The word communist no longer means anything in politics

The habit of calling everyone a communist has drained the word of meaning

Saying that Pedro Sánchez, Emmanuel Macron, Von der Leyen or Keir Starmer are communists is about as analytically useful as calling a tax inspector a liberal: not at all. The label has become a catch-all for everything a section of the right dislikes, but it is also used as a defensive weapon from the centre. Each side wields it as it sees fit, and through overuse the term no longer describes anything.

The European centre's double standard

The analyst Schwarz hit the nail on the head when he criticised Vox for calling moderate politicians communists. It is true that Sánchez or Starmer are not Marxists. But the defence of the "democratic centre" by Von der Leyen and company falls into the same trap. Presenting the President of the European Commission as the pinnacle of classic liberal democracy is a joke: her agenda of green deals, digital censorship and social engineering would have delighted a Soviet bureaucrat. It is not communism, but neither is it the textbook liberalism they try to sell.

The veneration of Angela Merkel is the clearest symptom. She is praised as "humane right-wing" in contrast to Trump, Le Pen or Meloni and is presented almost as a social democrat. Her critics point out that she left Europe awash with Russian gas and with its borders undefended. The "centrist" label replaces any analysis of her actual record.

From Soros to the AfD: any label will do

The contradiction reaches absurdity with George Soros. Calling him a communist is the height of cynicism: the financier was one of the main drivers of the USSR's collapse, a fact even acknowledged by members of the US government. He is not a communist, nor a humanitarian either: he is a shark of speculative capitalism who funded "colour revolutions". But the caricature serves the right just as well as the left when convenient.

The same mental shortcut is applied to voters of Alternative for Germany: labelling the whole party as extremist avoids discussing inflation, deindustrialisation or migration policy. Some blame the communists, others the extremists; that way, the substance is never addressed.

The result is an impoverishment of political language. When everything is communism, nothing is. And as long as the sides keep using the term as a throwing weapon, the debate on economics and freedoms will remain stuck in the ditch.