As a socialist Democrat, should I fear Communism?

[Lindsay]

I grew up in a lower income neighborhood in Chicago. I was a white minority in a mostly Latin American and African American community in a large urban diverse (yet segregated) city. This is important because now I’m part of a white majority in a mid-upper class suburb and I’m a care giver to a wealthy catholic Republican guy with locked in syndrome (total paralysis including speech, he communicates by using his eyes to look up and down and a spell chart) I have so much love and respect for him and his family. This is also very important because he is very into politics and Fox News and he listens to political far right wing audiobooks all day. He watches 700 club and other Christian tv. I been working there full time for 6 years and since he’s silent I do all the talking. And we debate for fun. Cuz I’m soooo far left in comparison. I get my news from Now This, vox, and vice. I try so hard to challenge his distaste for Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Cortez. He tries so hard to challenge my distaste for Trump and the republican administration. Our debates always boils down to Communism and how I should fear communism.We just finished the book “can a Catholic be a Socialist?” To me it sounded like propaganda. He thinks my public education brainwashed me. ( he went to catholic school, and went to the air force academy and was 2nd Lt before his accident). But honestly I had first hand experience with what it’s like to need welfare. How hard it is to move up from the bottom class. Disadvantages between public schools in poor neighborhoods.  I witnessed police racial profiling and I understood my white privilege first hand. I went to school with illegal immigrants and I understand how devastating  it was for them to graduate high school but not be able to go to college because of their legal status and they were as much of an American as I was. Both classes of people are so out of touch with each other. I tried to introduce spiral dynamics to him. He thinks it’s a model to brain wash Americans to become socialists. And then transition to communism. Like what the fuck. How do I get him off communism? So I been listening to stuff about communism, it’s not even that bad. I would prefer capitalism with the right amount of socialism to give an equilibrium to the classes but what the hell? What stage is communism?  Why is it so feared? What stage is socialism? What stage is capitalism? What stage is feudalism? Am I being brain washed? He demonizes socialism. And I embrace it. And I dont understand the disconnect between us. I just finished Robert Riech’s “The System” and Anand Giridharadas’ “Winners Take All.” I read some of it to my client. He still thinks honest money made should be kept and not taxed. It blows me. It really does. 

[Opo]

@Husseinisdoingfine Could you give an example of green capitalism? 

[tenta]

Ask yourself who is pushing for communism, it's not the libertarian leftists.

[Chakra Lion]

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." - FDR 

[Freakyboo]

Communism is not even a thing in modern Western society.  It's a boogeyman put up by the right wing propaganda machine to make people fear "the left," but when challenged, they have nothing but strawmen to offer.

[Franz Ferdinand II]

It strikes me how in America there is so much stigma whenever the idea of "communism" is presented. Communism is just one flavour of Socialism and it's not fixed ideology, it's about values. Socialism is deeply utilitaristic and favours people who are oppressed in hardcore capitalistic society. In Europe, communism is long gone and it's not coming back. Only thing that is coming back is socialism and socialistic values which will only improve existing capitalism. And only right-wing and far-right ideologues are scared of communism and socialism.