Hello and welcome to the eleventh post of Talking Points! As part of his 2025 Easter Message, President Trump talked about radical left lunatics who oppose his actions as President, which I would interpret to mean his political opponents, Democrats. This message is part of a pattern that he and the Republican party engage in regularly, wherein Democrats are conflated with the far-left. This conflation troubles me greatly, as the far-left has frequently been targeted by the American government. In this essay, I will examine left-wing political ideologies, how left-wing politics emerged, and how the government has responded to left-wing politics. In doing so, I hope to demonstrate why this conflation is both incorrect and dangerous, as it is representative of a pattern where those on the left are targeted for their political views.

To begin, I think it important to define left-wing politics and the ideologies under it we are going to discuss. Broadly speaking, the political left represents an advocacy for social equality as opposed to social hierarchy. For example, the broad left-wing ideology of socialism believes that this equality should be achieved by public ownership of the means of production for the benefit of all, rather than the private ownership of the means of production, for the benefit of the owners. One movement within socialism, known as communism, believes that establishing socialism within every country will cause the state to fall away, resulting in a stateless and classless society controlled by the workers. Another movement within socialism is democratic socialism, which is more focused on reforming a society through democracy to achieve better outcomes, which might include some level of a socialist economy. Democratic socialism can be compared to social or modern liberalism, an ideology focused on making capitalism more livable, through regulation, taxation, and welfare, rather than removing it. This social liberalism represents the typical ideology of the Democratic party today.

Following the Civil War, which ended in 1865, the United States industrialized rapidly. Steel manufacturing, oil production, railroad construction, and other related industries expanded in the following decades, with control of an industry typically concentrated among one or a small number of people, with such individuals being called robber barons. Such robber barons included Carnegie, who controlled the steel Industry, Rockefeller, who controlled the oil industry, and Vanderbilt, who controlled railroads. Although this period brought rapid advances in technology, economic growth, and urbanization, the benefits were not experienced by most people, leading to its name of the Gilded Age, referring to covering an object with a thin coat of gold, which can easily be scratched away. For example, by scratching away at the technological benefits of the Gilded Age, the poor living conditions, low wages, and child labor would be revealed. As one response to low wages and bad working conditions, workers formed labor unions, to collectively negotiate wages and working conditions.

A somewhat similar development to the Gilded Age occurred as a result of the industrialization of the Russian Empire. As Russia industrialized, the benefits were experienced by the the Emperor, his family, and the nobility. Inspired by the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who gave a theoretical basis to socialism, Russian socialist revolutionaries like Vladimir Lenin began to work to overthrow the Emperor and implement socialism. This came to a head in 1917, when political and economic damage due to the First World War triggered the Russian Revolution. The Russian Revolution saw the fall of the Monarchy, and a series of events which culminated in the Russian Civil War, a civil war between socialist countries led by Bolsheviks like Vladimir Lenin, the Pro-Monarchy White Movement, and other peoples seeking independence from Russia. This event unnerved many Americans in business and government, who were concerned that the same kind of socialist revolution could occur in the United States.

Events like the Russian Civil War, and domestic civil unrest associated with Anarchists, Labor Unions, and American socialists unnerved many Americans in government and business, triggering the first Red scare. This Red Scare was a widespread targeting of socialists and those seen as sympathetic to them, raiding their offices, deporting them, and arrest them. For example, Eugene Debs, founder of the Industrial Workers of the World and a frequent Presidential candidate under the Socialist Party for America, was arrested under the Espionage Act of 1917 for a speech wherein he criticized the draft, tried, and convicted, sentenced to prison for 10 years. In addition, five socialists were expelled from the New York State Assembly, and 249 Russian immigrants were deported. All of these actions were performed on the basis that socialists were radicals and a threat to American society, despite being largely unconstitutional.

During the Second World War, the United States found itself fighting alongside, if not allied with, the Soviet Union, the socialist successor state to the Russian Empire. The end of the Second World War saw the United States become a superpower, somewhat due to its development of the extremely destructive nuclear weapons. The tenuous peace which existed between the United States and the Soviet Union broke down after the war, as the Soviet Union established socialist governments in East Germany, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Hungary. Poland, Yugoslavia, and Hungary had been occupied by Nazi Germany, and East Germany having been allocated to the Soviet occupation as a result of the Potsdam Conference of 1945. A variety of factors, including the Soviet development of nuclear weapons themselves, largely due to espionage of the top-secret Manhattan Project which produced the weapons, fomented fears of a Soviet Union bent on world domination and which would use subversives to disrupt the United States from within.

These fears culminated with McCarthyism, a campaign of political repression of those with left-wing politics, from the late 40s to late 50s. This campaign is named after Senator Joseph McCarthy, who reached prominence by making claims about 205 communists working for the State Department, a claim widely followed by the press. Congressional committees like the House Un-American Activities Committee investigated the influence of communism not only in the government, but in elements of American society, like the entertainment industry. For example, investigations into communist influence in Hollywood, triggered an industry-wide blacklist, wherein those involved in the film industry were forced to reveal communists or be added to the blacklist, preventing them from finding work or funding. In addition, based on an Executive Order signed by President Truman, the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover, conducted loyalty reviews, investigating federal employees for supposed disloyalty to the American government. It was such a review that saw J. Robert Oppenheimer, a physicist and a critical member of the Manhattan Project, lose his security clearance due to communist associations in his past. Similar loyalty reviews were conducted in state and local governments, as well as private businesses.

The same impulse to find and protect against domestic subversives in American society, caused the American government to target a variety of political beliefs, including non-socialist ones. For example, in 1968, a variety of organizations opposing the Vietnam War, gathered in Chicago to protest the 1968 Democratic National Convention. For a variety of reasons, the protests devolved into a riot where many were injured. Seven of the organizers, collectively known as the Chicago Seven, were criminally charged and tried in a single trial, alleging that they had conspired to incite the riot. Although there may have been legitimate crimes some of them had committed, the optics of a single trial arranged for their conviction, would seem to indicate the trial was more about disrupting the anti-war movement. Indeed, despite the diverse views held by the defendants, the Government argued they were part of a single group called the New Left. In fact, the views were wide-ranging, while all were on the left, some of the defendants were socialists, whereas others simply opposed the war.

From the targeting of socialists during the First Red Scare, to the investigations that sought out communists during the Second Red Scare, and finally to the persecution of left-wing organizations which opposed the Vietnam War, it is clear that the American Left has frequently been a target of the American government. It is thus extremely dangerous for a sitting President to call his political opponents, radical left lunatics, especially when there is nothing radical about them. Despite claims that Democrats are socialists, this is emphatically not the case. There is nothing in the platform of the Democratic party or the views of its politicians which advocates for the public ownership of the means of production, the core element of socialism. Indeed, even Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, a prominent left-wing Democrat who has previously been endorsed by the Democratic Socialists for America, does not advocate for socialism. It makes no sense to define all Democrats as socialists, when even a Democrat endorsed by socialists does not support socialism. For Donald Trump to make these claims, speaks to a pattern in American history where people have been targeted for their political views, in the name of defending liberty, the right to hold different views.