mentioning socialism/communism tends to lead to a fairly reactionary response

This is why it's so important to de-stigmatize these terms, even if in doing so you're associating socialism with positive stuff that isn't technically socialism. When a politician says some nice social safety net in a well-liked capitalist country is "socialism," we shouldn't respond with pedantic leftist theory, we should run with it, and only start talking theory to those who soften a bit from "better dead than red."