Back during the civil rights era, a certain billboard began to appear across the rural South. It showed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. sitting with an integrated group, apparently listening to a lecture. The caption underneath proclaimed in big, bold letters, “Martin Luther King at Communist Training School” with an arrow pointed at King.

In fact, he attended no such thing. The photo was taken at the Highlander Folk School (now renamed the Highlander Research and Education Center), a Tennessee institution founded in 1932 for the purpose of training social justice leadership. Among its illustrious graduates besides King were Rosa Parks, who was inspired there to commit her famous act of refusal, Georgia state Rep. Julian Bond, educator Septima Clark and “good trouble” activist and longtime U.S. Rep. John Lewis.

For many attendees, it was the first time they had ever witnessed Black and white Americans congregating and working together. White supremacists who hated King and feared the fight for civil rights tried their hardest to smear King as a communist despite him being a devout Christian minister. J. Edgar Hoover’s infamous attempts are well known and even John and Robert Kennedy had their suspicions.

The 1960s were not as enlightened as current mythology would have it, and charges that the civil rights movement was directed by Moscow dogged the movement throughout the decade. This would be ancient history if the same defamation wasn’t making a recurrence today. Suddenly, accusations of “communism” and labels of “communist” have resurfaced among the far right, most notably launched by the lunatic fringe of that already extremist clown car.

Needless to say, if you ask any of them to define what those terms mean, you’ll receive a blank stare because they have no idea. They do recognize that it’s a perfect scare word to use, especially since they view their audience as being easily manipulated dupes who believe whatever they’re told.

But using it they are and sometimes its application defies the boundaries of common sense. I was surprised to learn that Democrats, librarians, teachers, drag queens and gay people are all communists, as is President Joe Biden for no other reason than he’s the freely elected president of the United States, a nation founded and strengthened by capitalist precepts.

But as a public service, let’s explore both the definition of communism and its history in the United States over the last 100 years. By its nature, communism is the antithesis of a liberal democracy, envisioning a so-called “classless society” where everything is owned by the state or by “The People.”

The classic examples are the Soviet Union, which collapsed in 1990; China, whose economy is faltering; and North Korea, which is a virtual concentration camp. Other communist-oriented countries include Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, all ruled by authoritarian dictatorships. There’s nothing here that we Democrats find attractive and pious whining aside, none of us would ever want to live under such an oppressive system.

Even radical 1960s activist Abbie Hoffman rightly condemned the Soviet communist leadership as a bunch of corrupt bureaucrats plundering the “people” for their own benefit.

For a time in America, communism had an appeal. Not surprisingly, it happened during the Great Depression when capitalism went belly-up and Americans were suffering from the venal behavior of Wall Street. Throughout the 1930s, left-leaning progressives with any type of social consciousness naively considered the Soviet Union as a shining alternative, while the FBI noted that American communists were the only white people who were polite to Black people.

Before conservative readers crow “I told you so!” it should be remembered that during this same era, those on the right found Hitler and the Nazis attractive with their union-busting, racist and antisemitic platforms. Although the Nazi Party included the words “Socialist” and “Workers” in their title, there was nothing socialistic about it and they banned trade unions the minute they gained power.

The American Communist Party took a hit in 1939 when the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed a nonaggression pact. Its death knell came in the 1950s after Stalin died and Khrushchev revealed that he was a homicidal maniac who had murdered or imprisoned millions of his own people. The subsequent Joe McCarthy anti-Communist witch hunt accused and ruined the lives of untold Americans through blacklists and purges as Red Menace paranoia swept the nation and our government.

In conclusion, smearing one’s opponent as a “communist” is an obsolete throwback to an ugly, regrettable past — so if Republican extremists need a better scare word, they’ll just have to lie better.

Daniel A. Brown lived in Franklin County for 44 years and is a frequent contributor to the Recorder. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with his wife, Lisa and dog, Cody.