The right understand 'communism' as authoritarian statism and loss of individual liberty but there is something else going on too.
It's amazing how little right-wingers talk about economics these days. Libertarians are different but Conservatives I know are almost entirely based in the culture war, with all the conspiracy theories and 'anti-wokeness' as a reason d'etra.
With these conspiracies comes a weird bastard hybrid of both McArthysim and proto-Marxism. What I mean by proto-Marxism is that many of them are heavily invested in an anti-establishment narrative. They (crucially) leave out the economic component of class analysis but they do have hatred of government, the elite and 'globalists'. They know that bad people upstairs are fucking them and - in the first instance - this is actually true. Ironically, such determined class hatred is also coupled with McCathyite fear of all things called Communist.
So if you see the ruling class as the problem and hate 'communism' but don't fully understand what either of these things are; it's natural to see them as the same.
@Burnley123 I see it a bit differently, and I'm sure they will think of it as an insult.
Trump/former Tea Party "conservatives", are not really capable of grasping the bigger picture, or the finer details, so they're handed some simple terms, by people like Trump: anything that's not part of their way of life, is "x". x is whatever is chafing their butts at the moment.
Never mind that they are the primary recipients of social welfare programs.
Trump was more successful because he's one of the best con artists out there, while someone like Sarah Palin was a true believer, and by that I mean someone who is not capable of thinking for herself, born into hate or adapted to it, and doesn't know any better.
🤣this is so funny, I thought you said Libertarian is a thing. 🤣
@Northwest Hmm... I'm coming at this from an international perspective too and it's not just about Trump. Con artists need at least something to sell and they have to be able to prey on the perceived needs of a target market.
I've always been fascinated by the political right and interested in how and why it has changed since the Reagan/Thatcher years. It can't just be a decline in brain cells.
They do have an ideology. It might be inconsistent and contradictory, but it is there.
