Common misconceptions about communism

In a recent discussion, someone asked why people in the US fear socialism so much. A lot could be said about the misconceptions on socialism (first of all, it's so diverse that you can't lump it into one label). So I thought of going a bit further and asking: why are people in the US so scared of communism? Well, apart from all the Soviet fear-mongering of course (don't get me wrong, the USSR was a real threat).

So I got onto this:

Why do Americans take communist countries as examples of socialism?

The top-rated response really intrigued me in its conciseness and comprehensiveness. Here's a full transcript, make whatever you want of it:

( Full transcript )