At a recent rally in Tucson, Arizona, Donald Trump told the crowd that presidential candidate Kamala Harris is a “Marxist, communist, fascist, socialist.”
If you watch a video of his remarks, you notice that the crowd reaction is surprisingly muted for a Trump rally. I imagine that is because most people in attendance were slowly filtering through Trump’s list of isms to determine if what they just heard made sense.
And, of course, it did not.
I wager that if someone were to research it, they would find that Trump set a new presidential campaign record for applying the most scary isms to one’s opponent.
This should come as no surprise since Trump spelled out his campaign strategy to one of his rally crowds last month: “All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody that’s going to destroy our country.”
So, why does Trump rely so heavily on the ad hominem, or name-calling, fallacy?
Sociologist Ron McAllister in The Observer states, “If you don’t have an argument as to why people should vote for you, calling the opposition scary names might help. The accusers are not trying to make an actual argument. Their purpose is to spread fear that foreign and dangerous things will happen if the opposition is elected.”
This strategy of spreading “fear that foreign and dangerous things will happen if the opposition is elected” was also deployed when Trump and J.D. Vance spread the false ‘Haitians eating pets story.’
Throwing around scary isms can be quite effective, even if the thrower and his listeners—especially if his listeners—have no idea what the words actually mean.
Trump is claiming that Harris is some sort of political Sybil, the female subject of a 1970s bestselling book concerning a young lady with multiple personalities.
If Kamala Harris is a “Marxist, communist, fascist, socialist” as Trump said, perhaps the four isms are battling for dominance within her, like what Sybil experienced involving her 16 different personalities.
First off, it's simply not feasible that a Marxist and a communist could peacefully reside together within Kamala Harris.
Marxism is a philosophy while communism puts that philosophy into action. If Kamala Harris is both a Marxist and a communist, it’s conceivable that one voice in her head declares “I think, therefore I am” while another voice shouts “Get out in that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans!”
Marxism’s political and economic philosophy proposes “a dictatorship of the proletariat” through a workers’ revolution. Communist revolutions, on the other hand, throughout history have resulted in an authoritarian regime headed by a cruel dictator.
Akin to Marxism, Kamala Harris certainly is on the side of workers as a staunch supporter of unions. Whereas favoring a communist totalitarian dictator like Putin or Kim Jong Un is clearly Trump-like.
Add socialism to that mix, as Trump does, and you have a weak sister which would have been pushed aside long ago by communism within Harris. As Karl Marx believed, it is inevitable that capitalism should give way to socialism and finally result in communism.
When one thinks about it, for a presidential candidate to attach socialist traits to his opponent is actually a badge of honor. That is, unless said candidate and his political party are totally against Social Security, Medicare, The Department of Veteran Affairs, The Department of Education, and the like.
Moreover, according to Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor from 1993 to 1997, in the U.S. we already have “socialism for the rich, and capitalism for everyone else” since it’s the rich like Trump who receive the bulk of handouts from the government such as loopholes to avoid paying taxes.
If Kamala Harris is truly all the isms that Trump claims she is, then there’s no doubt fascism would cause all hell to break loose within her. History shows that fascism and socialism mix about as well as oil and water. One need only study the Spanish Civil War to see that proposing the ideologies could coexist within a candidate is absurd.
Even more absurd is how one could claim that a liberal Democrat is a fascist since fascism is a FAR-RIGHT ideology characterized by dictatorship, ultra-nationalism, suppression of dissent, and other authoritarian strategies.
Kamala Harris is definitely not a fascist. On the other hand….
As sociologist Ron McAllister points out, the goal of certain political candidates is to “inflame American voters without really informing them. What is important is that voters feel the fear.”
Based on incidents this past week inspired by certain candidates, we are all starting to feel the fear.
(2) comments
Trump spins fairy tales for he deaf dumb and blind followers. "Their eating the cats, their eating the dogs." trump calls Harris a socialist when his big deal was to give billions to farmers because he lost their markets with his tariff trade wars. Trump is betting that his voting base has the memory of a slug and doesn't have much more than 4th grade knowledge when it comes to political science. The irony is Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the richest men in the world, back Trump. Trump is not calling Harris anything he isn't himself.
Communism is a one party system so is Fascism. The United States is a two party system and the parties themselves are pronounced.
The problem in America because of the Great depression and WW11 is that the Presidency has taken on powers never intended in the Constitution. What we see is that Congress has been reduced to paper workers with the White House dictating policy and Congress is the President' minions. What we need is a political upheaval which puts sociopaths like Trump on the back burner. He feeds on naive emotionalism and ignorance among the KKK crowds and racist propaganda. Their eating the cats, their eating the dogs. Such degrading idiocy coming from the mouth of a small mental boy who wants to be President again.
You think it's difficult now, wait until you're a Marxist Communist in a Marxist Communist system. Being a Communist in a free society is easy.
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