Marjorie Taylor Greene, following the federal indictment of the former president, says that “this is a communist country.”
Marjorie Taylor Greene Is on the Warpath
There’s been an uptick, in recent years, of Republicans referring to garden-variety liberal and Democratic politics as “communist.” At a time when the president and all of the major Democratic leaders in Congress come from the party’s center-left wing, and there is not a single avowed communist in any major elected office, the “communist” slur is frequent, most often when alleging that President Biden is a puppet of the Chinese Communist Party.
Back in the summer of 2021, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) claimed that about Biden.
“It’s a communist regime. It’s been a communist takeover of our country, and it happened on January 21. And that is who Joe Biden is,” Greene said on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” show. When Bannon asked her what the evidence was that the members of the administration were “Marxists and communists,” Greene replied “The evidence? Study history. Simply study history and you can see how they behave.”
Greene also alleged in the 2021 interview that the January 6 Committee — which was a project of Congress and had nothing to do with the Biden Administration — would ultimately seek to jail herself, Trump, Kevin McCarthy, and Rep. Mo Brooks. None of that happened, although Trump could conceivably still face charges resulting from the Committee’s criminal referrals to the Justice Department.
Now, two years later, Greene still believes that there has been a “communist takeover,” apparently a slow-moving one that has gone on for two years.
“Here they are, the Biden Administration, arresting, really, their top political opponent, and ‘enemy,’” Greene said in an online video following Trump’s arraignment on Tuesday.
“This is a communist country, we’ve been taken over. It’s not the America that we all thought that we had. We’re not a free country anymore.”
Trump himself made a similar allegation when he spoke after the indictment.
“If the Communists get away with this, it won’t stop with me,” he said at his Bedminster club on Tuesday, in a striking feat of conspiratorial nonsense. “They will not hesitate to ramp up their persecution of Christians, pro-life activists, parents attending school board meetings, and even future Republican candidates, which they do.”
It’s not clear, in Trump’s formulation, who “they” are, although it appears to hint without evidence at a vast conspiracy of everyone who he dislikes.
The ex-president also vowed, as he has in the past, to pursue a prosecution of Biden himself, should he become president again.
“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt President in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden Crime Family.” Trump had made a similar threat on Truth Social days earlier.
Greene went on to post a photo of herself online with Trump and Walt Nauta, Trump’s codefendant in the documents case, along with the phrase “honored to stand with the two men Biden’s communist DOJ unjustly indicted.”
This is, of course, nonsense. American politics in 2023 have many dysfunctions, but they have exceedingly little in common with any of the main features of communism. Communist countries, for one thing, tend not to feature bipartisan negotiations over the debt ceiling, or contentious battles over judicial nominations. And communist countries don’t allow anything resembling the House Oversight Committee’s current investigation into the finances of the president’s family members.
Also, when communist regimes go after political opponents, they tend to just arrest them, rather than bother with special counsels or grand juries or, for that matter, to allow the opponent to remain free pending trial.
Furthermore, former leaders of a country or political opponents of the current regime to be arrested and prosecuted is far from only associated with communism; right-wing dictators throughout history have frequently done that as well. It’s more a dictator thing than a communist thing.
Expertise and Experience: Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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