Der Spiegel has an amusing excerpt from Jan Fleischhauer’s book, “Unter Linken. Von einem, der aus Versehen konservativ wurde” (Among Liberals: How to Become a Conservative by Accident). Shades of Nick Cohen’s litany of disillusion:
Oranges were such a rare commodity for us because — for a period that unfortunately coincided with our childhood — the world’s citrus fruit-producing countries had fallen into the hands of Latin American strongmen or otherwise questionable autocratic rulers. We couldn’t buy Spanish oranges as long as General Francisco Franco was in power, because every purchase would have signified indirect support for his dictatorship. South Africa was out of the question, because of its apartheid regime, and Jaffa oranges from Israel seemed politically incorrect for as long as the Palestinians had to suffer. We still had oranges from Florida at first, but that ended when Richard Nixon was elected president. Franco’s death in November 1975, at 82, was the only reason my brother and I did not succumb to scurvy.
