Why Trump Keeps Talking About Communism: The 'Unhumans' Playbook
“It’s important to use ‘communist’ this way as a slur.”
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Donald Trump and his MAGA fascist party have a desperate new strategy for the midterm elections: a fake hysteria over “communists.”
Trump is screeching about the imaginary threat he calls more dangerous than “World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, or even 9-11.” He invoked “communism” 81 times between June 23 and July 6, according to Reuters. On July 13, House Speaker Mike Johnson joined the fray, declaring that “THE BARBARIANS ARE INSIDE THE GATE” and the nation is poised to “GO DOWN THIS DARK ROAD OF DEATH TO COMMUNISM.”
This dangerously unhinged propaganda comes from Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them), a genocide-themed 2024 book that depicts liberals as bloodthirsty demons hellbent on murder. Steve Bannon wrote the book’s foreword and JD Vance gave the book a ringing endorsement. Unhumans lays out a blueprint for demonizing Democrats as communists in order to seize power.
Here’s what I wrote about Unhumans in August 2024:
Unhumans, by right-wing conspiracy theorists Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec, offers a sinister thesis: Progressive-minded Americans are not humans. Instead, they are "communists." In turn, the authors define communists as bloodthirsty "unhumans" hellbent on the destruction of civilization.
Right-wingers, they write, must stop these unhumans with a policy of “exact reciprocity.” This means doing exactly to these so-called unhumans what the authors claim the unhumans are planning to do to them.
The 283-page screed reads like an effort to incite a civil war. It strains to create a sense of urgent terror in its readers. On nearly every page, it demonizes and dehumanizes “the left”– a vaguely defined group that apparently includes journalists (“the unhuman-occupied media”) and people who believe in things like diversity, equity, social justice and the rule of law. The definition is so broad that it seems most Democrats would qualify as unhumans.
The playbook is simple: frame the opposition as demonic “unhumans,” thus rendering them undeserving of human rights. The equation: Democrats=Communists=Unhumans. The book, a New York Times bestseller, is an insane specimen of propaganda. But now it’s become talking points for the White House.
Trump and his MAGA party are in dire straits, with their poll numbers circling the drain and Democrats poised to retake power in the midterms. The Trump regime desperately seeks to evade the wrath of voters. And, well, if you’re under attack from otherworldly forces, you can maybe declare some kind of existential emergency (demon invasion, foreign interference) and use it to cast doubt on the integrity of American democracy.
The idea of democracy-killing emergency—a “state of exception”—is popular in certain quarters of Silicon Valley. Palantir billionaire Peter Thiel and his followers are obsessed with Nazi philosopher Carl Schmitt, who advised that power is seized in moments when the normal rules can be suspended to allow a dictatorship to emerge. Schmitt, a jurist, infamously helped to justify Hitler’s seizure of power in March 1933. In that case, Hitler used a fire at the Reichstag—the seat of German government—to seize emergency powers and eliminate his opposition. Hitler kept those powers, which declared him the sole authority in the nation, until his suicide in April 1945.
Curtis Yarvin, a Schmitt-lover who is Thiel’s political guru, has been crying for Trump to take more extreme steps to consolidate power, warning that Republicans will face dire consequences if Democrats win. Yarvin advocates scrapping democracy in favor of a monarch with absolute power—a dictator—essentially plagiarizing the idea the Nazis called Führerprinzip. This means rule by a supreme leader with no checks on his power. Not Congress. Not the law. A system where the supreme leader is the law.
“It’s important to use ‘communist’ this way as a slur,” wrote Yarvin on July 14, explaining the communist hysteria strategy. “It should have the same mouth-feel as ‘pervert’ or ‘junkie.’ Like a punch. And the definition can’t be restricted to literal, fully enrolled, dues-paying Party members.”
Trump’s absurd effort to gin up a communism panic comes as he attempts an unprecedented power grab. He’s demanding an end to the Senate filibuster rule and a rollback of voting rights. He and Speaker Johnson also want an extra $350 billion for the Pentagon budget, money Johnson says is necessary to fight the (fake) communist threat.
But this red scare is transparently ridiculous. The most powerful communist in the United States appears to be Donald Trump, who has been forcing corporations to hand over partial ownership of their companies to his government. “President Trump is imitating Chinese Communist Party,” declared a Wall Street Journal headline in 2025.
Of course, Trump isn’t talking about real communists. There are very few of those left in the USA. “Communist” is just a slur for Democrats and democratic socialists—something Vance made clear in his endorsement of Unhumans.
“In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags,” he wrote in a promotional blurb. “Today, they march through H.R., college campuses and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people.”
In two sentences, Vance makes it clear that “communist” means anyone who opposes the Republican regime. Of course, Vance is also a big fan of Yarvin. That’s why this new propaganda campaign is so dangerous. Unhumans argues that liberals pose an existential threat and must be dealt with severely. Trump’s decision to adopt these talking points signifies that he’s considering extreme measures.
His regime poses an existential threat to American freedom and democracy and he’s looking for ways to interfere in the midterm elections. So, he is adopting a crude strategy to a) stoke a “communist” hysteria and b) create a fake existential threat while c) actually being the greatest existential threat the USA has ever faced. (This technique of accusing your enemies of doing that which you are doing is known as “Accusation in a Mirror.”)
“You can be loyal to Karl Marx or you can be loyal to America,” said Trump—who is mostly loyal to Vladimir Putin—during a speech at Mount Rushmore.
Will he continue to hammer on this theme, or will he be distracted by a new crypto scam, war, or nap? Might he follow Peter Thiel in pivoting to an Antichrist obsession to stir up his religious base?
Time will tell, but it’s important to recognize that his desperate gambit is more than senile ranting. It’s a playbook for dehumanizing and disempowering voters, and it comes straight out of Unhumans.
Gil Duran
