I don't see how this is meaningfully different from any other period of social conflict in the US. This article could just as well have been written about the struggle for gay marriage, the Civil Rights Movement, desegregation, women's suffrage, ending slavery, or any other period of struggle for equality. Also interestingly, "communism" and "communists" were the pejorative used by reactionaries against civil rights advocates, desegregationists, and women's suffragists. Maybe this resonates with the older, more reactionary generation that grew up in the cold war, but this language (and set of ideas) seems to hold less purchase as time goes on.
On HN I see a lot of accusations of "leftism", which seems basically synonymous with "communism", "Marxism", and "socialism" (all of which still hold currency). It's also effectively synonymous with "woke" and "SJW" and a bunch of others, all of which are used the same way as a generic insult for any kind of progressivism.
I don't think it's coming just from ancient reactionaries. They seem to be at least Gen X, and possibly younger.
