'He finally burst out, 'Are you a Communist!' ' - Ha, I remember that. What was even funnier was that he followed it up with 'or a member of the Labour party?' - you know that hotbed of anti-war socialism... Finger on the pulse as always. I have a theory that when people accuse radical leftists of being childish or naive they reveal the last time they had an original, nonconformist thought with the reference they use, eg: "You were supposed to get over all that in 6th form / uni / your twenties, etc." (it usually doesn't go later than that). So someone like Bolton has to go back to the Cold War, or even the McCarthy era in his struggle to place Pilger's politics, so devoid is the US political/military establishment of deviant thinking. He knows he has to sneer, belittle or attack, but it's a kind of quaint curiosity for him to try and remember how he used to do it.
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