It’s true that China is run by a party that uses Communist branding, but it’s just…of all things to go after China on, it’s a weird criticism. I can think of lots of criticisms that I can make, but “they have branding that’s mostly a relic from decades back” is kinda weird.
I’ve only really had one guess that I’d call reasonably-solid.
During the Cold War, there were a number of disparate groups that stayed under the Republican banner. They didn’t agree all that much about some things, but they all had some issue with communism.
Ronald Reagan coined the term as a way to describe the Republican party as a three part coalition based on the social conservatives (consisting of the Christian right and paleo-conservatives), war hawks (consisting of interventionists and neoconservatives), and fiscal conservatives (consisting of right-libertarians and free-market capitalists), with overlap between the sides.
So, those groups had things that they didn’t agree on, but one thing that united them was anti-communism.
The social conservatives had an issue with state atheism.
The hawks had a major military opponent.
The fiscal conservatives didn’t like the economic aspect of communism (well, and specifically the libertarians had it in for the authoritarian aspect).
But, after the Cold War ended, communism wasn’t really a thing any more, and so the things that united those groups kind of went away. Kind of kicked the legs out from under the major groups in the Republican coalition.
So…maybe the idea would be to try to reunite them. I mean, I can see, from a purely-political level, wanting to recreate that coalition. The Project 2025 documents do mention aiming to reinspire a sense of patriotism, so they’re thinking something about political movements.
The problem is, I just don’t see how there’s a very viable way to do this.
The hawks are gonna be onboard. Probably more than before – China is, militarily, quite powerful and building out its military.
You can maybe still get the social conservatives onboard. Today, China isn’t banning most religion so much as it is aiming to integrate it with state control so that it can’t form any kind of political threat. The changes made might be an issue to them, though I think that it’s probably less-objectionable than an outright ban. At the least, that approach is gonna clash pretty hard with US freedom-of-religion traditions. I have not personally seen a major attempt to go after that “state control of religion” aspect, but then I probably don’t read most of the material that social conservatives get. I think that this one is going to be a lot harder than it was during the Cold War.
And then there are the fiscal conservatives. I don’t see them getting back in. China’s got a larger state role in the economy than the US, sure, has SOEs, has the state influence a number of companies…but so do lots of countries. They don’t have this hard, concrete, explicitly-clashing ideology, and there isn’t the aim to export the political/economic model.
Like, I can imagine someone putting together some kind of domestic political coalition centered around opposition to China. That’s not impossible. But I have a hard time seeing someone doing it centered explicitly around communism. Maybe the one-party state aspect, authoritarianism, something like that. But anti-Communism? In 2025? I mean, the Cold War ended 35 years ago.
There’s also the a thing that I don’t really get on some of the right, involves associating everything with Marxism.
If you figure that the Project 2025 stuff is a Heritage Foundation product, probably on their website.
Yeah, accusations of “Marxism” are all over their stuff. That’d be kind of in-line with hunting for an anti-communist coalition. I just…have a pretty hard time seeing someone successfully building a lasting political coalition around anti-Communism in 2025, though.
An educated Marxist-Leninist such as Putin accepted that there had been more than 100 million victims of communism, an acceptable price to pay to remodel the world.
Sometimes the simplest explanation is the best explanation. You cannot understand Vladimir Putin and his war against Ukraine unless you understand that he is a Marxist-Leninist.
They have been doing a red scare about China for a while now tbh, it will only ramp up as their profits are threatened more
It’s true that China is run by a party that uses Communist branding, but it’s just…of all things to go after China on, it’s a weird criticism. I can think of lots of criticisms that I can make, but “they have branding that’s mostly a relic from decades back” is kinda weird.
I’ve only really had one guess that I’d call reasonably-solid.
During the Cold War, there were a number of disparate groups that stayed under the Republican banner. They didn’t agree all that much about some things, but they all had some issue with communism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Leg_Stool_(GOP)
So, those groups had things that they didn’t agree on, but one thing that united them was anti-communism.
The social conservatives had an issue with state atheism.
The hawks had a major military opponent.
The fiscal conservatives didn’t like the economic aspect of communism (well, and specifically the libertarians had it in for the authoritarian aspect).
But, after the Cold War ended, communism wasn’t really a thing any more, and so the things that united those groups kind of went away. Kind of kicked the legs out from under the major groups in the Republican coalition.
So…maybe the idea would be to try to reunite them. I mean, I can see, from a purely-political level, wanting to recreate that coalition. The Project 2025 documents do mention aiming to reinspire a sense of patriotism, so they’re thinking something about political movements.
The problem is, I just don’t see how there’s a very viable way to do this.
The hawks are gonna be onboard. Probably more than before – China is, militarily, quite powerful and building out its military.
You can maybe still get the social conservatives onboard. Today, China isn’t banning most religion so much as it is aiming to integrate it with state control so that it can’t form any kind of political threat. The changes made might be an issue to them, though I think that it’s probably less-objectionable than an outright ban. At the least, that approach is gonna clash pretty hard with US freedom-of-religion traditions. I have not personally seen a major attempt to go after that “state control of religion” aspect, but then I probably don’t read most of the material that social conservatives get. I think that this one is going to be a lot harder than it was during the Cold War.
And then there are the fiscal conservatives. I don’t see them getting back in. China’s got a larger state role in the economy than the US, sure, has SOEs, has the state influence a number of companies…but so do lots of countries. They don’t have this hard, concrete, explicitly-clashing ideology, and there isn’t the aim to export the political/economic model.
Like, I can imagine someone putting together some kind of domestic political coalition centered around opposition to China. That’s not impossible. But I have a hard time seeing someone doing it centered explicitly around communism. Maybe the one-party state aspect, authoritarianism, something like that. But anti-Communism? In 2025? I mean, the Cold War ended 35 years ago.
There’s also the a thing that I don’t really get on some of the right, involves associating everything with Marxism.
If you figure that the Project 2025 stuff is a Heritage Foundation product, probably on their website.
googles
Yeah, accusations of “Marxism” are all over their stuff. That’d be kind of in-line with hunting for an anti-communist coalition. I just…have a pretty hard time seeing someone successfully building a lasting political coalition around anti-Communism in 2025, though.
EDIT:
“Putin the Marxist-Leninist”
Wow. That’s amazing.