This Weekend, Oliver Stone Will Not be a Happy Man: Now The New York Times Takes Him On!
Indeed, Goldman goes on to point out that to Stone and Kuznick, “Stalin…still comes off as heroic, as an honest negotiator who, following F.D.R.’s death, was faced at every turn with Truman’s diplomatic perfidy.” Truman is to Stone and Kuznick, Goldman puts it, the “black hat” while the “white hats” belong to F.D.R., John F. Kennedy and most of all, “the man who inspired the whole project: Henry Wallace.”
Readers of my own article will find the real truth about Wallace, who as I argue, was the very epitome of a Communist dupe, a man whom if he had become president, would have enabled Stalin to fulfill his plans for takeover of more than Eastern Europe, and perhaps even succeeded in the Stalinization of the entire European continent.
What will really irk Stone and Kuznick, however, is that Goldman turns to me as an example of the sharp criticism Stone gets from those who know something about history. He writes the following:
While to his fans Stone’s alternate histories are provocative, his detractors see them as grossly irresponsible cherry-picking. The conservative historian and CUNY emeritus professor Ronald Radosh said he found himself wanting to do harm to his television while watching the first four episodes, which he reviewed for the right-wing Weekly Standard. Radosh had been blogging skeptically about the Stone project since its announcement in 2010, but now that he’d actually seen it, he said, it was the historian rather than the conservative in him who was most offended. “Historians can have different interpretations, but based on evidence,” he said. “What these other guys do is manipulate evidence and ignore evidence that does not fit their predetermined thesis, and that’s why they’re wrong.” According to Radosh, Stone and Kuznick’s take on the United States’ role in the cold war mirrors the argument in “We Can Be Friends,” a book published in 1952 by Carl Marzani, who was convicted of concealing his affiliation to the Communist Party when he joined the O.S.S., the precursor to the C.I.A. “This Stone-Kuznick film could have been put out in 1955 as Soviet propaganda,” Radosh said. “They use all the old stuff.”
Moreover, Goldman took my suggestion that Stone’s distortions of history were something that bona fide liberal historians who respect historical truth understand, and that he get in touch with Princeton University’s distinguished historian, Sean Wilentz. Wilentz had e-mailed me that Stone’s book was “misinformation,” and that anyone with a respect for history knew it was trash. When Goldman spoke to Wilentz, he stuck to his guns. Goldman writes:
Radosh, who grew up as a Red Diaper baby in Washington Heights and only later turned to the right, thinks of himself as intimately familiar with the “old stuff.” But fearing he might be dismissed as partisan, he insisted I reach out to Sean Wilentz, a Princeton historian who, owing to his strident defense of Bill Clinton during his impeachment hearings and to his 2006 Rolling Stone cover article on George W. Bush, “The Worst President in History?” is regarded as decidedly left-leaning. When I spoke to him, Wilentz said: “You can’t get two historians more unlike each other than me and Ronnie Radosh. But we can agree about this. It’s ridiculous.” Wilentz was in the middle of writing a review of Stone’s book. “Always beware of books that describe themselves as the untold history of anything, because it’s usually been told before,” he said. “It sets up this thing that there is some sort of mysterious force suppressing the true facts, right? Glenn Beck does this all the time. It’s the same thing here, except this is basically a very standard left-wing, C.P., fellow traveler, Wallace-ite vision of what happened in 1945-46.” It’s not, Wilentz continued, that the questions raised aren’t worth raising. “Is there a legitimate argument to be made about the origins of our nuclear diplomacy or the decision to build the H-bomb?” he said. “Of course there is. But it’s so overloaded with ideological distortion that this question doesn’t get raised in an intelligent way. And once a question gets raised in an unintelligent way, then you are off in cloud-cuckoo land.”
And may I recommend Ron Radosh’s excellent survey of Hobsbawm obituaries? I recorded my own responses to Hobsbawm’s first book in the famed tetralogy here: http://clarespark.com/2012/11/23/historians-vs-pundits-the-eric-hobsbawm-synthesis/. Radosh has shown himself to be a real historian, and not a flunkey for Stalinism, as the esteemed Hobsbawm clearly was.
What Radosh has written here gives me hope that we are climbing out of the abyss. Maybe.
Last week I happened to be tuning around and stumbled across an episode of Stone’s show on Showtime and was horrified to see it repeating the Communist party line of that time. I contacted Showtime and was told it was part of the network’s commitment to provocative and controversial programming.
I also wrote on piece on this and some other recent episodes along the same line.http://havechanged.blogspot.com/2012/11/showtimes-agitprop.html
I am glad, and pleasantly surprised, to see the Times take him on.
However, here’s what Stone is accomplishing even when criticized. After I saw the episode I found an LA Times review which criticized the show as too one-sided but then went on to note:
“That President Harry S. Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima had as much if not more to do with establishing America’s dominance in the postwar politics than ending the war with Japan is something that activists, politicians and historians have discussed virtually from the moment he made it.”
I just read your own blog and it’s first rate. Glad to see others are taking Stone on and letting Showtime know.
Dr. Radosh:
I remember buying and reading your seminal book “The Rosenberg File” way back in 1985; it changed the way I began to view post-WW II Soviet history and policy (thanks to the Verona cables that is). One would think that with the increased access to Soviet files since 1991, history would be a little clearer to those who sympathized with the USSR and show them the unvarnished truth. Much to my chagrin (since Stone appears to have some redeeming qualities), I’m stumped as to why the man refuses to acknowledge these truths about Stalin and his tyranny of terror. He can still argue with legitimacy that indeed, American history textbooks have discounted the enormity of the war that Russia waged with Germany with its attendant loss of life and, at the same time, recognize the monstrosity of the political system and its ruthless military which brought Hitler and Germany to its knees. Nor do I understand his anti-Semitism and why he clings to the base canard, repeatedly debunked time and time again, that the media is controlled by a cabal of Jewish interests. He might as well hawk “Protocols of the Elders of the Zion” on Showtime. Would they go for it? I wonder. I look forward to see if Mr. Stone is willing to go to the mat with you in public as you have challenged him to. Probably not and if he has any critical gray matter, he’ll respectfully decline. But you never know – he might just bite since, as the NYTimes Magazine author notes, he is very sensitive to criticism of his work.
This isn’t about whether Oliver Stone is wrong or right. This article and Stone’s potential reaction is all about a clash of ideology . . . and nothing else. Who is to say whether Stone or Mr. Radosh is right or wrong?
Why isn’t it about whether Stone is right or wrong? Americans of the past are being painted by Stone’s brush. He is no different than Howard Zinn. He rewrites history to satisfy his own sense of right and wrong with today’s sense of social justice which encompasses not a whit of understanding of the way things were back then and why.
Presentism is a false way to look at history. It is quite valid to say “Oh that was cruel” or something of that nature if you include, “by today’s standards which we use”. Stone is a flamer– but a good entertainer.
The Miami Herald published a stinging review the day before the show debuted.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/11/11/3089382/the-truth-is-out-there-but-you.html