I’m a socialist, a communist, a fascist and a Nazi. Well, I’m actually only a socialist. But if you’ve ever watched news coverage of the so-called Tea Parties and bought their rhetoric, you’d think all four of those labels meant the same thing.

Maybe I should explain. You see, as a socialist, I feel the term is often misapplied and misunderstood. For instance, Barack Obama is not a socialist. Even the editor of The Socialist, Billy Wharton, wrote an editorial explaining how Obama is not a socialist. It’s a good read, and I recommend it.

The fact is, socialism is the new communism. Senator John McCain has become our new Senator Joe McCarthy, who once threw around the word communism as a pejorative label on seemingly anyone whom he did not like — and those who agreed with him followed suit.

I think this all comes from a gross misunderstanding of both communism and socialism. The McCarthy era taught us socialism equals communism, which equals the evils perpetrated by the Soviet Republic.

However, communism is an entirely different system, and the two terms cannot, in all intellectual honesty, be used synonymously.

The same holds for “fascist” and “Nazi.” Again, the confusion stems from misinformation and poor education — or simply insouciance for what the facts are.

So why, since Obama was elected, do we see the constant conflation of these terms?

It’s because people do not think before they speak. They swallow what politicians say and take it to the extreme and spew it right back out.

Somebody, somewhere, mentions “Obama” and “socialist” together, and the gloves are off. We have Bill O’Reilly asking if we want to be like Sweden. If you look at the amount of money the average Swede pays in healthcare compared to the average American, then I say yes (we pay twice as much, by the way). They also have a more efficient healthcare system than we do.

But socialism is not communism, and communism is not fascism, and fascism is not Nazism. The Nazi regime was purported to be socialist, and Hitler gained power through the National Socialist party. But even if this is the case, where is the relation between an egalitarian economic system and a madman hell-bent on taking over the world? The same can be said of the Soviet dictators.

We have to educate ourselves on the differences between these different labels. I am not a fascist because I am a socialist.