In 2024 there is a question if former US president Donald Trump will be allowed to run for president a second time. He’s been accused of “seditious conspiracy” after he allegedly failed to overthrow the 2020 election. He’s currently facing four counts of election interference (O'Kruk & Merrill) which he has pleaded not guilty to (Sneed et al., 2023). Already the Colorado Supreme Court has banned him from running for president in their state (Riccardi, 2023). However, it’s still an issue that has yet to go before the federal Supreme Court which may overturn it. Other states are poised to make similar rulings banning him.
Trump supporters have decried the charges, alleging them to be an assault on democracy. In several protests, they have publicly demanded an end to the charges and have labelled them “as evidence of a crime — against Trump” (Klepper & Swenson, 2023). This is bound up with their greater belief in a communist conspiracy against them and the US in general. It's well documented that those who contend that Trump actually won the 2020 election have promoted several conspiracies involving alleged communist plots. The Southern Poverty Law Center tracks groups adhering to beliefs in the “Marxist globalist conspiracy, the theory of the New World Order” (SPLC, 2023). This is tied up with false accusations of transgender activism being a front for pedophile grooming (Tenbarge, 2022).
This demonstrates that in contemporary US society, there is still a significant portion of the population that believes there is a conspiracy by non-existent communists to take over the government. Even more bizarrely, many believe communists have already done so. This delusional belief is quite prevalent among Trump supporters who openly proclaim themselves against this fictional socialist agenda. The Soviet Union hasn’t existed in 32 years. China ceased being a socialist country in the 1980s under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping.
Even with the absence of the Soviet socialist superpower, the belief in their efforts by them persists. At least one study shows that US citizen belief in conspiracy theories is increasing. A significant increase occurred during the COVID-19 Pandemic from 2019-2021 (Uscinsk et al.,2022). Just the conspiracies surrounding COVID alone have done incredible harm to the public by nearly crippling efforts to hinder the spread of the disease (Romer et al., 2020). The belief in these conspiracy theories is heavily linked to the ideas of a” New World Order”, “one world government”, or a “communist takeover.” To this day, heavily right-wing organizations like The Heritage Foundation are openly claiming that communists are taking over the country via the progressive movement (Roberts, 2023). The fact that such false information is promulgated with the specific intent to demonize and persecute people of opposing political ideas is troublesome.
This “communist conspiracy” hysteria did not suddenly reappear with the election of Trump or the spread of COVID-19. It has steadily persisted since the Cold War. During that time, the US instilled terror into its people with decades of the Red Scare.
Innumerable innocent people were jailed, or killed, because of a hysteria that the US government perpetuated to combat the public’s rising support for socialism. A prime example would be in 1951 when Josephy McCarthy accused George Marshall, the creator of the Marshall Plan (McCarthy, 1951); which was created specifically to undermine Soviet influence in Europe after World War 2 (Marshall Plan, 1948). The 1919 general strike called by shipyard workers in Seattle was accused of being a communist plot. The national-level media falsely claimed that the general strike was "Marxian" and "a revolutionary movement aimed at existing government” (Murray, 1955). For years Ronald Regan claimed that the Soviets were trying to capture the US in the name of atheism. Once the “godlessness“ had reached its zenith; the US democracy would fall to Soviet hands. This was a basis for the belief that only a Christian nation, guided by the hand of the Christian God could save it (Williams, 2010). Something that few people realize: At one point the US had a concentration camp for communists in New York called Camp Upton in 1920 (New York Times 1920). For decades the Republican Party has been falsely accusing the Democratic Party of being communists or communist sympathizers.
The term ‘brainwashing’ entered the English language with the image of supposed Soviet “sleeper agents”, regular everyday Americans, that were secretly programmed to carry out assassinations by use of a code word delivered over a telephone call. We now know that this was Cold War paranoia. Brainwashing has never existed. There is no science at all that validates or even suggests that such phenomena are real (Williams, 2020).
To even instill more terror in the population, particularly to traumatize school children, the “duck and cover” practise was widely utilized. It was so blatant that even US academics acknowledged it as propaganda (Kopp 2018). Not just children but adults, the whole of US society was constantly gaslighted with the threat of the total nuclear annihilation of the world that could happen at any moment.
Since the Bolshevik revolution in 1919, the US government has been fearmongering its population with the nebulous threat of some ill-defined red take over that’s lurking in the shadows.
Is it unbelievable that this kind of Cold War operant conditioning was too successful? What should we expect from a population that was intentionally subjected to a paranoid delusion of some shadowy communist that could be striking out at you at any moment? It’s no wonder that there’s still a significant segment of the population who believes in such a conspiracy.
This kind of delusional behaviour is projected onto anything that the holder of said delusion opposes. The Clinton family and their Foundation have been repeatedly accused of being puppets of “communist” China. Even a superficial investigation can tell you what nonsense it is.
A company called Rilin Enterprises donated $2 million in 2013 to the Clinton Foundation. That company was a privately-held Chinese construction and trade conglomerate owned by billionaire Wang Wenliang. He was also a delegate to the Chinese parliament. It’s important to note that his company was one of the contractors that built the Chinese embassy in Washington (Goldman, 2015). Wang was subsequently expelled from China’s top legislature. According to the Washington Post: “The move was part of an investigation into corruption in Liaoning and a much larger national anti-corruption campaign launched by President Xi Jinping” (Vozzella & Denyer, 2016).
What happened here was: that a capitalist gave money to a capitalist institution to sway favour in order to obtain contracts for construction. This is an example of regular everyday politics in America. If this was a plot by China, why was Wang forced out in an anti-corruption move? There is no logic here to claim this was some kind of plot by the Chinese government.
This is just one example of the kind of misinformation that is taken as a part of a larger conspiracy.
As it relates to conspiracies about homosexuality and transgenderism being a part of some kind of communist plot - can be laid at the feet of US society itself. For decades the Christian right as claimed that homosexuality was a plot by the Soviets to destabilize US society (Kirchick, 2022). At one time feminism was accused of being a Soviet conspiracy to slow US population growth. At no time did the US government make any serious efforts to dissuade such notions. For more than 100 years racial equality has been tied to communism as part of some ill-defined plot against the US (Onion, 2019).
In fact, it has been demonstrated that the US government deliberately interfered in psychiatry to demonize anyone they considered a security threat. The field of psychiatric medicine was used as a weapon against the US public to falsely tie anyone whom the government merely perceived as a security threat with mental illness. Anyone who held “radical” political ideologies (meaning anything that challenged the status quo) or “deviant sexual behaviour” was automatically accused of mental illness (Robert, 217).
“In the early Cold War, the US government institutionalized a national security program, centered on the investigation into the political beliefs of federal employees, to safeguard the nation from Communist subversion. Often interpreted as the result of a partisan battle between New Deal Democrats and conservative Republicans, the national security program had deeper origins, reflecting the influence of psychiatric discourse on public understandings of deviancy. Framed by a metonymical logic that linked radical political beliefs, deviant sexual behaviors, and other illicit behaviors under the category of psychopathology, the security program sought to guard against the threat posed by potentially dangerous individuals, a form of protection that necessitated the public disclosure by those deemed security risks of all aspects of their personal lives.” (Robert, 217)
The American people have been programmed to blame everything on communism. Even if it’s something that would benefit them like a universal healthcare system. It's nothing but common sense that we should see this same tradition continue to this day.
Citations:
O’Kruk, A., & Merrill, C. (n.d.). Tracking Donald Trump’s indictments. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2023/07/politics/trump-indictments-criminal-cases/index.html
Sneed, T., Rabinowitz, H., Polantz, K., & Lybrand, H. (2023, August 4). Donald Trump pleads not guilty to January 6-related charges | CNN politics. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/03/politics/arraignment-trump-election-interference-indictment/index.html
Riccardi, N. (2023, December 20). Colorado Supreme Court declares Donald Trump is ineligible for the White House. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/trump-insurrection-14th-amendment-2024-colorado-d16dd8f354eeaf450558378c65fd79a2
Klepper, D., & Swenson, A. (2023, October 16). Trump supporters view the latest indictment as evidence of a crime - against trump. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/trump-jan-6-indictment-misinformation-e9d5077300dafa4c774429b7f82d8930
Southern Poverty Law Center. (n.d.). Conspiracy propagandists. Southern Poverty Law Center. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/conspiracy-propagandists
Tenbarge, K. (2022, April 19). LGBTQ people face “groomer” accusations and trolling as culture war rages on. NBCNews.com. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/lgbtq-abuse-spikes-online-fueled-intensifying-culture-war-rcna24904
Uscinski J, Enders A, Klofstad C, Seelig M, Drochon H, Premaratne K, Murthi M. Have beliefs in conspiracy theories increased over time? PLoS One. 2022 Jul 20;17(7):e0270429. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0270429. PMID: 35857743; PMCID: PMC9299316.
Romer D, Jamieson KH. Conspiracy theories as barriers to controlling the spread of COVID-19 in the US. Social Science & Medicine. 2020;263(113356):1–8. 10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113356.
Roberts, K. D. (2023, July 19). The Secret Communist Movement Inside America. The Heritage Foundation. https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/the-secret-communist-movement-inside-america
McCarthy, Joseph (1951). Major Speeches and Debates of Senator Joe McCarthy Delivered in the United States Senate, 1950–1951. Gordon Press. pp. 264, 307, 215. ISBN 0-87968-308-2.
National Archives and Records Administration. (n.d.). Marshall Plan (1948). National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/marshall-plan
Murray, Robert K., Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919–1920 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1955), ISBN 0-313-22673-3
Williams, Daniel K., 'Reagan', God's Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right (2010; online edn, Oxford Academic, 1 Sept. 2010), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195340846.003.0009, accessed 29 Dec. 2023.
"BEGIN PROCEDURE TO DEPORT REDS; Half of First Twenty Heard on Ellis Island Agree to Go Back to Russia. ALL COMFORTABLY HOUSED New Arrivals Will Be Sent to Concentration Camp at Camp Upton--One Girl Released". The New York Times. January 6, 1920
Williams C. (2020). Public psychology and the Cold War brainwashing scare. History & philosophy of psychology, 21(1), 21–30.
Kopp, David M. (5 December 2018). "Mental Hygiene Guidance Films and Duck and Cover". Famous and (Infamous) Workplace and Community Training. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. pp. 143–156. doi:10.1057/978-1-137-59753-3_9. ISBN 978-1-137-59752-6.
Goldman, J. (2015, March 16). Chinese company pledged $2 million to Clinton Foundation in 2013. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinese-company-pledged-2-million-to-clinton-foundation-in-2013/
Vozzella, L., & Denyer, S. (2016, September 16). Donor to Clinton Foundation, McAuliffe caught up in Chinese cash-for-votes scandal. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/clinton-foundation-mcauliffe-donor-caught-up-in-chinese-cash-for-votes-scandal/2016/09/16/bfb3b8fc-7c13-11e6-ac8e-cf8e0dd91dc7_story.html
Kirchick, J. (2022, May 31). The long, sordid history of the gay conspiracy theory. Intelligencer. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/05/the-long-sordid-history-of-the-gay-conspiracy-theory.html
Onion, R. (2019, July 19). Black and Red When modern conservatives associate activists of color with communism, they’re drawing on a racist history that goes back over 100 years. Slate Magazine. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/07/lindsey-graham-ocasio-cortez-black-activism-communism.html
GENTER, ROBERT. (2017). Removing the Mask of Sanity: McCarthyism and the Psychiatric–Confessional Foundations of the Cold War National Security State. Journal of American Studies. 52. 1-29. 10.1017/S0021875817000950.
Shared on FB 5000
During the Cuban missile crisis the sirens went off without warning that it was a test.