  Lol yeah fear of communism is a very prevalent and integral part of American society, even to this day. Of course it's way too shallow and outright wrong to label people or groups of people in some strict, broad, undefined, and misleading category. Here is what I found to be a brief definition of "Third World Countries": The term "Third World" was coined in 1952, in the wake of the Second World War, to refer to the ex-colonies that were not part of the two newly emerged geopolitical blocs (Soviets and US) of associated interests. The "Third" then meant the third way . So by that definition, I guess other than the US and USSR, Western european former imperialist nations and Japan won't be considered third world (because they weren't colonies), but almost every other nation could be considered third world. And interestingly enough, the US did not refer to the Soviet bloc and other communist nations as first world either, they sometimes are even categorized as second world. 
