Thank you. I feel like people either think "Stalin was a socialist/communist and a horrible leader" or "Stalin was a socialist/communist and good, actually" instead of considering that maybe the socialist branding was just the propaganda they used to justify the dictatorship.

It seems to be endemic in certain US circles to confuse Communism with Authoritarianism Why are the two things so regularly conflated by Americans ?

Because the American education system and lifelong propaganda peppered throughout popular culture creates this confusion intentionally. It’s like a word association game: anything not capitalism = oppression and death. This is why, in large part, why most people will describe capitalism when asked to define communism or socialism.

So this is more of a ‘how’ vs ‘why’ answer, however I’m sure you can easily arrive at the ‘why’ using the explanation I’ve given.

Red scare.
Conditioning.
Media.

Feelings of helplessness and victimization combined with low levels of education as well as black and white thinking. A lot of Americans want the “system” to not be what it is, but they’ll look to strongman types to make the world what they want rather do it for themselves, alone or collectively. Conservatives want to have their enemies either run out of the country, locked up, or shoved back into the closet so they don’t have to know it exists- they went for Trump. They’re also greedy and seem to assume that anything that benefits someone else or society was taken from them. Boomers grew up on Cold War propaganda, the idea that communism was the anti-America, so they fight hard against anything remotely social (plus add in some bigotry that socialism would benefit the folks they hate). But on the flip side, many on the left have come to idolize the authoritarian left method because it forces the change they want and that old propaganda of “communism is anti-American” has the reverse effect; it’s embraced because they’re reactionary.

It’s all more rabid each way online, the right just managed to find their figurehead around which to build a cult of personality first. The left now in-fights because it’s a three way battle between the old guard Democrats who want to go back to business as usual, the reactionaries seeking their golden goose, and the rest who don’t want to go back to what it was or rewrite the MAGA playbook but with “our guy” in charge.

Because American's are stupid and don't understand the difference between economic systems and political systems. After WW2, Russia was seen as a political threat/rival. Since Russia used a communist economic system Americans were taught that communism was bad. I can at least personally attest that I was educated to believe communism was equated with authoritarianism during the mid 1980s. This is something I didn't come to recognize until I was in college.

Because propoganda.

All states are authoritarian friends. Even proletarian states. The goal is to abolish the state entirely but doing so requires seizing the authority to repress your former oppressors. In the Western imagination this is evil because the dominant ideology is that of our oppressors. We are conditioned to see the world through their lense.

Do not be afraid of authority, it is a useful tool and our aversion to it only benefits the ruling class. It makes us easier to crush. There is nothing more authoritarian than a revolution, it is the forceful assertion of one classes rule over another's. Class society doesn't dissapear because we say so, we need to dismantle it and a state is the perfect tool for doing so. To not build one is to remove our best defence against counter revolution. We would be failing ourselves and the world. Failed revolutions get slaughtered and I do not want to see my comrades slaughtered.

Because communism has to be bad,because capitalism gas proven it doesnt have any virtues.

At some point you do have to answer the question of what do you do with the people that will inevitably try to bring the old exploitative systems back.

People are bent this way, not most, but some. What will you do with them? What will you do if they convince a lot of others the system is wrong? What will you do if enough of them collectively have a skill or stumble upon a resource the collective really needs?

Because most movies of today sneakily glorify corporations and billionaires. Maybe people wanted something different