The main problem is that college students have NO idea what communism is. They have never studied it so when you call them communists, it means nothing because they don’t know what it is.
When they think of Communists, they think of “sexy” guys like Che Guevara.
You nailed it.
What we are currently witnessing on college campuses, and for that matter, within the entire Obama administration, is the latest surge of "critical theory" that originated with a collection of college professors from the University of Frankfurt (Germany) right after WWI.
"Critical Theory"/ Cultural Marxism/ political correctness 1st infected the U.S. in 1933 when a group of these college professors from the Sociology-Philosophy Department of the University of Frankfurt (Germany) immigrated/ fled to the U.S. from Nazi Germany to escape the increasingly violent conflict between Adolf Hitler's National Socialists (Nazis) and German communists. They were mostly atheistic Jews from Eastern Europe and Germany and were all dedicated communists. In the study of the history of communism they are referred to as "the Frankfurt School". They landed in the U.S. at Columbia University, Princeton University, University of California-Berkeley, and Brandeis University .
Their influence was 1st notably noticed during the 1960s-70s during the Vietnam War. Their heirs, draft dodgers of the Vietnam War, sought careers in the insular haven of academia after the war and now dominate college administrations across the country (recall Italian communist Antonio Gramsci's (1891-1937) strategy for communist victory - "the long march through the institutions").
Two of the earlier surges during POTUS #44 BHO's watch were 2011's Occupy Wall Street movement and 2014's Black Lives Matters movement. The inmates are taking over the asylum ... and it is spreading.
They want to punish dissidents, but don’t know what Soviet gulags and Chinese “reeducation” camps were like - or that the people who helped the Communists rise to power but weren’t happy with the totalitarian streak were among the first sent.
No they don’t have any understanding of what Communism is. They weren’t alive at anytime it existed. I was 7 years old at the time of The Cuban Missile Crisis. I remember how concerned my parents were at the time but as young kid I didn’t understand the nature of what was going on. I was 33 when Communist Russia collapsed. I remember that very well.