They're using that word not because they disagree, but because it's an accurate description of what the EU is becoming.

Communist states centrally plan the economy. Everything is specified by government committees down to tiny details like the production levels of individual factories, what they produce, how, and what does or does not get researched.

The EU has developed a penchant for micromanaging the details of private industry to an extraordinary degree. The similarities to communist central planning are clear to see:

1. There is no democracy. The Commission does what it wants. The EU proclaims itself to have a parliament, but the body that uses that name isn't the same as a normal parliament.

2. They love to specify the details of trivial things like exactly how fast kettles operate, the exact way the curvature of bananas are classified, how browsers display cookie UI, and now the way phones plug into chargers.

3. All the above is justified via the usual terms ideologically left wing people like to use such as "fairness", "cooperation" etc.

None of this is a surprise because the EU traces its roots to a document written by communists called the Ventotene Manifesto, and prior Commission presidents have even celebrated Marx.

https://www.euronews.com/2018/05/04/juncker-opens-exhibition...

Thank you for your response, I appreciate the time and perspective; I stand by my observation though:

None of what you listed I see as a defining feature of Communism. It feels like some people have heard that "Communism is a bad thing that Russians did", and then they apply it to anything and everything they disagree with or may have centrally-planned authoritarian approaches.

"Centrally planned undemocratic / authoritarian" has so many wonderful implementations and versions, and communism is barely one of them :)

I remain unconvinced to see "USB-C Standard" as a "left-wing communist conspiracy" :-/

Well, I didn't mention the Russians. The Chinese, the Cubans, the North Koreans all do micromanagement of their citizens lives as well. North Korea has a law that regulates what hair styles citizens may have. This way of thinking isn't specific to the USSR.

The USB-C standard is fine. Nobody is attacking USB-C in this thread. The left wing quasi-communist stuff comes from the absurd assumption that it is the last word in cable design and therefore it should be illegal to use anything else. That is the sort of planning error that led communist states to poverty.