[gitrog]

Surely socialist activists are no closer to having any sort of power now than they did when you were in your twenties?

Also, would you mind to be a bit more specific about who these people are? In my experience Americans aren't particularly good at identifying what constitutes a socialist to the rest of the world.

[afiori]

Comunist are also quite bad at that, I have met moderate reasonable people under the comunism banner that were sorta ok with other people calling themselves stalinists.

For example for all the criticism that you can point against religion most religious communities openly and clearly oppose and denounce terrorism.

In my view comunism was never able to separate itselft from a revolutionary mindset, and so agitators and extremists were always (since Marx, at least) considered a planned and likely step.