Why is the US resurrecting the McCarthy era anti-communist prejudice and hate now in 2026? The Soviet Union has long disappeared and bourgeois ideologues had since been busy celebrating the end of the 'communist threat'. In the wake of the Cold War or the era of US-USSR superpower rivalry, US foreign policy has revolved around the twin targets of terrorism and the growing economic power of China. However, even while focusing on encirclement or containment of China, the US has articulated it more in economic and military terms, not ideologically or politically. But Marco Rubio now calls 'far-left terrorism' the 'blind spot' of the West's anti-terrorism discourse. The US now underlines far-left terrorism as a distinct strand alongside the two other variants known in the Pentagon's parlance as Islamic terrorism and narcoterrorism.
Targeting the Left is a characteristic feature of every rightwing political regime. Dubbing the Left as far-left, linking it up with terrorism and persecuting dissent as leftwing extremism is a defining feature of far-right aggression. This basic pattern of a far-right fascist regime can be seen everywhere from Modi's India to Trump's America. There is also something about the current juncture that makes the Trump Administration see red. Perhaps more than ever before since the Vietnam War protests and Civil Rights movement period, the US is today witnessing the rise of a distinct socialist stream within its regimented political mainstream that has started questioning the bipartisan consensus around neo-liberal policies of sacrificing the people at the altar of profit and waging wars of occupation and aggression across the world in the name of peace, democracy and human rights.
As the US-led Western world or Global North bids goodbye to the politics of liberal democracy and the economics of the welfare state, as Israel goes on perpetrating a continuing genocide on the Palestinian people and the US-Israel axis wages war on the sovereignty of Iran, there is also a renewed surge of anti-fascist resistance against far-right aggression as well as growing and active support for an end to Israeli occupation and genocide in Palestine. The Trump Administration and far right forces across the world are afraid of this potential Left resurgence, especially working class action and civil society solidarity against the US-Israel axis of war and aggression. The regime change plot against Iran has not just been foiled in the face of the remarkable resistance and resilience displayed by the government and people of Iran, the war on Iran has badly dented the myth of American military invincibility and global political hegemony. The development has also created serious strains on the NATO bloc and on US equations with several European countries.
Earlier this year Marco Rubio sought to repair the cracks emerging in NATO by invoking the shared legacy of colonialism and Christian values. And now comes the Cold War era glue of anti-communism. Using classic fascist rhetoric, Rubio calls Leftism an evil against civilization itself, 'a revolt of the worst against the best, a revolt of the weak and the cowardly against the strong and the good', and describes the growing worldwide resistance against fascism, imperialism and racism as 'a new wave of the old evil'. Apart from spewing venom against the anti-fascist anti-imperialist resistance, the Trump Administration has a long standing target in America's own backyard - it wants to topple the socialist government of Cuba. All through his life as Prime Minister and President of socialist Cuba, Fidel Castro had to face one CIA plot after another. Now after the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the Trump Administration feels emboldened enough to attempt to occupy Cuba. The rhetorical war on far-left terrorism is an integral part of this actual war against the Latin American Left.
For us in India, this is going to emerge as yet another ideological plank to camouflage the Modi government’s capitulation to US imperialism. India's subservience to the US began in the 1990s in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. From the American side it was presented as a civilizational alliance against the Islamic world and Confucian China while the Indian ruling classes called it a strategic imperative and opportunity in the era of globalisation. During the last two decades Israel too has become a strategic ally of India, and now India is seen as the strongest supporter of the US-Israel axis, surrendering completely to the US-Israel narrative and violence against Palestine and Iran. The growing affinity between Hindutva and Zionism has been a major ideological plank for India's surrender to Israel, and now this shared thread of anti-communism binds the Modi regime in an even closer embrace with the US-Israel axis.
