Red-Baiting: A Threat To Liberty
Accusations of socialist plots have a sordid history in America that needs to be recognized.
For several decades now, Republican operatives have been labeling Democratic politicians as socialists or simply socialistic in their policies. In particular, former President Barack Obama was targeted by conservatives as being a socialist, with one writer, Aaron Klein, writing an entire book dedicated to that premise. Rush Limbaugh, the famed conservative radio host, lambasted then-candidate Mitt Romney for his unwillingness to call Obama a socialist on his website. Such a response, of course, doesn’t accurately represent the ideological perspective that Obama held and dismayed many legitimate socialists — Marxist or otherwise. Even now, Biden is being accused of supporting socialists. But more than that, they were part of a dark history within the American right-wing sphere that continues to this day. It is part of an endless cycle of red-baiting.
Red-baiting is, as Webster’s defines it, “the act of attacking or persecuting as a Communist or as communistic.” While generally accurate, such a definition is limited insofar as it ignores the potential abuse of calling someone a socialist and its malicious past. For one, red-baiting isn’t merely accusing someone of being a socialist, but it is also part of a…
