The Zinning of America: How to Watch “The People Speak” on The History Channel on Sunday Night
Part I
In 1997, Matt Damon played the part of a janitor who turned out to be not only a math wizard, but one of the most brilliant men you could find anywhere. Trying to impress an arrogant Harvard student, who thought he knew everything, Damon’s character quotes from Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. He tells the Harvard kid and a psychiatrist at the hospital he works at that “you’re surrounding yourself with all the wrong fuckin’ books. You wanna read a real history book, read Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States. That book’ll fuckin’ knock you on your ass.”
A few years later, HBO’s “The Sopranos” had a Columbus Day episode. Tony’s kid informs him that they don’t celebrate it at school, because Columbus was a practitioner of genocide against the Indian natives in the new land. When Tony asks him where he got that from, he tells him it was from their school textbook , Zinn’s People’s History.
Zinn’s book has now gone through many editions, and became the single best selling text of history that has ever been published- selling over two million copies—some 128,000 each year since his first edition was published over twenty years ago! Schools around the nation actually use it as a textbook. As Dan Flynn notes, the course statement for a history class at Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA states that “This is an advanced class and all students should have read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States before the first day of class, to give us a common background to begin the class.”
So if you want to know why the current generation hews to a left-wing world view, look no further than the influence of Zinn. Lenin once famously quipped that “We will sell the capitalists the rope that we will use to hang them.” So true, except now the TV networks and its corporate owners are buying not the rope, but Zinn’s book for an even bigger mass market.
When Zinn’s book was just published, Matt Damon lived next door to him. He and his friend Ben Affleck spent long hours with Zinn. For many years Damon and Affleck tried to fund a major TV mini-series based on Zinn’s book. Originally, it looked like Fox had signed a deal, but it was squashed by Rubert Murdoch. Now, they have managed to partially reach their goal, with this Sunday’s TV special on the History channel, called “The People Speak: Democracy is Not A Spectator Sport.”
The hype for the show has been everywhere. On the TV talk shows you cannot have escaped its stars hyping it. If you read a popular news magazine or a daily paper, you’ve heard about it. Its adherents all make the same argument: for the first time, you get the real American story. The point is not to study and understand the past, but rather, as Damon told The New York Times,to show the past’s resonance for today, when the public is angry about banks and bailouts, and foreign wars. “That’s by design,” Damon said. “What they were up against oftentimes are exactly the same things we’re up against now.” Zinn added people rebelled in the past, and he hopes the series will spread rebellion now, and “lead into a larger movement for economic justice.” Zinn sees history as a tool to be utilized behalf of radical politics- not as a way to understand our country’s growth and development.
As The History Channel people present it, as do many of the actors and stars on the program, it is all so benign— simply a way to show the nation through dramatic readings, songs and Zinn’s narrative, some of the key documents that were at the center of our nation’s past. Viggo Mortensen says that it is history “from the standpoint of ordinary people often overlooked in our textbooks and our culture.” (This of course, is hardly the case. Indeed, for the past two decades, the new social historians have dominated the profession of history, and if anything has been overlooked in our universities and textbooks, it is plain old political history and narrative history.) Mortensen points to the voice of an IWW member, who points out WW I “is a businessman’s war,” and hence the people shouldn’t be shot to “save the lovely state of affairs which we now enjoy.” Just like today, when our troops are in Afghanistan and Iraq, of course, on behalf of the oil interests and Halliburton. Nothing has to be said about the actual causes and reasons for America’s entrance into the war—that would just confuse things.
The point is not to understand the past, according to the actors who participate, but to inspire people to make their voices heard today, not to tell it “from the standpoints of generals and kings and presidents,” which “encourages passivity, a sense of hopelessness.” Change only comes to these people through dissent, struggle, strikes, boycotts and the like. Thus one of the major participants, actor Josh Brolin, says in the trailer for his video performance, that “there is a need to speak out” and the people who did in the past were not heard, and now we can hear “the gold in their words.” As for the present, Brolin adds, people have to “speak out” and that is “the only goal,” so people can be “empowered” to take action which is “fantastic.” Does Brolin, I wonder, apply his view to the tea parties, where citizens who are empowered take action? No one seems to have asked him that question.
Damon also told USA Today that TV “is the perfect format for a history lesson. You’re getting the actual text verbatim, so there’s no spin, performed by these great actors.” If he went back to school today, he says, he’d be a history major. Spare us, please. But Brolin at least is pleased that his daughter’s California high school uses Zinn’s book as a text, so at least she’ll know true history.
Of course, its defenders say in advance, “the lunatic right will howl to the heavens after seeing ‘liberal Hollywood’ perform the words of labor radicals, anti-racists, feminists and socialists.” So all who might pay attention to critics, be forewarned by Dave Zirin at HuffPost, you are part of the “lunatic right.” I mean, who else would dare criticize this series? Indeed, to criticize this show is like Nazi “book-burning.” Our country, Zirin writes, “is “dedicated to historical amnesia,” and those in power fear our radical past. “We need to rescue the great battles for social justice from becoming either co-opted or simply erased from the history books. Our children don’t learn about the people who made the Civil Rights Movement.” I wonder what school Zirin went to. It seems at times that is all they learn about, as everyone who has kids in school well know.
And of course, Zirin hints that Obama has already betrayed those who voted for him, by sending troops to Afghanistan, so that Obama “in practice has been like watching George W. Bush with a working cerebellum.” And he thinks the administration is “counting on the American people” to support him and pretend “we never saw this movie before.” That is what the TV series will, he hopes, prevent, so that it will “resurrect our past as a guide to fight for the future.” New generations will now not only hear the words of Socialist Party leader Gene Debs in the 20’s, but will themselves turn to the works of Zinn, who knows that history is not about “understanding the past,” but about “changing the future.” That alone, by the way, should disqualify anyone from ever calling Zinn a “historian.”
Part II
I must confess that I have not seen the actual program. The producers, knowing that the media is more than willing to cooperate with them in the hype, obviously do not want advance criticism from those who they know will have sound criticisms. So what one can write depends only on what is on the show’s website. Although we have some examples and videos of material that is on the program, what they do not give us is the narrative that ties the episodes together, that is written and spoken by Zinn and written with his co-author Anthony Arnove (who also is a co-producer of the program and co-author with Zinn of some of his books).
I tried to get the DVD in advance, but was unsuccessful. Arnove e-mailed an associate to send me one, but it never came. He did let me know he despises my ideology but was glad, he wrote, that at least I wanted to see the show before criticizing it. (He also thanked me for taking him and my son many years ago, when they were in college, to a Bob Dylan concert.)
Zinn, I suspect, would like to paint all his detractors as nutty right-wingers, and he can easily write off criticism coming from people like Daniel Flynn, David Horowitz, or Mark Tapson who has blasted him at BigHollywood.com. Tapson’s article speaks to those who already agree with him, and knocks Zinn for being the far leftist we all know he is already. It’s easy to prove that, and Zinn and company can respond that attacks like these are simply ideological, and not to be taken seriously.
As Zinn sees it, America is a story of dissent. A favorable critic, Mary McNamara, writes in The Los Angeles Times that democracy is a political activity, and that all social change came from the rebels who demanded it often using violence to gain their ends. She writes that the dramatic readings “provides a striking, exhilarating and at times horrifying reminder of not just our indomitable ability to change but also this country’s collective history of oppression.” But even McNamara has her reservations. She writes:
Class division is a drumbeat throughout “The People Speak,” which is a primer of liberal ideology with a decided bent toward socialism; no one’s reading a few rousing passages of Ayn Rand’s, for instance. The letters and journals and speeches selected cover the American timeline, from the abolitionists through AIDS activists, but the theme of personal and political enfranchisement, tolerance, peace and American humility is the consistent theme. Equal rights, protection of workers, protection of children, even rent control are celebrated while concepts such as patriotism — the last refuge of scoundrels, according to pacifist and anarchist Emma Goldman — and national security are portrayed as the whip and cattle prod used by the power elite. Even World War II is cast as a false model for American military domination.
Evidently joining the likes of Pat Buchanan, the Zinn film (which she has evidently actually viewed) puts World War II in the pantheon of unnecessary wars and the result of America’s reaching for global hegemony.
The Critique of Michael Kazin
Therefore, one must read some of the brilliant serious critiques that have appeared over the years about Howard Zinn. The most important and serious comes from a first-rate historian who happens to be openly a man of the Left, but whose commitment to history rather than political ideology leads him to have authored the single most devastating attack written on Zinn. I urge readers to hit this link and read the entire article by Michael Kazin, which was published in a left of center journal that should be dear to Zinn’s heart, Dissent.
Kazin argues, and goes on to prove, that “A People’s History is bad history, albeit gilded with virtuous intentions. Zinn reduces the past to a Manichean fable and makes no serious attempt to address the biggest question a leftist can ask about U.S. history: why have most Americans accepted the legitimacy of the capitalist republic in which they live?” As Kazin says: “History for Zinn is thus a painful narrative about ordinary folks who keep struggling to achieve equality, democracy, and a tolerant society, yet somehow are always defeated by a tiny band of rulers whose wiles match their greed. He describes the American Revolution as a clever device to defeat “potential rebellions and create a consensus of popular support for the rule of a new, privileged leadership.”
In Zinn’s eyes, therefore, the people are rather stupid, since the rulers are always able to hoodwink them, somehow making them believe that the system they support and the country they live is not really evil. To learn the truth, all they have to do, of course, is read Howard Zinn and watch this program. One would wonder after reading Zinn, as Kazin notes, why anyone but the very rich would ever want to come to America and stay here. After all, whenever they win victories, even those are ruined when the capitalists take away all meaning. The civil rights movement smashed Jim Crow and ended segregation, but the black masses were not able to destroy capitalism, thus guaranteeing them perpetual misery. Kazin captures it perfectly. “Ordinary Americans,” he writes, “seem to live [for Zinn] only to fight the rich and haughty and, inevitably, to be fooled by them.”
Kazin paints Zinn as a propagandist, not a historian, who “measures individuals according to his own rigid standard of how they should have thought and acted.” He never mentions those who came here and succeeded—immigrants who build businesses and trade unions, women who were both suffragists and in favor of temperance and opposed to abortion, African-Americans who supported the doctrine of improvement favored by Booker T. Washington, not only the militant path espoused by W. E.B. DuBois. To Zinn, there is only one kind of rebel, and all complexity goes out the window.
Naturally, as Kazin points out, Zinn never mentions conservatism which is obviously a disagreeable thing he would rather forget, or Christianity, a force that motivated much of the reform Zinn supposedly favors. His entire history is one of a catalog of American imperialism’s onward march of oppression at home and power abroad. It is not surprising his TV film evidently treats WW II in the same way, since in Zinn’s eyes—again I quote Kazin—the war is brought down to its “meanest components:profits for military industries, racism toward the Japanese, and the senseless destruction of enemy cities.” Even then America to Zinn had no real enemies.
Finally, Kazin makes an interesting point, that challenges Zinn’s supporters who believe his perspective is one opposed to passivity. Actually, Kazin argues, it is nothing but “an apology for political failure.” The people never win, because the rulers are so ingenious. They can be freed by learning how they are controlled, but never can win. As for the Left, it was always correct, and never did anything wrong. Zinn lived both through the Communist years of the 40’s and the New Left of the 60’s, but not once does he reveal the CP’s slavery to Stalin’s agenda or the New Left’s commitment to the guerrilla warfare fantasy of Bill Ayers and friends.
Kazin himself is dedicated to social change. He is a radical. But he understands that the rulers Zinn disdains keep getting elected by the people Zinn says he loves, or acknowledge that while revolution failed, reform in fact improved the lives of average people who eschew radical change. Perhaps conservatives should be happy, since Kazin concludes that Zinn’s “fatalistic vision can only keep the left just where it is: on the margins of American political life.”
There are other similar critiques one should check out. At the indomitable History News Network, its editor in chief Rick Shenkman offers “The Left’s Blind Spot,” in which he writes that “Zinn plays the role in a self-satisfied often uncritical mainstream culture of the seemingly attractive dangerous rebel.” Zinn, he shows, keeps up a relentless rage at American horrors abroad, never mentioning that the foreign policy he abhors has been supported over time by the same masses he claims to revere. The People are lionized when they endorse things Zinn favors; they are ignored when they support policies he detests.
The Critique of Aileen S. Kraditor
There is one other source readers should consult, if they have access to a university library or J-Stor. It is an article written by a major American historian, who when she wrote it in 1972, was one of the first generation of new feminist and social historians, Aileen S. Kraditor. Then a radical who was starting to ask difficult questions, she eventually became a rock-ribbed conservative.
In the British Marxist journal Past and Present (August 1972,) she wrote a path breaking article called “American Radical Historians on Their Heritage,” a piece which had Zinn read, might have given him pause. Virtually everything Zinn has done wrong was taken up by Kraditor, who saw early on the a-historical direction towards which some radical historians were moving.
Kraditor began by noting that the first thing a historian has to do is respect “the pastness of the past.” She goes on to write that a new group of Left historians clearly ignore that. “I believe,” she wrote, “the judgement applies with particular force to those on the Left who have endeavored to find in American history justifications for and forerunners of their own party or movement,” and that many “have been interested in little else.” History, in their eyes, becomes a “cheering section as they root for the same victims or reformers struggling against the same Oppressors or Interests.” It is a conflict paradigm shared by both liberal and Left historians. They believe only that the people fight the elites, and they never ask about the “consensus about all the values and beliefs that really matter to the maintenance of the established order.” Instead of asking for examples of the people fighting the interests—as Zinn does today—she says the real question is “Who fought whom and over what issue,” and whether or not the fight affected “the basic structure of the system.” These are, of course, precisely the kind of questions Howard Zinn and his followers never ask.
Kraditor’s observations are so adroit it is as if she read Zinn’s book before he even wrote it. The Left historians, she writes, “have tended…to focus on Our Side’s heroism, dedication, love for
The People—non-historical qualities that they of course see in themselves and want their contemporaries to see in them. In both their views of historical events and their views of their own vocation as radicals they have often underestimated the importance of ideology as a mechanism of class rule.” When they deal with the radicals of the past they eulogize- they almost never discuss what the majority of the people believe or the ideas of the elites of the day. In fact, she argues, when the masses take positions they do not like, they simply see them as “obstacles to overcome, illusions to be dispelled.” They never look at their actual beliefs to see “elements of truth” that led common people in the past to not follow the radicals of their own day. She writes:
The penchant for asking yes-type questions reinforces this elitism, for the historian who seeks evidence that past radicals and the masses were forerunners of himself will tend to overlook the democratic racism, the docile slaves, the militancy of workers struggling for a larger slice of the pie, the customary isolation of socialist movements in the United States, and many other things that do not fit his picture of the past.
Keep this in mind when you see the famous actors reading the words of radicals of the past. Instead of historical context, you will have words uttered meant to show that the issues are the same today, not obsolete and conditioned by the time in which the words were uttered, as Kraditor insists. They cannot be depicted in our own image, as Zinn tries to do. Kraditor puts it this way:
To exclude from our definition…the movement to humanize slavery, or the movement to bar Catholics from office-holding during the nineteenth century, is to distort our image of the past by depicting it in the image of the present, just as it would be to exclude from our definition of past radicalisms that that did not adhere to the small-communitarian ideal. To consider as an unfortunate deviation…the nativist and racist aspects of the suffragist movement is to distort these movements by depicting them in our own image.
Anyone out there willing to make a bet whether “The People Speak” tells its views about the nativism and racism of its past heroes? Will we learn that Gene Debs’ Socialist Party had separate black chapters and saw no need to challenge white racism? I somehow don’t think so. As Kraditor notes, some of the same people who were radical in their political and social views were conservative in their economic views (like William Lloyd Garrison) and others were radical in economic views “and reactionary on the subject of race.” It was a little more complex than the world of Zinnite history has it. Her main point:
To construct a ‘radical’ or ‘reactionary’ tradition in our own terms and for our own purposes, in the way that ‘relevance’ historians do [Zinn, I would argue] not only do we have to lift whole movements out of their contexts; we must also split individual men’s minds and discard half, or, to put it another way, we must match disembodied ideas from the past with disembodies ideas in the present, ignoring the real world in both contexts that gave and give them the only meanings they can have.
Kraditor also raises another point that vividly calls into question Zinn’s beliefs that the words of these past figures inspires one in fighting for the need for revolution. She writes: “The majority of white abolitionists and the majority of suffragists worked hard to convince their compatriots that the changes they advocated were not revolutionary, that far from undermining the accepted distribution of power they would eliminate deviations from the democratic principle it was supposedly based on.” For good measure, she adds that “the racism and nativism in the [suffragist’s] movement’s thinking were not an aberration and did not conflict with the movement’s objective of suffrage.” Their movement was one for reform- a necessary one- but not “a threat to the established order.”
These reforms, she writes, showed what changes society could accommodate without endangering its fundamental structure. Reform movements helped change America, that “a redefinition of certain principles was necessary and possible,” and once enacted, helped stave off further dissatisfaction. But they worked to strengthen the people’s loyalty to the country that showed it could accommodate change—not to move them in the direction of revolution that Zinn presupposes was the case. These words, I argue, sum up all that is wrong with Zinn’s history:
The point is that a historical account emphasizing how radicals, reformers, workers, have fought heroically to wring concessions from politicians and bosses tells only half the truth, for it focuses on individual men’s morality or clearsightedness, or their opposites, and ignores the system’s power structure and capabilities. The Old Left’s [Zinn’s] historiography is little more than the chronicle of how every working-class advance has been due to the workers’ struggles against ruling-class opposition. The other half of the picture is that each such advance was proved by subsequent events to have been perfectly compatible with the continued hegemony of the class that opposed it.
Thus they ransack the past, and here she finally mentions Zinn, “not for its own sake, but as a source of alternative models of what the future might become.” And this is not the job of the historian, but of the propagandist who distorts the past to present false examples for his own radical prescriptions for the present.
Part III
And so we get to tonight’s TV presentation, portions of which we have online. Let me take a few examples. Let us examine Josh Brolin’s reading of Bartolomo Vanzetti’s letter to the court, proclaiming his innocence and announcing his willingness to suffer martyrdom on behalf of the truth. Brolin, of course, reads it with power. He is an actor. We expect that. He says he was convicted because he was “against the war,” not because he favored victory for the German enemy. Vanzetti says he is proud to die, since he can show there is no liberty or prosperity in America; that all that the rulers say is a lie.
Now again, there is a hidden context to that case. Again, I have not seen the program, and I do not know what the Zinn-Arnove script says before Brolin reads his words. But I am certain of one thing. Viewers will not learn that Sacco and Vanzetti were members of a radical and violent anarchist sect led by Luigi Galleani, that believed in robbery, murder and violence in their quest to overthrow the State. There was at the time anti-immigrant and anti-Italian prejudice; there was a blatant disrespect for civil liberties, and the Judge called the two “anarchist bastards” in court, revealing his own heavily biased point of view. But that is the only side of the story that the TV program will reveal.
Nor will viewers learn that there is substantial proof that Sacco was guilty of murdering a guard in order to steal a factory’s payroll for the movement. A few writes have cast doubt about this, but there is real controversy among historians and serious scholars. The entry in Wikipedia accurately summarizes the differences and the controversy among historians. It is not a given that both of the men were innocent.
We also get Morgan Freeman reading the powerful oratory by Frederick Douglass made by the great black abolitionist on July 4, 1852. The actor- in this video Douglass is played by Brian Jones-speaks the words spoken by Douglass at the Corinthian in Rochester, New York. Yes, Douglass at the time made clear that he could not give a tribute, since the promises of the Declaration were not those given to the slaves. He emphasized “the disparity between us,” since the Negro was not part of the “blessings” that other Americans celebrated. The 4th was that of the whites, he said, “not mine.” It is an attack against slavery, meant to acquaint those outside the South of the reality they were ignoring.
The 4th meant nothing to the slave, Douglass had said. He was correct. But viewers will not learn that after the end of the Civil War, Douglass- the most radical and unforgiving of abolitionists-gave up protest for politics, and acknowledged the leadership and greatness of Abraham Lincoln, whom he called “the black man’s President.” One must read real history, in particular, James Oakes’ The Radical and the Republican, to learn that while during Lincoln’s presidency, Douglass had heaped criticism after criticism at the President. Yet, in the major speech Douglass gave after Lincoln’s death, on April 14, 1876, Douglass told his audience that reality was “more complicated” than it appeared to himself and the abolitionists years earlier. “Abraham Lincoln,” he told his black audience, “saved for you a country,” and “delivered us from a bondage…one hour of which was worse than ages of the oppression your father rose in rebellion to oppose.” He told them that he and others took into account the “circumstances” of Lincoln’s position, and ignored his straying and hesitation and concentrated on what Oakes calls his “longstanding commitments.” Douglass concluded: “We came to the conclusion that the hour and the man of our redemption had met in the person of Abraham Lincoln.”
The point is again that history is complicated, and Douglass himself changed positions and saw how America had grown and what Lincoln had accomplished, and joined the Republican Party and no longer stood outside the political system as a stranger. Oakes compares this speech with that of the July 4th oration. What would Zinn’s viewers think if this was presented right after the earlier Douglass speech? It might teach the viewer something about history, although not the history Zinn seeks to convey. As Oakes writes: “So Douglass shifted perspective again, this time to see events from Lincoln’s point of view, that of a democratically elected official with legitimate obligations to all the people.” He realized that in this light, “Lincoln’s record soared to greatness.” Douglass could acknowledge that; Zinn evidently cannot.
Change, in other words, came from both reformers and politicians, both of whom played a role, and both who at times conflicted with one another; and at other times coincided. History is complex—not that of a simple struggle between the forces of light and those of darkness.
Of course, much of the video will speak only to those already convinced. Marisa Tomei reads Cindy Sheehan’s speech “It’s Time the Antiwar Choir Started Singing.” Since the producers obviously chose to include this in the speech, Sheehan more than any other figure has become nothing but a laughing stock. Her words are so crude, so repellent, that those who watch it could perhaps be turned off forever. That Zinn and Arnove could include such a figure with the likes of Douglass is not only a case of bad judgment, but an example of the left-wing dogma that only an audience of fellow-travelers like those who applaud Tomei, are part of.
We also have Sandra Oh playing Emma Goldman, as she did in this appearance before an audience, who cheers Goldman’s words that “patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.” An outdated assault at patriotism, Goldman’s words are meant to show disdain at those who dissent from Zinn’s perspective, and believe that some who are patriots have solid reasons to support a war. It is assumed her pacifist screed is correct. Goldman’s argument, indeed, can easily be used to praise those who opposed World War II as well as World War I. But the speech is obviously meant for today’s America, since Goldman (or Sandra Oh) says with a sneer that Americans think they are a peaceful people, while all they do is drop bombs on those who are innocent. America, she says, “plants her neck on all other peoples,” since that is “the logic of patriotism.” The speech ends with Goldman telling her audience, the workers will demand that the masters do their own killing; the people have done enough on their behalf. The audience at this reading breaks out in applause.
Again, Goldman’s words are meant to rouse people today to oppose Obama’s war in Afghanistan, as many of Zinn’s supporters are calling it and will undoubtedly do. One must forget that from the start, when after 9-11 took place, Zinn blamed the united response of our country on America’s imperial stance and from the start, he opposed the war against the Taliban. The people did not have Zinn’s position; they supported retaliation against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Obviously, his hope is that this TV program will help them see what is really in their interest, which Zinn alone stands for. Goldman’s speech was made many years ago, about a different war, and in a different time and place. Yet, obviously, her words are meant to be taken as a guide for action today, as if the stand as a guide for all time, were not specific to time and place.
Finally, the audience will hear Josh Brolin reading from Dalton Trumbo’s anti-war novel, Johnny Got His Gun. I do not have the video, and hence do not know what the narration says as an introduction. But I am certain we will not hear how Trumbo wrote this and had it published during the years of the Nazi-Soviet Pact from 1939 to 1941, when Trumbo and his fellow Communist Party members abandoned their once proud anti-fascism, and proclaimed that Nazi Germany was a benign power, and that the enemy of “the people” was Franklin D. Roosevelt and imperial Britain, who were ganging up on all the European powers, like Germany and its Soviet ally, who wanted peace and an end to war.
Nor will it tell the audience of how once the Nazis invaded Soviet Russia on June 22 of 1941, Trumbo withdrew his own book from circulation, took the plates from the publisher, and made it unavailable. A book preaching pacifism would interfere with the need to call for arms against the Soviet Union. Not only did Trumbo do this, but he called the FBI, and asked them to come to his home. He had received letters from readers who having heard the book was good, asked where they could obtain a copy. Trumbo told the FBI he wanted to give them the names of his correspondents, since they might be opponents of the President, might be pro-Nazi, and could be traitors. In other words, he not only named names, but asked the FBI to investigate people he knew nothing about, who only wanted to read his book, because they might even engage in politics and “oppose” the Commander-in-Chief.
Years later, when the Vietnam War broke out, Trumbo quickly had the book republished, and soon Hollywood came forward with a film version. Once again, the book he once banned on his own was now available. After all, it was useful as a tool against a war of which he disapproved. And obviously, Zinn wants it out there again to serve a similar use today.
Conclusion
This has been a long piece. There will be more to say about this film after it is on television, and the extended version is released on DVD. But the final version will not change the critique I have offered here about Zinn’s view of history, and his approach to politics.
That a major TV cable channel has seen fit to put this on the air, says much about the state of our culture today.
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Excellent critique – I frankly haven’t read any of the works you have cited, however, one would think that common sense rules. If they truly believe in their cause, why not go (live) somewhere where there truly is oppression? Are not Hollywood and their ilk (with their overly capitalistic bent, I mean, Damon is one wealthy man, no?) powerful themselves? And Mr Zinn, is he not a puppet (i.e. needs Damon’s money) of Damon and crew (or the other way around?). Frankly, their stances while living in the lap of luxury are so hypocritical, it’s not worth my time to listen to them outside of perhaps watching their movies. However, I’ve even come to the point where I won’t watch their movies.
Also, your point about the selectiveness of their vision is spot on. Context in anything is a very important concept. Essentially, Mr Zinn is unwilling to include the context surrounding the historical figures and their stances. Therefore, it is incomplete and unbalanced.
Lastly, I had to laugh about someone saying they detest your ideology, but appreciate your largesse regarding the Dylan concert. Do not your actions say more than words? If someone’s actions match their words, then believe what they say, otherwise believe what they do.
Zinn’s persepctive isn’t “overlooked” when enamored liberals trumpet it all the time. How ’bout equal time for stuff that actually happened and/or leftists don’t like? Oh, now that’s “racist” and narrowed-minded to have.
As someone who used to watch History Channel shows like “Civil War Journal”, “Dogfights”,
and “Wild West Tech”, and even the stranger stuff like “UFO Hunters” and “Monster Quest” and enjoy them (UH and MQ both started out highly skeptical and ended up incredibly credulous), all I can say about this show is, “Stick a fork in HC- it’s done”.
As someone who tried to read Zinn’s book (and gave up after spotting the twelfth mistake, or maybe outright falsification, in just the first chapter), I can understand how “progressives” must love it, because it confirms all their deep-seated beliefs in how evil and stupid their fellow Americans really are, and always have been. In fact, for half of what Zinn says to be accurate, this continent must have been “invaded” solely by mental defectives. Which leads to the question of how we have survived as long as we have.
It must have taken divine intervention, a factor that would probably not have surprised the Founding Fathers but would no doubt displease Zinn no end, both on the grounds of helping the “bad guys” win and offering final and clinching proof that G-d exists. (Which deprives Zinn & Co. of some of their best arguments for their own elevated stature.)
What isn’t in question is the question of the wisdom of spending any time (or cable or satellite rental money) watching Zinn & Friends babble in prime time. What we really need is not a TV special, but a cheap Cliff’s Notes version of Zinn’s book.
With all the errors clearly noted.
clear ether
eon
Ron, thank you for a well researched and scholarly rebuttal to the American BBC’s Zinn propaganda piece. Such reporting isn’t seen at all these days in our America. Stay safe.
Zinn is an America-hating propagandist. Liberal educators have pushed his distorted crap for years. It is required reading in schools throughout the country, hence the vast sales figures.
I was browsing the children’s section of a bookstore last week and saw a children’s version of Zinn’s smear of the U.S. I nearly barfed. The extreme left has a stranglehold on our people from cradle to grave.
Any parent who sees their children reading this man’s garbage should sit down and have a serious talk with their kids about the role of propaganda in their education. Parents should also read Paul Johnson’s (Award-winning British historian and author) A HIstory of the American People for some ammo to combat Zinn’s trash.
Oh, this is rich. Having uber-wealthy actors (by trade people pretending to be someone else) reading what Zinn preaches and trying to indoctrinate us into his preverted rewriting of American history is wonderfully ironic.
Zinn pretends to loathe wealth yet those following him are the wealthy. I’d like to know how much of Zinn’s wealth from his royalties has he given to the poor? How about Freeman, Glover, Damon and the rest giving their wealth to poor African, or South American people. Wouldn’t that be more humane and redistributionist than reading some phony caricature of history. How come Zinn has no problem with the wealthy but has disdain for those who actually work for a living?
The left is all a lie. Everything about them is based on a lie. Hypocrit is too soft a term to describe them. They are about power and controlling the proletariat.
Wealthy, pampered, self-congratulating, academically unaccomplished celebrities explaining American history — on a cable network owned by the BBC. What could go wrong?
See: Hedonistic Historians http://bereapundit.com/hedonistic-historians/
Notice these leftists who constantly whine about how terrible the US supposedly is never move to another country.
This article is very good and thorough.
Want a good–and legit–history book about pre-colonial history? Try “1491″. Great book, and, with a little thought, it explains HOW one could conclude that Columbus killed millions even though he did not. Fantastic. For more time periods read “Lies My Teacher Told Me” and “Weird History”, both widely available.
“Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past.”
Orwell in 1984
These are the bitter fruits of having allowed the left to control history teaching.
Sanctimonious Marxist claptrap history for mediocre minds like those of Damon, Brolin and Mortensen, comfortably wealthy, pampered and insulated actors. This induces nausea.
Howard Zinn is an idiot who bluntly admits in not letting facts get in the way of his leftist narrative. His postmodernist approach is inherently anti-intellectual. This sort of nonsense is the inevitable result of the affirmative action policies that have been firmly in place for minimally the last forty years. The standards in the liberal arts disciplines have become a joke. Twenty percent of today’s students may not even be bright enough to do the assigned work. I have long said that everybody possessing a liberal arts degree behind their name should be treated like an idiot until proven otherwise. Only hard science credentials are usually worthy of respect.
@David Thomson #7
You touched the wave of the (dystopic) future: the subordination of science and knowledge to a political agenda. It is not only evident in people like Zinn. The East Anglia CRU scientists have demonstrably crossed a line from science to ideology. And in my own field, I’ve seen Harvard studies (from Elizabeth Warren and David Himmelstein) who disseminate papers attributing the majority of US consumer bankruptcies to lack of health insurance, and attributing 144,000 deaths per year in America to the same lack of health insurance (a cri de coeur taken up by the demagogic congressman Alan Grayson from Florida). This too is science manipulated to serve a political agenda. Expect more of this.
“I’ve seen Harvard studies…”
Harvard University is mostly an intellectual whorehouse. Shabby scholarship is the norm in the softer areas of study. Unfortunately, the Harvard “elites” have been able to con the American people to believe otherwise. That’s a major reason why the poorly educated Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. Caroline “you know, you know” Kennedy also graduated from Harvard. Professors at this vastly overrated academic institution are infamous for giving their students unearned grades. A medical degree from Harvard may represent a fantastic accomplishment—but the liberal arts graduates are usually a bunch of dummies.
“You’re getting the actual text verbatim, so there’s no spin,”
LOL! Wow, this is sad.
“… performed by these great actors.”
Oh my, I might hurt myself laughing to the second part if my head wasn’t thrown back already from the absurdity.
This too is science manipulated to serve a political agenda. Expect more of this.
It’s almost bad enough to make one long for a true technocracy to cut through all of the sob stories. Bring on “GATTACA”, already.
Thanks Mr. Radosh.
Re:David Thomson & Zhombre
You have no idea how right you are. I returned to college to finish my degree (yes, liberal arts) two years ago. I only needed four classes to get my degree. I took a class that sounded interesting to get my feet wet, Media and Culture. I got an A, because I showed up for every class. Yes, that was the reason for the A. I wrote four papers, I never received a grade on. The second to last class I had become so concerned about it I asked the professor during class, how I knew if I was passing because I had not received any grade on my papers thus far. His answer, not to worry if you showed up to every class you got an A. I was infuriated, what a waste of my time. The history classes were horrifying. I had to read “Give Me Liberty,” by Eric Foner. After the first chapter, I had concluded that Mr. Foner believed America was a bad place. He believed America could not be redeemed because it was born out of the sin of slavery and killing the Indians, therefore it had to be destroyed. I could not use any other sources, including primary source material, to refute the author’s take on history. In addition, the final exam was a research paper that could only be written using the journals the professor laid out in the syllabus and Foner’s book. How is THAT for a history course???
I hope our children are stoned or drunk for college, it is the only hope I have for our future.
Finally, after seeing the e-mails from the CRU gang I understand very well how they manipulated data and made sure the pier reviewed process is a scam. Where do we turn when the scientific community, media, and government officials can no longer be trusted?
The Howard Zinn synthesis for American history duplicates Stalinist propaganda from the early 1950s on. In its later phases, the Soviets identified its most powerful opponent as “Zionist.” Hitler did the same when his propaganda alleged that the U.S. was controlled by Jews, and used Indian removal as an example of Uncle Sam’s evil habits.
But it is important for more alert readers to distinguish between sectors of “the Left”. See my blog http://clarespark.com/2009/11/24/perceptions-of-the-enemy/, to see why most of them, including left-liberals, have no twinges of conscience as they falsify U.S. history, not because bad things didn’t happen, but because they have no boundaries that would locate the less attractive events and practices in our history in the past, as opposed to continuation in the present of Indian removal, slavery, and the lack of women’s suffrage.
Lump these useless idiots in with the global warming-CO2-
scam artist-’scientists’.I appreciated the quote from Zinn you provided:
so that Obama “in practice has been like watching George W. Bush with a working cerebellum.”
I appreciated the Zinn quote you provided:
“…so that Obama “in practice has been like watching George W. Bush with a working cerebellum.” ”
I have never read any of Zinn’s books and thankfully escaped the influence of these obviously noxious texts. From what I’ve read here, it appears that Mr. Zinn, like President Obama, also has a “working cerebellum”.
But based upon their unwavering support of socialist and communist programs, policies, and ideologies, it is very clear that neither man has a working cerebrum. And, it would appear, a large percentage of the Leftists occupying Hollywood have equally little brain power.
As the Ron Radosh says, oral history, or “testimony” as it’s sometimes referred to, has permeated much history writing since the 70s or early 80s. At some levels (military history, my area of whatever expertise I exhibit) it’s useful. You get to know what things are like on the ground, as opposed to the General’s tent or headquarters, whatever. People can forget warfare is bloody. The difficulty (to my mind) comes when the historical study is *all* narrative of low-level participants, with no context. The context of course is tricky: interpreting events is a subjective art, and things can be distorted in one fashion or other. That *can* lead to the idea that since such work is subjective, it should be avoided, in favor of the testimonies by themselves, with the sentiment that they *can’t* be distorted.
The trick here is that of course they can. You can probably, if you look hard enough, in the proper directions, quote 50 or 100 people who opposed America’s entry into World War II. If you left their quotations bare on the page, with no context, left out the part about Pearl Harbor, Japanese atrocities in China, Hitler ditto in Eastern Europe, and so forth, you’d leave people thinking that World War II was another “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight” and completely unjustified. You’d be dead wrong, but you could come to that conclusion.
I also find find one observation of Radosh’s to be particularly appropriate…when the radical left and the radical right can agree on something, then you know you’re in trouble. The fact that Pat Buchannon and Howard Zinn agree that World War II was something the United States didn’t want to get involved in is illuminating. It’s also interesting to note how ostracized Buchannon has been, while Zinn is considered main-stream, and used as a textbook across the country.
Frankly, I avoided Zinn once I read that Noam Chomsky is a big fan. That told me all I needed to know.
Gosh..Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, Hollywood Alcoholics and students of History. They read alot of Toynbee and Spengler, Thucydides and Machiavelli, Montaigne and Sorel before heading over to their next door neighbor Howie Zinn proclaiming him the best historian ever. Being able to drink and watch video games while the veils of time are removed and transcendent truths revealed is intoxicating. Right boys?
Read it and see what your children are being taught at the government schools. This is the single most important area where we have let the leftists take over. The results are now playing out in our elections. Even 12 years ago, a communist like Obama would have never had a chance.
Howard Zinn is an Hisorian in the same sense that Jeffrey Dahmer was a Chef.
er… insert this “t” in the appropriate spot in my last comment.
DavidN, this guy also makes that Chomsky/Zinn connection, pretty in-depth:
Noam Chomsky
Howard Zinn
Sadly, I meet more stupid people in the teaching profession than I even want to mention. One history teacher was shocked, SHOCKED, that Hitler’s National Socialist Party (Nazi) was so named because Hitler was a SOCIALIST. You should have seen the gears in his head as they twirled and spun, and he struggled to wrap his mind around that one!
I sit at the lunch table with nice people, but people who are so utterly blind that one of them actually said, out loud, that the reason she was voting for Obama was because “he’s sooo dreamy”.
Honestly, it is amazing what otherwise intelligent people do not know about the real political world. And did I mention, it’s sad, too.
In “Team America” Matt Damon was presented as a mental defective. That’s a bit closer to the truth than “Matt Damon, Super Genius.”
Jim Baker: you’re correct. A cardinal error of the Right was to assume, during the Reagan years and after the fall of the USSR, that events had conclusively proven to everyone that leftism was wrong. When books and articles about PC on campuses began appearing in the late ’80′s and early ’90′s, conservatives I knew then assured me that yeah, those goofy lefty professors still clung to their old religion, but the kids would come to their senses after graduating and working in the real word for a while. So the influence of the Marxists on college campuses and the general culture was ignored.
Conservatives mistakenly believed they had won for good. Freedom is never won for good. And bad ideas don’t die; they’re simply resurrected and prettied up in chic jargon.
Goodness, I read Zinn’s book ages ago (when it was in the 2nd edition I believe) and while it was an interesting read it was obvious that it wasn’t history. Perhaps it would make a nice secondary text to an US history survey course but it obviously has no utility as a primary text. It is too general for a course on class structure in the US (and just plain wrong on class pre-1940s) and too specialized for a survey course. Not that I consider having read it a waste of time, it just obviously isn’t history.
Um. May I suggest that, if you are going to the History Channel for “real history” on anything, you are going to be, at the best, mislead. It is an entertainment venue. It caters to its audience.
As to Zinn…..I have taught in seven colleges–some so liberal Zinn is only a distant pin figure on their right–and during my long career as an historian not a single one of my colleagues has ever assigned Zinn. He is passe. Believe me, there are far more dubious texts out there. The History Channel can’t even get the propaganda right.
I would also add, that the subject that consistently puts bums in seats in colleges is military history–still is. Yes, pomos dominate history departments, but the military historians are the envy of their peers at every institution I have taught in–little wonder they are so viciously attacked. BTW: I am a social historian. Nothing intrinsically wrong with that. But students need the political pegs upon which to hang everything else. I despair when I have to choose texts for my American History classes and have resorted to building my own.
I must confess that I have not seen the actual program.
Lol. What an idiot.
You realize that the whole point of the book was to provide an alternative source for history from oral and written accounts. And no matter what you say, you’ll never remove the power of the beginning of the book, an excerpt from Columbus’ own diary, never taught in “legitimate” history books, in which he boasts how easy it will be to decimate the native population. Ass.
Indeed. This was worth reading.
The Grammy’s, Emmy’s, Critics’s Choice, Screen Actors Guild, Oscars. The multiple marriages, drug scandals, murders, petty crimes, and lawsuits.
There are the movies made for profit. Movies which glorify war, death, destruction, drugs, murder, crime, greed, scandal, sex and infidelity, the mafia and organized crime; and bring millions of dollars into the actor’s lives. MILLIONS.
How are we expected to decipher all of this self aggrandizing, profiteering, immorality, sex, drugs and rock and roll?
I have very little time to consider such things, I have to work 45 to 50 hours per week minimum, assist my family through the trials and tribulations of this life, and try to have fun with my 2 weeks paid vacation.
Don’t get me wrong, I am no saint, and I have done things I am ashamed of; But I do not have the capability to influence millions. I do not have the monetary resources, or contacts, to advance my personal opinions and beliefs on a world wide scale. Nor can I jump on an airplane with a First Class ticket and jet of to the Middle East.
The “Hollywood Elite”, whatever that means, has clearly embarked on a mission that is wrought with inconsistencies as much as their personal lives are wrought in scandal.
A challenge to readers:
The next time you take a visit to your local movie rental store, take a closer look at the movies. When you see movie previews at the theatre on the Internet, or in the newspapers, take a closer look at what you see. Look at the titles, themes, and the actors in them. LOOK REAL HARD.
Perhaps you will se what I see. A bunch of spoiled rotten loud mouths who are filled with hypocrisy (as much as they are filled with sex, drugs, murder, crime and infidelity), and profit from what they condemn, and live their personal lives alarmingly close to the lives they portray in the movies. One has to be rich to think the way the Hollywood Elite thinks.
Zinn is replete with disinformation.
The viable counter is home schooling.
The end of all liars is the lake of fire, Rev.21.8, and it looks like there will be standingroom only.
I guess I should be grateful my public high school was too poor to afford books printed after 1976 back in the early 90s.
“It seems at times that is all they learn about, as everyone who has kids in school well know.” – Truer words were never spoken. My kids have had Civil Rights and slavery stuffed down their throats every year since 1st grade. The big, month-long Multicultural unit was always about Africa, Asia or Australia, and cycled between only those 3 in case, heaven forbid, any grade not get its full quota of all things African. My second grader spent a week perfecting her rendition of a tightly packed slave ship – part of the coordinated art class effort. I wonder how many suburban white parents would be startled by their child’s substantial knowledge of black poets and authors relative to white ones.
I could have ignored all of this, but there was no corresponding study of Western culture, and in fact the anti-Western bias was in full sail with exploration and discovery portrayed as evil, grasping and invasive, while native cultures are routinely portrayed as warm, welcoming and peaceful, their mud huts and spears deliberate lifestyle choices.
Why don’t more wealthy conservatives create or sponsor private schools teaching a classical curriculum? That would be investing in the future of America and it would give parents a way to opt out of public schools of indoctrination.
“…patriotism — the last refuge of scoundrels, according to pacifist and anarchist Emma Goldman….”
Sorry, but the quote is from that other pacifist and anarchist, Samuel Johnson.
As a proud member of the “lunatic right”, I am not especially receptive to Zinn as presented by Hollywood lightweights. So I got rid of History Channel by simply selecting “hide channel”. I also asked attuverse to drop the channel, though I doubt they will.
Yeah, I read Zinn an’ Trumbo and saw them as half-baked…I mean “The People”, how it’s played today, is a media contrivance that ignores the fact the “people” are a majority of individuals who have the sound reason an’ ability to speak for themselves…You can’t look to actors for original thought…Not their business…’Sides isn’t Damon’s,”Good Will Hunting” essentially a Harvard info-mmercial..He’s essentially these folks dog(ma) in terms of his “pursuit of happyness”…Sit, boy, roll over…play dead.
I saw this documentary and I thought it was pretty good. Like it or not most people don’t know this history. Regular people who don’t go to college. Its real and raw words from people who lived during that time read by some celebrities. Not that bullshit and propaganda they teach you as a kid.
wow, I can SMELL the fear in every line on this site … oh my … it sure doesn’t take much to gin you pathetic tightie righties up does it. it proves once again, that the anti-intellectual fear is what is driving this country into the depths of despair.
I can now add Ron Radosh’s piece to Kazan’s in my arsenal when doing battle in my profession — K-12 social studies and history. The saddest part of this story is Zinn’s godlike superstar status among this group of educators. These are people largely not trained in history at all, but who are accorded great power to shape the idea of what history is in the minds of young people. The failure to arm them against ideological charlatanism of the Zinn variety is a great and tragic failure of the educational elites in the ed schools and professional associations that determine what is and is not to be paid attention to.
Zinn’s book is totally dark and depressing. It gives the whole history of the country through the narrow spectrum of the Marxian prism. I read it and nearly wanted to throw up. No real discussion of the every day people’s struggle against the land, the elements, there common struggle to improve their material progress, their joys, aspirations and triumphs. Why this is required reading in school is a mystery to me.
This piece is a reasonable response to Zinn’s one-sidedness. Zinn has one truth, but it is hardly the whole truth. Another truth could be told through the story of the Mayflower Compact and what followed, that this country was founded by religious zealots on the one hand, and fortune hunter/land speculators on the other. The religion has expanded in range to include Marxism, as it has declined in influence. The money piece remains about the same. The miracle is, or is it common sense, that it has somehow worked.
Despite their educations, most students go on to a life of making money and supporting their family, and then trying to get their kids into the “best” colleges. We have no shortage on entrepreneurs, hedge fund traders and people healthily and unhealthily obsessed by money and material (or just call them “nice”) things. Fewer people are interested in joining the military or fighting wars, altough the current Recession has brought in a lot of people.
The underlying “truth” is that our history is very complicated and so much a product of opposing forces and tendencies. Lefties and righties have done a lot of nasty and vicious ting; sometimes to each other, sometime just to get what they wanted. Righties don’t have the peculiar ambition or stomach (and sometimes, tact) for the classroom, so the left prevails there. What are needed are compassionate but clear-eyed centrists.
Maybe for Affleck and Damon, humoring and bankrolling Zinn is like going back to Mass. They certainly have been around the block enough to know the way things work.
It’s difficult for people to look outside of things that have been programmed into them since birth — such as traditional history. Most history books do not speak from the people’s point of view, but from the viewpoints of the leaders. And most history books (especially in the USA) speak purely from a very narrow capitalistic and imperialistic viewpoint. Given the fact that most history is presented in these very narrow ways, it is far from balanced, and becomes something far closer to propaganda. Unlike most traditional histories, Zinn makes a point of being very clear about his perspective, about what is included and what is left out, and why. Most history books don’t say, “This history is presented from a capitalistic, imperialistic viewpoint,” when clearly that is what they are about. But Zinn is up front about all of these things. In my view, then, most histories are dishonest, whereas Zinn’s is honest. People may not agree with his viewpoint (I do), but it is honest in its approach. Also, most people don’t read great insightful authors such as Michael Parenti, and dare to question the obvious. Go to YouTube and type in “Michael Parenti Terrorism Globalization Capitalism” and watch that talk. There’s a great saying, “Where everyone thinks the same they don’t think much at all.” So when you’ve got most of the people in the USA thinking that Columbus was a great explorer and discoverer, when in fact he was a pillager who slaughtered thousands upon thousands of indigenous people for gold, then it’s clear most people are not thinking much at all, but instead just buying the propaganda that has been foisted on them for years. I say bravo to Zinn.
Zinn’s continued presence on school reading lists might well prove that Antonio Gramsci was right all along. As Jim Baker pointed out above, it wasn’t that long ago that a fraud like Obama wouldn’t have stood a chance.
Isn’t it funny that a bunch of rich spoiled brats are trying to incite the working people to enter revolution, but the working people just want to be left alone?
The more things change the more things stay the same. Perhaps Mr. Zinn should’ve studie why people refuse to become revolutionaries.
Great article, really enjoyed it. History is written by the victors they say.
Peter@50: Could you possibly be more programmed by progressives? I mean, really, you are nothing more than a robot programmed to repeat the same progressive tripe that has been inculcated into that glob of goo that should be a brain.
RE: #50 Peter –
What makes you think Zinn’s perspective is any more honest? IMHO, it is Zinn’s own piece of propaganda, with his own desired spin, what makes it any better or truthful than anyone else’s? Just because it’s not what has been taught does not make it more truthful or better.
#50 Peter: back in the 60′s, “Question Authority” became a popular bumper sticker. So why are people like you so afraid to question Zinn’s take on history? Those old ’60′s hippies? They’re the academic Establishment now. Why not question their authority?
It astounds me that young people who pride themselves on being “transgressive”are in reality as docile and conformist as any ’50′s housewife. It’s just a different sort of conformity.
You’ve swallowed a cartoon version of history without even questioning it or imagining the truth might be a bit more complex than “Evil Capitalist Imperialists vs. the People.” Oooh,ooh, that horrible Columbus! Nevermind that most of the natives who came in contact with the Europeans died of disease, and at that stage, it was entirely unintentional because nobody understood immunities and antibodies in those days. Your view is every bit as childish and simple-minded as insisting that Americans have never made mistakes.
Read both sides, get a different viewpoint and then make up your mind. Try reading something that challenges your prejudices for a change instead of confirming them.
(Of course, that might be a bit too scary and uncomfortable for you. I did it – and went from Left to Right.)
Look, 30 years ago, when I was at the University of Illinois, a friend–a history major–informed me that the history department was composed entirely of Marxists. (He seemed to think it was a good idea at the time.) This was true all over America.
Is it any wonder that so many who have gone through the university in the last 30 years are brainwashed and hostile? It is literally possible to tell by a commenter’s opinion when he or she attended college.
I actually caught “the people speak” last night and could not finish watching it. It was that horrible. Watching these actors trying to act like American patriots was pathetic, espeically since I knew everything they were saying was complete bias propaganda. The program was meant for the historically challenged. If howard zinn
advocates that there is no such thing as a fact then I say 9/11 was a inside job.
Obama said: Words Matter. So, we should make them live up to what they preach. Otherwise slogans such as “9/11 was inside job” become the reality.
As for howard zinn’s book “A people’s history of the untied states of America” unfortunately there are too many absences of footnotes to sources.
Other problems with his book include….
- There was no “Spain” in 1492, there was Castilla and Aragon (with separate Queen and King respectively, although they were married).
- The Court of the Crown of Castilla wasn’t in Madrid until 1561 (it was in Toledo by that time).
- It is not exact that Hernan Cortes turned Aztec against Aztec, but the tribes that were being slaughtered by the Aztecs.
The problem with Zinn’s view is his dismissal of historical context. He presents the United States as a criminal state and provides us with a list of its crimes.
The question is, Are these crimes what is “distinctive” about the United States? Of course there are awful things this country has done, and Americans should certainly know about them, but for the most part the awful things we have done are not novel. How many societies have been hostile to “the other”? How many societies have kept the territory they have won in military engagements? How many societies have condoned slavery and sexual inequality? In how many societies has greed been a major human motivation?
The short answer to these questions? “All of them.”
Yes, there are some areas in which I think we do poorly in comparison to other societies in our respect for education and for our cultural heritage, in remembering to value the life of the mind and aesthetic appreciation, but Zinn doesn’t have all that much to say about our actual weaknesses.
What is different about the United States is the way we have defended, through a long and sometimes bloody series of struggles, liberty and universal equality under the law. Surely there have been many evil Americans, which (given human nature) is not a surprise, but on balance we have been an unprecedented force for good in the world.
he myth that Native Americans were saintly innocents has been debunked very thoroughly by both historians and anthropologists. This of course does not excuse the behavior of Europeans, which was sometimes evil, but the idea that Europeans were “especially” vicious can be maintained only by ignoring the history of other peoples.
On the other hand, European civilization has contributed greatly to the welfare of the world. Since the Industrial Revolution, global life expectancy has increased dramatically, as has global wealth and the quality of global health. You should also remember that slavery was a global phenomenon “throughout history” until Europeans (primarily by means of the British Navy) decided they had a moral duty to end it.
The non-Western countries that have benefited the most have been the ones that have adopted free markets and representative democracy. (And much of the non-Western world “has” asked for democracy and “does” value it.) The non-Western countries that have lagged have generally been the ones that have adopted radical leftist ideologies. If all the nonsense about capitalist “exploitation” were true, then the “exploited” capitalist countries would be poor and the countries that adopted Zinn’s favored model (anti-capitalist, “anti-imperialist”) would have prospered. This is decidedly “not” the case.
However, I will give him credit as he says quite openly that he has no desire to write objectively. Here he is in his own words: “From the start of my teaching and writing, I had no illusions about “objectivity”, if that meant avoiding a point of view. I knew that a historian (or a journalist, or any one telling a story) was forced to choose, from an infinite number of facts, what to present, what to omit. And that decision inevitably would reflect, whether consciously or not, the interests of the historian.”
Zinn aims to advance his ideology and his “interests,” not to give a balanced depiction of historical reality. In effect, Zinn is a liar, and a liar who defends ideas that have produced almost nothing outside of mass misery and mass murder.
If your looking for good counter books to Zinn’s nonsense this hoilday season I suggest reading: Paul Johnson’s “A History of the American People” and Larry Schweikart’s “A Patriot’s History of the United States: From Columbus’s Great Discovery to the War on Terror.” One other book I would suggest reading is
“48 Liberal Lies About American History”.
Perpare yourselves for the progressive propaganda now that Obama is president it will be coming at you ferociously. Even the history channel has sold out.
Wow and here all these years I thought it was the American military who were most responsible for our freedoms. Thanks for opening my eyes, Matt Damon,Mr. Zinn, and the next anarchist I see, I’ll make sure to shake his hand and thank him for his service…
Wow Ron – great piece. The references are excellent. I dare say given the sorry state of education it’s almost eligible as a CORRESSPONDENCE COURSE!
That said – there is a whole lot wrong with education today and I really see this all as a tempest in the communal couscous.
I think George Son has it right. Don’t get me wrong – despite this idotic programming decision – I love History Channel. That said – it’s entertainment first. I may devour their WWII & Civil War ‘dramady’s’ – but I don’t confuse them with Shelby Foote or Stephen Ambrose.
The reason the libtard celebs managed to get History Channel to take the plunge is pretty simple. Despite Zinn being a leftist dolt – over the past thirty years his collective sales (read or merely ‘assigned’) translates to a built in audience.
It’s not much different than why writers of Tom Clancy or James Patterson status ‘opens’ a movie: rare authors with a wide enough audience that film rights are assured the moment the author sits to OUTLINE let alone pen their next novel.
Worse in Zinns case – the controversy helped spike viewership. Everybody talking = buzz = $$$$.
It remains to be seen if there is any long term backlash in the form of alienating viewers. As a personal antidote; I haven’t given money to PBS for ten years but I still watch FRONTLINE. I for one don’t see my HC addiction getting cured as long as I have a viewing habit.
Zinn is a white gentile hating racist, everything else is incidental. In fact, the whole leftist/non-white/Democrat coalition is a movement joined together only at their shared loathing of white people. Anyone who doesn’t primarily attack the left as racist isn’t being honest, in some cases because deep down they share that racism. It’s like confining criticism of Nazis to their economic beliefs or farm policies. The Zinns of this world aren’t upset by nationalism or capitalism in non-white countries, nor are they much upset about racism in those countries (or from non-whites within this country, for that matter). Here is a quote from Zinn: “These Arawaks of the Bahama Islands were much like the Indians on the mainland, who were remarkable … for their hospitality, their belief in sharing.” This is pure racist fantasy, American Indians were in an almost constant state of war with each other and often delighted in torturing or enslaving any of their enemies unlucky enough to fall into their hands. Zinn also loves to whine about Mexico’s loss of the Southwest but never questions what legitimate right Mexico had to the territory or its treatment of the Indians in that territory, nor is he concerned whether or not Mexico retaining that territory would have advanced socialism or the general plight of those living withing it. He’s a white-hating genocidal racist, full stop, and his radical economic posturing is merely a fig leaf he puts over his racism.
Well shortly I’ll be resigning from the “History Channel Club” & asking for my $$ back. Today it appears as though our country is divided and politicized as never before, an yet it looks to me like its 60-40 or 70-30 right versus left. You folks suppose they will figure that out anytime soon? me neither.
One wonders why the History Channel took this, what the hell happened to “PBS” I mean its a glove fit for those geniuses? how could they miss it? oh they were all at the retirement part for Bill Moyers. Oh well
ta ta Bill, enjoy your retirement.
Check “6″
Oh I must say two things quickly,
Congrats to “George” excellent post you nailed it-so did several others. Since I do teach at a college-I know hard to believe I take some comfort in the fact most of the students I know will be on “Utube” or “Twittering” etc. They don’t watch that much TV. Perhaps they can save their world after all.
As a often deployed Soldier since 9/11, I have watched my son grow; mostly from a distance. He is a bright kid, I have provided him with the best opportunities I could in my absence.
Would some of you recommend some real history books for my high school aged son? I must inoculate him against the never ending socialist bombardment he receives on State media, and school.
I had to have many conversations with him during the presidential campaign about the moral bankruptcy of socialists.
If I get the article’s gist:
1) Zinn should not be referred to as an historian. Okay.
2) Something about the very existence of Zinn and his (unviewed)
program has Radosh and many of his readers frightened half out
of their wits. Hmmm …
Now I’m interested. Why not just chill and let the people speak? Their words, after all, are part of our common past (yikes, almost said “history”). Guess I’ll have to check this show out.
I sense a lot of right wing frustration on this blog. It is understandable (and good). Conservatives have been on the wrong side of every social issue in our nation’s history: Independence, slavery, women’s suffrage, child labor laws, Social Security and Medicare, environmental, health and safety reform, and civil rights just to name a few… and now you have turned your wrath on universal health care and climate change mitigation. You will lose on these issues too, just like you always lose. But as always, many people will suffer while you lash out at those seeking progressive change.
I seriously doubt that many of the angry bloggers on this list actually watched “People Speak” on the History Channel. Just as well because you wouldn’t have enjoyed it. It showed your intellectual ancestors beating civil right marchers and shooting Vietnam war protesters. I know you don’t feel shame, but you can’t deny your intellectual roots.
As a college professor, I make a concentrated effort to instill in my students the necessity to examine multiple sources regarding any subject, and to try to show them that all authors have biases that we must be aware of, even if they mirror our own.
If we don’t encourage critical faculties, we’re doomed.
Radosh has always needed an editor. This piece is simply a recounts of several critics oaf Zinn none of whom have had the impact that Howard Zinn has had on college students. I used his text for years with a regular text that does all the things Radosh seems to want- but it was Zinn’s text that riled the students into discussions. I have thought that Howard had far too much faith in and seemed to believe this was a revolutionary country only put down by police. I made that point to my students but contrary to Radosh’s absurd assertion that the younger generation is teeming with radicalism they were eager to engage in discussion.
As for Michael Kazin I wrote him and criticised his attack on Zinn. My God, is Zinn a danger to the country . I think not and he has proved to be a far more influential teacher and historian than any of his critics. Radosh seeing Zinn as an ideologue is funny.
Well written critique Mr. Radosh. I heard Dennis Prager describe Zinn’s view of America as analagous to a proctologist’s view of the body. An apt description I think and characteristic of the old Soviet penchant for rewriting/purging history. Sad that he has such undue influence in academia but unsurprising. Much of academia has become nothing more than a propaganda factory – to the detriment of our Republic.
Mr. Radosh, you are a true embarrassment.
It makes me want to vomit.
You will never accomplish a fraction of the good Howard Zinn has provided this world.
I am not sure how everyone here can be praising Ron for his well researched piece. He complete gets the Good Will Hunting references wrong. If Ron can’t even watch an hour and forty minute movie to get his quotes and description correct, how can we expect him to have spent the days it would take to read all of Zinn’s work and provide us with an actual critique. For those that want to lump Zinn in with all the rich and powerful hollywood elite, perhaps you should take some time and read about his work during the civil rights movement.
I was educated during the pre-Zinn era. This is probably why I felt privileged and proud to serve two enlistments in the Armed Forces, returned from combat, earn my advanced degrees with zero loans, and built my own company of like-minded personnel with pure hard work and successful results — again, with zero loans (pure re-investment).
I never worried about how awful the world is around me even when the air was full of lead, shrapnel, fire and smoke; I just live and share the rewards life has to offer.
I believe that Zinn is the anti-historian, who approaches his passion as a subjective purist. Frankly, I don’t hire people like that, nor do I associate with them. Life is too short for that kind of contrived regret. Why pass that on to future generations? This only creates artificial constraints on an individual’s potential.
Mr. Radosh: Forgive me if someone else has already pointed it out. but you have rendered the Lenin quotation backwards. It is (if memory serves) “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” not “we will sell the capitalists. . . ” Just about the only things the Bolsheviks ever sold abroad were vodka, caviare, and Kalashnikov rifles.
One minor historical correction on the quote of Vladimir Lenin. He said, “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”
Citation: http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quotes_by/vladimir+ilyich+lenin
Your quote on page 1 of an excellent essay has it reversed.
I am one of those fortunate students of history who went through school before Zinn’s book was published. All we had to deal with back then was superficial mediocrity in the history textbooks and not propaganda.