Communist Party USA’s co-chair, Joe Sims has responded to recent comments from Donald Trump:
Donald Trump’s back-to-back holiday weekend speeches at Mount Rushmore and the National Mall, where he said the Communist Party was composed of ‘illegal immigrants, criminals, and people who don’t want to work’, are taking on an increasingly fascist trajectory.
That’s the standard authoritarian playbook. They always come for the communists and socialists first.
Sims added:
If Trump got this ‘intelligence’ from the FBI, Kash Patel needs to be fired immediately. What a bunch of garbage. He’s trying to criminalise us. We’re among the best Americans.
The Communist Party USA views the sudden rise of anti-communist rhetoric not as a sign of strength, but as a symptom of midterm election panic. Rossana Cambron, who co-chairs the Marxist party with Sims, said:
It’s red meat for the GOP base.
The administration’s tirades follow a string of progressive electoral victories in New York and Colorado, alongside ballooning membership numbers for left-wing organisations.
Cambron noted:
It’s an attack on free speech and the freedom to think. We’ve been here before.
During the McCarthy period, communists went to prison for “teaching and advocating” socialism.
Trump declared communism a “mortal threat” greater than even past world wars, including the false notion that citizens:
can be a communist or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both.
Sims responded:
Baloney. We love working-class USA and Marxists since the time of the Civil War fought on the side of the Union and against slavery. People like Eugene Debs, Helen Keller, Paul Robeson, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and W. E. B. Du Bois represent the best of this country.
The Communist Party USA noted that Trump’s attacks are a transparent effort to launder a hardline immigration crackdown and voter suppression tactics ahead of the midterms. They warned that Trump’s rhetoric is a:
smoke screen designed to mask an ongoing assault on civil liberties and labour rights.
Trump claimed anti-capitalist beliefs “destroy democracy”. But his speech explicitly called on Congress to eliminate the filibuster to pass the “Save America Act”. This is a piece of voter suppression legislation intended to ensure his party:
does not lose an election for a hundred years.
The First Amendment protects the right to organise politically, including in the Communist Party.
By treating political belief as “disloyalty” and “anti-patriotic”, the Trump administration is testing how far it can go to secure its permanent rule while chipping away at the Bill of Rights and democratic liberties.
Featured image via the Canary
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