Why don't people on our side call Trump a "Communist" instead?

[Wanderlust988]

I'm amazed that we still call him a fascist. Half the country doesn't even know what a fascist is, but everyone knows what communism is. Trump is trying to establish state control over everything in our society. It would be easy to pick him apart by calling him America's first communist president. Our politicians certainly don't get the bumper style politics.

[Ocelot II]

1. Well, he certainly does seem to want to control the means of production and distribution.

He tells businesses what they should produce, and where, and how much they should charge for their products. Free enterprise, my fat pink ass.

[H2O Man]

2. Maybe.

I'm not sure everytone knows what communism is or isn't, but it still has value for a target audience. And I'm really not sure if it makes a big difference. I like to identify him as the "convicted sex offender/felon."

[David__77]

3. Perhaps because he is not a communist.

W.E.B. DuBois was a communist. Trump is no communist.

While liberals and social democrats aren’t communists, there are good reasons they can’t really play the McCarthyist game so well.

[RainCaster]

10. Incompetent Jackass would be more accurate

He doesn't know from one minute to the next what he wants. He's so stupid that he has people who are simply there to keep him from running into walls. Any other politician would be run out of town on an instant for such incompetence.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. What David__77 said.

He absolutely, 100% is not Communist. I think you need to learn a bit more about Communism.

[Christian255]

5. Fascist for now...

Communism is about making everyone equal. There’s no private property—the government owns everything. It aims to get rid of social classes and focuses on workers and sharing wealth. Usually, there’s one ruling party, sometimes led by a dictator. Think Soviet Union and Cuba.

Fascism is about making the nation strong and united under one leader. It allows private property but controls it. It keeps social classes and favors the powerful. It’s very nationalistic and often militaristic. The government is strict, with one party and a dictator. Think Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

Might be an opportunity for us to start educating folks.

FYI - Here's a list of all the various types of governments:
• Democracy: People have the power to choose their leaders and make decisions through voting.
• Republic: A form of democracy where people elect representatives to make decisions for them.
• Monarchy: A king or queen rules with power passed down through family.
• Absolute Monarchy: The king or queen has total control, with no limits on their power.
• Constitutional Monarchy: The king or queen has limited power, and elected leaders make most decisions.
• Dictatorship: One person has all the power and rules without input from the people.
• Totalitarianism: The government controls nearly every part of life, including thoughts and beliefs.
• Oligarchy: A small group of people, often wealthy or powerful, make the decisions.
• Theocracy: Religious leaders or laws based on religion guide the government.
• Anarchy: No government or rules; people live without leaders or laws.
• Communism: The government owns everything and shares resources equally, in theory.
• Socialism: The government helps provide things like healthcare or education for everyone, but people still vote and own property.

[Wanderlust988]

11. This is what's wrong with Democrats...we need to be 'technically' correct. Fuck that!

They've been calling us commies for decades!! Now it's time to turn the tables. Fuck that technical definition crap. That's why our communication is so poor. We are worried about using the correctly defined terms instead of calling them terms that resonate with people.

All Americans were taught about commies and the Soviets. Most people don't know who Mussolini is. Calling him a fascist, while true, doesn't resonate. Communism is a very salient term.

[malaise]

19. Rec

and welcome to DU 😀

[JHB]

6. I'm with you on this. They stretch definitions like taffy, so why don't we take over the trigger word?

After all, what was the Red Menace? What were we afraid of?

Of a pack of radicals destroying our way of life, taking away our freedoms, telling us what to do, and taking away the things we worked hard our whole lives to help ourselves and our families.

A hundred years ago they waved red flags. Now they wear red caps. Does it really matter if your property is seized by the government directly or by the bank thanks to bankruptcy from horrendous policies of conservo-Bolsheviks? The net effect is the same.

People need to get over being so fussy about accuracy and go for the word that has impact.

[Fiendish Thingy]

7. Fascist is the more accurate descriptor. Nt

[Wanderlust988]

13. Who cares what's accurate? lol We're talking about TRUMP here!!

Use trigger terms that are salient. Ask 10 people on the street and 2 of them will know what fascism is. Our education is not good.

[JHB]

8. My preference for the whole lot of them is "Bolshevik" with a prefix on it

There are a number of radical factions who see Trump as their ticket to grabbing all the marbles.

There has always been a faction of the Conservative Movement that had a sneaking admiration for the Bolsheviks. Not the ideology, of course, but for the ability of a small radical faction to play other factions against each other, maneuver for leverage, and being absolutely ruthless when they saw a chance to take total control.

These Conservo-Bolsheviks have always wanted to do away with the New Deal, get rid of the income tax, any program or policy that helps ordinary people. To them, America's "golden age" was literally that: the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, when "great men" built great industries, amassed huge fortunes, and didn't have to put up with any damn government hampering them for trifles like "grinding people under their heels." This is the leadership of the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society and Project 2025, people like Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh who actively worked to paint Democrats as "the enemy". They demonized Bill and Hillary Clinton so that less extreme Republicans wouldn't decide they could work with a "pro-business" Democrat who was content to work with and tweak the Reaganomics framework rather than to reverse it. If the squishier ones went that way, the Conservo-Bolsheviks could kiss any chance of more extreme measures goodbye. Thus, we've had the last 35 years, with Republicans hamstringing Democrats at every opportunity while going for broke whenever the opportunity presents itself, all while consistently putting conservative operatives on the Federal courts.

Overlapping with them are the Pluto-Bolsheviks. They share a lot of goals with the Conservo-Bolsheviks, but being the guys footing the bills, they want to make sure the outcome is tailored to their liking. This is the Kochs, the Mercers, all sorts of billionaires and multi-millionaires. This group was especially active in trying to get enough support for a new constitutional convention, where the nation's foundations could just be rewritten to their liking, locking in their own personal obsessions and making reform pretty much impossible. And by making reform impossible they would make revolution inevitable.

Next up are the Theo-Bolsheviks, an odd coalition of extremist Evangelical Protestants and right-wing Catholics. They think America has been a moral nosedive since the 60s, and they're out to put the country "back" to a place it never really was, but the facade makes them all tingly. These are the various Trump-loving Evangelicals who rationalize his behavior as that of a modern King Cyrus, the hardliners of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Opus Dei people, all the Catholic RWers on the Supreme Court, etc. Even if the Theo-Bolsheiks came out on top, they're doomed to simply turn on each other due to the "Catholics aren't Christian" views of the Evangelicals. But for the time being they have enough in common with each other and the other factions that they can work together on "step 1: taking control."

The latest addition are the Techno-Bolsheviks: Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance, and others who have adopted Curtis Yarvin as their guru. Yarvin argues that American democracy is a failed experiment that should be replaced by an accountable monarchy, similar to the governance structure of corporations. They fully believe they're the only ones who have brains. The rest of us are pretty much insect drones, and lesser beings whose expertise can be replaced with AI. In other words, they're F***ING NUTS, and they'd be harmless if they were muttering into their cups together at some dive bar, but instead they're some of the richest men in the world, and their views overlap enough with the other groups that they're all useful to each other.

[GoodRaisin]

9. "Dictator" is more on point for him.

His only ideology is himself.

[Wanderlust988]

12. Err...the problem with Dictator is that Republicans love it

And calling him a King is even worse. The love dictatorship so long as it's him that's dictating. Commie is a trigger word.

[no_hypocrisy]

14. It won't work.

MAGA doesn't understand what Communist means. It's whatever Trump tells them it is; and he'll say any Democrat (progressive or otherwise) is a Communist. He'll redirect the message.

The label of Communist doesn't have the same resonance/impact that it did during Joe McCarthy's era. It won't persuade too many people.

[moondust]

15. Their propaganda and brainwashing

are also reminiscent of the commies. Of course fascists also do it. "Totalitarian" would cover both but I'm not sure the (easily distracted) public would understand a word that seldom used.

[Patton French]

16. Won't stick

Trump is an authoritarian through and through.

[OldBaldy1701E]

17. To be honest, I doubt too many people know what 'communist' means either.

It has become a 'buzzword' to use as an insult, but like the old homosexual slurs, they are more used to be insulting that to exactly insult a gay person. I know when I was growing up that someone using the term 'gay' was trying to insult the other person, usually with no idea what they were saying. (I don't think that wearing Converse over Nike applies as being 'gay', for example, yet I heard a student say that once.)

I prefer 'stupid asshole'. That is what he and his cronies are. Just use that.

"Lades and Gentlemen, The President of the United States: Stupid Asshole!"

[malaise]

18. Because a White supremacist fascist

is not a communist. Concepts have meaning.