[watwut]

There is long history of extreme right wing trying to make people think that communist and "anyone more left them me" are the same.

Already in Germany before WWII Hitler used that to his advantage where he worked hard enough to make "Jew", "communist" and "social democrat" into synonyms. Meanwhile, social democrats were the biggest party that was openly pro-democracy. Other major party were anti-democracy.

The distinction is not between modern and old "socialism" like Sweden or Denmark. The distinction is whether you buy the "anyone not exactly right with is basically communist" framing.