The issue is not whether voters may criticize socialism. It is whether a loaded label is being used to replace evidence in fights over today’s progressive politics.
Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik is challenging a familiar political word that has returned to Republican messaging: “communism.” His argument is not that Cold War conditions have come back. It is that anti-communist language can turn ordinary policy fights into tests of loyalty when it is applied loosely to domestic opponents.
That distinction matters because criticism of socialism, democratic socialism or left-populist politics is a legitimate part of political debate. Hiltzik’s concern is narrower: when “communist” is used as a sweeping accusation, the label can do the work that evidence should do.
A label with more heat than precision
In strict ideological terms, communism refers to a system built around collective ownership and the abolition of private capital. In American campaign language, however, the word has often carried a broader emotional charge.
Hiltzik’s column focuses on that second use. According to his critique, Republicans are increasingly invoking “communism” not only as a description of a governing system, but as a way to cast progressive figures and ideas as alien to American life.
That does not mean every conservative objection to democratic socialism is red-baiting. Voters can fairly debate taxes, markets, government power, public benefits, regulation and constitutional limits. The issue begins when one word is used to collapse those separate arguments into a claim of subversion.
The current examples Hiltzik cites
Hiltzik points to Donald Trump’s July 3 remarks at Mt. Rushmore as one example. Hiltzik quotes Trump as saying there is a “resurgence of the communist menace” in the United States and as describing communism as a mortal threat to American liberty.
Trump’s remarks, as quoted in the column, also referred to “newcomers to our country” who embrace ideas he said are opposed to America’s way of life. Hiltzik treats the language as part of a wider return to older anti-communist political habits.
The column also discusses a July 21 State Department report titled Cuba: the Capital of 21st Century Communism. According to Hiltzik, the report used rhetoric reminiscent of past anti-communist campaigns while naming public figures including New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, progressive journalist Amy Goodman and Ben Cohen, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s.
Where nostalgia fits into the argument
Hiltzik frames the rhetoric as part of a broader conservative habit of looking backward to earlier eras. He notes that Trump has expressed admiration for the 1890s, an era associated with high tariffs.
In Hiltzik’s telling, the latest turn is not only economic nostalgia but rhetorical nostalgia: reaching for Cold War language that once carried enormous political force.
The point is interpretive, and readers may disagree with it. But it explains why the column treats “communism” as more than a campaign insult. The word carries a history of suspicion, exclusion and loyalty politics in the United States.
Why McCarthy enters the debate
The historical reference point is Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, the Wisconsin Republican whose name became shorthand for reckless anti-communist accusation. The U.S. Senate’s own history notes that McCarthy rose to national prominence in 1950 by alleging that Communists had infiltrated the State Department and other federal agencies.
Hiltzik recounts McCarthy’s Wheeling, West Virginia, speech and the claims that followed. Subsequent accounts of the era emphasize that McCarthy’s charges changed over time and were not substantiated as he presented them.
The relevance for Hiltzik is not that today’s politics are identical to the early 1950s. It is that accusations of hidden communist influence once became a powerful substitute for proof, narrowing the space for dissent and placing political opponents under suspicion.
What the analogy should not erase
There are limits to the comparison. The United States today is not the United States of McCarthy’s era, and not every Republican criticism of progressive policy is McCarthyism.
Some conservatives make detailed arguments against democratic socialism on economic, legal or practical grounds. Those arguments can be evaluated on their merits without assuming bad faith.
Hiltzik’s warning is aimed at a different move: treating “communist” as a catchall for domestic political opponents whose actual proposals may involve democratic socialist or left-populist politics rather than authoritarian communism.
The voter’s test
The useful question is what the label is doing in a given argument. If someone calls a policy communist, voters can ask for specifics: Which proposal abolishes private property? Which plan creates one-party rule? Which person is advocating authoritarian state control?
If those specifics are missing, the word may be functioning less as analysis than as red-baiting. It tells an audience what to fear before explaining what is actually being proposed.
Hiltzik’s column is an opinion piece, and its conclusions will land differently with readers of different politics. But the historical concern it raises is clear: American politics has seen the damage that can follow when accusation outruns evidence and disagreement is recast as disloyalty.
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