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.