None of that is communism though, that's authoritarianism. Like this isn't even a "not real communism" thing, it's just objective facts. Communism is an economic system, NOT a government system.

But you know what, I AM gonna say not real communism anyways, because they weren't. The direct stated goals of communism by Marx is the workers owning the means of production, and the abolishment of both private property(which is different than PERSONAL property, btw. i.e It's still "your" toothbrush, not "ours") AND the STATE. Many definitions also include the abolishment of money in of itself.

Only one of those goals were achieved by the USSR. Private property was abolished, but the state owned the means of production, which is a double fail as not only do the workers not own them, the state owning them means the state still exists. Money still existed as well. So overall, they met 1 out of 3/4 of the minimum requirements to be communism, and thus they weren't communist.

Same story with China and basically every other "communist" country you could gotcha me with, abolishing private property is the only requirement they have met.

Meeting only one of multiple requirements to be something and calling yourself it anyways does not mean you actually are that thing. By that logic, I'm a good singer; I'm not good at it, but I CAN sing, so calling myself a good singer is perfectly valid.

I’ve never met anyone who hates communism more than the colleagues of mine who grew up under communism

Of course they do. They grew up in an authoritarian country calling themselves communist. Whether that country was actually communist or not doesn't really matter; if you don't actually know what communism IS, you won't be able to recognize that the entity harming you is communist in name only. If they hadn't actually read stuff like Marx, which most people likely didn't seeing as google didn't exist and you had to research stuff the old fashioned way(and even if you did do research, censorship is a concern), their definition of communism will be entirely based of the actions of their authoritarian government that claims to be communist.

To put a more modern perspective on this, North Korea calls itself a Democratic Peoples Republic despite being none of those things. But to a North Korean citizen isolated from outside information, NK is ALL of those things; if NK collapsed, there would definitely be some former NK citizens proclaiming the horrors of democracy, and there would definitely be people replying explaining how that "wasn't true democracy"; sound familiar?

Communism is a flawed system because it can never work in reality, not because it's inherently bad. For it to work, all forms of inequality have to be not just abolished, but abolished by total unanimous agreement by humanity; which will never happen, because there will always be people who care only for themselves or their "chosen people".

Capitalism, on the other hand, is inherently bad. Evil, even. It "works", but only by exploiting those beneath you. If you're on the bottom rung with no one under you to exploit, or if you're just too ethical to exploit those under you, it no longer works and you are left being a wage slave just to survive.