WASHINGTON: “Everybody knows she's a Marxist,” Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has repeated loudly and frequently, referring to his Democratic rival Kamala Harris, whom he hopes to tarnish with one of the oldest brushes in the American political playbook.
The goal? To portray Harris as a dangerous left-wing extremist and invoke the infamous Cold War-era “red scare” in the United States.
In recent weeks, the former president has escalated his rhetoric against the vice president, describing her as a “Marxist” and “communist” at almost every opportunity.
Harris has not directly addressed the taunts, but her policies over decades in public office do not appear to conform to either the views of the 19th-century German theorist or the various left-wing schools of thought that followed him.
“She's not a Marxist, she's not a communist,” said Thomas Zeitzoff, a professor at American University and an expert on political violence.
For the Republican side, using those terms is “a way of trying to say that she is an extremist,” he said. AFP.
According to experts, Trump is using an old American political tactic called “red-trading,” which aims to discredit an opponent by accusing him of not being a capitalist.
