Andy Beckett Thursday January 17, 2002 The Guardian
-clip-
Other people have been less polite. Within days of the deaths in New York and Washington, anyone, it seemed, who had ever been publicly critical of America or globalisation suddenly found themselves accused of complicity with Osama bin Laden - and worse. In the British press alone, they have been described as "defeatist" and "unpatriotic", "nihilist" and "masochistic", and both "Stalinist" and "fascist"; as "a Prada-Meinhof gang", "the handmaidens of Osama" and "an auxiliary to dictators"; as "limp", "lofty", "wobbly", "heartless and stupid", and "worm-eaten by Soviet propaganda"; as full of "loose talk", "wilful self-delusion" and "intellectual decadence"; as a collection of "useful idiots", "dead-eyed zombies", and "people who hate people".