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GELFAND’S WORLD - Remember when calling somebody a Communist was a big deal? At one time, it was enough to justify a lawsuit for defamation -- just the fact of accusing somebody was enough to justify damages. Of course, there was the alternative fact that red-baiting --taken too far -- could turn public opinion against the accuser. John Birch Society founder Robert Welch became infamous for accusing Dwight Eisenhower of being a conscious agent of the communist conspiracy. Writers were able to use the quote to portray Welch as a nutcase.
In the premodern era when there was still a Soviet Union, calling someone a Communist was something that generally made you look like somebody from the far fringe. It's not that there weren't any Communists, but that use of the term against ordinary Americans was so inappropriate.
So now we have Donald Trump dusting off that old accusation against Kamala Harris.
It became particularly egregious when Trump posted an obviously fraudulent depiction of Harris speaking to a giant assembly of people backed by the hammer and sickle flag. He referred to her as Comrade Kamala. With less than 90 days before the November election, Trump has made himself into the new Robert Welch by calling commie on an obviously clean-cut American leader.
There are a few obvious comments to be made as well as one or two not so obvious points.
The first point is that there is no reason to consider Harris as anything other than a middle of the road American politician. She's been vetted repeatedly over a long career that includes an elected city office, statewide office, the United States Senate, and of course the Vice Presidency. That means that her history and performance in office have been checked out by hundreds of reporters. Every word of hers that was printed in a newspaper or spoken for the television cameras has been viewed by her opponents and by reporters. Trump and his apologists have not as yet provided any evidence whatsoever that she harbors any radical thoughts. She is pretty much center-left, with a sprinkling of social justice positions that would be considered center-right in most European countries.
There was a time when the very hint of being a communist or even sympathizing with communism was enough to ruin your career and even endanger your life. But mainly, the veiled implication of communist leanings was used effectively by conservative politicians to smear their opponents. Richard Nixon was famous for having built a political career in this way. Southern racists used the word to smear the civil rights movement and its leaders.
At one time, the word Communist was so effective an epithet that courts made it defamatory automatically, in the sense that "Aspersions that cause injury to a person at whom they are directed in his social, official or business relations of life are defamatory. The current Western regard of Communism is such that the Florida Court was irresistibly led to the conclusion that the appellation Communist is on its face defamatory." (from a 1954 review from Marquette)
The use of the term Communist to refer to another person was to imply subversion, evil-mindedness, treachery, and mainly, that of being an outsider -- not one of us.
But there was some merit to such ideas in those cases which involved people being actual members of the Communist Party USA and, in addition, taking on the tasks involved in working on behalf of Stalin and the interests of the Soviet Union. There clearly were such people, although their memoirs show that some of them were merely idealists who took things a bit over the top. Academy award winning screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr. explained this in his book titled "I'd hate myself in the morning."
So for Donald Trump to trot out this old accusation and apply it to a legitimate presidential candidate is to take things to another level in the history of presidential politics. It was, at some point in Trump's life, a most serious charge to make, and to make it recklessly was to subject yourself to possible legal action and to substantial monetary damages.
I think it is obvious that Trump is not trying to use the word in the same way that Robert Welch applied it to Eisenhower, which is to say, implying literal fealty to Joseph Stalin and his political heirs. Trump is using it in a way that I see as being playful, at least in the Trumpian manner of being playful. That is to say, Trump is being reckless and sadistic. In his long life's experience, calling someone a Communist was about the worst thing you could say about somebody, and therefore Trump feels the need to whip out the term and glue it to Kamala.
There are two complications that Trump has to face if he hopes to get any traction in this new approach. The first is that the old-time communists have long since gone goodbye. The Soviet Union no longer exists, and the Russian Federation and other remaining countries allow for a substantial mix of capitalism and grand theft. Even China has become a mixed economy which makes most western capitalist countries look small. So, it's hard to imply by that word that some American that you don't like is subservient to foreign masters.
But Trump has one other complication. It's not too great an exaggeration to point out that Trump is and has been Vladimir Putin's bitch. He has carried water for Putin as President of the United States (see the Helsinki story) and more recently has worked against the interests of Ukraine and for the interests of Russia. That may be a bit distanced from being a loyal Communist with ties to Stalin and Khrushchev, but it certainly involves ties to the old KGB officer who has been trying to resurrect the old Communist Russian empire.
In this sense, we can interpret Trump's latest outpouring as straight-out projection. The old saying is that every accusation Trump makes is really a confession. He calls his opponents crooked because he is as crooked as they come. Now he tries to implicate a political opponent with being subservient to a foreign master or at least to a foreign ideology. Straight out projection.
We might consider the way this attack works in practice. Harris talked about reining in merchant price gouging that sometimes happens in emergency situations, so the Republicans accused her of supporting price controls. Kevin Drum bothered to look up what she actually said, which you can find here. As Drum points out, it all looks pretty modest and does not use price controls (the way Nixon did in the early days of the oil crisis). No, Harris did not propose a Communist approach to price gouging, but that's how the Trumpies are trying to play it.
What this all says to me is that Trump has found himself in an uncomfortable situation where he suddenly cannot play the age card effectively and he doesn't have a lot more to fling. So he dusts off all the standard Republican tropes about Democrats, in spite of the demonstrated fact that Democratic presidencies are better for the economy and are less damaging in terms of increasing the national debt. When all else fails, call 'em a commie -- that is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected].)
