In other words, it is less acceptable in polite society to be a McCarthyite than to be a communist. In 2008 both leading candidates for the Democrat nomination for President of the United States of America were disciples of the communist Saul Alinsky and that illuminating fact was considered unremarkable by the establishment media.
>> I speak of the faculty lounges of our leading universities
The dweebs were pushing Marxism and a form of Agenda 21 decades ago at the university I attended.