Are you defending authoritarian policies of historical socialism alot?
Nope, but I do point out that most socialist countries fail due to direct US intervention, which is true but inconvenient to their narrative that socialism is a failure.
I have also been called a communist, but this wasn't meant as an insult but a description
Are you familiar with the American concept of the "Bible Belt?" It's essentially just the American Southeast, Texas out to the East Coast, up to mid-Virginia or so. (The confederate states, basically.) This section of the country continues to be hyper religious and hyper conservative. What I'm getting at is that in this neck of the woods, socialist and communist are used almost exclusively as slurs lol, for anybody who doesn't have an almost comical conservative stance.