Dear Fellow Conservatives: Stop Conflating Socialism with Communism.

A spate of primary victories by democratic socialists — from New York to Colorado — have Republicans trying out the kind of hyperbole not heard since Sen. Joseph McCarthy. To paraphrase Barack Obama: The 1950s called. They want their rhetoric back.

It’s not just coming from the Fox News flamethrowers, either. This goes all the way to the top. During a recent speech to the Faith and Freedom Coalition, President Trump described democratic socialists as “hard-core, godless communists.” On July 3, he declared, “You can be loyal to Karl Marx or you can be loyal to America. You can be a communist or a patriot. You cannot be both.” And he continued the onslaught the next day on America’s 250th, saying communism is “like a cancer.”

As with so many of Trump’s attacks, the “commie” charge begins with a germ of a plausible point — only to run right past it. Yes, Democratic Socialists of America advocate left-wing, progressive policies that are outside the mainstream. But dismissing them all as “communists” collapses vital distinctions, deprives us of a real conversation — and may, in the long run, weaken conservatives’ ability to defend economic and political freedom.

None of this, to be clear, means the current crop of democratic socialists don’t deserve some serious scrutiny and even criticism. They absolutely do.

Aside from embracing classic progressive ideas like Medicare for All, a stronger safety net, racial justice, and housing affordability, some of today’s younger democratic socialists see opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza (which they insist is a genocide), and even opposition to America itself, as central to their mission.

Perhaps the most controversial statements have come from Darializa Avila Chevalier, a DSA member who was endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and recently won a Democratic congressional primary in New York.

In now-deleted social media posts, Chevalier called Joe Biden a “war criminal,” said “This country is a f—ing disgrace,” slammed Bernie Sanders’ “liberal Zionism,” and criticized Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for voting “present” on Israeli military funding.

If that isn’t enough for you, she also criticized minority men for “fetishizing ugly colonizer women,” boasted about wiping her hands on the American flag, said she wanted to abolish police, borders and prisons, and called U.S. service members “child murderers.” (I could go on.)

Most relevant to the issue at hand is that in deleted tweets uncovered by CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski, Chevalier made favorable references to Marxism and communist leaders.

But does this mean that Sanders, AOC, Mamdani, et al., are all actual communists?

There’s a huge difference between political movements that want to use democratic means to expand the welfare state and truly authoritarian ideologies that reject liberal democracy altogether.

This distinction matters. A lot.

Trump’s use of the term “communist” is coded to evoke images of the Soviet Union, an evil empire defined by one-party rule, political persecution, collectivism, gulags, famine, and its failure to compete with capitalism. Conflating that with supporting Medicare for All feels like a huge stretch to me.

And while making such charges can surely generate applause at rallies — and possibly even swing a midterm election or two — accusing a politician of being communist will do little to persuade the guy who says, “Yeah, so what?”

Thirty-five years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the slur has lost some of its sting. A 2025 survey conducted by the Cato Institute and YouGov, for example, found that 62 percent of Americans between 18 and 29 viewed socialism favorably, and 34 percent said the same about communism.

Perhaps the questions conservatives should be asking ourselves are: (a) Why are so many democratic socialists and democratic socialist-adjacent candidates winning primary elections? And (b) what has changed in America to cause their messages to resonate with so many young people?

One likely reason is that the American dream has become elusive. In a recent Pew Research Center survey, 89% of Americans under 40 said it’s harder for them to own a home than it was for their parents’ generation.

But even beyond the issue of home ownership, there is an increased sense that the game is rigged for fat-cat billionaires, and that following the old formula — if you work hard and play by the rules, you’ll have 2.3 kids, a dog and a white-picket fence — no longer works.

Indeed, the Trump administration itself seems to believe that a different approach is needed. OpenAI is reportedly proposing giving the federal government a 5% stake in its business. This comes on the heels of the White House obtaining a “golden share” in U.S. Steel last year. These policies might or might not be prudent, but they hardly represent free market capitalist orthodoxy.

And if artificial intelligence dramatically reduces the demand for labor, previous assumptions about what is politically acceptable could completely explode. Ideas such as universal basic income or providing a “public wealth fund” would then move from the category of academic debate to a minimum requirement for preserving economic (and political) order and social cohesion.

Regardless of whether we get to that point, an increasing number of young people are asking a big question: After 250 years, is America still delivering enough opportunity to justify confidence in the future?

If we want to preserve economic and political freedom for posterity, those of us who still hew to more traditional, conservative politics had better find a way to get young people to answer in the affirmative. Solving that very real problem will take a lot more work than merely calling our adversaries communists.

Matt K. Lewis is a NOTUS Perspectives columnist.