> It did produce the witch trials, Mcarthyism, internment camps,
> Guantanamo, Jim Crow, and genocide.
After the Soviets took power, the main enemy in Russia turned out to be "economic backwardness" in the conditions of a fortress "besieged" by the imperialist powers. The Chinese revolution was led by a peasant army. You can see how, in those conditions, an autocratic regime resting on a bureaucracy could have emerged to lead the "breakneck" industrialization of the country, etc. The "economic backwardness" factor would be largely absent in the U.S. Maybe it's the poverty of my imagination, but I can only envision attempts to build socialism in the U.S. in opposition to McCarthyism, racism, imperialism, and genocide. Socialism in the U.S. would not be surrounded by aggressive foreign military machines bent on reversing socialism or at least nothing comparable to the technological and military asymmetries that Soviet Russia faced. If anything, the danger of a nuclear holocaust would come from the other side. I'm not saying people should take for granted that the process will be smooth, but the dangers don't appear to be those that plagued Russia and China.