Some excerpts from “The Red Scare Returns to America. This time, though, it is pure farce” by Katherine Stewart at The Contrarian:

“With their party’s popularity in freefall, leading Republicans have identified a new message to unite around. The Democrats, according to House Speaker Mike Johnson, will lead America down “the dark road of death to communism.” President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, along with religious right leaders such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s spiritual leader Doug Wilson, have made equally histrionic claims. The Red Scare has returned to America, only this time it is pure farce. Still, this is dangerous stuff and will appeal to some voters. The pro-democracy coalition must confront it directly and forcefully.

…Republicans point to the candidates affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America who have won their races — never mind that others have failed. Notwithstanding the presence of some noisy individuals on the fringes whose years-old tweets have received extraordinary amounts of attention, the politics of the Democratic Party remain, on balance, closer to the center than even those modest proposals…it’s about distracting from the current administration’s corruption and incompetence, criminalizing dissent, and laying the groundwork for authoritarianism.

What to do? This is no time for Democrats, progressives, and others in the pro-democracy coalition to return to the familiar defensive crouch. Rather, they must blow the whistle on this effort to distract from the failures and corruption of the worst administration in American history…Welcome to Trump’s America! We are now a country where dear leader and his friends use every lever of government to direct money away from you and into their pockets.

…In America today, we have a Cabinet, with a collective net worth around $7.5 billion, making policy for the benefit of billionaires; we have major AI investors “regulating” AI; and defense contractors overseeing defense contracts (especially when one of the president’s sons is involved). And we have sectors of the corporate world supplying Trump with free legal services, ballrooms, and whatever else he craves at any given moment. The difference between this and state socialism is that, under the Trump administration, profits are privatized while the costs are spread out among the population.

…The fear that powers the Red Scare is just the fear that American might one day become the free, fair, and democratic society that it has always promised to become.”

McCarthyism played out decades ago, and this twisted version will be a tough sell to the centrist Democrats, Independents and swing voters they want to get. It’s hard to see much value added for Republicans here. Voters who would buy into such infantile hysteria while Republicans rob the U.S. treasury blind were probably already set against Democrats. And after all, Trump and his GOP enablers are the ones who support Russia. Expect Republican midterm candidates to squirm like greased snakes when they ‘splain why they oppose giving Ukraine what it has asked for to defend their country against Russia.