I don't think communism and atheism go hand in hand. The right wingers are the ones who made this connection, and like most of their ideas, it's a false correlation.

Having been a Godless Communist at one time in my life frankly I feel that we were much maliligned and still are. At no time did we ever not belivieve in beimg totalatarian in fact we believed in a much higher level of democracy where elected councils of workers voted on everythingand rules , regulations and actions would only move forward by majority approval be everyone. Well you see the problem that I came to see with this idea rather quickly, nothing could get done quickly, which is why I think it ends up putting to much power into the hands of too, few because it is inefficient. By the way most of the members were not godless at all.

It is hard to differentiate for peopel who are misinformed and think they already know it all.

First of all, "godless communism" usually refers to communist totalitarianism. You can have communism without totalitarianism. It actually works very well... in villages of 200 or less people. Once you get above 200 people then it starts to not work so well because at that point anonymity starts to kick in, and some people will no longer be doing what is in the best interest of hte community, but will do what is only best for themselves. So, communism does work, but only on a micro scale. On a macro scale it breaks down.

There is a capitalistic version of totalitarianism. It is called Fascism. Any totalitarianism requires a polic state, which is very expensive. Virtually every Fascist government has gone under mostly because the local economies collapses, Fascist leaders are not pretending to be communists, so their excesses far outstrip that of communist totalitarian countries and so they go under much faster.

Carl Marx, is quoted as saying "Religion is the opium of hte masses". Mostly because ti teaches blind obedience to authority and makes it easier to manipulate and take advantage the masses. The rich exploit the work of the middle class and poor so that they can live lives of leisure and pretend they are better than everyone else. Marx pretty much got the diagnosis of the problems of capitalism right on, but his solution of revolution and the workers rising up to take over was the wrogn prescription for the disease. You can't change the people, a country or aculture over night.

In Northern European countries they have Democratic Socialism. They have a very high tax rate, but after paying taxes an living expenses they have considerably more discretionary money left over than the average American does. Those countries have also been measured as beign much happier than Americans. These countries are not very religious either.

So, getting back to the question, you really cant' educate people who wish to remain ignorant, but try to educate those that you can. At some point in he future common sense may (hopefully will) reach a critical mass and spread much more quickly. I got my BA degree in Sociology, and probably the most important thing I learned is that the strongest influence in deciding how people behave is how the people they care about will think of them for what they do. The right wing denigrates sociology, while at the same time they use it to manipulate their constituents. They only denigrate it because once people understand what they are doing they can tget away with doing it as easily.

Those "Godless communist" states sought to oppress religion to strengthen their hold over their people. Your average atheist wants to do nothing like that.

One example of just how stupid and gullible modern right-wingers are is that they reflexively call those they disagree with "communists".

In most cases these people are too fucking stupid to know what communism is and they are just repeating what propagandists like Rush Limbaugh tell them to say.

As an Indian, I have a 6,000 year old cultural link to the swastika. All symbols and labels are corruptible. I would never defend the use of the swastika, but this informs my fight for keeping the American flag from being used by racists and Nazis. That is the same fight I have with atheists: don't make my label look bad. However when outsiders who use the label, I try and make them engage with me and my beliefs. Labels are like handles that the mind uses to pick up and throw ideas out.

I think that when the religious right are attacking atheism by attacking Godless Communism they are trying to use the tactic of lumping together multiple ideas in order to slander by association. So no amount of differentiation by the holders of any particular idea being attacked will prevent or even lessen the propensity to do this by those who will.