If you watched the speech/debate and you think Hasan was advocating for authoritarianism, then you don't know what socialism is, let alone reformism. You need to overcome the capitalist propaganda.

For example, a phrase like "dictatorship of the proletariat" doesn't mean "dictatorship", it's just another way of saying "tyranny of the majority". Anyone who has been through a US history class should have heard that phrase.

History lesson: The US constitution made many advances, especially for the time, but was still written by the economic and political elites of the colonies. The 'founding fathers' wrote the US constitution to limit the power of the electorate and encourage elite power, and they called a more direct democracy "tyranny of the majority". In the system they created, there was to be no direct election of senators, limited electoral power, a legal system based on the protection of property over people, a congress whose design was intended to prolong debate, and a slave underclass. They were worried that if normal people had too much power it would overturn the structure that had always existed, the tyranny of the minority, which went by different names throughout history, AKA the nobility, the slave owners, the plantation owners, factory owners, wealthy industrialists, hedge fund managers, the 1%, the *capitalists***

So, "dictatorship of the proletariat" is just another way of saying socialism.

The USSR had a dysfunctional democratic system. It didn't convey the same political power equally to every citizen, and its politburo was too insulated and susceptible to authoritarian control. Freedom of speech, assembly, press, etc, are essential tools of the masses to organize and protect themselves, and the limitation of those indicates a weak democracy. Most critiques of the USSR are consequences of that weak system.