QUOTE : A new technique had been unveiled,” comments David Oshinsky, “guilt by disassociation.”h “Owen Lattimore had not been proved a Communist,” Time commented on the case, “but he had not proved that he was not one.” And how could he? Any more than he could prove that the Daily Worker wasn’t criticizing him as part of a secret Communist strategy? The comment illustrates how the ground had shifted. At the outset of the Red Scare, Communists might have been people with whom one absolutely disagreed but whose actions were broadly legal and acceptable. Then Communists per se came to be seen as disloyal and their activities semicriminal. Then people who might have been Communists were added to that category, or people whose arguments were sometimes the same as the Communists. Assumption was piled on assumption, until you could have someone as nonrevolutionary as Lattimore, whose calvary could be justified because “he had not proved he was not” a Communist. One feature of widely believed conspiracy theories may be that even those who do not accept them often cease to examine them properly; something that would otherwise be quickly seen as absurd is instead treated as if it were one genuine possibility among several.