Last Friday, Donald Trump declared that the spectre of “communism” was hanging over the United States.In a speech to religious conservatives on Friday, Trump warned that the “communists” were taking over the Democratic Party and that their goal was to destroy “the traditional American way of life.” But it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that he is merely looking for ways to counter the sinking prospects of the Republican Party in the November mid-term electionsTrump’s remarks related to the good showing of the democratic socialists in the recent New York primaries. Three candidates backed by the democratic socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani made a clean sweep of the Democratic Party primaries in the US’ largest city in a huge boost to the party’s left wing. All three candidates have called for the abolition of ICE, taxing the rich and have accused Israel of genocide.Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.Trump had repeatedly called Mamdani a communist during his successful run for mayor last year. This is a label that Mamdani rejects and says that all he is seeking to do is “to put working people back at the heart of our politics.” The resurgence of democratic socialism in the US is in reaction to the fact that while the US workers of today enjoy access to cheaper consumer goods and advanced technology as compared to the 1990s, their foundational economic security in relation to health, education and retirement has eroded drastically. Between 1987 and 2017, the cost of a four-year public college has gone up more than 200%. Central to the American Dream is the house. But this has become increasingly unattainable. From January 2020 to December 2023, the monthly payment needed for the median home increased by more than 100%, while median household income rose just 12%.Trump’s tirade against communism is no doubt shaped by the fact that when he was a young boy, the US was wracked by its Second Red Scare triggered by the onset of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. The mid-1950s saw the culmination of the era of Senator Joseph McCarthy whose aggressive, and largely baseless investigations led to government purges and the blacklisting of thousands of Americans for their alleged Communist outlook. Among these were federal employees, labour leaders, academics and Hollywood entertainers.But where the Red Scare of the period was based on a fear of the Soviet Union and the alleged violent activities of their agents in the country, the current bogeymen are people like US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), Mamdani, Rep Rashida Tlaib and democratic socialist patriarch Senator Bernie Sanders. Their politics are rooted in democratic socialism and progressive populism, which operates within the Democratic Party and seeks to transform the economy and society by prioritising the interests of the working people over corporate interests.In their view, the democratisation of the economy is a priority, which means placing essential human needs – healthcare, housing and education under the public sector rather than allowing it to be commodities of private profit.They strongly support expanding the social safety net through Medicare for all, federally guaranteed public housing, rent stabilisation and so on. And they are strong supporters of trade unions and back the use of strikes as a means of generating pressure on the system.They champion aggressive action to combat climate change, linking environment reform to economic justice and they propose to transition to 100 per renewable energy even while creating millions of well-paying union jobs.The democratic socialists have an institutional affiliation with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) that was established in 1982 through the merger of the Democratic Socialist Organising committee founded in 1973 by Michael Harrington following a split from the Socialist Party of America and the New American Movement, a group of former New Left activists.Prior to 2016, the DSA’s electoral influence was non-existent and they had over the years influenced just a handful of federal legislators who openly identified with the democratic socialist principles. The 2016 presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, who openly identified himself as a democratic socialist, focused attention on the DSA platform including the policies of Medicare for ALL and tuition-free public college. Membership surged and the 2018 victory of AOC over a 10-term incumbent in New York and Rashida Tlaib’s win in Michigan saw the first DSA members elected to Congress.But the organisation more or less plateaued in the Biden years, winning many local level offices and local councils, but not making much headway in Congress. The 2025 victory of Mamdani, however, has given the democratic socialists a major boost which is translating itself into wider influence.The strength of the DSA is visible from the fact that their core ideology is no longer a liability inside the Democratic Party, indeed, it is an advantage. Polling data suggests that they have substantial support among the Democrats. Polls suggest that a majority of Democrats now view socialism favourably compared to just about 40 per cent who favour capitalism. DSA membership has now risen to over 100,000 active members organised in more than 200 national chapters. Their strength is in their ability to pull the Democratic platform leftwards in calling for universal social programmes like Medicare for All and tuition free public college, their Green New Deal framework tying climate mandates to job guarantees are popular, as are the localised tenant protections and rent control packages.Not surprisingly, their distinct and vocal foreign policy stance opposes US policies of interventionism. The DSA has formally adopted an anti-Zionist platform and views Israel as a “settler-colonial, apartheid state.Actually there is a substantial socialist tradition in the United States with its antecedents in the millenarian communities, labour movement, populism and democratic reform movements in the 19th century. The socialist movement peaked in the 1910s under the leadership of Eugene Debs, the leader of the Socialist Party of America. He got as many as a million votes in the 1912 elections, while hundreds of socialists were elected to public office across the county. This tradition rejected violence and sought a democratic path to the public ownership of monopolies and municipal control of utilities and strong protections for workers.The movement fractured in the face of state repression and the Bolshevik revolution further divided it into democratic socialist and more radical communist groups. In the First Red Scare of 1919-1920 the US government jailed many of its leaders like Debs under the Espionage Act. Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal effectively co-opted many of the socialist proposals such as Social Security and minimum wage laws. The onset of the Cold War and the Second Red Scare marginalised the movement.Trump’s mood today is shaped by that of the country, where more than half, according to recent poll of polls, believe it is headed in the wrong direction. Even as Trump’s approval has reached new lows, the Democrats are not particularly loved either. Trump will soon become a lame-duck president but the American right will still be around, though it remains to be seen whether it remains in the centre of politics or retreats to the margins.At the basic level, Trump’s alarmism over communism is less a political argument than a political reflex – the instinctive reach for a label that once reliably frightened American voters. Whether it still does is the real question. A generation that came of age after the Cold War, burdened by student debt, unaffordable housing and a healthcare system that treats illness as a market opportunity, may find the communist bogeyman considerably less terrifying than their grandparents did. If so, Trump’s red-baiting may end up accelerating the very movement it seeks to discredit.Manoj Joshi is a Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been updated and republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click.