“Communism is no longer a far fetched threat,” speaker of the US House of Representatives Mike Johnson warned on social media recently. “It is here on our SHORES!”

Johnson is hardly alone. After candidates associated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) movement won several Democratic primaries in June, President Donald Trump alone invoked communism 81 times within two weeks.

He’s called opponents “hardcore, godless communists” and described communism as a cancer that must be cut out.

Around the same time, the US State Department published a 100-page report portraying US journalists, trade unionists and activists as participants in a Cuban-communist influence network.

Just days earlier, the Trump administration had hosted a “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism” attended by representatives from 65 countries.

At the meeting, Trump’s allies focused exclusively on political violence from the left, despite evidence of greater danger from the right, warning of violent “Marxist revolutionaries” and “gulags”. The Republican Party and its media supporters are now on-message and sounding the alarm.

Is America under threat of communist revolution? Definitely not. But the DSA victories created the opening to label all Democrats as communists – and potentially influence crucial midterm elections in November.

One word, four dimensions

Linguistically, the term communist is being used as a “dysphemism” – a deliberately disparaging label substituted for a more accurate or neutral one.

Its power comes from a kind of........

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