Have “Antisemitic” and “Communist” Lost Their Meaning? | Ask the Professor

YouTube Channel member @GSM1 asks: When politicians use terms like communist and socialist, or countries call themselves people’s republics, what do these words actually mean to their audiences today? Have these labels, much like the term anti-Semitism, evolved so far from their original meanings that they’ve become largely meaningless political rhetoric?
I don’t think these labels are meaningless. I think they serve two purposes. First, leaders use them to motivate their public. The United States is separated from its adversaries by two oceans, so elites have to work to get Americans to back costly wars. That is why Saddam Hussein became Hitler, why Iran’s leaders are compared to the Nazis, and why every standoff becomes Munich in 1938. Second, sometimes the labels reflect real ideological differences that fuel conflict, as on the Eastern Front in World War II and in the Cold War.
When ideology and geopolitics point in the same direction, they reinforce each other. When they conflict, the realist logic wins. The United States and Britain allied with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, and Washington cleaned up Stalin’s image to do it.