Why is socialism so popular? A few reasons. One straightforward one is ignorance—we’re just not really taught that much about it. I sometimes half-jokingly say, and it’s a bit of hyperbole, that in American high schools you get 155 hours on Hitler, three minutes on Stalin, zero on Mao, and zero on Pol Pot. You might get a quick mention of Fidel Castro in the context of the Cold War, but that’s about it. You don’t really learn about the far-left tyrants who were responsible for tens of millions, maybe even upwards of 100 million deaths under communism.

So that’s one reason: just complete ignorance. Another factor is that it’s difficult to understand, which may be part of why it isn’t taught. And then there’s the argument that many teachers themselves are ideologically sympathetic to socialism or communism, and so they don’t really want to dwell on how badly it went wrong.