What's with the "communist" name-calling from the right?

[RememberTheCoup]

Are these people aware that the cold war ended long ago and that the Soviet Union collapsed? It seems like I hadn't heard "communist" thrown about as an epithet for a long time and suddenly it's making a comeback. I'm not even sure they're thinking of when they say it. I don't think they have China in mind. Where did this come from? Is it just that they all copy each other and say the same stupid things mindlessly -- kind of like the anti-French comments?

[amber dog democrat]

1. Well they can't call people

Carpet baggers and Scalliwags anymore. Its no longer relevant. Callilng someone "communist" isn't today either.

Now its terra ist.

[RememberTheCoup]

7. well "terra ist" is at least timely

"Communist" just seems so anachronistic to me -- almost quaint. And they *were* calling everyone terrorists somewhat recently. Maybe they picked up on it having a backlash effect? Nah, they're not that clever or sensitive.

[hobbit709]

2. They have nothing else

that works so they bring out old insults. Maybe they consider Cuba a threat

[Mika]

3. Stop by some of the "Cuba threads". You'll see it here too.

Don't ask questions!


Mr Kerry, Tear down the wall of ignorance and hate!

[LisaLynne]

4. They still think it means something as an insult.

They're living in the past with their namecalling, along with everything else.

[elehhhhna]

5. To them I say GLASNOST!

[Dukakis88]

6. Think of them as poo-dripping parrots with severe brain damage.

The words emitted from their mouths are naught but the strangled lovemaking cries of castrated gerbils rolling in shit.

[markbark]

8. Irony is SO dead....

considering that the Bush states are referred to in the press as "Red" states :)


--MAB

[w4rma]

15. …

I think the colors switch every 4 years.

[cali]

9. They're just not terribly imaginative

Communist as an insult is simply the best they can do. It's like a small child calling someone a poopy head.

[lawladyprof]

10. Christian school textbooks and

right-wing propaganda conflate communist with socialist and liberal.

[AspenRose]

16. My father taught me it was also used as code for those in the Civil Rts.

Movement.

e.g. "That Martin Luther King was a COMMUNIST. That's why we can't support having a national holiday in his honor. It'd be un-American."

[JHB]

11. They don't know what it means, it's just an epithet.

It's a BAD NAME to call People You Don't Like, effectively. Real definitions have been lost.

[slappypan]

12. It was drilled into their brains for 50 years

"Communists are the enemy, therefore all my enemies are communists." Try to think like a dog. My pack, good. Others, bad. Roll over and piddle for alpha male. Bite weaker dog. Snatch weaker dog's food. Snarl and bark at outsiders. Protect territory. See? Now you think like a right-winger.

[obreaslan]

13. What's next?

How about RED-COATS! Oh wait, that's to old...how about ZOOT-SUITER RUFFIANS!!!! That works.

[mtnsnake]

14. Maybe it's time to start turning the tables on these morons.

Give them a dose of their own ignorance. Sometimes I think we liberals take too much of the high road with these idiots by simply ignoring them or trying to be reasonable with them when it comes to labels. Maybe it's time the other side gets some labels thrown at them. I wonder how each and every con would like it if they were labeled as fascists. I don't think they'd appreciate it. Maybe it would teach those jerks to never throw around a label so loosely again.

[mainer]

17. Yeah, i got called a Commie at a peace march recently

By 20-somethings driving a pickup truck. Those kids probably had no idea what a commie was. Heck, Commies are a nearly extinct lot in the world these days, and we just laughed.

[justgamma]

18. They must be getting it from rightie radio

This is an excerpt from a ltte in my local paper.

"America's domestic enemies have been destroying our individual rights and replacing those lost rights with a creeping socialist world. The are self-anointed elitists, extremists who look to Karl Marx and Lenin as models,
FDR imported Social Security, a real scam, from Europe. :snip:

Wealthy liberal extremists do not have any use for the Founding Fathers and our Constitution and the Bill of Rights! And one of them, George Soros, thinks of himself as a secular god."

It goes on. These people frighten the shit out of me.

I'm sure this person is going to turn down the "scam" that is SS.

No link. Small local paper. 5000 readers. Editor hates Bush. Full page editorials all the time. He's always debunking Shrub and his ads.

[Eurobabe]

19. 99.9% don't even know what a communist is...

[GoldenOldie]

23. Like a child that uses a potty word without understanding

its meaning. I find it amusing because it truly reflects the ignorance of the user. Thoe that use it to insult do so because it is easier than reading, researching and analyzing to come up with an intelligent debate.

My spouse ran for local school board during the early 60's and although he came from a fourth generation of Arizona ranchers the opposition labeled him a communist and played it long and hard with the senior citizens of which there were many senior snowbirds that had retired to the area. The opposition also played the "communist" bit to the local nursing homes that was filled with elderly, many of who were having mental deterioration. On day of the election, they than bundled these elderly up and drove them to the voting booths with the idea deep in their minds that they were fighting communism and a communist. But I had to remember that these elderly citizens had spent much of their lives living the communist threat and it was very real to them.

[Javaman]

20. This is ground work they are laying for the future...

If they steal this election, they will pound the communist bullshit hard. Thus solidifying their position as the "real" American political party, thus marginalizing the Democrats. Hitler did the same thing.

[Cats Against Frist]

21. B-R-A-I-N-W-A-S-H-I-N-G

What they don't seem to realize is that their method of governance is closer to the totalitarianism of the state socialists that gave the collective a bad name, than actual social democracy, the Democratic Party, or real communists.

They don't grasp nuances, people.

[KurtNYC]

22. They must be worried that we will send them to labor camps

after the restoration of democracy. And come to think of it... Hmmmmmmm...

[Kitsune]

24. I get called a communist all the time.

It probably has something to do with the fact that I am one. :)

[txindy]

25. They're the ones who build walls, not us

These people are stuck in the past. If they had a original thought among them, it'd be lonely.

[Cerridwen]

26. It's a continuation of the U.S. War Dept.'s marginalization

of pro-peace/anti-war (primarily) women's organizations used to turn the organizations into enemy of the state status in order to quiet and/or punish dissent and criticism of the status quo. (circa 1920's)

Here's a link with one example: interesting things at the site on which it resides.

http://womhist.binghamton.edu/wilpf/doc3.htm

[RamboLiberal]

27. Yep - got called one a couple of weeks ago koolaid drinking coworker

Got right back in his face and told him "How dare you!". That I'm just as patriotic, may be more so than him!

Also I think we need to start getting language about them out there. I hate how they've turned Liberal in to a dirty code word to many.