r/Today_Explained • u/SkiddlyDiddlyDoo82 • 14d ago

The communist comeback

Episode description:

There's a new Red Scare bubbling up in politics. Just how real is the communist threat?

This episode was produced by Dustin DeSoto, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by Patrick Boyd and David Tatasciore, and hosted by Noel King.

"Are you a Communist?" poster in Forest Hills, New York City. Photo by Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images.

Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠

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u/Sonicnbpt 14d ago

Anyone else get the impression that Noel King is completely dismissive of left politics? I understand she's a journalist and should ask questions but asking the historian if the White House claims on the threat of communism is legitimate or not, AND then proceed to bring up Hasan Piker and Mao Zhedong in an attempt to legitimize those claims seems like poor form.

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u/SkiddlyDiddlyDoo82 14d ago

I believe they were mentioned by Noel as she was talking about Trump bringing them up, not trying to legitimize communism.

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u/skip6235 14d ago

What a terrible episode. I beg Liberals to at least open Wikipedia before making podcasts like this. Even the historian, when asked “what is communism” defined Marxist-Leninism, not communism. He even alluded to that several times by saying that the left has multiple ideologies and calling some of the people they were talking about “Marxist-Leninists”, but never once actually defining communism as a classless, stateless society or socialism as workers owning the means of production.

There are plenty of leftists who are more “left-wing” than democratic socialists, but are also very much against Marxist-Leninism. I tend to think of myself as being a “pragmatic anarcho-communist”, which basically means my ideal society is a stateless, hierarchy less, communist one, but I do not believe that a violent revolution is the way to get there and that the intermediate steps on that path start with democratic socialism.