Trump, Republicans conjure familiar enemy, attack Democrats as Marxists

Lashing out after his arraignment on federal charges last week, Donald Trump took aim at President Joe Biden and Democrats with language that seemed to evoke another era: He was being persecuted, he said, by Marxists and communists.

Trump has used the labels since he first appeared on the political scene, but it lately has become an omnipresent attack line that also has been deployed by other Republicans. The rhetoric is both inaccurate and potentially dangerous because it attempts to demonize an entire party with a description that has long been associated with America's enemies.

Experts who study political messaging say associating Democrats with Marxism only furthers the country's polarization and is simply wrong: Biden has promoted capitalism and Democratic lawmakers are not pushing to reshape American democracy into a communist system.

That hasn't mattered to Trump and other Republicans, who for years have used hyperbolic references to the associated political ideologies to ..