Considering Nazism stands for National Socialism your friend was not that far off the mark. Not only is socialism != communism != Marxism, there is more than one strand of socialism.
I was going to mention the etymology of "Nazi" as a protective measure against comments like yours, but I figured that it was unnecessary. Apparently not. "Socialism" is an infinitely malleable and borderline meaningless term that does nothing to shed light on any topic unless qualified with some clarifying adjectives.
If you think my friend, who uses the term "socialism" to connect Obama with Hitler, is "not that far off the mark," as you wrote, please by all means let us all know.
No, asshole, I was using it in the dictionary definition sense. I even took the time to look it up before I wrote my comment, because I didn't want to be accused of precisely what you're accusing me of.
(And before you accuse me of conducting an ad hominem attack on you, please note that my insult, which I mean whole-heartedly, has no bearing on my point, which is that I was not, in fact, using the term sloppily.)
That's an interesting point: a republic is by definition "by the people," so saying that it's the people's republic would constitute redundant piling-on. But since it's a lie, Mao or whoever named the country should be awarded the Goebbels Medal for Excellence in Propaganda.
