"They accuse us of being communists, as if we would be offended by that. We are not offended."

"We would be offended if they called us Nazis, neofascists, terrorists. But never a communist, a socialist. That doesn't offend us. It makes us proud many times."

Lula - 2023

My only point is that many people have name-dropped communism in history, and many of these people were counterrevolutionaries, reactionaries, utopians, liberals, social-democrats etc.

I don’t care that Lula thinks a communist is cool. I care whether Lula is communist, whether Lula belongs to a revolutionary communist party, whether the party is firmly linked with the masses and is actively fighting for the concerns of the masses — I could keep going but these things are not true. But yes it is true that Lula praised a communist. So did Pol Pot.