HIS COLD WAR POLITICS WERE JUST AS VILE:

Le Carré's post-Cold-War politics are best described as more Pilgerish than Pilger. Connoisseurs of his public statements can tick every space on the bingo card. Le Carré believes that corporations brainwash the bovine masses (check) on behalf of the imperial American hegemon (check) which is itself controlled by a conspiracy of right-wingers (check) who are pulling our puppet strings at the behest of -- guess who? -- the Jews (full house!). Or as le Carré explained, the neoconservatives are "appointing the state of Israel as the purpose of all Middle Eastern and practically all global policy".

Then there is the self-pity, that most deplorable affectation of Western intellectuals, who have never once faced the smallest threat of persecution or punishment for their writing. At one point during the last decade, le Carré compared himself to the German-Jewish diarist Victor Klemperer, who miraculously survived life under the Nazis.

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