"I think the propaganda of "The Communists" has been drilled into the American public so solidly"
You mean the part where communists murdered 100 million people in the last century? That "propaganda"?
You mean the part where communists murdered 100 million people in the last century? That "propaganda"?
This is the point: The US right tries to label anything they perceive as to the left of it socialist or communist and by extension to equate all of these ideologies with Soviet or Chinese inspired socialism with total disregard for the fact that while it also includes related ideologies, this spectrum also encompasses ideologies that are further apart than Republicanism and Stalinism.
It just becomes comical when e.g. European style social democrats gets lumped in with Stalinists, ignoring that Stalin himself ordered all Komintern member parties to treat the social-democrats as fascists (more precisely they were deemed to be "social fascists") and to oppose them with the same urgency as they opposed Hitler, effectively destroying any chance of a united opposition to Hitler, and draining both.
And it just becomes ridiculous when libertarian and moderate socialists who fought the Bolsheviks authoritarian tendencies tooth and nail and often lost their lives also gets lumped in with them: Millions of socialists and communists and anarchists were amongst the 10 million dead during the Russian Civil War - fighting alongside the White's to oppose Lenin. Thousands died in the Kronstadt rebellion, demanding reinstatement of free speech. Rebellion after rebellion against the Bolsheviks were arranged by SR, Left SR, the Mensheviks and other left wing groups, leading to executions after executions, and starting in 1922 a concerted campaign of political show-trials. Tens of thousands of them were murdered after the Moscow Processes by Stalin in the 30's - at that point Stalin was even purging opposition inside the Bolshevik party.
Many, many more perished in labour camps or had been wiped out together with other political opponents in the years before for standing up for democracy.
So, if you define what you consider socialism and communism, we can nail down which of these groups you are including, and how many of them were actually actively opposing the mass murders you are referring to and/or were victims of them.
You've heard of those people, I take it.
You're trying to set up a "No True Scotsman" argument. Won't work.
http://maoistrebelnews.com/2012/03/16/1-6-billion-killed-by-...
Deaths are counted multiple times, cigarette related deaths worldwide are capitalism fault, children killed by hunger are capitalism fault (especially in North Korea), famine of 1932-33 is capitalism fault (this one is really fucked up, because it is exactly the opposite).
When even Obama - a conservative not much left of Reagan, that not that many years ago could have fit into the Republican party politically - was repeatedly accused of being a socialist there was a watershed.
More and more the response was a "well, I kinda agree with Obama, so if he's a socialist, why do they say it's bad?" curiosity.
The only reason it didn't backfire far worse was that there was no strong social democrat or socialist political organization ready to benefit. But I strongly believe that the only reason Bernie Sanders is getting any kind of hearing this election campaign is that the right laid the groundwork by making the term "socialist" socially acceptable again amongst large groups of the US public
They overplayed their hand massively, and legitimated discussions of socialism by making the category so ridiculously over-broad that they defined people into it and forced those people to re-evaluate socialism rather than re-evaluate their own viewpoints. It's a truly classic failure to understand the psychology of propaganda that deserves treatment in university courses on psychology:
You don't win a propaganda war by saying "these viewpoints you agree with makes this guy you're considering to vote for a [insert label believed to be offensive here]". You win propaganda wars by disassociating your opponent from the views of his base and presenting yourself as the protector of the same views.
The right way to have fought Obama was not to label him a socialist, but to upstage him and paint him as unwilling to go far enough, and twisting the mechanism to fit whatever they'd wanted afterwards. It's not like this is a new strategy: Specifically within the context of welfare and healthcare, it was first used by Bismark in the 1880's, leading to the first welfare state, but at the same time both shoring up the German state by undermining support for revolutionary socialism, and establishing an insurance system that persists to this day that avoided a nationalisation of the entire system.
Instead they walked right into what may turn out to be one of the largest political own goals for decades.