Date: Sun, 16 Aug 1998 10:49:35 +0100 To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com From: Jim heartfield <Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk> Subject: Re: under-35s In-Reply-To: <l03130301b1fc0b179f02@[166.84.250.86]> MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Turnpike (32) Version 3.05 <74W2kiRljMZBzdLwRmnMvYWx62>
In message <l03130301b1fc0b179f02@[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood
<dhenwood at panix.com> writes
>So Frances Bolton grew up without Commies being demonized? Anyone else here
>under, say, age 35 who didn't imbibe the equivalence of Reds and Satan from
>birth?
Being 37 I don't qualify. But I had the reverse experience, in that my parents told me that everything on the news was the opposite of the truth. So I went through my childhood thinking that Leonid Brezhnev was fighting for freedom, and Arthur Scargill was the best thing that happened to Britain.
As a belief system it was a bit crude and could lead to errors. In my infantile way, I had an atlas which I gradually coloured in Red - not for the British Empire, but for the foundation of each Socialist Republic. Imaginemy surprise when some time in the seventies all of Africa had become socialist. I still cringe at all the absurd excuses I made for the clapped-out Soviet Union.
On the other hand, I'm grateful that I was an instinctive supporter of the wars of liberation in Vietnam, Ireland and Palestine. -- Jim heartfield