Oh my God, we've finally yelled at Americans on the internet enough that after A H U N D R E D F U C K I N G Y E A R S conservatives are vaguely aware that there's some linguistic difference!

It does work, guys!

I thought "tankie" was the new "commie" but maybe that's just for DNC true believers because calling people with even the slightest leftwing ideas or who are skeptical of the political propaganda from the US a "Communist", is too obvious Red Scare-style Propaganda and unlike the fans of the outright Fascist party, the fans of the Fascism-adjacent party actually care about keeping up appearances.

Plus, this is simply a poll of "what's your favorability of the word we use to say something is when we don't we don't like the thing?"

Of what use, then, are the American Communists?

They serve one function extremely useful to you and to the country, so useful that, if there were no Communists, we would almost be forced to create some. They are a reliable litmus paper for detecting real sources of danger to the Republic.

Communism is so repugnant to almost all Americans, when they are getting along even tolerably well, that one may predict with certainty that any social field or group in which the Communists make real strides in gaining members or acceptance of their doctrines, any such spot is in such bad shape from real and not imaginary social ills that the rest of us should take emergency, drastic action to investigate and correct the trouble.

Unfortunately we are more prone to ignore the sick spot thus disclosed and content ourselves with calling out more cops.

--Robert A. Heinlein, Take Back Your Government

Maybe this is just my experience living in a red state

It is

Cato institute is not a very reliable source imo. Admittedly did not look up this study but this is TV news and they are in the business first and foremost of trying to frighten their viewers (never watch TV news BTW). Fox viewers would be petrified by these numbers. I'm guessing that perhaps a disproportionate portion of the sample was college students, city dwellers or even just people that know how to read. Ie. Not a representative sample most likely. Also, this is not the demographic politicians pay the most attention to.

Nothing wrong with the concept of communism. In practice it always leads to authoritarianism, fascism and the loss of personal freedoms. But look at the U.S. as it suffers late stage capitalism with a populist dictatorship growing - it's exactly the same.

Communism as a concept, or what the world actually got?

Because those are not the same thing.

I don't trust the Cato Institute, but Pew Research has some likely more accurate figures, at least for the socialism front, (with what I believe is a larger sample size) showing about 36% overall positive viewings of socialism, with 6% being very positive, and 30% being somewhat positive.

McCarthyism is probably the most succinct answer. The Cold War directly aligned us against the Soviet Union, and a key means of villainizing the USSR and its citizenry was to paint their core governing beliefs as heretical to the American way.

There is also no doubt in my mind that Socialism's strong connection to Union activity in the US also incentivized Corporate Barons to lobby against Social Politics hard. I have not seen any specifics about that myself, though. Modern lobbying efforts are well-known, though.

cold war and the red scare once performed never went away

Americans see China and think: "Oh no, very bad because of socialism"

But as someone who was born in mainland China (I'm Chinese-American), PRC is nothing "socialist"/"communist" at all, its a horrible State-Capitalist Authroitarian Regime under the guise of Communist aesthetics. I don't fear socialism/communism because they never truely existed, in fact, I'd say that Norway or Finland (based on what info I could gather anyways, never personally been to Norway or Finland so I can't speak from experience) would be more closer to "socialism" than PRC, at least they actually have a social safety net, PRC doesn't.

As for why Americans fear these terms, I think it's because, for some people anyways, you can get labeled as an enemy of the state to even uttering "socialism"/"communism".

(Legal disclaimer to the FBI Agent reading this, just in case I have to make this clear: No, I am not a "communist", as in, I do not support the CCP or similar authoritarian parties, I just support a more egalitarain and democratic society however you want to call that, and my views are 100% compatible with the US Constitution, now fuck off FBI, stop trying to denaturalize me, maybe actualy investigate the traitor in the white house, for fuck sake)

It depends on how the socialism is used. US corporations, farmers and the fucking MAGAts that abused Payback Protection Program like it a lot.

I'll just refer you to the above graph. That fear is greater among the elders who grew up in the McCarthy era, and the unfortunates who listen to them.

The elites own the media. We're conditioned from birth to hate SoCiAlIsm/CoMmUnIsm/TaXes/ThEft/Etc. Repeat those terms 100 times a day over a lifespan and it becomes religion for 30% of the population.

If the government spends money on the little people, there's less money to bail out the Too Big to Fails.

Privatize the gains, socialize the losses. The United States isn't a country, it's a corporation with a military.

Probably stems from the Red Scare when people were rounded up and jailed/fired/blacklisted/exiled. It became the boogeyman. Through the last couple generations the fear around the word is still there, mostly because we haven't heard positive things (let alone the truth) about socialist policies in the better part of a century.

What Your saying is socialism, You commie!

My mom had a spinal fusion in the 90s which she got in debt for.

About 15 years ago my lung spontaneously collapsed. Several surgeries later, the bill was $315,000. I was on Obamacare because of the mandate, thank god. I paid $19.

My mom found out and told me I "deserved to go bankrupt" because people like her had struggled for so long with their medical bills.

I don't speak to her anymore

Americans are willing to give up everything they own if it means some hypothetical strawman isn't "mooching" off of their propaganda headcanon.

Success is suffering and hard work and if everyone isn't suffering then life isn't fair. Fuck this entire viewpoint, but it's one of the main American traits ruining socialist ideals.

They are under the impression that what'll happen is that their paycheck will go down by the cost of universal healthcare per person because the costs are taken out via taxes. Then they hear that some people will get it who don't pay taxes and they get indignant that they're paying and someone else is getting. Then they think about the difficulties they have with our current system, and picture putting something like the DMV in front of it, since that's what a lot of people have as their biggest reference for what the government does.

That's all because someone has a vested interest in making sure they understand it wrong, and no one is going to make a lot of money off universal healthcare so there isn't the same degree of motivation to teach people a more accurate understanding.
"Against" has billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs, and "for" has "human decency", "efficiency" and "why are we doing this to ourselves".

People hear that your paycheck gets a bit bigger, you go to the doctor when you feel sick, bills are mainly to keep you from going to the doctor for free aspirin and are lower than your copay, and you just ... don't deal with the billing anymore and think that sounds unrealistic. Entirely missing that other countries have done it, that the government already has a medical billing system, and dealing with paperwork is something the government does even better than "moving stuff from one place to another".

Propaganda sold to us at an early age.

I have had arguments on social media with Americans. They are A) deluded, believing that paying a monthly premium and still having a deductible, that can be denied, is awesome because its tge best plan avaipable. B) are I got mine types, who have stated they got private insurance because they don't want to pay for other peoples health care (they clearly don't understand how insurance works) C) don't want their taxes to go up one smidge, even though putting every american into a universal system would save so much money and would barely be blip in their taxes.

Obviously, transsexuals are a bigger concern. They are educated from birth the US has a superior healthcare system (by every measure, it does not). They are told that a lifetime of debt means they are good Americans .Also, most voters just assume one day they will be billionaires and never get sick.

I do like the idea that they went around and asked people their age and if they said over 29 they went nope your opinion is invalid and walked away.

I'm assuming the reason that it's broken down like this is so they can show generational differences but I have to say I'm in my mid 30s and I'd like some socialism I'm not sure why the cutoff date had to be 29. Are there other slides where this information is provided?