Consequently, this positions the government as the largest shareholder of Intel.

According to author and investor Doug Casey, “Trump is making some huge mistakes” in regard to MP Materials and Intel. “As well as taking a so-called golden share in US Steel, and forcing Nvidia to pay 15% of its revenue on sales to China. This is all right out of Mussolini’s playbook.”

Mussolini’s idea was that the State and large corporations would be hand in glove, working together in a “public-private” partnership. Unfortunately, everything that Trump is doing these days is headed in that direction.

The Failure of “Communism or Common Sense”

President Trump’s Mount Rushmore denunciation of communism and its mimetic repetition in the MAGA echo chamber is an effort to vilify Democrats ahead of the midterm elections. Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s SPOX, who is married to a millionaire, told Fox News that Gen Z (largely in favor of socialism) is “lazy” and born with “silver spoons in their mouths,” and that if they misbehave, they should be sent to “Iran” and “Cuba.” AF Post notes that “Gen Z faces some of the most disparate wealth inequality in US history, with relative purchasing power, especially of homes, greatly diminished.”

Trump’s effort to frame the midterm elections as a contest between “communism and common sense” will fail to sway millions of Americans. “Democrats have seized on the issue of affordability, as inflation continues to rise under the Trump administration. Data released by the Commerce Department last week showed inflation hitting its highest level in over three years,” The Hill reports.

Democrats, of course, are wedded to the same financialized economic system as Republicans. During the 2008 financial crisis, a number of economists argued that financial services had become an overwhelming sector of the US economy, with no real benefit to society accruing from the activities of increased financialization.

“The financial sector functions as the sharp canines that the predator state uses to rend the nation,” writes white-collar criminologist William K. Black. “In addition to siphoning off capital for its own benefit, the finance sector misallocates the remaining capital in ways that harm the real economy in order to reward already-rich financial elites harming the nation.”

During his first term, Trump signed the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act, the largest rollback of financial regulation since the global financial crisis and the enactment of the Dodd–Frank Act. It has been noted that the Act raises the asset threshold for banks considered “too big to fail,” which could leave large institutions without necessary oversight.

Despite Trump’s claim that Democrats are communists, both parties are beholden to financial capital, corporate PACs, and organizational donors, including high‑profile individual donors such as Sam Bankman‑Fried, the perpetrator of one of the largest financial frauds in history, stealing over $8 billion of his customers’ money, and subsequently sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Article posted with permission from Kurt Nimmo