I wish people would read even a little bit about the idealogy of these communist states that we demonize so much.

Absolutely none of them have ever claimed to be communist. They claimed to be working towards communism. As in, doing what needed to be done, in their opinion, to make a Communist future possible.

Unfortunately, with the capitalist countries being so aggressive and more powerful, they decided that being authoritarian police states was what needed to be done to protect themselves.

You can find that course of action abhorrent, I agree, but using their actions to throw out the entirety of 100+ years of socialist political and philosophical thought is entirely unfair and only helps the rich ruling class of the world.

No one would ever completely abandon the idea of democracy just because some countries that claimed to be democratic ended up becoming authoritarian.