Lashing out after his arraignment on federal charges last week, Donald Trump took aim at President Joe Biden and Democrats with language that seemed to evoke another era: He was being persecuted, he said, by “Marxists” and “communists.”
Thank you for supporting our journalism. This article is available exclusively for our subscribers, who help fund our work at the Chicago Tribune.Madelin Munilla, 67, who came to Miami as a child when her parents fled Fidel Castro's Cuba, holds up a sign comparing President Joe Biden to Castro and other Latin American leaders at a rally outside the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. U.S. Courthouse, June 13, 2023, in Miami.
That hasn’t mattered to Trump and other Republicans, who for years have used hyperbolic references to the associated political ideologies to spark fears about Democrats and the dangers they supposedly pose.Hours after pleading not guilty in federal court, Trump told a crowd of his supporters at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, that Biden, “together with a band of his closest thugs, misfits and Marxists, tried to destroy American democracy.
In a country that has historically positioned itself against Marxism, “red-baiting is as American as apple pie in political communications,” said Tanner Mirrlees, an associate professor at Ontario Tech University in Canada who has researched political discourse about “cultural Marxism.” “This is what they do in Latin America,” said Madelin Munilla, 67, who came to Miami as a child when her parents fled Fidel Castro’s Cuba.
A surge in immigration from Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War also brought a population of staunchly anti-communist voters, some of whom have aligned with the Republican Party in part because of its forceful messaging on the issue. Though the term has become popular among mainstream Republicans, it has a darker past. Experts say the concept of “cultural Marxism” posing a threat was historically spread by antisemitic and white supremacist groups.
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