Comment by knieveltech

Given his statement I'm assuming his family fled a particular implementation of communism at some point in the past. I struggle with responses to statements like OP has made for a number of reasons. I find it questionable that authoritarianism is a required component of a communist society. That said it has clearly been a component of all implementations of "communism" at the national level. I'm air quoting that because again it's questionable that authoritarian regimes bear any resemblance to actual ML political theory, and most real world implementations were merely authoritarian regimes that borrowed the stalinist playbook and enough ML buzzwords to offer a fig leaf during their rise to power.