In popular Western discourse

In popular US discourse, maybe.

You have already given some reasons in Part VIII, but for a more comprehensive theory, see, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes by Jacques Ellul - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda:_The_Formation_of_M...

Nordic model is not socialism. Socialism is predation from a political class instead of just the capital owners.

EDIT: I didn't flag the reply below. The expression "epaulette heavy countries" is funny though.

Plenty of other (European) countries have universal healthcare, tuition-free universities, strict labour laws, maternal leave, and extreme extortion under the name of taxation. Yet few of those champagne socialists praise countries like Slovakia or Hungary with similar "socialist" laws.

What we never hear about from them is the moral part of socialism. They categorically assume every person consents with such system. What happens when someone doesn't want to participate in it by wanting to keep their hard-earned money to themselves, they conveniently ignore. I don't blame them for inheriting the collectivist idea of democracy and not bothering to critically question it, but thinking that if most people value stability more than freedom (or vice versa), then heuristically everyone does so and hence may be forced upon them needlessly locks people in tribal capitalism vs socialism discourse that ultimately accomplishes nothing.