I was lucky in the sense that I was brought up in a politically sophisticated family, and my parents had been active in the inn anti Communist, left wing politics so that I I knew, unlike the other kids, I knew both what was wrong with communism and what was wrong with the kind of anti communism that right that ruled and rained and how and that It said that really the sort of mindless anti communism that assumed that any kind of helping of the poor, for example, was communism, that that was communism's best friend in my school.

I remember in my school a lot of a sudden a film called up Operation Abolition was being shown not in social studies class, not an assembly, but in gym class, because there was a sort of a John Birch Society gym teacher.

And, uh, there was this film being screened over and over again.

And it was a documentary, an alleged documentary actually produced by the government, produced by the House in American Activities Committee, a propaganda documentary against efforts to abolish the House UN American Activities Committee.

And, among other things, this is the first glimpse I had of student protests mean they actually showed protesters at Berkeley being hosed by by, uh, by fire hoses and being arrested.

And then, of course, find my friends and watch this film and say, Hey, that looks pretty good.

No, I remember driving with my mother in a car in 1952.

Ah, a little kid And I said, Mom, is there anybody in the world that you wish I would die?

Ah, heavy question for for a nine year old.

And she said yes, Josef Stalin and Joseph McCarthy.

And so I thought, This is this.

This was this was, ah, weighty business and and, um, I did know I did know a lot about about It's simply not true that liberals did not appreciate the threat of communism or the oppressiveness of communism.

In fact, liberals led the fight against communism and they were simply McCarthyism And this kind of right wing so called anti communism waas, I think on, ah knowing distortion of the way of where liberals actually stood.

Uh huh, McCarthy.

McCarthy was an evil figure, among other reasons, because he was not a real anti communist.

I mean, what what communist to be an anti communist.

The way I learned about anti communism meant to be against oppression in all its forms, admit meant to be in favour of freedom and especially freedom of speech and freedom of expression in all its forms.

And what McCarthyism said was, No, you can't express this opinion.

You can't express hit some freedom of speech.

It doesn't include this speech over here.

And, uh that to me.

I I couldn't understand why everyone couldn't see that that was essentially the same as Communism.

I remember when if I would say something critical about American about American society in school, you know, the sometimes the other kids would say, Why don't you go back to Russia?

And if you don't like it, go back to Russia and, uh, they just seem perfectly ridiculous.

I remember Ah Herblock cartoon that summed it up for me.

It showed Barry Goldwater pointing his finger angrily at some poor mother and child, sitting on a stoop and saying to her, If you had any gumption, you'd go out and inherit a department store because Goldwater was a department store heir and he was always talking about how we have to have individual initiative and get out there.

And and it just seems so transparently absurd of the conservative movement and Goldwater.

And it was it was resisting.

Not only it seemed to be resisting not only what was right, but what was inevitable.

Um, we forget now that we forget.

Now, I think that Goldwater and his movement was against the civil rights laws was against the voting rights laws, was essentially against the full citizenship of black people.

Um, I'm not saying they were racist.

I don't I'm sure that they were sincere in their views about state's rights or whatever it was, but we were impatient with it, and we just thought, This is ludicrous.