Many opponents of the social programs common in Western Europe consider their popularity and support among younger generations in the US a sign that communism and socialism are popular.
Those social programs are unrelated to socialism and communism - social democracy is not socialism-light as some people seem to think. Socialism, the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and its supposed destination of communism, the "classless state" centre around state ownership of the means of production. Social democracy makes no such claims, it aims to spread the gains of the economy over a larger part of society. That economy tends to be some form of controlled capitalism.
In other words there is no contradiction between supporting European-style social programs and the insight that socialism and communism should be put in the same corner as fascism and national socialism for being destructive and dysfunctional ideologies.
