Why are you afraid to call them Communists. That is what Joe Stalin. Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Mao, Hoenacher, Ulbricht,
Pol Pot, Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro referred to them selves as. They were Communists. To equate the USSR, the PRC, or North Korea, with the left leaning countries of Scandinavia, and sometimes, France, Italy, Spain and Greece is ludicrous. Where are the gulags in Norway, How many millions did the leftist in Sweden kill. How many Danes went to re-education camps never to be heard of again. Everyone that is a Communist is a leftist. Not every leftist is a Communist. To use the term that loosely is no smarter than the leftists referring to anyone with a right slant on politics as a Nazi or a Fascist. There is a difference.
Nazis and Fascists are leftists. They’re socialists.