Last week, CNN published a report about Bernie Sanders’s time as a member of an independent left-wing political party in Vermont called the Liberty Union Party. “Bernie Sanders in the 1970s urged nationalization of most major industries,” the headline read. Socialists were impressed, but not everyone shared our enthusiasm.

According to CNN, the Liberty Union Party called for “nationalization of the energy industry, public ownership of banks, telephone, electric, and drug companies and of the major means of production such as factories and capital, as well as other proposals such as a 100% income tax on the highest income earners in America.” Sanders ran for governor of Vermont and US Senate on the Liberty Union Party ticket four times between 1972 and 1976, and was briefly the party’s chairman. His dissatisfaction with its inactivity between elections led to his departure in 1977.

This history wasn’t exactly a secret. It made the rounds in 2016, with some using it to smear Bernie as an “out-and-out Stalinist.” The new report has solicited even more red-baiting attacks from the Right. “If there were any doubt that Democrats are the party of socialism,” said the spokesman for the Republican National Committee, “their highest-polling 2020 candidate has called for total government control of our country’s industries.”