Just recently the Trumpist have taken up calling Kamala Harris a "Communist".
What horse shit.
Calling right wing politicians "fascists" is an old slander, dating back at least to the 1960s. It's overuse has now lead to the problem that when some of the right are genuinely approaching being fascistic, the slur has lost part of its meaning, compounded by the fact that a lot of the people who use it, even seriously, don't really know what it means.
The US of course fought a fascist power during the Second World War, Italy, and bombed a second arguably fascist power, Romania. Germany, quite frankly, probably doesn't really qualify as fascist during the war, but something else. Vichy France and Francoist Spain had fascist elements, but probably can't really qualify as fascist. That doesn't make any of those powers nifty, but rather it demonstrates the problem of the sloppy use of words.
Since Barack Obama, those on the right have been busy doing it. Obama wasn't a "Marxist", as some on the right like to claim, and Harris isn't a Communist. But now some followers on the Trumpist right seriously believe that Harris is really a Communist.
That is in part because they have no idea what Communism is.
I hear this all the time. The government will propose regulating something, for example, and people will decry that as "Communist". It isn't. It is't Socialism either. Simply favoring government action or espousing "progressive" views isn't either of those things.
And regarding Socialism, there's big elements of Socialism that many people on the right are perfectly fine with. Like state funded highways? Well, you are dirty Socialist, maybe a Communist even.
