Perhaps they cannot say it was far worse, because that is of course speculation as there was no successfull communist takeover. And historians can tell it in the political correct way.Speaker to Animals wrote: If a professor tried to say that in a history class on an American university campus, there would be a shit storm and he'd probably be denied tenure if he didn't already have it.
Just refer a Red Scare of the Middle classes. Or talk about it as a Red Scare hysteria, and then you are on quite safe waters when it comes to SJWs. German McCarthyism. You then leave out talking anything about the actual threat that the Communists did pose. That there actually were Trotskyites and that the Red Army was only stopped near Warsaw.
After all, one of the clear problems in history is that everything looks like an unavoidable outcome. Any worse outcome that was avoided is just speculation.