Comrade Kamala? The red-baiters and anti-communists are at it again

Collage: People's World

The right-wing New York Post ran a front page with a smiling picture of Kamala Harris alongside a big bright hammer and sickle and the word “Kamunism”—a sloppy combination of the words Kamala and Communism.

The Washington Times, always a refuge for reactionary propaganda, warns that Harris’ vice presidential running mate isn’t who is says he is, as a Tim Walz mask falls aside revealing Joseph Stalin.

Trump, meanwhile, is filling social media with AI-generated pictures of huge crowds at an alleged communist gathering in Chicago—implied to be the Democratic National Convention—with Harris addressing the red flag-waving multitudes. And the criminal ex-president has now taken to calling his Democratic opponent “Comrade Kamala.”

Some in the media report on all this as straight news stories; others take it all humorously. The truth of the matter is, however, that the renewed anti-communist campaign is neither business-as-usual news nor is it the least bit funny.

History tells us that red-baiting and anti-communism are always—yes always—a gateway to the real harm that sections of the ruling class are determined to impose on the majority of the people.

In the 1950s, of course, we had the McCarthy era in the U.S. During World War II, the U.S., allied with the Soviet Union, defeated fascism in Europe and Asia. A world of peace and progress was really possible then if that alliance had continued. The corporate bosses in the U.S. were having none of that, however, and wanted, instead, a world that they controlled for purposes of unprecedented profit-making.

So, they did everything possible to scare the U.S. public about the alleged “dangers” of communism, which during the Cold War period, took the form of virulent anti-Sovietism. The combination of racism with the added ingredient of anti-Sovietism helped move the entire politics of the nation to the right.

Before McCarthyism, more than a third of the workforce in the U.S. was unionized. After the Red Scare campaign finally subsided, the percentage of union workers had sunk below 15 percent. It was clear the anti-communism and the Red Scare were directed at much more than just the membership and supporters of the Communist Party in the U.S. It was directed at the very ability of workers to organize in their own self-interest by forming unions.

In Europe in the 1920s and early ’30s, people in Germany, Italy, France, and elsewhere were told about the “dangers of communism.” In Germany, they were warned that communism was so bad that they should ally with Hitler and Nazism, the only force capable of ridding Europe of communists.

“Later we’ll take care of the Nazis,” the oligarchs assured the people. That “later” never came. The wages of anti-communism were paid with the enslavement of all the people, including the German people themselves, and the destruction of almost the entire continent.

If someone offered a multi-million-dollar price to anyone who could find an example of how anti-communism ever benefitted anyone except the wealthy capitalist classes, the prize money would never have to be paid out.

Today’s “baby boomers,” myself included,” grew up during the worst parts of this anti-Soviet period. When I was in Catholic elementary school, the nuns forced us under our desks during special drills in which we were taught how to “protect” ourselves from what we were told was a likely Soviet nuclear attack.

Some of my fellow students, only 6 and 7 years old, shook and sobbed as they waited for imminent death, which, of course, was not coming. In the schoolyard, when we heard a loud clacking sound made by noisemakers held by the brothers and the nuns, we were told to pretend it was the flash after the explosion of a nearby nuclear bomb. We immediately had to fall to the ground and shrink into a fetal position. We practiced “duck and cover” that way every few weeks.

We watched, often in horror, as workmen attached nuclear radiation warning signs above the entrances to the basement below our school building. It was selected as a nuclear fallout shelter, we were told. It was, of course, a “shelter” with absolutely no protection against nuclear fallout.

Those anti-communist scare tactics used against me and the other children disarmed and dis-educated an entire generation. The price for that is still paid by the country today, with millions of us, now seniors, still acting politically against our own self-interests.

Fortunately, however, many of today’s young people don’t think socialism is so bad. In fact, they want to see a more humane system take hold. Many think it is capitalism and the death and destruction it has wrought are the things to be feared.

Nevertheless, when Trump goes to Truth Social to post fake pictures of communist rallies addressed by Harris or the New York Post runs pictures of her alongside communist symbols, be forewarned. Such things are a clear sign that we must stop Trump from being elected this November. Then and only then will be able to fight for progress on so many fronts important to us.

Anti-communism never did the people any good during the Cold War, and it never will in the future.

As with all op-eds published by People’s World, this article reflects the views of its author.

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CONTRIBUTOR

John Wojcik

John Wojcik is Editor-in-Chief of People's World. He joined the staff as Labor Editor in May 2007 after working as a union meat cutter in northern New Jersey. There, he served as a shop steward and a member of a UFCW contract negotiating committee. In the 1970s and '80s, he was a political action reporter for the Daily World, this newspaper's predecessor, and was active in electoral politics in Brooklyn, New York.