United Socialist States of America flag (Samdir3 CC BY-SA 3.0).
The way that Americans seem to have a penchant for labelling anyone they disagree with — particularly Republicans labelling Democrats — as “communist” has always troubled me. The problem is ignorance. A good friend of mine — a former resident of the United States — who is well educated in this area says that he won’t talk to anyone about communism unless they have read all of a reading list by authors such as Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, etc. I don’t remember the full list, but I myself have not met the prerequisite. Among them I vaguely recall “Das Kapital” by Karl Marx. At best I have read a number of excerpts of a few of the texts in my friend’s list from text books from a college political science course.
But today, in 2024, I am stunned by the extent to which right-leaning American politicians are siding with former communists, particularly one vladimir putin. You may have heard of him: he started the first war in Europe since the end of World War II in 1945 by sending Russian troops to invade Ukraine, troops that were immediately defeated in their push for Kyiv. The current American president-elect — donald trump — and his nominee for the cabinet position of Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, both (by all accounts) support putin, and trump claims that he plans to end the war within 24 hours of taking office, if not before! It is widely expected that he will do this by denying any further military assistance to Ukraine and twisting the arm of Volodymyr Zelenskyy (president of Ukraine) into ceding Ukrainian territory to putin.
To someone whose country’s west-leaning government was abandoned by the United States of America to the communist terrorists — supported by the Soviet Union and China — against which we fought in the 1970s, this actually shouldn’t be surprising. So welcome to the club, Mr. Zelenskyy, the club of people that have been fighting on the side of America and to bring the freedom of the West to your country, but in whose faces America has spat.
But is this really surprising behaviour by a president-elect who has nominated an anti-vaxxer as the Secretary of Health, and a suspected criminal as the Attorney General?!