Things don’t look great for the US president. The war against Iran launched jointly with Israel was unpopular from the start. Six months later, with the Strait of Hormuz still closed, opposition has only grown, as the war drags on without achieving any of its objectives. But for Americans, the conflict has above all meant higher prices, especially for petrol (up 35% since February). Two years ago, Donald Trump was reelected on promises to improve living standards and stop ‘endless wars’. With the November midterms approaching, the record is hardly impressive, as the president’s approval ratings show.

So what to do? He could hunker down and hope that a sporting event, a juicy news story or a hurricane will distract public attention from a war that, for the US, has not cost many lives (18 soldiers). Or he could raise the stakes of the coming election by conjuring up a monster that must be slain. Strategic consistency not being Trump’s strength, he is tacking between the two. One moment, everything is terrific thanks to his successes, which are the envy of the world; the next, beware the communist terrorists conspiring to destroy our beloved country.

Communist terrorists in the United States? Apparently so. They have even become the Republican Party’s great rallying cry. On the face of it, the murder of Brian Thompson, the CEO of a health insurance company in December 2024, the assassination of far-right influencer Charlie Kirk in September 2025 and two months later the election of socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York are disparate events that don’t portend the destruction of Wall Street or a new October Revolution. But in the country of McCarthyism and wild conspiracy theories, such a sequence can create a certain climate – and provide material to fuel a campaign. <exergue|texte=Communism is, in my opinion, the single greatest threat to our country in its history, including even World War I and World War II, Pearl Harbor and (…)

Full article: 2 336 words.

(1) See Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, Alfred A Knopf, New York, 1965.

(3) Rally in Marietta, Georgia, 22 July 2026.

(4) Julia Rock, Zehra Munir and Amelia Pollard, ‘New York City’s super-rich complain about Mamdani’s tax on second homes’, Financial Times, 16 April 2026.

(6) There were 227 attacks and 520 deaths attributable to the far right, compared with 42 attacks and 78 deaths attributable to the far left. See Steven Chermak et al, ‘What NIJ research tells us about domestic terrorism’, National Institute of Justice, 4 January 2024. The report is available in an archived version.