Concurrent with the Media Research Center’s scaremongering over socialism in general is its scaremongering over the Democratic Socialists of America:
- CNN’s Cornish Wonders Why Republicans Call the DSA ‘Communists’
- MS NOW Leftist: DSA For European Social Democracy, Not Soviet Socialism
- On PBS, Brooks RIPS DSA ‘Authoritarians,’ Capehart Says the Trend Is ‘Not a Thing’
- MS NOW Calls Trump a ‘Fascist,’ Denies There Are Communist DSA Candidates
- Democratic Socialists of America Membership Sets Record as 58% of Democrats View Socialism Favorably
- Sen. Cruz Shares Video of DSA Members’ Threats: ‘This Is Today’s Democrat Party’ [sic]
- Why Are the Media Blind to the ‘Democratic Socialist’ Platform?
- Jon Karl Repeatedly Changes the Subject as Bill Maher Denounces DSA-Dem Socialism
- DSA-Endorsed Dem House Hopeful: Politics Is About ‘Redistribution of Resources’
- MacCallum Picks Apart Radical DSA Co-Chair, Exposes Their True Goals
- Cringe: Atlantic Magazine Compares Democratic Socialists to MAGA
- Atlantic’s Chait: Abolishing the Senate Might Be the DSA’s Best Idea
Indeed, Tim Graham had a meltdown in a July 3 post that this scaremongering was pointed out:
Brett T. at Twitchy chronicled how the tweeters mocked the liberals at Axios for warning: “GOP reboots the Red Scare as young Democrats embrace socialism.” They don’t want to spend any time identifying the actual communist sympathies displayed by the Democratic Socialists of America candidates winning primaries.
The use of the term “Red Scare” always implied falsehood, that there were no actual communists to be exposed. Warning about the dangers of the Soviet Union was for kooks, and so was worry about communist spies in the United States (they were real). Today, you’re supposed to ignore communists winning seats in Congress, as in CNN gumshoe Andrew Kaczynski’s report that incoming congresswoman Darializa Avila Chevalier was tweeting communist content in 2020:
Graham also had a mini Mamdani meltdown: “Mamdani spoke of ‘seizing the means of production,’ which certainly sounds like Karl Marx copy. Axios presented DSA statements as ‘news’ like helpful press aides.”
Is that like how Graham and the MRC presents right-wing statements like helpful press aides? There’s a reason we call it Trump Regime Media, after all.
Alex Christy whined that such smears got fact-checked in a July 7 post:
President Trump has reacted to the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America by sounding the alarm about communism, which greatly upset Associated Press fact-checker Melissa Goldin on Thursday because, according to her, only card-carrying members of the Communist Party USA can be called communists.
Goldin cited two Trump quotes. The first was, “It’s the biggest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, September 11th.” The second was referring to Democrats as “hard core, godless communists.”
She also lamented, “But experts say his claims, echoed by Vice President J.D. Vance and other Republican leaders, are off base.”
[…]If you were wondering where the AP fact-check article denouncing the left for calling Trump and Republicans fascists is, there isn’t one. There is this 2024 article by Will Weissert and Laurie Kellman that seeks to portray the issue as complicated.
As for Goldin, she continued by citing one of her hand-picked experts, ‘“The reality is that none of these major political figures in the Democratic Party, even those further out on the left, are identifying as communists,’ said Marc Selverstone, director of presidential studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center for Public Affairs, adding that it’s an opportunity to portray Democrats as marginal figures.”
[…]Whether you call them communists or not, the DSA is not the American version of the archetypical Scandinavian social democrat. If the fact-checkers want to say that you cannot call socialists communists because they do not call themselves communists despite their history of praising communist dictators and their policies, then they should apply that same standard whenever Democrats call Republicans racists or fascists despite GOP denials.
Of course Christy is peddling this opinion — he’s paid to do so, after all.