Using the word “Socialist” to spook American voters away from candidates like Bernie Sanders has been one of the number one scare tactics our corporate media has implemented— for decades — to restrict the scope of American political discourse.

Bernie Sanders has been one such marginalized voice. Not only does his own party use the term to pull potential voters away from him (as when they refer to the other candidates as “moderates” in an attempt to paint Bernie and his base as “radicals”), Donald Trump and the GOP are quick to label him as a “commie” and other such derogatory terms to stoke antagonism against his candidacy.

Should Bernie go on to win the Democratic Party nomination, it is likely these attacks will intensify as the GOP and the corporate media try to gaslight the American public into believing that Bernie Sanders poses a radical threat to the foundations of American democracy and it’s free market, capitalist economy.

A significant number of people, upon hearing the word socialist, will have the image of an authoritarian Communist regime — such as the USSR — come to mind.

They will be repelled at the thought of the government swooping in to seize the means of production and using force to try and create a classless, utopic society.

It is largely due to the way Communism evolved away from traditional Marxist economic theory that the words “Socialist” and “Communist” came to be thought of as one and the same, at least in the minds of American voters.

But when one inspects both the platform and the history of Bernie Sanders, there is startlingly little evidence to support that he is in favor of seizing the means of production or pursuing some sort of Communist vision for society.

The particular flavor of politics that Bernie espouses is much closer to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal policies that helped America recover from the worst effects of the Great Depression.

There’s also a reason Sanders is quick to compare his vision to that of notable European nations — such as Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

In fact, I would prefer to simply give you the definition of Democratic Socialism as Sanders himself lays it out: