A strange figure appears repeatedly over decades of testimony for the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC): the “Marxism expert.” One might expect such an expert to explain concepts of Marxist theory to the Congressional committee, even to demonstrate how they inspired alleged communist organizing. But that wasn’t their role.

Many of these “experts” said freely that they could not read Marx, that his works are incomprehensible. It might even be a bit deviant to admit anyone could understand such a radical theorist. The expert’s role, rather, was to identify communists by their vocabulary and political concerns: “progressive,” or “democracy,” or “racial chauvinism,” all code words that must be unmasked. They were there to point out witches, not discuss the finer points of witchcraft.

Many have pointed out Fox News host Mark Levin’s bestselling American Marxism has likewise, at best, a shaky grasp on his topic. Calling it a work of “staggering ignorance,” Zachary Petrizzo notes that Levin refers to the European Marxists grouped under the heading the “Frankfurt School” as the “Franklin School” on multiple occasions, even on live television. Levin also locates the origins of these masterminds of the American left in Berlin — not, as their name might suggest if he knew it, Frankfurt. There are other embarrassing errors, such as twice referring to the central Marxist concept of “historical materialism” as “material historicism.”