Christian Right Trumpism

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), still the largest Protestant denomination in the US, is apparently going through yet another way of “conservative takeover.” And after decades of conservative takeovers, that’s an impressive accomplishment!

The latest wave is even embracing the Christian Nationalist notion.

This is being spearheaded by a group called the Center for Baptist Leadership, headed by William Wolfe. In June, the SBC selected Willy Rice, the candidate favored by Wolfe’s Center, as their new president.

Kiera Butler reports:

Wolfe and his colleagues oppose SBC leaders whom they see as “caught up in the spirit of the worldly ‘MeToo’ movement, DEI ideology, and social justice signaling,” according to the group’s website. Those misguided aims, the Center for Baptist Leadership claims, have led to a scourge of problems, including women pastors, financial secrecy, and an obsession with blaming the SBC as a whole for the sex abuse scandals in individual churches, thereby bringing “perverse, anti-Christian standards of justice to judge claims of abuse.” [my emphasis] (1)

The SBC has a decentralized structure in which local church can ordain Baptist ministers and there is no centralized organization in charge of assigning pastors to individual churches like the Catholic Church or the Presbyterians. Which limits the denomination’s ability to address issues involving sexual abuse or other misdeeds by SBC pastors.

It also tends to be very politically conservative, i.e., supportive of Trumpism. And conservative Christian organizations including churches are a very important element in Republican get-out-the-vote efforts.

Jennifer Cohn reported in 2024:

Approximately 100 right-wing organizations have signed onto Project 2025, an expansive plan for controlling (and in some cases dismantling) federal agencies in the event that Trump or another Republican wins the presidential election this year. Many of these organizations are led by Christian fundamentalist political operatives, suggesting that they may use the plan to force all Americans to submit to their extreme religious beliefs. ...

Despite [a] hurricane of attempted deflection, the Christian Nationalism promoted by [William] Wolfe is extreme, not mainstream, as evidenced not only by Przybyla’s excellent article, but also by a shocking online manifesto found by the Beacon, which identifies Wolfe as an editor. ...

Specifically, it states that “Christian Nationalism is a set of governing principles rooted in Scripture’s teaching that Christ rules as supreme Lord and King of all creation, who has ordained civil magistrates with delegated authority to be under Him, over the people, to order their ordained jurisdiction by punishing evil and promoting good for His own glory and the common good of the nation.” ...

This idea of forcing the American public to submit to the authority of Christian “civil magistrates” isn’t new. It was also championed by Christian extremist Stephen Wolfe (@Perfinjust on “X”) in his book, “The Case for Christian Nationalism,” an infamous screed, which William Wolfe enthusiastically promoted in a tweet that he later deleted. The two men are not apparently related, despite having the same last names and a shared ideology. ...

The manifesto denies that “civil authorities have the right to coerce or command obedience to the dictates of men apart from God’s Word.” (emphases in Cohn’s article].) (2)

But it’s not just Protestant Christian fundis who also in the theocracy game. Sarah Jones reported, also in 2024, and J.D. Vance’s fondness for “Catholic integralism.”

His rise as a national figure has carried relatively obscure ideologies closer to political power, including what the AP called a “subset” of postliberalism, known as integralism. What is integralism, then, and could it influence our would-be vice-president? As held by prominent thinkers like Adrian Vermeule of Harvard Law School, integralism imagines a future when the state may punish the baptized for violations of ecclesiastical law. (3)

Thomas Carter in a recent piece discusses the “political and spiritual intersection of Silicon Valley Techbros & Opus Dei adjacent Catholics.”

Patrick Deneen, high priest of Catholic Integralism, who mentored Pete Hegseth and helped shepherd JD Vance to his Catholic conversion, says a break between Musk Doge and Bannon Maga is inevitable, but not yet, as they have a common enemy - basically anyone woke, with a lick of sense and not red pilled. (4)

Catholic Integralism is basically a conservative Catholic theocratic movement. It’s also one reason that Vance doesn’t like the current American Pope Leo’s vision of the Catholic Church: (5)

Butler also reminds us of one of the leading figures of the Christian Right, Brother Al Mohler of the SBC:

And there are signs that the SBC’s ties to Christian nationalists extend beyond the Center for Baptist Leadership. Consider Al Mohler, a prominent SBC leader who has served as president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky since 1993. He has witnessed decades of social change, but put forth this year’s amendment [at the SBC] to ban women pastors. He appeared last week on the podcast of Doug Wilson, a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist pastor—though not a member of the SBC—who presides over a small fiefdom in Moscow, Idaho. Mohler expressed frustration with what he considered a misconception that Baptist forefathers were “some kind of strict separationist when it came to Christian morality and the society.” Baptists, he said, actually had a lot in common with Christian nationalists like Wilson. “I have been calling for maximum Christian influence in the public square my whole life,” he said. [my emphasis]

Notes:

(1) Butler, Kiera (2026): The Southern Baptist Convention Was Going Mainstream. Then the Christian Nationalists Weighed In. Mother Jones 06/22/2026. <https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/06/the-southern-baptist-convention-was-going-mainstream-then-the-christian-nationalists-weighed-in/> (Accessed: 2026-29-06).

(2) Shocking Online Manifesto Reveals Project 2025’s Link to a Coordinated ‘Christian Nationalism Project’. Bucks County Beacon 03/07/2024. <https://buckscountybeacon.com/2024/03/shocking-online-manifesto-reveals-project-2025s-link-to-a-coordinated-christian-nationalism-project/> (Accessed: 2026-21-07).

(3) Jones, Sarah (2024): J.D. Vance and the Rise of the ‘Postliberal’ Catholics. New York 09/22/2024. <https://archive.ph/RFRNz#selection-1189.0-1189.54> (Accessed: 2026-01-05).

(4) Carter, Thomas (2025): Techbros & Rise of Catholic Fascism. Medium 05/09/2025. <https://medium.com/@thcarter123/techbros-rise-of-catholic-fascism-99f6080ef347> (Accessed: 2026-01-05).

(5) Why some U.S. conservatives want Catholicism to shape the country. The Hill YouTube channel 04/12/2016. <https://youtu.be/HIje43bnNEI?si=gTnyj6LHRqeG3-Cd> (Accessed: 2026-21-07).

The implications of mass acceptance of vigilante murder – with the example of the Azaria Affair in Israel

Joshua Leifer writes in Haaretz about an incident of an Israeli soldier murdering a wounded man in 2016 wound up becoming a celebrated act and how the trend in that direction has intensified in the ensuing decades:

Earlier this week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz requested that President Isaac Herzog pardon Elor Azaria, a former Israeli soldier convicted of shooting to death a wounded Palestinian man, Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, in Hebron in March 2016.

At the time of the shooting, Azaria was a 19-year-old army medic who arrived on the scene of a stabbing attack carried out by two Palestinian men against Israeli soldiers near the settlement of Tel Rumeida. In grisly footage captured by the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem that subsequently circulated widely online, Azaria can be seen firing a single shot to the head of al-Sharif, one of the two assailants, who lies wounded and immobile on the ground.

In 2017, an Israeli military court sentenced Azaria to 18 months in prison for the crime of manslaughter (although he would ultimately serve only nine months and was released on parole). The court charged that Azaria had violated military orders and the rules of engagement, killing al-Sharif when he posed no immediate threat to soldiers or civilians. (1)

Azaria became a hero for the Israeli right. “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for his part, initially backed Azaria's prosecution, but pivoted once he realized where the wind was blowing and called Azaria's parents to offer support.”

Leifer observes that for the settler movement, “it was precisely Azaria's merciless, gratuitous act of killing that made him a hero.” Though the Israeli armed forces (IDF) “wanted to demonstrate that Azaria's conduct and his trial was the exception that proved the rule.” But, in fact, “Azaria's trial was one of the last times a soldier was jailed for unlawfully killing a Palestinian. In the intervening years, acts like Azaria's have become normalized, and, in some precincts of the Israeli right, lionized.”

This kind of celebration of murderous, criminal violence is a standard part of fascist ideology and practice. We saw something very similar during the Nixon Administration when rightwingers celebrated the homicidal thug Lt. William Calley, who commanded the war crime that became known as the My Lai Massacre – also known as the Son My Massacre, after the Vietnamese name of the village. (2)

We see something very similar in today’s Trump Cult and their celebration of the often lawless and sadistic and sometimes explicitly murderous conduct of Trump’s ICE Gestapo and the deadly neglect practiced by the for-profit private prison companies that run ICE detention systems, which are being accurately described as concentration camps.

In Israel, the Azaria affair turned out to be a turning point in the acceptance by the Israeli government and large parts of Israeli society that became impossible for most people to overlook after Israel’s response to the October 7, 2023 by Hamas. Bar Peleg reported last week:

The Israeli military has opened dozens of criminal investigations into the deaths of detainees held in its custody during the Gaza war, but none has resulted in an indictment, according to IDF data.

The IDF attributed the lack of charges to what it described as evidentiary challenges inherent to warfare. However, most of the investigated deaths took place inside military detention facilities equipped with security cameras and where numerous potential witnesses were present, including soldiers and detainees.

Data obtained following freedom of information requests submitted by Hatzlacha, a nonprofit that works to expand public access to information, shows that there have been 57 investigations into deaths in IDF custody, including 56 Palestinians from Gaza and one Lebanese. (3)

Two analysts back in 2017 warned about the problematic developments that they were seeing in the Azaria Affair, which have since presented such a horrific set of examples that has drastically changed:

The main problem lies in societal perspectives surrounding Azaria’s actions. The tragic root of the affair is linked to the fact that large segments of the public, backed by a portion of the political establishment, openly reject basic principles of the rule of law and of a society that respects human rights. IDI’s Peace Index poll, conducted in October of 2015 – just six months before the Azaria affair took place – found that 53% of Israeli Jews supported the killing of a terrorist even after he had been subdued. More and more frequent are public figures, from Knesset members to government ministers to popular singers, calling for changing the rules of engagement to allow the killing of terrorists, regardless of whether they constitute a clear and present danger.

This represents not only a moral failure, but also a perverted view of the meaning of justice. If a majority of the public believes that it is permissible and even right for a soldier to kill a terrorist without trial, even after the terrorist has been subdued and is no longer a threat, the underpinnings of the entire legal system begin to crumble. [my emphasis] (4)

The late writer Uri Avnery wrote about the moral and political implications of the murder committed by Azaria and what it reflected about the ethnic division within Israeli Jewish society between “Mizrahi” (Jews of non-European descent) and Ashkenazi, who Avnery describes as defining “all Israelis of European and American origin, who adhere or pretend to adhere to Western values.” And he reported:

Public opinion polls [in 2017] tell us that for the large majority of Mizrahim, killing a seriously wounded "terrorist" is the right thing to do. After the singing in court [in support of Azaria during his trial], his father kissed him and cried out: "You are a hero!" For many Ashkenazim, [the murder] was a despicably cowardly act.

One casualty of the affair is the Chief-of-Staff, Gadi Eizenkot. Until recently, he was the most popular person in the country. Now he is cursed by the Mizrahim as a contemptible lackey of the Ashkenazi "elites". Yet, in spite of his German-sounding name, Eizenkot is of Moroccan descent.

And he observed:

For more than 40 years now, the army has not fought a real war against a real military. It has deteriorated into a colonial police force, the instrument of a system of oppression of another people. In the performance of this role, many acts of brutality are committed every day.

Quite recently, an innocent Arab teacher, a Bedouin citizen of Israel, got involved by accident in an incident, when policemen clashed with the local population. They shot the teacher, in the erroneous belief that he was about to run them over.

The man was severely wounded and bleeding, with policemen all around him. They did not call the medics. He slowly bled to death. It took 20 minutes. (5)

If this recalls the action of Jonathan Ross, the ICE Gestapo goon who reportedly murdered Renee Good in Minneapolis this year, it should. It’s the same mentality. And the kind of personalities who sang in court in support of the killer Elor Azaria in 2017 are very similar to the Trump cultists who support such murderous action by ICE in the US today. And to the ghouls in the American South – and not exclusively in the South – who came to watch public lynching of blacks and sometimes other minorities.

Any state who intends to practice the rule of law cannot afford to be indifferent to such public enthusiasm for vigilante murder.

Notes:

(1) Leifer, Joshua (2026): How the 2016 Azaria Affair Foreshadowed the IDF's New Impunity. Haaretz 07/16/2026. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-politics/2026-07-16/ty-article-magazine/.premium/how-the-azaria-affair-foreshadowed-the-idfs-new-impunity/0000019f-6a91-d782-ad9f-fffbf9880000> (Accessed: 2026-17-07).

(2) The My Lai Massacre. PBS American Experience n/d. <https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/vietnam-my-lai-massacre/> (Accessed: 2026-23-07).

Herring, George (2012): The Vietnam War and the My Lai Massacre. History Now 31:Spring 2012. <https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/essays/vietnam-war-and-my-lai-massacre> (Accessed: 2026-23-07). “The murder of more than 400 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai and My Khe by US soldiers on March 16, 1968, stands as one of the darkest days in the nation’s military history.”

Taylor, Telford (1971): Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy, 123-153. New York: Bantam Books.

(3) Peleg, Bar (2026): IDF Opened Dozens of Probes Into Deaths of Detained Gazans. No One Was Charged. Haaretz 07/16/2026. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-crime/2026-07-17/ty-article/.premium/idf-closed-dozens-of-probes-into-deaths-of-detained-gazans-no-one-was-charged/0000019f-6fa6-d853-a9bf-7fb7fdd50000> (Accessed: 2026-17-07).

(4) Cohen, Amichai and Shafran-Gittleman, Idit (2017): The Azaria Affair: How Israel’s Leadership Betrayed Democracy. Forward 08/07/2017. <https://forward.com/opinion/379250/the-azaria-affair-how-israels-leadership-betrayed-democracy/> (Accessed: 2026-17-07).

(5) Avnery, Uri (2017): Uri Avnery: the Sergeant Azaria affair mirrors a rift in Israeli society. PIME Asia News 03/03/2017. <https://www.asianews.it/en/middle-east/israel/uri-avnery-the-sergeant-azaria-affair-mirrors-a-rift-in-israeli-society> (Accessed: 2026-23-07).

Saving liberal democracy without going all-in on compulsive centrism

“I am … simply unprepared for a world in which [Bill] Kristol sounds way more radical than Ezra Klein,” says Dan Drezner in a footnote to a recent Substack. (1)

Esquire columnist Charlie Pierce refers to Kristol as “Butcher’s Bill” Kristol, using a old term for casualties in war, referring to Kristol’s chronic neocon enthusiasm for wars.

Kristol became an enthusiastic NeverTrumper. And if he wants to be part of the “popular front” against Trump, I’m fine with that. (2) That’s a bit of historical sarcasm, because Bill’s father Irving Kristol is one of the founding thinkers of what we now call “neoconservatism.” Kristol Sr. and some other leading figures of the 1980s neocons had previously been Trotskyists – or at least influenced by Trotskyism. (3) Trotskyists were known for being so pure in their Marxist doctrine that they were said to “support revolution everywhere except for where one was actually going on.”

Whatever the exact influence of the Trotskyist perspective may have been, the neocons had an intense fondness for the kind of “regime change” operation that resulted in the disastrous Iraq War. Their idea was that it was immoral to allow regimes that were anti-American and/or annoying to Israel should be replaced by revolutionary wars of liberation to establish liberal democracy. Or at least to make them cooperative with America and friendly to Israel. We’ve seen the results for decades now. But even though the theory was pretty thin to begin with, groups like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) are still out there promoting the neocon regime-change gospel.

At least Kristol Sr. nominally promoted an “ethic of restraint” even in foreign policy, in Michael Signer’s judgment. In an essay on the occasion of Kristol Sr.’s passing, Michael Signer noted that Bill didn’t seem to share much of his father’s attitude of “restraint”:

There is perhaps no more respectful way for progressives to commemorate Kristol’s legacy than to explore the decline of his thought - as dramatically evidenced by the contrast of Irving Kristol’s ideas and those of his son, Bill. Irving Kristol placed practical experience at the heart of his political theory. By contrast, his son would choose the inducements of pure theory - of a foreign policy chasing dreams rather than the hardscrabble earth. Where a certain humility drove the ideas of Kristol père, a certain hubris has driven those of Kristol fils. These intellectual differences have had profound consequences for world events, including the disastrous conduct of the war in Iraq. …

[I]n the years to come his son [Bill] fixed neoconservative foreign policy on abstractions and evils - on metaphysics rather than physics - particularly when it came to democracy. As a result, the striking feature of Bill Kristol’s political theory is not the ideas but the extravagance surrounding them. In a now-famous 1996 Foreign Affairs article co-authored with Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol wrote that Republicans should endorse a policy of “benevolent hegemony” that was “good for conservatives, good for America, and good for the world.” “America,” he added, “has the capacity to contain or destroy many of the world’s monsters, most of which can be found without much searching.”

Monsters, power, and dreams - in retrospect, the Iraq War seems so simple. [my emphasis] (5)

But, to be fair to Bill Kristol, he is singing the praises of liberal democracy against Trumpism. He was one of the attendees at a Liberalism for the 21st Century Conference (LibCon 2026) at which Ezra Klein surprised him by making Kristol look like a leftie radical by comparison. Klein has recently been advocating an “Abundance” agenda, which he and Derek Thompson advocated in a 2025 book of that title. In their construction, the problem of housing affordability is due a bunch of whiny NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) liberals who insist on building codes and environmental reviews and similarly useless sissy stuff.

What, your house burned down because of faulty wiring because there were no building codes or inspectors? That’s just the free market at work! Because once it burns down, nobody will buy that house again, right? Free Enterprise!!

Christopher Jones explained the problems with that framing:

Let’s start with a limited view of abundance as a policy agenda to build better by avoiding layers of review, overly long permitting processes, burdensome reporting requirements, and so on. That these inefficiencies should be corrected is all well and good in theory, but what would corrections look like in practice? The reader does not really know, because Klein and Thompson explicitly avoid getting into the weeds by claiming that they are offering “a lens” to think about problems rather than “a list” of recommendations.

Consider railroads. They cite Americans’ construction of a transcontinental railroad in less than a decade during the 1860s as an instance of how the nation used to be able to build. But what they don’t say: This technological progress came at immense cost by way of hundreds of dead workers, tens of thousands of exploited Chinese laborers, wide swaths of lands stolen from Native Americans, and staggering amounts of financial manipulation that enriched robber barons while leaving others destitute. How do we recreate the benefits of railroads while avoiding such harm?

Another rub: their environmental assumptions. Klein and Thompson echo the claims of ecomodernists who believe that we can solve all our environmental problems through technological innovation and economic growth. Dubbed solutionists, ecomodernists assume a world of infinite renewable energy, which means we can have it all—abundant food, medicine, travel, and wildlife. This Pollyannaish vision ignores the messy realities on the ground, such as the massive environmental costs that accrue from mining, manufacturing, and disposing of the materials necessary for generating so-called clean energy. It’s an unrealistic vision that fails to engage with hard choices. (4)

Drezner’s report on that LibCon event is a reminder that there it’s easier to talk about broad concepts on the questions of how to preserve and strengthen liberal democracy against Trump’s or any other brands of fascism. (That F-word does not appear in Drezner’s essay.)

What Bill Kristol offered to the convention does not seem all that impressive in Drezner’s telling, in which he describes Kristol’s diagnosis as follows:

Illiberals have captured too many institutions — corporations, law firms, some universities — creating authoritarianism within the government, beyond the government, and projecting pressure from the government. He fretted that there had not been enough people who have expressed revulsion about Trump. Kristol was nonetheless pleased that 20% of Trump’s supporters have abandoned him ...

Since public opinion polls have been showing historically low ratings for Trump and his Presidency and elections in 2026 have shown a strong tendency to rejecting Trump’s and the Republican Party’s agenda and candidates, it hard to guess what Kristol means when he grouses that not enough people are negative on Trump.

If Drezner’s article doesn’t dissuade you from any curiosity about LibCon, here is a two-hour segment of the of the 2025 version of the event featuring, among others, Bill Kristol. And there are hours more of video of it at C-Span. (6)

Mainstream pundits all too easily fall into the trap of assuming that voters care only about one or two issues and are too blinkered to pay attention to Big Issues like the sanctity of elections or the rule of law. Actually, most Americans who are not Trump cultists actually do think democracy is important and do understand why it’s a very bad thing when the laws apply to jaywalkers but not to mega-criminals like Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.

The challenge for the Democratic Party and civil institutions that care about a democracy that works for ordinary people is to develop political narratives and campaigns that call attention to the massive corruption and criminality for which the Trumpified Republican Party stands and connect those Big Themes with specific and visible problems like the shrinking access to health care, the mass closing of rural hospitals, the ever-escalating costs of college and the ever-decreasing resources of public schools.

Drezner cites Ezra Klein at the conference as arguing “that liberalism had become too enmeshed in institutions and procedures rather than grander visions.” Unfortunately, lazy centrists who are attracted to Ezra Klein’s Grand Vision of, uh, less rigorous housing codes never get around to exciting people with meaningless “moderation” or grand visions like, the President shouldn’t be allowed to use the Presidency to make billions of dollars for his own crime family.

It’s also critical for the Democrats to build a much stronger infrastructure to train and recruit candidates at all levels and building more effective networks of people to run get-out-the-vote campaigns at election time. Despite being laser-focus on making billionaires richer and more powerful, the Republican Party through its Christian-fundamentalist political networks does have an impressive get-out-the-vote political network.

Not starting wars like the current one with Iran that have massive negative implications for large numbers of people in the US and across the world would also be a great idea. Although for Ezra Klein and other insistent centrists, that might not qualify as enough of a Grand Vision – or at least not “centrist” enough for their liking.

But for Democrats wanting to get people to the polls in November, that should look very attractive.

Notes:

(1) Drezner, Daniel (2026): Whither Liberalism? Drezner’s World 07/19/2026. <https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/whither-liberalism> (Accessed: 2026-19-07).

(2) The Soviet-line Communist parties in the 1930s promoted the idea of a “popular front” of Communist, Socialist, and nonsocialist parties who supported liberal democracy in order to politically and militarily defeat fascism.

(3) William King has contested the nature of the Trotskyist influence on “neoconservatism.” (Neoconservatives and “Trotskyism” (2004). American Communist History 3:2, 247-266. [It's an academic journal, if you're wondering.]) He argues rightwing isolationist “paleoconservatives” invented the story of Trotskyist influence as a form of redbaiting against the interventionist neocons. He cites several examples of liberals who echo that analysis. King points out that Irving Kristol himself later made references to having considered himself a Trotskyist for a few years. He also gives a glimpse of what a fractious set of theories and positions it was that constituted American Trotskyism.

The US Radical Right has long had a fondness for people who claim to have been Communists but who converted to the True Light of hardcore rightwing fascism (or something adjacent). The former Soviet spy Whittaker Chambers was one of that group, who could claim to be defectors from the Communist cause who understood better than anyone how really evil the Reds were.

The historian Bernard DeVoto in 1951 describe (with heavy irony) the pose of the devout ex-Communist’s pitch this way: “I understand, I am right now because I was wrong then. Only the ex-Communist can understand Communism. Trust me to lead you aright because I tried to lead you astray. My intelligence has been vindicated in that it made an all-out commitment to error.” As DeVoto notes from the beginning of his essay, the pose is very similar to that of the converted Christian who claims he understands sin much better than most people because he was once so sinful. (The Ex-Communists. Atlantic Monthly Feb 1951, 61-65. <https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1951/02/the-ex-communists/639665/> (Accessed: 2026-21-07).) And that stance is still popular on the far-right today.

(4) Signer, Michael (2009) : The Neoconservative Père et Fils. Dissent 12/03/2009. <https://dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/the-neoconservative-pere-et-fils/> (Accessed: 2026-19-07).

(5) “Abundance” Is Not the Answer. Los Angeles Review of Books 07/20/2025. <https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/abundance-is-not-the-answer/> (Accessed: 2026-19-07).

(6) Conference on Liberalism in 21st Century, Part 1. C-Span. <https://www.c-span.org/program/public-affairs-event/conference-on-liberalism-in-21st-century-part-1/664282> (Accessed: 2026-19-07).

“Anti-Communism” in the Trump 2.0 era politics

Trump’s use of “communism” to describe all Democrats is an indication that he intends to use the politics of “anti-Communism” extensively in his authoritarian, anti-democracy project this year. It’s important to know that the politics of Anti-Communism in the United States was historically not primarily directed against people and political groups that identified themselves as communists. Although to the extent they could find actual, self-identified Communists to trash, they were happy to do that, too.

Time magazine has a recent piece by staff writer Nik Popli that can serve as an example of lazy popular media accounts may treat the topic. (1)

The only surprising thing about Popli’s piece is that it notes, “Trump came of age during that period [of “anti-communist politics of the Cold War and the Red Scare” in the 1950s] and was mentored by Roy Cohn, who served as chief counsel to Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the infamous anti-communist hearings of the 1950s.”

“Coming of age” usually references a young person reaching adulthood. Trump was born in 1946. The beginning of “McCarthyism” is typically dated to February 1950 when the sleazy Senator from Wisconsin managed to grab national publicity for his claims that the State Department was full of Communists. Although he continued to serve in the Senate until 1957, when he passed away with cirrhosis of the liver, his ability to generate national headlines had crashed and burned when the Senate censured him 67-22 in December of 1954. Trump didn’t reach the age of 21 - then still the typical minimal voting age in the US - until 1967.

For a detailed primer on McCarthy and McCarthyism, see Thomas Reeves’ 1982 book, The Life and Times of Joe McCarthy: A Biography.

Popli uses a sane-washing description of the Trumpistas’ current usage:

Progressive candidates have argued that addressing affordability requires expanding government-funded programs, raising taxes on wealthy Americans, and strengthening labor protections - positions Republicans increasingly characterize as evidence that the party is embracing socialism or even communism.” (my emphasis)

This would define even the famously reactionary 19th century German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck as a socialist and/or communist. But then, in a campaign context, trying to explain who Bismarck was, much less what his idea of a reactionary welfare state was, would fall flat. Although any history geeks in the audience would enjoy the reference.

Here, the formulation linguist George Lakoff used as an example of how not to frame a defense against an accusation is helpful: “Don’t think of an elephant.” Because if you mention an elephant, you automatically invoke the image of an elephant in the hearer’s mind. He applied that concept in a 2004 book, Don’t Think of An Elephant! which is available in the Internet Archive. There he introduces the concept this way:

Every word like elephant, evokes a frame, which can be an image or other kinds of knowledge: Elephants are large, have floppy ears and a trunk, are associated with circuses, and so on. The world is defined relative to that frame. When we negate a frame, we evoke the frame.

Richard Nixon found that out the hard way. While under pressure to resign during the Watergate scandal, Nixon addressed the nation on TV. He stood before the nation and said, “I am not a crook.” And everybody thought about him as a crook.

This gives us a basic principle of framing, for when you are arguing against the other side: Do not use their language. Their language picks out a frame – and it won’t be the frame you want.

In a pair of articles in 2023, he applied this perspective to combatting critics of “woke.” (3)

The anti-“woke” whining from conservative Asleepists is basically a variation of 1950s style redbaiting. Dig into the far right “anti-woke” polemics and you’ll see they claim that a bunch of Jewish Commies started the whole thing. And that is also as frivolous of McCarthy’s typical accusations. (4)

Lakoff was addressing this in the context of political speech and campaigning, i.e., political persuasion or propaganda. In the context of analyzing the framing of “anticommunism” as political rhetoric like this piece, it’s obvious that we have to use the term. He would presumably think that when a candidate it would not be his recommended approach to respond to accusations that he/she is a Communist to say, “No, a communist is x, y, and z, and I’m not any of those things.” Because that reinforces the opponent’s theme.

But responding with a more contemptuous counter like, “You wouldn’t know a communist if one bit you in the leg,” conveys the message, “You’re a liar and a dumbass,” without directly reinforcing the hostile framing. Now, if one party to the debate is a stark raving libertarian or Peter Thiel disciple, they might actually say, “Social Security is a communist program.” In which case the Democratic participant would think, okay, my work here is done!

Nik Popli in his Time piece shows little understanding how this works. For instance, he writes, “There are also no members of Congress who openly identify as members of the Communist Party, and no Communist Party candidate has won state or federal office in modern American history.” (my emphasis) I would classify that as red-baiting-lite, e.g.: none of these Dems say they’re Communists, but those Reds are pretty devious people, you know. (“Reds” in the McCarthy era referred to Communists, not Republicans.)

Do Time’s editors think there is a party in the US that would be generally identified as “the Communist Party”? Presumably Popli is referring to the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), which does exist. That party goes back to the time of its founders, which included the journalist John Reed, as depicted in the 1981 film Reds, in which Reed was played by Warren Beatty. Its active adherents probably number in the thousands today and their direct influence on electoral politics is negligible.

But in the context of political messaging, especially in the electoral context, saying what my previous paragraph says would be falling into the messaging trap that Lakoff warned against. Because it takes sloppy journalism repeating a Republican framing as though it were serious journalism.

Another “tell” in Popli’s article indicating he’s trying to make the 2026 version of McCarthyism sound respectable is that he quotes Matt Bennett, who he identifies as “a co-founder of the centrist Democratic organization Third Way.” Third Way is basically a mouthpiece for corporate neoliberalism. To call them “centrist” is almost an insult to lazy centrists everywhere.

The New York Times has helpfully (?) provided us with an interview with the current Third Way president, Jon Cowan, in which he pretty much defines any Democrat who is serious about fighting Republicans as a seedy leftist: “Some of it is on policy. If you are for Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, abolishing ICE, open borders, you’re a lefty. And those things will really haunt you in a general election.” (5)

Did you catch that? The Green New Deal was a signature Joe Biden priority. So, Biden’s a Commie!!!

Who do you appeal to? What’s your brand and approach in politics? Are you more pragmatic? Do you have an unabashed love of the country? [Or] are you kind of hypercritical of America? Are you willing to pick a range of fights, not just the fights that are really safe and convenient? What’s your track record, also, with winning over swing voters? ...

What it means, ultimately, is influencing all of the people who will run for president who are anywhere from the kind of mushy to more moderate. Not the lefties, but everybody else.

Influencing them, and all the concentric circles around them. Not just their teams and their operatives, but all the key people in the early primary and presidential battleground states. People in media, on social media, etc. Creating a highly persuasive case that we market very widely throughout the Democratic Party, not just in Washington but around the country, so that people believe there is one way to win in ’28, and that is by nominating somebody who can win over that middle, and rejecting anybody from the far left. [my emphasis]

Good Lord, these people are tiresome!

The word “Republican” does not appear in the printed interview. Because Third Way is about defeating actual Democrats, not about defeating Republicans. Much less about campaigning for anything that is actually constructive for people who aren’t billionaires.

A 1998 opinion piece by the late historian Tony Judt defined the neoliberal “third way” concept like this:

Each age has its cliche. Ours is the "third way." Hardly a week passes without a public figure in Britain, Germany or the United States hailing the coming of the third way: the new, "post-ideological" approach to politics and policy making. Sociologists theorize about it, policy seminars promote it, Presidents and prime ministers bask in the reflected glory of its modest ambitions. No reasonable person can dissent; the bad old days of big projects, of left and right, are gone for good. The political goals of the third way are small goals -- and in the cliche of an earlier age, small is beautiful.

Much of this is humbug, of course. In the English-speaking world the third way is just a new label for an old electoral tactic -- ''triangulating'' between ideas and voters to maximize short-term advantage. Tony Blair's Government -- the European reference for contemporary effusions about a third way -- is the natural child of Margaret Thatcher (much as Reagan begat Clinton). She swung the political pendulum so aggressively against compassion and government intervention that for the first time a government of the "left" could occupy ground somewhere to the right of center and get credit for radical intentions just by standing still and emoting fuzzily. New Labor's third way is opportunism with a human face. [my emphasis] (6)

And Judt seems to have been trying to be generous!

In the ensuing 18 years, the American version of the “third way” has descended into sad hackery.

Notes:

(1) Popli, Nik (2026): As Trump Brands Them ‘Godless Communists,’ Democrats Divided on How to Respond. Time 07/13/2026. <https://time.com/article/2026/07/13/as-trump-brands-them-godless-communists-democrats-divided-on-how-to-respond/> (Accessed : 2026-13-07).

(2) Michael Harrington, a founder member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and for a long time its most famous member, described Bismarck’s approach to governance as “authoritarian modernization.” Socialism: Past and Future (1989), 45. New York: Arcade Publishing.

(3) Lakoff, George (2023): Time to Get Woke About Woke. FrameLab 03/16/2023. And Lakoff and Gil Duran, Redpilled, QAnon, Anti-Vaccine: Conservative versions of 'woke'. 03/20/2023. Available at the Internet Archive.

(4) Iber, Patrick (2026): Which Way, Western Marxism? (Review). Dissent 73:2, 101-108. <https://muse.jhu.edu/article/990886>

(5) Glueck, Katie (2026): Can These Democrats Make Combative Centrism Happen? [Note: Third Way is only “combative” against Democrats who sound like they are to the left of Donald Trump. New York Times 03/02/2026. Gift link: <https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/us/politics/democrats-centrism-2028-election.html?unlocked_article_code=1.xVA.6OJo.M8i0vhfJPCOM&smid=url-share> (Accessed : 2026-13-07).

(6) Judt, Tony (1998): The 'Third Way' Is No Route to Paradise. New York Times 09/27/1998. (Accessed: 2026-13-07).

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard

Following the current US-Israel War on Iran is like some kind of bad dream in which you work to solve a problem and are relieved you finally figured it out, but then the same problem keeps popping up over and over again. The fact that the President is running an insider-trader routine nearly every weekend where he puts out bad news on Friday so stocks dip and then good news on Monday that makes the stocks rebound. But any way we look at it, pretty much every analyst that’s not an outright cheerleader for the war is saying that unless there is a substantive settlement soon – soon as in a few weeks – there’s going to be a major hit to the global economy than different (disastrous) wars like the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War did not produce.

A new article in the German Der Spiegel discusses what the author perceives as an intense power struggle within the current Iranian regime. This is understandable, since the current leader of Iran is Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the previous Ayatollah who died along with several other senior Iranian leaders in the decapitation strikes by the US and Israel early in the current war, has not been seen in public since that event. The official Iranian position is that he was wounded but is currently very much in charge. Iran pretty clearly had multiple layers in its chain of command who were ready to step in after the previous top leaders were assassinated. (1)

Reuter’s article speculates about whether the Revolutionary Guard, which in the Iranian system is considered a secular institution subordinated to the Supreme religious leader, is now moving into the dominant role within the Iranian system. Such suggestions should be regarded with caution. After all, the current war started after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convinced a gullible Donald Trump that the Iranians were on the verge of overthrowing the current regime completely and that the US and Israel going to war against Iran would result in a near-term overthrow of Iranian regime to be replaced by something more malleable for Israel and the US. And, as the current war illustrates for the umpteenth time in human history that when a country is attacked, the people of that country tend to rally around their leaders in the short run. And often in the long run, as well.

John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in 1992:

Almost any military venture receives strong popular approval in the short run; the citizenry rallies to the flag and to the forces engaged in combat. The strategy and technology of the new war evoke admiration and applause. This reaction is related not to economics or politics but more deeply to anthropology. As in ancient times, when the drums sound in the distant forest, there is an assured tribal response. It is the rallying beat of the drums, not the virtue of the cause, that is the vital mobilizing force. (2)

Dexter Filkins did a long profile in 2020 of the now-deceased Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Filkins relates that when Khamenei achieved that position in 1989:

The job gave Khamenei nearly absolute power: control of every branch of the government, command of the armed forces, and supervision of the judiciary. He proved to be a nimble and energetic autocrat, creating a parallel structure for each institution. “This is how he kept everyone weak,” Mehdi Khalaji, a former Shiite cleric in Iran who is now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said. Khamenei also oversaw the country’s largest concentrations of wealth: an array of institutional funds, built on property seized from the Shah’s élite, which came to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars. (3)

That aspect of the late Khameini’s structuring of the government and its power centers is important background for evaluating the claim that Reuter makes about the IRGC, to which he refers as the Pasdaran (it’s also called Sepah). It is a branch of the Iranian armed forces, though it reports directly to the Supreme Leader. But, similar to the multiple capabilities of the various armed forces branches in the US, the various branch have overlapping types of functions. The IRGC itself is formally considered a terrorist group by the US and several other Western governments.

As an analysis from the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) published a month before the current war began on February 28 puts it:

The IRGC is also highly influential in Iran’s national politics. Many corps veterans have moved on to senior government roles, including in the cabinet, parliament, and provinces. The corps has meanwhile enriched itself with billions of dollars by running illicit commercial and financial networks around international sanctions. Many regional experts expect the IRGC to play a pivotal role in selecting a successor to the aging Khamenei, which could further consolidate the group’s power and increase barriers to political reform. (4)

One implication of that structure is that the IRGC is very much part of the current regime. Reuter’s article might be taken to suggest that a shift to a more dominant role by the Pasdaran could produce some kind of qualitative “regime change.” But Reuter cautions against any such interpretation:

But the omnipresent power of the Revolutionary Guards suggests that the changes of course [within the government] are not the result of a dispute between two power blocs - with a dangerous vacuum at the top - but rather maneuvers so as not to alienate the most radical regime supporters.

The actual line of conflict in Iran has long been between the regime as a whole and the majority of the population, which has been rapidly impoverished because of the previous mismanagement, the sanctions, and the consequences of the war, and is likely to take to the streets again sooner or later.

But the anthropological impulse that Galbraith described is a strong one, even when a major portion of the population hates the existing regime. And the Iranians are very much aware that they were attacked by an illegal war of aggression on the part of the US and Israel – neither of which were regarded as particularly friendly to Iran before the war.

The CFR analysis a month before the beginning of the current war observed:

The IRGC has … become a central player in Iran’s domestic politics, evolving into what CFR’s Ray Takeyh has called the most important organization in the country. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—who led the IRGC during the Iran-Iraq War—has appointed former IRGC commanders to top political posts, and former guards in parliament tend to advocate a hard-line foreign policy, as well as support for developing a civilian nuclear program.

Because the IRGC marches in lockstep with the supreme leader’s policy positions, its powers at times seem to outshine that of Iran’s president, who does not control any of the armed forces and has relatively few powers of his own. (Only men have been president, and whether Iranian law requires this is unclear.) Although the president has sway over domestic policy—he controls the national budget, for example—his influence over foreign policy is limited. [my emphasis]

So, whatever power shifts may be happening within the ruling structures in Iran, it’s not as though the IRGC has been some completely separate power center within the regime. And pro-American or pro-Israeli, they definitely are not.

Reuter’s description of the IRGC as controlling half or more of the country’s economy raises interesting questions how to understand their economic system. Can we say that half their economy has been “nationalized”? That it’s an oligarch-dominated kleptocracy? A theological kleptocracy dominated by oligarchs?

This is an explainer video from April by Middle East Eye on the IRGC which presents it as a major element of the governing structure. It also provides a reminder of the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, in which the US backed Saddam Hussein’s Iraq against Iran, in a war Iran clearly won, at great cost to itself:

Notes:

(1) Reuter, Christoph (2026): Die unheimlichen Herscher. Der Spiegel 30:17.07.2026, 56-57. My translation to English.

(2) Galbraith, John Kenneth (1992): The Culture of Contentment, 166-167. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

(3) Filkins, Dexter (2020): The Enemy Is Here. New Yorker 05/25/2020, 28-39.

(4) The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Council on Foreign Relations 01/30/2026. <https://www.cfr.org/backgrounders/irans-revolutionary-guards> (Accessed: 2026-17-07).

The Iran War disaster, authored by the US and Israel, proceeds

The US and Israel began the current war against Iran on February 28. It’s a conflict that has already damaged the world economy and the prewar order (such as it was) in the Middle East.

Israel has been pursuing a goal of regional hegemony in the Middle East. It aims to remain as the dominant regional military power with the ability to periodically attack neighboring countries in “mowing the grass” operations of the kind it has been running for decades in Gaza and Lebanon. It prefers a neighborhood of “failed states” that are unable to put up any substantive military opposition to whatever Israel decides to do. It has long since seen Iran as the most threatening regional adversary, which is why politicians like Benjamin Netanyahu has been advocating for the US to go to war against Iran. Netanyahu’s goal is not to have stable, responsible regimes that can be good neighbors. His goal is for Israel to be surrounded by failed states that Israel can periodically attack militarily with relative impunity.

Wars like the current one can result in important things changing quickly. A particular factor in the current situation is that the President of the United States is physically and mentally unfit for the job, with his cognitive health visibly deteriorating. The Trump 2.0 regime is also seemingly unique in US history in its inability to conduct normal diplomacy. The Lebanese international relations scholar Gilbert Achcar has some important observations about how the lessons the Trump – or at least the Trump team - seems to have taken from the Iraq War. Though in the current war, they have reverted to basically the neocon approach, with the results that we are now seeing unfold.

As Achcar summarized it in February:

Trump’s second-term neo-imperial policy combines a cynicism that some have mistaken for honesty with a policy of brute force in the service of a worldview that displays a taste for both supremacism (America First) and Lebensraum – the ‘Donroe doctrine’, a new version of the Monroe Doctrine that claimed the Americas as the US’s exclusive preserve. [my emphasis] (1)

In May, Sania Faisal El-Husseini describe Israel’s current policy as follows:

U.S. and Israeli strategies toward the three fronts; Iran, Palestine, and Lebanon, show clear similarities. They pursue a single objective: eliminating any remaining political opposition to Israel in the region and preventing the emergence of any future material force that could challenge it. While a truce exists with Iran [as of May 22], economic and political pressure continues. Negotiations are also being used to secure gains under pressure, mainly related to Iran’s weapons capabilities and its future power. Likewise, despite the ceasefire reached in Gaza, the targeting, killing, and blockade of Gazans by the Israeli occupation continue. At the same time, pressure on Hamas persists through negotiations aimed at achieving its full disarmament. The same pattern appears in Lebanon. Although Israel and Lebanon reached a ceasefire agreement, it has largely remained nominal, much like in Gaza. The Israeli military continues targeting civilians, villages, and towns in southern Lebanon, while negotiations with the Lebanese government are used to pressure it toward the disarmament of Hezbollah. [my emphasis] (2)

The goals described in the now-defunct memorandum of understanding between the US and Iran included demands that Israel withdraw from territories in Lebanon (and implicit in Syria) that it current illegally occupies. Israel has never committed itself to that and won’t without major pressure from the US. Which the Trump regime shows no willingness or even the diplomatic ability to bring about such a result:

... the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and undertake from now on not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other, and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon. The final Deal will confirm the permanent termination of the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and other provisions of this paragraph.

El-Husseini writes of Israel’s goals in the current war:

In Iran, Israel is not seeking only to destroy Iranian nuclear capabilities. It is also seeking to keep Tehran under prolonged military, economic, and political pressure, or to bring about regime change. Israel views Iran as the center of threat production. Since the Iranian Revolution, Tehran has adopted the rhetoric of “exporting the revolution” and supporting the “oppressed.” This was translated in practice through support for its allies in Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. [my emphasis]

As many commentators have noted, Iran has been Netanyahu’s White Whale.

Meanwhile, journalistic soothsayers are trying to detect what the leaders of the US and Israel have in mind in the current situation. Journalists covering the war are assuming that Axios is the current favorite outlet for the Trump regime views of the conflict, and in particular the reporting of Barak Ravid. On July 17, Ravid writes:

Among the options being considered [by the US] are bombing Iranian infrastructure facilities like power plants, conducting more attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities in order to bury Iran's enriched uranium even deeper, and bombing the Pickaxe Mountain underground site that is suspected to be a facility in the making.

Trump hasn't made a final decision yet, but he appears willing to escalate the war to cause enough damage that the Iranian regime will open the Strait of Hormuz and accept Trump's nuclear demands. (3)

Amos Harel, a military analyst for Haaretz, presents a picture that sounds suspiciously like, things aren’t looking good any way we take it:

Following several weeks of gradual escalation, there are growing signs that the war between the United States and Iran may intensify and expand. For the time being, it still appears that the two countries have no interest in drawing Israel into a renewed confrontation in the Persian Gulf. This may nevertheless happen, whether because of an inability to contain the confrontation to the Gulf region or due to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's political considerations – mainly, his dire domestic situation.

The truth is, besides a decisive American victory over Iran, which is not in sight, Israel has little to gain from an expanded and prolonged war. The U.S. doesn't need it for now, and it seems that Iran is wary of involving Israel at this point, since Tehran, apparently, is not interested in a broader confrontation: Israel is considered to be an unpredictable actor. [my emphasis] (4)

That second paragraph is a bit enigmatic. Of course Israel is deeply involved in the war and will continue to be. And Iran’s leaders perceive this the current conflict as a war for national and regime survival. They would be foolish not to. And their ability to block traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is a powerful advantage. And it’s not their only advantage.

Robert Pape has been one of the Cassandras of the current war. This is an July 16 interview with Deutsche Welle, including the unfortunate fact that the world is facing an “oil inventory cliff”: (5)

Maybe some Christian Zionists can explain to us why the escalating disaster is all part of God’s Divine Plan. But it’s hard to see how we can blame God for this very human-created disaster.

Notes:

(1) Achcar, Gilbert (2026): US: an old-new imperial doctrine. Le Monde Diplomatique (Feb 2026). <https://mondediplo.com/2026/02/05us> (Accessed: 2026-18-07).

(2) El-Husseini, Sani Faisal (2026): Israel: From neutralizing the frontline states to neutralizing the Axis of Resistance. Middle East Eye 05/22/2026. <https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260522-israel-from-neutralizing-the-frontline-states-to-neutralizing-the-axis-of-resistance/> (Accessed: 2026-19-07).

(3) Ravid, Barak (2026): Scoop: U.S. sending dozens of refueling planes to Israel as Iran escalation looms. Axios 07/17/2026. <https://www.axios.com/2026/07/17/trump-iran-israel-refueling-planes> (Accessed: 2026-19-07).

(4) Harel, Amos (2026): Even as Ground Invasion Looms, U.S. and Iran Want Wild-card Israel Out of the Fight. Haaretz 07/19/2026. Gift link: <https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/2026-07-19/ty-article/.premium/israel-may-be-dragged-into-a-u-s-iran-fight/0000019f-76e7-d969-afdf-f6e781ae0000?gift=4fbe229f26434dbf8462b5e7454f4331> (Accessed: 2026-19-07).

(5) Why Trump is taking a risky bet on Iran, but could lose on all counts. DW News YouTube channel 07/16/2026. <https://youtu.be/ze9fLTI2eE0?si=ERyBdxvkpbkkq-SI> (Accessed: 2026-19-07).

TrumpCarthyism, 2026

In a presentation I embedded in a previous post, historian Heather Cox Richardson talked about how anticommunism became a particular polemical tool in US politics. (1)

Trump’s address on July 16 about voting reminded me of how much he’s a re-run of his mob-lawyer mentor, Roy Cohn (1927-1986), who also had served as chief counsel for Joe McCarthy’s infamous Senate witch-hunt committee.

Trump's mentor would have been proud of his protégé’s speech last night. McCarthy focused heavily on alleged collusion by officials with Chinese Communists. Now Trump is saying Chinese Commies are subverting our elections.

So, we have China to blame for Trump getting elected again in 2024?

A reporter once asked Harry Truman if he had heard a comment McCarthy had just made. His response: "I don't know anything about it, but if McCarthy said it, it's a damn lie, you can be sure of that." (2)

That’s a good standard for Trump‘s claims, too!

Starting just after 25:00 in this July 9 video, Heather Cox Richardson reminds us that the politics of “anticommunism” in the US predate the Bolshevik Revolution. And, not surprisingly, the 19th century version had much to do with white racism. And so does the Donald Trump 2026 version.

(27:36) But then you also have what people are looking at with this idea of left-wing terrorism that the administration is pushing and that's the attempt to criminalize the idea of political opposition to Trump with the argument that those people who are standing against him are communists.

Now I want to call out here there is something circulating on social media saying that it looks like a Trump post from Truth Social and it looks like he is saying he's going to put communists in jail. That is fake. That is not real.

All right. It looks real. It is not real. And if you see things like that and people are reacting hugely to this because it's not outside the realm of possibility. ...

Facts matter, as Richardson’s comment there reminds us.

Now, that being said, Trump very clearly is doubling down on the idea that his opponents are communists. This is really interesting from a psychological perspective for Trump because Trump really, if you think about him, which I have done more than I want to, let me tell you. But his great moment in the sun, you know, the moment when he was on top of the world was the 1980s. And much of his mindset remains in the 1980s. and his glee with which he has glommed onto the word “communists” in this moment just strikes me once again of him being back in the 1980s and ever so happy to be there.

But for the rest of us, the threat of communism is just gone. I mean the for most Americans at this point you don't even haven't really lived in a you in a world that was dominated by the great Communist powers and even powers that are nominally Communist now are really not fully Communist any longer but he clearly thinks that that's such a frightening word that people will react crazily to it. And this is interesting for me because the idea of communism and socialism in the United States is very different than it is in … the concept of international communism.

This shouldn’t be taken as a reason to credit Trumpista anticommunism with some kind of goodwill in their effort to make Medicare For All sound like the Second Coming of Pol Pot. It’s just as sleazy and dishonest as Joe McCarthy’s and Roy Cohn’s demagoguery.

We start to see people complaining about socialism and communism in the United States in 1871. That's before the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. 1871, and it comes out of the American South where white Democrats, formerly Confederates, don't want black voting. And what they say is that black, it's men at this point, black men are uneducated and they are poor. And if you let them vote, they're going to vote for politicians who will promise them roads and schools and hospitals and so on. And those can only be paid for by tax dollars. And because only white people have any property, that's going to mean a redistribution of wealth from white people to black people. And that's socialism.

And after the Paris Commune of March through May of 1871, they begin to call it communism. This is long before uh people are talking about imposing Marxists governments on the rest of the world. But in the United States, those ideas of socialism and communism went back to the idea of minority voting, racial minorities voting. And I think Trump - unconsciously, because I know he doesn't know this history - is tapping into that. Basically, it's something that an embattled white group of people has rolled out every time they want to make sure that minorities can't vote.

And she takes up one of my own pet peeves:

So, one of the things that you people ask me about every single week is that's that you know, old chestnut. We're not a democracy. We're a republic. Why is that? Where did that come from?

That comes from the John Birch Society in the 1950s and 1960s when they were trying to justify not permitting black voting in the United States. And what did they say? They said that black Americans were communists.

Now, in that period, there is overlap between communism and certain black activists in the United States. But there that's really not what the heart of that that equation is. Nonetheless, I think what Trump is doing when he talks about communism is he's basically saying us white guys have to stick together because anybody who's complaining about anything I do is one of them guys, right? And all the things that you can shovel into that bucket of Communism.

So, one of the things that people are identifying with this push for the White House to go after leftwing terrorism is to take opponents of Trump, those he is now calling communists and that he identified in September of 2025 as being terrorists, put them all together and use the American government to go after them. And that is a very, very real issue. You saw that in the Broadview 6. You saw that in the Prairie Land case where they took people who were simply protesting ICE, said they were a conspiracy and tried to throw the book at them, even if they didn't know each other, for being part of a conspiracy.

And that's dangerous. That is out there. And that's probably part of what's going on. It's not fairing well in the courts, by the way, with the exception of the Prairieland case, which is going to be appealed for sure because it's bonkers.  [my emphasis]

The Prairieland case to which she refers is the case in which protesters at an ICE facility in Texas which the Trump Administration charged protesters with felonies to use it as a model case for their efforts to declare all anti-Trump dissenters as part of an “antifa” terrorist conspiracy. As AP reports:

President Donald Trump last fall signed an executive order designating antifa a domestic terrorist organization, even though there is no domestic equivalent to the State Department's list of foreign terror organizations.

Critics warn the case could have wide-reaching impact on protests given that organizations operating within the U.S. are supposed to be protected by First Amendment free-speech rights.

Short for "anti-fascists," antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations. (3)

In some ways, this is also a rerun of the McCarthy era because here we again having a particular organization being defined as a terrorist conspiracy or something similar. At least the post-World War II Red Scare had an actual (if small) organization, the Communist Party (CPUSA) out of which to construct a bogeyman. (4) Trump 2.0’s designation of “antifa” protesters as a some nationwide organization is completely bogus.

But the McCarran Act (Subversive Activities Control Act) of 1950 and the Communist Control Act (CCA) of 1954. The latter was sponsored by Congressman Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, who is generally remembered as some kind of liberal. The official name of the Minnesota Democratic Party, then and now, is the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL). The New York Times explained the year the CCA was passed:

The bill that has now become known as “the Communist Control Act of 1954” was promoted as a political coup by so-called Democratic “liberals” headed by Senator Humphrey of Minnesota, who is running for re-election this fall. The Democrats had been goaded for months, even years, by Republican demagogues charging them with “twenty years of treason” and the like; and this time they apparently decided that they could out-demagogue the Republicans. (5)

It was 1954, so the ultra-respectable New York Times saw the need to add this qualification:

In the present atmosphere, the Democrats reasoned, they would get credit for being more anti-Communist than the Republicans because they were proposing legislation superficially even more anti-Communist than anything the Republicans had come up with.

This was the same we’re-more-rightwing-than-the-Republicans tactic that Kamala Harris applied in her 2024 campaign to immigration enforcement, where her message was essentially: We’re trying to get more aggressive against all these here illegal aliens, but the soft-on-immigration Republicans won’t let us!

Returning to Harry Truman, he famously said in 1952:

I've seen it happen time after time. When the Democratic candidate allows himself to be put on the defensive and starts apologizing for the New Deal and the fair Deal, and says he really doesn't believe in them, he is sure to lose. The people don't want a phony Democrat. If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don't want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign. [my emphasis] (6)

Notes:

(1) Today in Politics-Explainer. Heather Cox Richardson YouTube channel 07/09/2026. <https://youtu.be/bxEawcvCle4?si=WMdkrG_F65NwgWr3> (Accessed: 2026-13-07).

(2) Truman 'Worried' Taft Is Losing; Reaffirms His Civil Rights Stand; TRUMAN 'WORRIED' ON TAFT'S CHANCES. New York Times 07/10/1952. <https://www.nytimes.com/1952/07/10/archives/truman-worried-taft-is-losing-reaffirms-his-civil-rights-stand.html> (Accessed: 2026-17-07).

(3) Stengle, Jamie & Marcelo, Philip (2026): 8 convicted of terrorism charges in Texas immigration center shooting sentenced to decades in prison. AP/PBS 06/23/2026. <https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/8-convicted-of-terrorism-charges-in-texas-immigration-center-shooting-sentenced-to-decades-in-prison> (Accessed: 2026-17-07).

(4) This is not to imply that the legal actions and Red Scare measures taken were justified. 

(5) The Communist Control Act. New York Times 08/21/1954. <https://www.nytimes.com/1954/08/21/archives/the-communist-control-act.html> (Accessed: 2026-17-07).

(6) Truman, Harry (1952): Address at the National Convention Banquet of the Americans for Democratic Action 05/17/1952. The American Presidency Project. <https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-national-convention-banquet-the-americans-for-democratic-action> (Accessed: 2026-17-07).

Is appointing weirdos as senior security officials a good idea?

Donald Trump has been selecting some very dubious characters for important security posts in the Trump 2.0 regime. That brings to mind a fairly recent experience from Austria.

[Trump] pulled Bill Pulte, the head of a housing agency with zero national security background, and made him acting Director over all 18 intelligence agencies. This is the man who accused a sitting Federal Reserve governor of mortgage fraud and pushed hardest to fire the Fed chair. The backlash was bipartisan. Republican senators said out loud they saw no qualifications for the job. The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee warned he would bend the intelligence to fit what the President wants to hear. The fight even threatens the renewal of a major surveillance law. A Democratic House owns the Intelligence gavel. They will ask what a housing official is doing reading the nation’s secrets, and they will ask it on camera. (1)

MS NOW has this report on Pulte, including commentary by Jack Smith, who organized the prosecution of January 6 Trumpistas who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021 – prosecutions that were nullified by Trump’s shameless pardons (2):

Austria has borders with nine other countries (Liechtenstein, Switzerland, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, and Italy). All of them are part of the Schengen Treaty Area, which means there are normally no border checkpoints on roads between Schengen countries. So it's kind of important for Austria to have good intelligence sharing with those countries. In any case, Vienna still lives up to its stereotype as a magnet for spies because seat if the International Atomic Energy Commission has its seat there. And Austria's bank secrecy laws are even stiffer than Switzerland's so Austria is particularly attractive for various foreign sheikhs, mobsters, and oligarchs Looking to launder money.

Back four governments ago in Austria (2017-2019), the country's main intelligence organization, known as the BVT. The Interior Minister at that time was Herbert Kickl of the far-right "Freedom Party" (FPÖ). He had a Vienna police unit raid the BVT (the local police are part of the Interior Ministry) to see what intelligence it was gathering on domestic terrorists who might be sympathetic to the FPÖ. The FPÖ, now headed by Kickl, is one of those parties J.D. Vance is encouraging as a defender of white civilization is also very pro-Russian in its foreign policy.

Karen Kneisl, the Austrian Foreign Minister in that same government, moved to Russia after she left office and basically functions as a propagandist for Putin’s government now.

The Austrian Chancellor in whose government Kneissel served as Foreign Minister was Sebastian Kurz, who after leaving office joined Peter Thiel’s stable of sponsored politicians, to which Vice President J.D. Vance belongs.

When that government fell in 2019 due to its chronic corruption, the Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen had to appoint a new Cabinet and he specified he would never appoint Kickl as a Cabinet member again because his BVT raid had led some countries to not trust Austria to protect intelligence Sources. Just this year, Van der Bellen implied that neighbor countries still serious limit their intelligence cooperation with Austria as a result of that incident.

This is why it's a really bad idea to appoint a fool, a nationalist zealot, or an incompetent sleazebag to head the national intelligence agency. I'm just sayin'...

This is a short BBC report from 2023 on Karen Kneissl: (3)

Notes:

(1) Jackson, Mitch (2026): The Verdict Is In. He Won't Survive Two More Years. Uncensored Objection 07/15/2026. <https://mitchthelawyer.substack.com/p/the-verdict-is-in-he-wont-survive?utm_source=publication-search> (Accessed: 2026-14-07).

(2) Intelligence chief Bill Pulte begins FIRING dozens of intelligence officials. MS NOW YouTube channel 07/03/2026. <https://youtu.be/4makitJU1bU?si=heKVOxt7xHV46PxK> (Accessed: 2026-16-07).

(3) Putin described as 'most intelligent gentleman' by former Austrian foreign minister. BBC News YouTube channel 12/07/2023. <https://youtu.be/1J1PYVDf9z4?si=ImXxij5aUpRxg6Nv> (Accessed: 2026-14-07).

Counting European armed forces (It’s trickier than one might think!)

In posting about the size of the largest European and NATO armed forces – those concepts may be the same if we consider Türkiye as European – I’ve been relying on a ranking that put Poland as having the largest active-duty army and Spain as having the largest active-duty-plus-reserves number.

After spending some time checking the current numbers, I am reminded that there are different ways to count troops. And war-readiness is not identical to number of troops. War readiness depends of course on what potential war we’re talking about, e.g., a NATO war against Russia? A European and Canadian war to defend Denmark from an American invasion of Greenland?

So available military forces are a key measure. But numbers of troops alone don’t equate to military capability or readiness.

Here are rankings I put together based on three different sources:

None of those rankings show Spain as having the largest number of combined active and reserve forces. Nor Poland as number two in active-duty forces. And the Global Firepower count even shows Germany as easily having the largest number of active and reserve forces.

Counting methodologies differ, in other words. A count not included in the tables above, Paramilitary Personnel, is another challenge. The World Population Review count cites the same count for “paramilitary” personnel and total personnel. The New Union Post count shows only active and reserve-duty counts.

The criteria for counting “paramilitary” numbers probably includes different proportions according of people who could be quickly integrated into the regular military.

For instance, at least parts of urban police departments could reasonably be described as paramilitaries. But municipal police as such can’t be directed inducted to the armed forces. (And some significant portion of them may not be able to meet the physical requirements for the armed services.) And if we look at the United States, their military services have their own formal Reserves that can be immediately called into active service. The National Guard are primarily state militias, i.e., paramilitary units, that can be nationalized as paramilitary units. And Guard members can also be directly inducted to the regular forces.

The Global Firepower count provides a variety of measures, like the following for France 2026:

In the crisis (or averted crisis) early this year over Greenland, Britain and five NATO countries that are also EU members issued a public statement warning that they were prepared to stand by their mutual-defense commitments to Greenland: France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Spain. Türkiye, which ranks in all three counts shown above as having the largest active duty forces, is not an EU member state.

The Carnegie Endowment has this podcast about the considerations current facing European countries now that Trump has severely undermined NATO and has taken a more downright hostile position against the European countries who are still nominally its allies. (1)



Notes:

(1) How Europe Fights Russia Without the U.S. Carnegie Endowment YouTube channel 07/10/2026. <https://youtu.be/AzE8YPufrvg?si=aGMmtQR91e66OwsA> (Accessed: 2026-14-07).

The Mamdani approach to governance may be catching!

Le Monde English reports:

A little more than two weeks after being elected mayor of Paris on March 29, Emmanuel Grégoire kicked off the first major initiatives of his term. The Socialist, who won the municipal elections heading a left-wing coalition (excluding the radical-left La France Insoumise), has called a Paris City Council meeting on Tuesday, April 14, with four priorities on the agenda. According to information obtained by Le Monde, the initiatives to address include sheltering people living on the streets, the housing crisis, after-school care and the possible sale of the Parc des Princes stadium to Paris Saint-Germain (PSG).

On these last two issues, the new mayor of the capital immediately signaled a break with his predecessor, Anne Hidalgo, who had allowed these matters to stagnate during her final years in office. [my emphasis] (1)

Yes, Paris also has a socialist mayor. From the current Socialist Party (PS) that has been around since 1969, co-founded by François Mitterrand, which served as President of France from 1981-1995. The PS is part of the Socialist International, a formal but loose alliance of various social-democratic parties, which includes Spain’s Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE). Of course, socialist politics in France was around long before 1969!

Parliamentary governments like those in Europe tend to have multi-party systems, which means that their national, regional, and local governments are often governed by coalitions of parties rather than a single one. This system often seem inscrutable to Americans. And Europeans often find the two-party systems that tend to predominate in Europe and America at least equally puzzling.

But both Britain and the US have winner-take-all electoral districts, also known as first-past-the-post systems. In other words, the candidate with the most votes wins, even if it’s not a majority. That was also the case in the 2024 US Presidential elections, where Trump won with less than a majority of the popular vote. (It was close, but not a majority.)

The reason that tends toward a two-party system can be explained by thinking of a vote on an ideological spectrum – although actual voters’ choices are messier than that. But take an example of a Congressional district in which 60% of voters are “left” or “center-left” and the other 40% “right.” If there are two left/center-left candidates in a general election who split the left-leaning 60% among themselves, while all of the 40% of “right” voters vote for a single candidate, the large left-leaning majority gets no Representative, while the 40% with the right-leaning majority gets to be the Representative.

This creates an obvious practical incentive for the “left” to each consolidate around one candidate who is closer to their general orientation. We could make a similar example with urban vs. rural preferences.

The recent emergence of a stronger democratic-socialist faction inside the US Democratic Party, mostly famously represented by Zohran Mamdani, follows a similar electoral logic. There are Democrats to this day who blame Ralph Nader for Al Gore’s critical loss of Florida in the 2020 Presidential race. As later studies showed, the actual election results reflected something different. For one thing, polls showed that Nader voters in Florida were more likely have take vote from Shrub Bush rather than from Gore. (Go figure!) And the later, statewide media consortium’s count of the statewide vote showed that Gore actually did win the election.

The Democratic Socialists of America have tended, like Mamdani did, to focus on winning within the Democratic Party in primaries and campaigning as Democratic nominees in the general elections. Such a dynamic is not unique to the Democratic Party. In 1964, the George Wallace Democrats and the howling-at-the-moon Goldwater Republicans were ideological soulmates. Although some of those impious Mean Libruls might question the “soul” part of that description!

Failing some kind of currently unforeseeable events, it’s highly unlikely that any new party would rapidly displace one of the current two dominant US parties. The US party system began in the 1790s with the current Democratic Party (then called the Republican Party and soon the Democratic-Republic Party) and the Federalist Party. The Federalist Party was basically decimated by the War of 1812 against Britain, because New England Federalist were widely perceived as sympathetic to the British. At the Presidential level, the Jefferson-Jackson Democratic Party had something like one-party rule for the first four decades of the 19th century. The current Republican Party was founded as a liberal, pro-democracy, anti-slavery party in 1854.

To the extent that we can equate the left-right spectrum of 1854 to today’s, the left-right alignment of the Democratic and Republican parties has completely flipped. Which is consistent with the ideological dynamic of countries with winner-take-all electoral districts as described above. (Politics is always messier than simply left-vs.-right. But that’s another part of the story.)

Politics is politics, so there will always be intra-party differences around issues, personalities, and priorities.

Back during the Cheney-Bush Administration, critics of it and in particular of their Iraq War started describing ourselves as part of the “reality-based community.” That’s an important foundation for any responsible and effective politics and policies.

What the successful DSA Democratic politicians like Mamdani and AOC and others are showing is that programs matter. A Medicare for All system is far better than private, corporatized media that can be owned and squeezed for every penny of profit by private-equity investors focused on short-term returns on investment.

And both sides within the party can reinforce the party messaging if they put their minds to it. DSA candidates can respond to criticism of “socialism” by saying things like, “Yeah, I’m a democratic socialist! That means I support Medicare for all and our public schools. My Republican opponent is opposed to both!”

The more traditional Dems can say, “I don’t call myself a socialist. But I support Medicare for All and our public schools. My Republican opponent is opposed to both. And I welcome the support of anyone who does supports them like I do.”

It does appear that with Trump’s explicit rhetoric this year calling the Democrats “communists” looks very much like an attempt to pump up a new, Joe McCarthy-type, sleazeball “Anti-Communism” campaign. Which is the kind of politics Trump learned from his political mentor, Roy Cohn. Who served as the lead counsel for McCarthy’s witch-hunt Senate Committee before he went on to become the top Mob lawyer in New York City. Democrats need to put some thought and energy into how they go about countering that without falling into the “don’t think of an elephant” trap George Lakoff warned about, i.e., reinforcing the other side’s narrative while trying to refute it.

Starting just after 25:00 in this podcast, Heather Cox Richardson reminds us that the politics of “anticommunism” in the US predate the Bolshevik Revolution. And, not surprisingly, the 19th century version had much to do with white racism. (And so does the Trump version!)

Notes:

(1) Bekmezian, Hélène (2026): Emmanuel Grégoire launches first four major initiatives of his term as mayor of Paris. Le Monde English 04/09/2026. <https://www.lemonde.fr/en/politics/article/2026/04/09/emmanuel-gregoire-launches-the-first-four-major-initiatives-of-his-term-as-mayor-of-paris_6752248_5.html> (Accessed: 2026-13-07).

(2) Today in Politics-Explainer. Heather Cox Richardson YouTube channel 07/09/2026. <https://youtu.be/bxEawcvCle4?si=WMdkrG_F65NwgWr3> (Accessed: 2026-13-07).