On Zohran Mamdani, Taylor Swift, and the Evolution of the Red Scare

On Friday, November 7, President Trump issued a proclamation asserting the week of November 2 to 8 as “Anti-Communism Week.” The announcement conjectured that “for more than a century, communism has brought nothing but ruin” to the world. It went on to say that “wherever it spreads, it silences dissent, punishes beliefs, and demands that generations kneel before the power of the state instead of standing for freedom” (no need to explain the irony here, right?). America, Trump says, rejects “this evil doctrine” and the “new voices now repeat[ing] old lies,” referring to Zohran Mamdani, who was elected New York City mayor three days before this proclamation.

Even more, Trump and his administration, according to Trump, “honor the victims of oppression”—because, if anything, that is exactly what an oppressive figure like him is known to do—and mandate that communism and any other system purporting “destructive” things like social justice and democratic socialism “find their place, once and for all, on the ash heap of history.”

Just two days before this, Mamdani appeared on the November 5 cover of the New York Post, his head cut-and-pasted onto a Soviet figure holding up a hammer and sickle in victory. The color-grading on Mamdani’s face is yellowed, surely a racialized editorial choice, and the Empire State Building looms behind him like a comic book villain’s lair as red stars shoot across the sky. The headline reads: “On your Marx, get set, Zo! Socialist Mamdani wins race for mayor.” And underneath that, it says, “THE RED APPLE.” In the bottom right corner, the subhed reads, “After a Campaign that promised high taxes, free stuff, hating Israel and vibes, socialist Zohran Mamdani romped to victory last night and will become the 111th mayor of New York City.”

In the eyes of the Post, Republicans, and establishment Democrats alike, a frightening spectre has come to haunt the city. (For what it’s worth, the post-election issue of the Post became an ironic viral hit among Mamdani supporters.)

Like some sort of divine timing, the same day that Mamdani was elected mayor, War on Terror architect and mass murderer Dick Cheney died. That afternoon, the Post honored Cheney as “a giant of Republican politics” who Democrats made “into a boogeyman.” The resulting composite image produced by both Trump and the Post—that of a “communist” Mamdani taking over the city as dearly beloved Cheney is laid to rest, followed by a Cold-War-era presidential proclamation—is illustrative of our current moment’s iteration of a cherished American tradition: the Red Scare.

If past iterations of the Red Scare teach us anything, it’s that such a campaign is sprawling, decentralized, and extends beyond the political arena, trickling into and using culture as another one of its theaters.

The Red Scare has been slowly creeping back in recent years—whether via Hollywood’s blacklisting of pro-Palestinian actors, universities crackdown against students’ dissent, cultural and arts institutions’ surrender to the Trump administration’s anti-DEI agenda, or the fact that there’s now, according to the Trump administration, a week dedicated to anti-communism. But McCarthyism never really left since its inception in the 50s, only shifting tactics and changing shapes to become other evils, like the War on Drugs, COINTELPRO, or the War on Terror. Through policy, which then permeates into our culture, the Red Scare remains a bipartisan ideological mainstay in the US today.

In the case of a Mamdani NYC, the impending threat purported by establishment propaganda may still be communism (though Mamdani isn’t a communist) or socialism (though Mamdani, arguably, isn’t exactly a socialist either) but it’s also anything remotely divergent from and more equitable than that which protects white American family values (communism and socialism included).

Like McCarthyism of the past, proponents of this “new” Red Scare use reactive moral panic (read: racism, Zionism, Islamophobia, transphobia) as a means of dissuading people from the mere thought that ideas critical of capitalism (let alone a life beyond it) might be effective (although, the Post did a bad job because “high taxes, free stuff, hating Israel and vibes” sounds enticing).

Throughout the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, anti-communism was similarly used as a catchall. “Republicans and some conservative Democrats saw in anti-Communism a powerful campaign issue and a weapon that could be used to curb union and civil rights activism and New Deal policies,” writes Wendy Wall, an associate professor of history at Binghamton University. Charisse Burden-Stelly, an associate professor of African American Studies at Wayne State University, expands on this in her book, Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States:

At the national level, anticommunism as a mode of governance administered by all three branches of the federal  government, fused  “public  authority” and “societal self-regulation” to penalize, regulate, censure, and criminalize ideas and beliefs that challenged US racial oppression, economic inequality, and class antagonism by labeling them “communist.”

Suppressive policies like the Communist Control Act of 1954, which outlawed the Communist Party USA and criminalized membership or involvement with communist-affiliated groups or activities, then seeped into culture. As Jacobin film critic Eileen Jones put it:

The conformity and conservatism of the 1950s were manifest across all mainstream media, but especially in sanitized television shows celebrating the American, white, middle-class nuclear family — think Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best, and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. These shows imprinted themselves on the conservative political imagination. When politicians urge us, as Ronald Reagan did when first running for president, to “make America great again,” the ideal in their minds is the one modeled by these fantasy shows.

If past iterations of the Red Scare teach us anything, it’s that such a campaign is sprawling, decentralized, and extends beyond the political arena, trickling into and using culture as another one of its theaters. On September 30, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went on a tirade about the end of a “woke” military with the reissued standard of racialized no-beard policies, fat-shaming, and sexism. In the same week, Taylor Swift, who’s no stranger to Red Scare tactics, released an album littered with anti-Black microaggressions—all the way down to the merch. A necklace inspired by her song “Opalite” features two lightning bolts that many have considered a Nazi dog whistle. Swift has since removed the accessory from her shop page, but a MAGA-like hat that reads “Leave it with me/I protect the family”—lyrics derived from her song “Father Figure”—remains.

In other pop culture news, registered Republican Sydney Sweeney finally broke her silence after her American Eagle ad came under rightful fire for promoting eugenics and covert white supremacist messaging. When GQ reporter Katherine Stoeffel haphazardly asked Sweeney about the reactions to the ad, the actress said it was a surprise. Stoeffel went on to ask Sweeney how she felt about Trump’s praise of her ad on Truth Social. “It was surreal,” Sweeney said with a smile. Not only indicative of Hollywood’s ongoing conservative pivot, this example in Sweeney—in tandem with that in Swift—shows how McCarthyism manifests in culture so as to ever so subtly indoctrinate the public.

Each of these cultural moments, be it Swift’s protection of family values, Sweeney’s promotion of eugenics, or DiCaprio’s contributions to eco-imperialism, serve to reinforce the same ideological architecture that McCarthyism once codified through law and propaganda.

Along with indoctrination, the Red Scare also appears in ways to pacify or appease audiences through image over action. Wicked and the upcoming Wicked: For Good, for instance, critique authoritarianism, propaganda, and even American empire, but it’s also executive produced by Marc Platt, a known Zionist. Similarly, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another muses on revolution and power, but also top-bills Leonardo DiCaprio, who is building an “eco-friendly” luxury hotel in apartheid Israel. The images produced by these films signal to audiences that they are heard in their opposition to authoritarianism, propaganda, genocide, and the need for revolution. But they are just that, images.

Today’s Red Scare is as much about distraction as it is about indoctrination, producing images that are purposefully contradictory; these films line the pockets of Platt, DiCaprio, and other Hollywood figures, providing them with more power and profit so that they can continue to move in ways completely contrary to their films’ supposed arguments (e.g. blacklisting pro-Palestinian voices in Hollywood or erecting resorts atop genocide).

Whether through overt indoctrination or appeasement disguised as progressivism, the result is suppression. Each of these cultural moments, be it Swift’s protection of family values, Sweeney’s promotion of eugenics, or DiCaprio’s contributions to eco-imperialism, serve to reinforce the same ideological architecture that McCarthyism once codified through law and propaganda. Under the guise of entertainment, these images and narratives reinscribe the supposed sanctity of white American family values, denoting anything that diverges from those ideals as un-American, communist, and something to be afraid of.

What is produced, then, is not a “new” Red Scare but an evolved one that—along with weaponizing legacy media and the federal government—also uses brand marketing, celebrity, outrage, and sanitized progressive aesthetics to delegitimize radical politics while making audiences feel good and politically engaged. Trump’s “Anti-Communism Week” isn’t even necessary as this cultural spectacle becomes a communist containment strategy all on its own.

Naturally, this spectacle in culture finds its way back inside the political arena nonetheless. On November 4, senator Ted Cruz went on Fox & Friends to honor warlord Dick Cheney. A day before that, Cruz made a racist, anti-communist tweet about the New York City mayoral election. “This seems like an easy one, New York City,” he wrote above a meme of a mock ballot containing two options: “A Democrat / Just a Democrat” or “An Actual Communist Jihadist / A literal Karl Marx-quoting, America-hating Jihadist.” Cruz’s post also quote-tweeted one of Mamdani’s from 2020 in which he does, in fact, quote Marx. “Each according to their need, each according to their ability.” New York City chose the latter option by the millions, and it seemed to have been an easy choice, indeed.

I just hope Mamdani makes good on all the “oppressive” and “destructive” stuff he wants to do to make that Marx quote more of a possibility—like free childcare, affordable housing, taxing the 1%, and the rest of that “evil doctrine” of his.