They’re crying about the threat of “communism,” which is so old that maybe they think it’s new again. He called communism “a mortal threat to American liberty ... the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor or even 9/11.” AdvertisementThe conservative and Republican target isn’t really “communism” but “democratic socialism,” an affiliation espoused by progressive Democrats including Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). A decade earlier, opponents of the New Deal used “communism,” “socialism” and “Moscow” as interchangeable epithets signifying a foreign ideology posing a mortal threat to the American way. It may turn out that communism today seems such a remote threat that the conservative campaign will fall flat.