In recent months, Bernie Sanders has faced a barrage of scaremongering about socialism.

After a televised debate last month, MSNBC anchor and former Democratic Party operative Chris Matthews raised the specter of revolutionary violence, suggesting that Bernie Sanders would support “executions in Central Park.” (Matthews later resigned.) Donald Trump, speaking at the State of the Union, declared: “Americans are united with the Venezuelan people in their righteous struggle for freedom! Socialism destroys nations. But always remember, freedom unifies the soul.”

On March 6, the New York Times got in on the red-baiting action with a story claiming Sanders was an unwitting stooge of Moscow in the 1980s when he promoted sister-city initiatives with the Soviet Union as mayor of Burlington, Vermont. Despite Sanders’s noble intentions, the Times wrote, the Soviets “exploit[ed] Mr. Sanders’s antiwar agenda for their own propaganda purposes.” The clear implication was that Sanders’s socialism led him to aid and abet authoritarian government — a charge the media also pushed while circulating remarks that Sanders once made praising Cuba’s literacy program.