IF YOU were wondering where the Neanderthal branch of our species ended up, the answer lies in those populating the recent Republican National Convention, on stage and off.

Watching the line-up of stiff, make-up-caked, too perfectly coiffed speakers was like seeing what would happen if Mattel went bad. This was Ken and Barbie controlled by evil AI puppetmasters.

Amid all the disbelief-inducing, teleprompt-recited false rhetoric, the most risible was the drumbeat of doom that a Democratic government led by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris would plunge us into Marxist mayhem.

“Biden is a Trojan horse for socialism,” Trump opined in his acceptance speech, with the Democrats led by “wild-eyed Marxists.”

Don’t we wish?

“This election will decide if we save the American dream or whether we allow a socialist agenda to demolish our cherished destiny,” the president proclaimed.

Never mind that we currently dwell in an American nightmare thanks only to him, an economy wrecked, a pandemic unchecked and millions out of work.

Vice-president Mike Pence asserted that “Joe Biden would set America on a path of socialism and decline.” The “decline” presumably referred to the fate of the rich and super rich, since “socialism” and “decline” are pretty much a contradiction for everyone else.

“Biden, Harris, and the rest of the socialists will fundamentally change this nation,” shrieked Kimberly Guilfoyle, yet another member of the Trump extended family hauled out to acclaim him. 

Guilfoyle, Donald Jnr’s girlfriend, labelled a socialist agenda “dangerous” and responsible for “destroying” Cuba — where she has almost certainly never been.

The socialists in California, Guilfoyle went on at high volume, had turned that state from “a place of immense wealth” into “a land of discarded heroin needles in parks, riots in streets, and blackouts in homes.”

It was insane stuff. If Guilfoyle had carried on like that in the Middle Ages she would have been burned at the stake.

No-one would give you odds on a bet that none of these people have ever read Marx. Of course they haven’t.

But on they went, painting grim pictures of life under Democrats — aka radical Marxist socialists — as we currently know it.

“Democrat-run cities across this country are being overrun by violent mobs. The violence is rampant. There’s looting, chaos, destruction and murder,” said South Dakota governor Kristi Noem who tried to stop Native American tribes in her state from running Covid-19 health checkpoints at reservation borders to keep their own people safe.

The gun-waving white couple from St Louis, Missouri, now charged with a felony, and who live in a 52-room mansion, reminded us that Biden would “abolish the suburbs.” 

The couple were echoing earlier remarks by Trump who said the Democrat-destroyed suburbs would be “replaced by a socialist nightmare.”

Biden probably hasn’t read Karl Marx, either. He is no socialist. His biggest challenge may not be winning over the right wing of his own party, but the left flank, which is already pushing back against his pro-fracking position and the influence of big oil companies in the upper echelons of the Democratic Party.

There was doubtless a collective cringe in the inner sanctums of the Democratic National Committee when Bernie Sanders spoke during the Democratic convention. 

An actual socialist and someone who probably has read Marx, Sanders said of his progressive movement: “Many of the ideas we fought for, that just a few years ago were considered ‘radical,’ are now mainstream.”

Yes, the Marxist wolf may be inside the tent. But this is as unpalatable to Establishment Democrats as it is to Republicans. We have a long way to go. 

Linda Pentz Gunter is the curator and editor of Beyond Nuclear International and the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear, a Maryland-based non-profit membership organisation (www.beyondnuclear.org).