Yeah; it feels a little naive to think “bad associations with the word” come from past-tense propaganda instead of current-tense propaganda.
Like, nobody cares if you say “mother-fucker” anymore; and that was unthinkable, what, two decades ago? Less?
Without active, current, pervasive propaganda about the ‘bad intentions’ of the left, the word ‘communist’ would also lose stigma in the U.S. within a similar timeframe.
(I’m open to being told I’m wrong about this …)
When I was a kid, I was such a nerd, that I invented my own decimal timekeeping system.
Even wrote a little macOS menubar clock for it — I was dead-serious.
Edit: omg the website still works, even though I never put any real content there …
http://yreality.net/UJD/
Edit 2: Found this old explanation I apparently put together in July 2010, according to my image archive: