The US used the word socialist is very strange way. Socialists and communists are not the same thing at all – except in the US, which is one of the very very rare countries that never had a socialist party as far as I know. A socialist party (labor, “social democrat”, etc) is what most countries consider “left” (as opposed to communists which are “far left”)
Socialists want councils and the political discussion to happen inside the party by party members, which is what there idea of democracy is. (The self-labeling as democratic isn't a lie, but what they perceive to be democratic.)
A social democrat wants a welfare state with a democracy with multiple parties.
In practice socialists strive to create communism, which hasn't really worked out anywhere yet. Some declared that it was achieved, but than later backpedaled and claimed it didn't really happened yet.
The definition of Wikipedia is not that different from mine:
> Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems[1] characterised by social ownership of the means of production,[2] as opposed to private ownership.
A social democrat isn't opposed to private ownership. In fact he cares that everyone has enough private ownership.
However the Wikipedia article than uses the term also as a super category for socialism and social democraty, which confuses, because now the term is overloaded in the very same article.
This meaning assignment comes from this:
> Social democracy originated within the socialist movement, supporting economic and social interventions to promote social justice.
They were often in the same party, before the last century, but split as soon as they came anywhere near starting to implement their ideas. If anything, the fact that some english-speaking countries seam to be lenient with the difference, comes from never having experienced a socialist government.
> The US have a very strange definition of the word
As a descendant in a former socialist country, no that definition isn't US-specific. If anything grouping the meanings as the same is lenient and only helps to normalize those who want to implement real socialism. Like their effort to also call them democratic, this is just a way of undermining a democracy by a radical ideology.
> Socialist has been used by members of the political right as an epithet, including against individuals who do not consider themselves to be socialists and against policies that are not considered socialist by their proponents.
I'm not familiar with the notion of socialist in the US, but I would expect it to be like that, i.e. right-wing parties labeling social-democracy as socialist in order to make them deemed unvotable by a majority?
> As an example, the european socialist party
Note how this very party does NOT call itself socialistic in my language and for very good reason. When you look at the different names in different languages, you see that it is only called socialist in countries in West-Europe, whose government had never been socialistic, so they still think that they don't need that distinction.
