President Donald Trump and MAGA are in a meltdown over socialism.
While Trump has made his political fortune fomenting fear, now he and MAGA are afraid of losing the midterms. One of the shibboleths they’re raising in response is “socialism.”
The fear is visible in a recent television ad featuring Trump. The ad, in stark black and white, looks, sounds and feels apocalyptic. Trump says: “This is the final battle. With you at my side, we will demolish the deep state. We will expel the warmongers from our government. Together we will defeat communism, socialism and Marxism in America. … America will never be a communist country.”
Trump claims the ad is “educational” and “not political.” Yet his choice of the apocalyptic genre makes it ripe for a little demythologizing. Apocalyptic always has been the breeding ground for fanaticism and speculation.
This propaganda — like so much of today’s conservative rhetoric — convolutes and confuses people about the meaning of “socialism.” The word is slippery, chameleonic in nature, like attempting to nail Jell-O to a tree.
“Socialism” has become the most promiscuous of political words.
What MAGA labels “socialism” turns out to be progressive democracy. As George Lakoff puts it, “Behind every progressive policy lies a single moral value: Empathy.”
“’Socialism’ has become the most promiscuous of political words.”
Repetition, always a favorite ploy of demagogues, keeps the idea of socialism alive in every news cycle. Trump is notorious for repeating himself in cabinet meetings, speeches, press conferences and social media posts.
Just because he keeps saying it doesn’t mean it’s true. And it doesn’t mean he understands the meaning of the word.
The dictionary definition
According to Merriam Webster, socialism is “any of various egalitarian economic and political theories or movements advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.”
Communism in Russia, China, North Korea and Cuba, along with old Cold War ideas, tend to inhabit the worldview of real socialism. Americans have suffered two “red scares” in our history. Trump is attempting to create a third red scare.
But there’s a problem: Among Democrats, Trump’s preferred enemy, you can’t find anyone who actually advocates for government ownership of businesses. Our most famous current socialist, Sen. Bernie Sanders, is not a proponent of this kind of socialism. Neither is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who says, “It doesn’t mean the government owns everything.”
“Among Democrats, Trump’s preferred enemy, you can’t find anyone who actually advocates for government ownership of businesses.”
Capitalism remains the best economic system but it has flaws and dangers MAGA can’t accept. Regulation of capitalism is a prerequisite for keeping corporations responsible. Republicans have resented corporate regulations since FDR.
The fear of a regulated, government-interfering socialism motivates Trump and MAGA to glorify and worship an unfettered and unregulated market.
Trump and MAGA definitions
The kind of “socialism” Trump warns about is smoke and mirrors — an array of lies, misinformation, fears and conspiracy theories. It is based on beliefs, opinions, fear and hyperbole. Here socialism becomes a fluid term capable of meaning whatever Trump and MAGA say it means.
Trump overstates and over intensifies his warnings. His fears of socialism are all part of his usual hyperbole. Socialism is a great truth that has been distorted into a “devil” term. This kind of “socialism” roots out empathy, compassion for the poor and has room only for an anti-social Darwinism — “only the strong and the rich deserve to survive.”
This is a collection of lies as fantastic as Sen. McCarthy’s claim of communist infiltration in America.
JD Vance speaks during the vice residential debate October 1, 2024. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)
When Vice President JD Vance recently was asked to define the word “socialism,” he replied: “I think in reality what it actually means in the American context is you want to replace American workers with foreign workers, and you want boys to play in girls’ sports.”
Vance’s definition is simply absurd.
Democratic socialism
Democratic socialism centers on the ethics of empathy. The government provides protection and empowerment. This includes Social Security, disease control and public health, safe food, disaster relief, health care, consumer and worker protection and environmental protection.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, the greatest Democratic Socialist, offered Americans freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. The Right has been working ever since to erase his Great Society programs while personally benefiting from them.
“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals,” Roosevelt said in his second inaugural address. “We know now that it is bad economics.”
President Barack Obama later said, “The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart — not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.”
America no cause to fear FDR’s kind of socialism. Historian Robert McElvaine argues, “A spoonful of socialism makes the capitalism go up.” There’s nothing to fear in this kind of socialism.
The policies most Americans support — affordable health care, student debt relief, livable wages — are all socialist ideas. What people want isn’t authoritarian control. They want fairness, safety and stability — the very things on which this kind of socialism is built.
Biblical socialism
There are elements of socialism in the Bible. The account of Jubilee in Leviticus 25 can boggle MAGA minds. Moses declared as God’s will: Every 50 years you must give back to the people the land and property that is inalienably theirs, that they have lost in the rough and tumble of the economy. When the yabal sounds, when the signal is given, everybody returns property, everybody cancels debts, everybody breaks off the mad scramble of accumulation and acquisition.
“There are elements of socialism in the Bible. The account of Jubilee in Leviticus 25 can boggle MAGA minds.”
The early church had a moment of primitive socialism, as recorded in Acts 4:32 — “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.”
The idea of a “community of goods” continues to retreat from the church with only periodic outbursts here and there. Among the Catholics, a number of mendicant groups arose with the most famous being Francis of Assisi. But today’s Christians would not cross the street to join any movement suggesting all their money be given to the poor.
During the Radical Reformation, the Anabaptists became the standard bearer of “all things in common.” And they suffered persecution and countless martyrdoms for daring practice community of goods.
The call of biblical socialism revived in the late 19th century under the Social Gospel teachings of Walter Rauschenbusch and Washington Gladden. Evangelicals of the time embraced the Social Gospel and advocated for the poor, women’s rights, worker’s rights and better material conditions. Among the faithful successors to the Social Gospel are the Hebrew prophets, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr, the Black prophetic tradition, Walt Whitman, John Howard Yoder, Vaclav Havel, James Cone, Cornel West and Stanley Hauerwas.
Which kind of socialism?
I have concluded Trump’s hustle is to convince Americans the Democrats are the first kind of classic socialism — they want to take away freedom, have the government own everything and destroy America. Trump attempts to use his own definition of socialism as disingenuous propaganda to condemn all Democrats.
There is no danger of classic socialism in America, despite what Trump says. However, what he seems to equally fear is the kind of biblical socialism Jesus taught.
Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer. He is the author of 11 books, including his latest, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit.
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