Part of it is propaganda. And not just western propaganda. The way Marxist Leninism aped the communist aesthetic while being specifically NOT COMMUNISM. Heavily tarnished the image of communism outright. It’s social oppression and wildly anti democratic nature is a big turn off to most people.

That gave ample ammunition to western actors. Handing them a ready made narrative to build on to smear communism. ML will shout about how the west is oppressive and often anti democratic. And they aren’t wrong. But that doesn’t excuse the actions of ML governments. And really doesn’t speak well of their own ideology. If we want to get rid of oppressive anti democratic governments. Why would we want to switch to a different oppressive anti democratic government. It doesn’t really fix the problem. It’s a lateral transition. Not a transition up.

Pragmatically I trend Dejacque Libertarian and anarco communist. To get others to understand you have to decouple parasites like ML first. And that’s only to get started. Then you have to run them through a lot of heavily simplified poly-sci. Pretty much reprogramming a number of purposeful misconceptions drilled into people. Which, if they aren’t interested in the first place. Is pointless.

Best case is to avoid using a lot of the propagandized terms. Explaining the concepts through basic concepts.