Communism has appeal because it appears simple, orderly, dependable, and predictable. A capitalist society, with each individual providing his or her element of unpredictability, and with a market nearly impossible to predict, is a form of semi-organized chaos often described as creative destruction. To many, such a society is frightening, making the appeal of the Communist vision all the more seductive.

Sadly, the success of our capitalist society in providing a measure of security (from our efforts) to our younger members has lulled them into the belief that life should be easy. When faced with the (to them) harsh reality that success depends largely on personal effort and persistence, they recoil in fear, seeking a less stressful path to security, which Communist sirens lay before them.

The desire for safety and security becomes so strong that no matter how false or contradictory the message is from the proponents of Socialism/Communism, it becomes gospel, and the mind is shut to fact and logic. The followers eagerly embrace promises of "free" health care and education. "Guaranteed" employment sounds so much better than the messiness of the capitalist job market. When realist thinkers try to tell the followers that such promises come at a harsh price, and that the guaranteed jobs are essentially slave labor, their ears are shut. The idea that followers become subjects under the control of the state is a sad surprise, and no matter how many examples they are shown, the followers do not listen.

There is no doubt that changing language and the meanings of certain words has an effect. It serves to smooth over the differences between left and right to the point where communism is a bad word, but progressive is a word that can be tolerated by both sides. One more way to lead the naive toward the left.

The radial left wants a new age across the globe. An age of feeling. Where subjectivity trumps objectivity. Emotion trumps reason. The Endarkenment!
https://www.libertynation.com/postmod...

Communisim, and its close companions of socialism, facism, etc., will always have an appeal to those who are incapable of rational or critical thinking. And, do not want to make decisions for themselves, i.e. take responsibility for themselves in life's many twists and turns.
Its much simpler to just follow the crowd and allow the emotions of the crowd to control what one does.
We see this in the Antifa movement and others which seem to pop up from time to time. All founded on the same philosophy, let the state do everything and accept no responsibility for the outcomes, personally.
A cop out for mindless lemming behavior.
As an old guy, it makes me wonder where it will end up. Almost makes me glad I'm old and probably not much time left on the planet. Almost.

Spot on. “Rebranding” is a powerful and legitimate tool in the private market, mostly due to brilliant advertising geniuses.

Definitely works in politics, too.

Other important examples re Marxism/Socialism:

Branding Marxism as “scientific”.

Turning “classical Liberalism”, ie free trade into “liberal”, it’s opposite: Socialism.

Progressivism (not sure if it was used before, correctly) to describe an ideology guaranteed to provide stagnation, not progress.

Not quite direct rebranding, but to dividing the basic political duality as Socialism as “Left” and “Fascism” as “Right”. When except in minor details are both Socialism. Example: the Nazis as “Fascist”, where their party name, translated, was “National Socialism”.

This may be the most pernicious in its modern effects. Note that “Capitalism” is excluded as a choice, or worse: The Right = Fascism = Capitalism.

Currently reading Chuchill’s 6 volume history of WWII, and even he accepted the false dichotomy. A virulent anti-Communist, still for practical reasons I agree with, he allied with Stalin. Fascist “Hitlerism” was the greater evil. In the end, it translated into Allied victory, but very soon he learned the dealing with “Uncle Joe” was still dealing with the devil. The most tragic outcome being that liberating Poland, which due to treaty, caused Britain’s immediate declaration of war, did not lead to Poland’s liberation at all.

A favourite minor example of mine, buried so deep I only stumbled onto one historical reference :

The New School of Social Research “ in NYC, now just “The New School”, in an “alternative” school that is predominantly Marxist. Founded around the 30’s, it had “Marx” in its original official name. Even the radical Marxist founders realized, very quickly, it was inhibiting student enrollment. Very quickly rebranded, brilliantly, as “The New School...”...who doesn’t like “new” ideas?

We need to do our own "rebranding", starting with Capitalism.

https://strategiesforliberty.wordpres...

Commercial advertisers sell products and services using words that generate a positive consumer response. This is also a sensible strategy to use when discussing our freedom-oriented values with people we seek to persuade. If more than one word or phrase captures the essence of an idea, we should choose the word or phrase most likely to be accepted by our audience.

For example, defenders of economic liberty often use the terms “capitalism” and “free market” interchangeably. Strictly speaking, the two concepts are nearly identical in meaning. But to the general public, the word “capitalism” evokes a multitude of negative associations that do not arise when the term “free market” is used.

For many people, “capitalism” conjures up images of politically connected financial institutions receiving government favors; multinational corporations “outsourcing” American jobs to cheaper and less regulated labor markets abroad; giant retailers crushing helpless smaller competitors; exploitation of conscientious workers by uncaring employers; and awarding of multi-billion-dollar bonuses to rich Wall Street executives.

Although most of these undesirable events result from massive government interference in the economy, the public at large perceives them to be failures of capitalism. This is due to the pervasive influence of the media and the public education system, both of which are overwhelmingly friendly to “activist” government and hostile to business.

However, propagandists for big government find it harder to demonize the phrase “free market.” Both words in this phrase resonate positively with the public, and “free market” is familiar to many people as shorthand for a system of voluntary exchange. While “capitalism” can readily be personified and caricatured (“evil capitalist”, “plutocrat”, “exploiter”, “monopolist”), the term “free market” does not lend itself to such verbal distortion – we never hear leftists castigating “evil free marketers”.

When we promote our ethical and political principles, we are engaging the emotions of our audience as well as their reasoning faculties. We can more easily appeal to their emotions if we strive to use words and phrases that evoke the most positive images and associations in their minds. Promoting the “free market,” rather than defending “capitalism,” is more likely to achieve this goal.

"Welcome to post-modernism and the resentment it sows. But life is too precious to let that seethe and fester. We have a choice, become captive to the envy and guilt our elites are selling, or expose the man behind the curtain and reclaim ownership of our lives. We can let the collective consciousness of society shape our ideas, or we can win the future as individuals armed with reason, pursuing our values, and ready to defend the right of anyone else to do the same."
This is so powerful. Earlier in the article Shupe talks about communism being re-branded as liberalism and progressivism. I tend to identify with liberalism / progressivism to the extent they mean the rejection of all that, a rejection of post-modernism and seething resentment.

"Jordan Peterson condemns the teaching of equity, diversity, inclusion, white privilege, and systemic racism. "
I don't get this. These seem like basic values. Ideally they shouldn't need to be taught. We should try to live our values such that they're self-evident and need no teaching. System racism is a HUGE problem, but the arc of history clearly bends away from it. I'm optimistic it could disappear, along with any hand-wringing about how to teach these things.