Statement on the President Reviving McCarthy’s Playbook
This weekend, while America marked its 250th birthday, President Trump was focused not on the anniversary celebrations, but on whipping up anti-communist fervor against his opponents.
On Friday at Mount Rushmore, the president said: “There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land,” and said this included immigrants, criminals, and people who don’t want to work. He claimed communism was “the greatest threat to our country including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or even 9/11,” and that "you can be a communist, or you can be a patriot” but “you cannot be both." In that 30-minute speech, he mentioned communism or communists 14 times. In his speech on the National Mall the next day, July 4th, he repeated: “We don’t want communists in our country.”
His recent rhetorical fixation with communism follows several major primary wins for Democratic candidates who are members of the Democratic Socialists of America — and looks like a clear attempt to stoke anti-left hysteria and justify a crackdown on political organizers and groups he does not agree with through the midterms and beyond. On June 26 at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference, in response to the recent DSA primary victories, the President said, "These are not social Democrats, these are hardcore, godless communists.” This tactic — branding political opposition as a dangerous enemy — is a standard feature of the authoritarian playbook.
“The original Committee was launched to oppose weaponization of the communist label by the federal government—and as they did then, so we oppose it now,” said Jane Fonda, co-founder of the relaunched Committee for the First Amendment. “McCarthy, Hoover and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee suppressed activism by punishing and jailing people who fought for social and racial justice and peace, and intimidating people to turn on each other. What we see now is a desperate attempt by Donald Trump to mimic this old playbook, and it will not work.”
President Trump’s obsession with communism is just his latest effort to demonize and criminalize people for their protected political views and speech. In recent weeks, federal agents have tracked down individuals for criticizing ICE over email and social media. Daniel Sanchez Estrada was sentenced to 30 years in jail for transporting political pamphlets and being an alleged member of “antifa,” an organization that does not exist. His prosecution stems from NSPM-7, a presidential memorandum that brands “anti-American,” “anti-capitalism” and “anti-Christian” views—along with “extremism” on immigration, race, and gender—as terrorism. We should expect that more prosecutions like this are coming.
Taken together, his branding of Democrats as communists, communism as an existential threat, and leftist organizers as domestic terrorists is not rhetoric — it is a playbook for criminalizing dissent through the midterms and beyond. As the Committee’s founders wrote in 1947: "any attempt to curb freedom of expression and set arbitrary standards of Americanism is in itself disloyal to both the spirit and the letter of our Constitution." The Committee opposes any attempt to initiate another Red Scare, and stands with anyone the federal government targets for political speech that is protected by the First Amendment.
