Howard Zinn: Communist agent

[carlos1215]

http://www.city-journal.org/2010/eon0819df.html

An FBI History of Howard Zinn
Did the historian lie about his Communist Party affiliation?
19 August 2010
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, as Joseph Stalin entered the final years of his reign of terror in the Soviet Union, twentysomething Howard Zinn served as a foot soldier in the Communist Party of the United States of America—this according to recently declassified FBI files. Zinn, the Marxist historian and progressive hero who died in January, may also have lied to the FBI about his Communist Party membership. Is it at all surprising that someone who got history so wrong stood on the wrong side of history?

Zinn’s partisans will no doubt jeer at much of what the FBI files reveal. Who cares if Zinn marched in a May Day parade or if his wife subscribed to The Daily Worker? Other allegations are more serious but vague. One declassified report notes: “Information received on 6/12/53, indicated that the subject was possibly in contact with persons operating in the Communist Party underground.” What information, derived from whom? Was Zinn “possibly” involved with spies or really involved with spies? What kind of “contact”? Who in “the Communist Party underground”? And for some, the identity of the accusers vindicates the accused. J. Edgar Hoover’s personally ordering an investigation of Zinn on March 30, 1949; FBI associate director Clyde Tolson’s ominously asking, “What do our files show on Zinn?”; and FBI spooks’ surveillance of Zinn’s home—these stand as badges of honor in some circles, most notably the ones in which Zinn operated.

But amid charges innocuous and amorphous are specific allegations by numerous eyewitnesses that Howard Zinn was indeed a Communist Party member. After interviewing Zinn on November 6, 1953 and again on February 9, 1954, FBI agents described him as “courteous” and “friendly,” yet willing to part with information only after a repetition of pointed questions. Zinn admitted membership in numerous Communist fronts, including the Americans Veterans Committee and the American Labor Party, which employed Zinn at its headquarters in Brooklyn at a time when Communists controlled it. But he steadfastly denied membership in the Communist Party itself.

Several Communist Party members said otherwise. The files paraphrase one informant’s conversation with Zinn in 1948 as the future historian traveled from a protest outside the Truman White House to a Brooklyn rally for presidential candidate Henry Wallace. According to the informant, “Zinn indicated that he is a member of the Communist Party and that he attends Party meetings five nights a week in Brooklyn.” The files summarize how another informant believed that Zinn was “selected as a delegate to the New York State Communist Party Convention.” The Zinn that emerges from the files manned picket lines, religiously attended almost daily party meetings, and collected subscriptions for The Daily Worker. His work on behalf of radical causes was apparently so conspicuous that even a neighbor told the FBI that she believed Zinn was a Communist.

Zinn, of course, is most famous for writing A People’s History of the United States, an unremittingly Marxist retelling of the nation’s past. Fueled by enthusiastic professors who made the book required reading and by pop-culture name-dropping by the likes of The Simpsons, Good Will Hunting, and The Sopranos, A People’s History has sold more than a million copies. Late last year, the History Channel aired The People Speak, a film partly based on Zinn’s book that featured appearances by Eddie Vedder, Sean Penn, P!nk, and other entertainers. The octogenarian activist was the celebrity’s celebrity.

“I wanted my writing of history and my teaching of history to be part of social struggle,” Zinn explained in a 1998 Revolutionary Worker interview. “I wanted to be a part of history and not just a recorder and teacher of history. So that kind of attitude towards history, history itself as a political act, has always informed my writing and my teaching.” But what happens when the aims of the social struggle and the facts of history clash?

Zinn the historian is a one-trick pony conditioned by Marxism. One crucial line from The Communist Manifesto—“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”—colors the entirety of A People’s History of the United States. Zinn characterizes the American Founding as a Machiavellian trick to usurp British Empire profits and subjugate the American populace. According to Zinn, the main casualty of the Civil War was not slavery but “class consciousness,” which the drums of war drowned out. Zinn argues that it was “money and profit, not the movement against slavery, that was uppermost in the priorities of the men who ran the country.” He explains World War I thus: “American capitalism needed international rivalry—and periodic war—to create an artificial community of interest among rich and poor.” Columbus’s discovery of the New World, World War II, and every other significant event in American history is similarly described through the lens of Marxism.

Perhaps it is unsurprising, then, that the FBI files also note “a photograph of Zinn taken in about 1951 which showed him instructing a class in Basic Marxism at the Twelfth Assembly District, CP Headquarters, Brooklyn, New York.” Were Stalin-era Communists in the habit of inviting “liberals” to teach them about Marxism? That, after all, is how Zinn described himself to the FBI agents: “Zinn stated that he was a liberal and that perhaps some people would consider him to be a ‘leftist.’” He insisted that he joined the International Workers Order, a Communist-controlled front group, “entirely for the insurance benefits.” And what about that Communist Party convention that he allegedly attended as a delegate in 1948? Zinn told the FBI that he couldn’t recall whether he had attended or not.

Howard Zinn, subject of an FBI investigation, was just as deceptive as Howard Zinn, historian.

Daniel J. Flynn, author of A Conservative History of the American Left, blogs at www.flynnfiles.com.

[FrankRep]

New evidence from the KGB files confirms long-standing charges that media icon and investigative journalist I.F. Stone was for many years a Soviet agent and propagandist. William F. Jasper


Leftists in Tizzy Over Exposure of KGB Ties (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/1158)


William F. Jasper | The New American (http://www.thenewamerican.com/)
26 May 2009


The Left is in a tizzy over Izzy. More precisely, they are in a tizzy over the latest revelations exposing the late I.F. "Izzy" Stone as worse than a god with feet of clay. Documents from the KGB archives show that instead of being the sainted, fiercely independent crusading journalist he pretended to be, Stone was, in fact, a Soviet agent, a toady for Stalin, one of the most vile, murderous tyrants ever to have stalked the planet.

The leftist brouhaha broke in April with pre-release stories related to the new book, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (http://www.amazon.com/Spies-Rise-Fall-KGB-America/dp/0300123906/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1243132154&sr=1-1) by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev (Yale University Press). With the book's release on May 26, Stone's defenders can be expected to launch another round of counter-offensives on his behalf rather than admit that their revered icon betrayed them, even as he betrayed his country and humanity.

Isidore Feinstein Stone is hardly a household name, but he casts a big shadow among the Marxoid, hate-America pseudo-intellectuals who populate academia, Big Media, and the "Indie" media. Stone (born 1907, died 1989), an active writer for over six decades, wrote for the New York Post, PM, The Nation, the New York Compass, and other newspapers and publications. But he achieved his fame and fortune as editor/publisher of his own I.F. Stone's Weekly.

The home page of I.F. Stone's official web site boasts (http://www.ifstone.org/index.php): "In a journalistic poll to determine the 'Top 100 Works of Journalism in the United States in the 20th Century.' I.F. Stone's Weekly was rated 16th." In 2008, Harvard's prestigious Nieman Foundation for Journalism awarded its first annual I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence (http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/NiemanFoundation/Awards/AwardsAtAGlance/IFStoneMedalForJournalisticIndependence.aspx). According to the Nieman Foundation: "The award will be presented annually to a journalist whose work captures the spirit of independence, integrity, courage and indefatigability that characterized I.F. Stone's Weekly, published 1953-1971."

The University of California-Berkeley's graduate school of journalism offers "I.F. Stone Fellowships." And, in a remarkable coincidence of timing, The Park Center for Independent Media (PCIM) at Ithaca College announced (http://www.ithaca.edu/news/release.php?id=2646) on March 4 that it would be inaugurating its first annual "Izzy Award for special achievement in independent media." The award ceremony (http://www.ithaca.edu/rhp/independentmedia/izzy/) on March 31 presented the first "Izzies" to left-wing Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald and Amy Goodman, host and producer of the ultra-leftist Democracy Now! radio and TV program.

The bestowing of the Izzy Award on Goodman at a time when Izzy is being exposed as an agent for totalitarianism and an inveterate apologist for Communist regimes that ruthlessly suppressed all independent journalism (not to mention all other human rights), is particularly apropos. Her Democracy Now! program regularly features interviews with the likes of: Marxist professors Noam Chomsky, Ali Mazrui, Edward Said, and Howard Zinn; "scholars" from the KGB-linked Institute for Policy Studies; Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan; jailed Islamic Jihad leader Sami al-Arian; jailed cop killer Mumia Abu- Jamal; Venezuela's Communist leader Hugo Chavez; Bolivia's Marxist leader Evo Morales; Communist Cuba's National Assembly President (and DGI agent) Ricardo Alarcon. On November 14, 2008 Goodman and her co-host Juan Gonzalez interviewed (http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/14/exclusive_in_first_joint_broadcast_interv) the infamous husband-wife Weather Underground terrorist team of Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. As usual, they did not ask probing, challenging questions of their "distinguished" guests. In fact, it appeared to be "Radicals' Old Home Week" as Juan Gonzalez fondly reminisced regarding his former SDS activist days with Bill and Bernardine. Gonzalez asked: "I remember back more than forty years ago I was in the Students for a Democratic Society with you and Bernardine — and could you talk a little bit about how the Weather Underground developed and what were its goals?"

In case you didn't know, you're helping pay for this. Democracy Now! and its parent, Pacifica Radio, have received millions of tax dollars (http://www.aim.org/special-report/the-case-for-de-funding-public-broadcasting/) from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). But that is a pittance compared to the billions of dollars worth of taxpayer-subsidized exposure that Democracy Now! and Pacifica have received over the years from hundreds of "public" radio and TV stations funded through National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

IHOP: Izzy's House of "Pancakes"

But, back to Izzy Stone, or "pancake," as he was known under the code name assigned by his Soviet NKVD-KGB handlers. Stone's role as an unflinching Soviet apologist and his association with numerous communists and Communist Party fronts had understandably aroused suspicions among sensible Americans about his true loyalties. In his authoritative four-volume Biographical Dictionary of the Left (Western Islands, 1969), Dr. Francis X. Gannon wrote, in his entry for Stone:



In 1956, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee included Stone's name in its list of the eighty-two most active and typical sponsors of Communist front organizations.


Dr. Gannon then listed the many Communist Party fronts to which Stone belonged, before observing:



Stone's obvious Marxism and his long history of defending Communists and their causes has not prevented him from lecturing on college campuses or from having his writings quoted in non-Communist newspapers and magazines.


There was reason to believe he was more than just a "fellow-traveler." According to Louis Budenz, a former Communist Party leader and editor of the Communist Daily Worker, Stone was a Party member. In the early 1990s, the release of the Venona intercepts provided very strong circumstantial evidence that Stone was a longtime Soviet agent. That touched off a furor among his comrades, many of whom rushed to his posthumous defense.

Additional damning evidence provided by Klehr, Haynes and Vassiliev in their new book — and in their pre-release article (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/special-preview--i-f--stone--soviet-agent-case-closed-15120#foot2) in Commentary magazine — should remove any lingering doubts as to Stone's culpability. In Commentary, they write about revelations from the KGB archives, including this:



The New York [KGB] station further reported in May 1936: "Relations with Pancake have entered the channel of normal operational work. He went to Washington on assignment for his newspaper. Connections in the State Dep. and Congress." By stating that its relationship with Stone had entered "the channel of normal operational work," the KGB New York station was reporting that Stone had become a fully active agent. Over the next several years, documents recorded in Vassiliev's notebooks make clear, Stone worked closely with the KGB.


However, there are many blind ideologues on the Left who refuse to believe the evidence, just as there were many who continued stubbornly to defend Soviet Agent Alger Hiss, even after Prof. Allen Weinstein's book, Perjury, shattered any lingering pretenses of Hiss's innocence.

Eric Alterman, a friend and protégé of Stone and now a professor of English and journalism at Brooklyn College and a professor of journalism at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, as well as a blogger for The Nation, rushed to Izzy's defense with a column (http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-04-22/slandering-if-stone/full/) on April 22. Other diehard leftists have also taken up quills in defense of their revered hero.

However, I.F. Stone's defenders are looking more and more ragged and ridiculous. Red diaper baby and reformed former '60s radical Ronald Radosh capably tackles Stone, Alterman, and the Izzyistas here (http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2009/04/22/if-stone-soviet-spy/) and here (http://pajamasmedia.com/ronradosh/2009/04/25/first-eric-alterman-now-jim-naureckas-the-silly-left-wing-effort-to-prove-that-if-stone-was-never-a-soviet-agent/). Likewise for good pieces by Daniel Flynn at The American Spectator (http://spectator.org/archives/2009/04/24/pancake-red-stone), Cliff Kincaid at Accuracy In Media, and Herbert Romerstein (http://www.postchronicle.com/commentary/article_212230853.shtm), columnist and former investigator for the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities and House Committee on Internal Security. Even uber leftist Marty Peretz at The New Republic, in an April 22 piece entitled "I.F. Stone Lied for Tyrants (http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_spine/archive/2009/04/22/i-f-stone-lied-for-tyrants.aspx)," notes that the new revelations on Stone "are devastating," and "that he lied for the tyrants is unquestionable."

The release this week of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America will undoubtedly reopen debate not only on I.F. Stone, but on many others as well who held important posts in the federal government, the media, and academia. As an article in the May 2009 issue of Smithsonian magazine, "George Koval: Atomic Spy Unmasked (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/42961262.html)" by Michael Walsh underscores, there are many stories still untold about the Communist penetration of our most sensitive institutions in the 1930s, '40s and '50s. Koval, code-named "Delmar," was an American-born agent of the GRU, the Soviet military intelligence. Until he was posthumously decorated by Vladimir Putin in November 2007, Koval-Delmar was virtually unknown. How significant was he? Walsh says that with the exception of the British scientist Klaus Fuchs, Koval "may have done more than anyone to help the Soviet Union achieve its sudden, shocking nuclear parity with the United States in 1949."

Koval joined the super-secret Manhattan Project in 1944 and held a top-secret clearance at the project's Oak Ridge laboratory where both types of atomic bombs — uranium and plutonium — were being developed. The Koval revelations bring to mind a similarly explosive disclosure over a decade ago, with the publication of Bombshell: The Secret Story of America's Unknown Atomic Spy Conspiracy by Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstel. The object of that historical expose' was Theodore Hall, the young Harvard physics prodigy (and traitor) who passed crucial atomic weapons information from the Manhattan Project to the Soviets. According to the Soviets, the data Hall provided was "priceless." Yet the enormity of Hall's crimes was not made public until nearly five decades later. And all the while the liberal-left cognoscenti of the media and academe continued telling us (as they continue to do today) that the "Red Scare" of the 1950s was the result of paranoia, irrational anti-communist fears, xenophobia, fascist impulses, etc. "McCarthyism," not communism, they insisted was the great threat to American liberty. It doesn't seem to matter how many critically placed Soviet agents are exposed — Alger Hiss, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Harry Hopkins, Lauchlin Currie, Harry Dexter White, Walter Duranty, Owen Lattimore, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Klaus Fuchs, Theodore Hall, et al. — much of the liberal-left intelligentsia can be depended on either to deny the obvious or to say, "So what? That's old history."

Well, setting the historical record straight — righting wrongs, exposing lies and terror, restoring the reputations of heroes vilified, debunking the reputations of villains glorified — is a right and worthy thing in and of itself. However, the real issue at hand is even more basic than that; it is about national security and national survival. The lessons that should have been learned from the continuous stream of revelations from Soviet and American archives over the past few decades obviously haven't been learned. Some of the worst penetrations of our government by the communists came during the WWII period when the Soviet Union (and dear "Uncle Joe" Stalin) supposedly was our ally.

We are repeating the same suicidal policies today with Beijing and Moscow, our new allies and "partners" in the global "War on Terror." Russia and China, for instance, are our partners in the farcical Six-Party Talks (Russia, China, U.S., North Korea, South Korea, Japan) with communist North Korea and the multi-party talks with Iran. Both terror regimes are client states of Beijing and Moscow and depend on them for weapons, technology, and technical support. However, Russia and China have used their positions not to disarm or rein in their fractious clients, but to sabotage genuine efforts at disarming them and to manipulate the talks to their advantage.

Russia's Vladimir Putin, a career KGB-FSB-GRU man (and former head of the KGB-FSB) appointed Yevgeny Primakov (former head of the KGB and the Kremlin's Middle East terror chief) and Henry Kissinger to an ongoing U.S.-Russia panel on global security (http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/foreign-policy/663). Meanwhile, both Russia and China have flooded the United States and other Western countries with espionage agents and agents of influence. Which brings me to a final comment about the book that launched this article, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (which I have not yet read, but eagerly anticipate doing so). It is a comment, actually, about the title, or the second part of it, at any rate: ... Fall of the KGB in America. This is an unfortunate choice of wording, as it implies and plays to the prevalent triumphalism that dangerously and falsely assumes we defeated the KGB, and its schemes and agents no longer present the threat they did during the Cold War. In truth, the KGB-FSB-SVR-GRU are more deadly and dangerous than ever. Ditto for the Chinese intelligence services. And the "experts" who counsel otherwise should be considered in the same light as the so-called experts who completely failed to foresee the 9/11 terror attacks or the current economic implosion.

Related articles:

Kissinger, Putin, and the "New World Order" (http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/foreign-policy/663)

Putin's Russia (http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-mainmenu-26/europe-mainmenu-35/664-putins-russia)


SOURCE:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/1158

[YumYum]

I'm a little confused. Is the FBI now a reliable source for information?

I saw the documentary "Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral On A Moving Train", and he had courage to stand up to the Un-Constitutional injustices committed by our government.

brb, there is a communist under my bed. :p

[FrankRep]

Wikipedia: Howard Zinn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn#FBI_files)

FBI files:

Due to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, on July 30, 2010, the FBI released a file with 423 pages of information on Howard Zinn’s life and activities. During the height of McCarthyism in 1949, the FBI first opened a domestic security investigation on Zinn (FBI File # 100-360217), based on Zinn’s activities in what the agency considered to be communist front groups and informant reports that Zinn was an active member of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA).[54] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn#cite_note-Progress-53) Zinn denied ever being a member and said that he had participated in the activities of various organizations which might be considered Communist fronts but that his participation was motivated by his belief that in this country people had the right to believe, think, and act according to their own ideals.[54] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn#cite_note-Progress-53)

Later in the 1960s, as a result of Zinn’s campaigning against the Vietnam War and his influence on Martin Luther King, the FBI designated Zinn a high security risk to the country, a category that allowed them to summarily arrest him if a state of emergency were to be declared.[54] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn#cite_note-Progress-53)[55] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn#cite_note-54) The FBI memos also show that they were concerned with Zinn’s repeated criticism of the FBI for failing to protect blacks against white mob violence.[54] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Zinn#cite_note-Progress-53)

[RedStripe]

"According to Zinn, the main casualty of the Civil War was not slavery but “class consciousness,” which the drums of war drowned out. Zinn argues that it was “money and profit, not the movement against slavery, that was uppermost in the priorities of the men who ran the country.” He explains World War I thus: “American capitalism needed international rivalry—and periodic war—to create an artificial community of interest among rich and poor.” Columbus’s discovery of the New World, World War II, and every other significant event in American history is similarly described through the lens of Marxism."

LOL cry me a river.

Zinn's book on American history is a required reading for anyone who wants to hear an alternate perspective that balances against the traditional, propagandized, nationalist, mythological history of the United States. Of course, it also pissed off a lot of people who'd rather not see the underbelly of America and their perspective of (then) current events.

That article presumes that we are all right-wing babies who are so afraid of "communism" we are willing to instantly dismiss anyone who has ever associated with that ideology. Sorry but people on this forum aren't that dumb. Zinn was a great man.

[FrankRep]

That article presumes that we are all right-wing babies who are so afraid of "communism" we are willing to instantly dismiss anyone who has ever associated with that ideology. Sorry but people on this forum aren't that dumb. Zinn was a great man.


Noam Chomsky: Rise of Far-right Imperils U.S. (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=257757)


Noam Chomsky compares America today with Hitler's Nazi Germany, wrote a book which seemed to expose the lie that Pol Pot’s communist Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia was responsible for the deaths of millions of people and lumps the Nazis and Tea Partiers together under the label “right-wing.” by Selwyn Duke

[RedStripe]

Noam Chomsky: Rise of Far-right Imperils U.S. (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=257757)


Noam Chomsky compares America today with Hitler's Nazi Germany, wrote a book which seemed to expose the lie that Pol Pot’s communist Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia was responsible for the deaths of millions of people and lumps the Nazis and Tea Partiers together under the label “right-wing.” by Selwyn Duke

Awesome link, but do you care to speak for yourself? If not that's ok too, just keep doing your thing bro.

[BenIsForRon]

Zinn my have been wrong on some of the solutions, but he was dead on about many of our problems. All the haters are just jealous that the left could produce such a great American hero.

[RedStripe]

Zinn my have been wrong on some of the solutions, but he was dead on about many of our problems. All the haters are just jealous that the left could produce such a great American hero.

Exactly. I'm no supporter of communism, but I can understand how an enlightened individual might come to the conclusion that communism was necessary/the only way to correct the system.

Everyone reading this thread should go to a used bookstore and pick up a copy of A People's History - it's a great read and I couldn't put it down. Sure, it's ideological, but he admits that in the very beginning, unlike most historians who pretend to have some "objective" view of history. He was truly one of the greatest Americans to live.

[FrankRep]

Zinn my have been wrong on some of the solutions, but he was dead on about many of our problems. All the haters are just jealous that the left could produce such a great American hero.

Institute for Policy Studies: A Tribute to Howard Zinn
http://www.ips-dc.org/events/a_tribute_to_howard_zinn


http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/525


In These Times (ITT) is a longtime subversive magazine founded and published by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a radical Marxist-Leninist organization with strong ties to the Soviet KGB and Cuban DGI. With few exceptions, the ITT/IPS cadres have always favored communist regimes, terrorist groups, revolutionary movements and radicals of every stripe — as long as they spew sufficient venom against the United States. This is the toxic company in which Ayers is most comfortable and the political stripe with which he should be identified.

[RedStripe]

Institute for Policy Studies: A Tribute to Howard Zinn
http://www.ips-dc.org/events/a_tribute_to_howard_zinn


http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/525


In These Times (ITT) is a longtime subversive magazine founded and published by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a radical Marxist-Leninist organization with strong ties to the Soviet KGB and Cuban DGI. With few exceptions, the ITT/IPS cadres have always favored communist regimes, terrorist groups, revolutionary movements and radicals of every stripe — as long as they spew sufficient venom against the United States. This is the toxic company in which Ayers is most comfortable and the political stripe with which he should be identified.

I just invented a test to determine whether or not one is a delusional nut-job:

The question is: which has been a more immoral nation - "communist" Cuba (since the revolution), or the United States (for the same period)?

Anyone with 1) an elementary understanding of world history, 2) a sense of basic morality, and 3) the ability to disregard ignorant appeals to patriotism will know the answer.

[00_Pete]

Zinn getting pwned:

YouTube - 9/11 truth confront Howard Zinn in Montreal (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WXU4eir-i8)

[RedStripe]

Zinn getting pwned:

YouTube - 9/11 truth confront Howard Zinn in Montreal (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WXU4eir-i8)

The important thing you learn, when you realize that the government may have been involved on 9/11, is the core nature, and character of our government... something that people like Zinn had known for a long long time. That's why they aren't 9/11 truthers.

Unlike most people, it wouldn't have really undermined Zinn's understanding or view of our government to learn that 9/11 was an inside job.

[Monarchist]

:

The question is: which has been a more immoral nation - "communist" Cuba (since the revolution), or the United States (for the same period)?


Both. Unless Cuban imperialism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_intervention_in_Angola) doesn't count.

[Austrian Econ Disciple]

"According to Zinn, the main casualty of the Civil War was not slavery but “class consciousness,” which the drums of war drowned out. Zinn argues that it was “money and profit, not the movement against slavery, that was uppermost in the priorities of the men who ran the country.” He explains World War I thus: “American capitalism needed international rivalry—and periodic war—to create an artificial community of interest among rich and poor.” Columbus’s discovery of the New World, World War II, and every other significant event in American history is similarly described through the lens of Marxism."

LOL cry me a river.

Zinn's book on American history is a required reading for anyone who wants to hear an alternate perspective that balances against the traditional, propagandized, nationalist, mythological history of the United States. Of course, it also pissed off a lot of people who'd rather not see the underbelly of America and their perspective of (then) current events.

That article presumes that we are all right-wing babies who are so afraid of "communism" we are willing to instantly dismiss anyone who has ever associated with that ideology. Sorry but people on this forum aren't that dumb. Zinn was a great man.

Walter Block used to be a communist. :p It only took Rothbard 10 minutes to convince him Marxism is a horrible ideology. People change. Zinn though, eh. Haven't really delved too much into him (And, I probably won't like 99% of what he wrote :p). I also recommend Rothbard's Conceived in Liberty.

[Jace]

Zinn and Chomsky, multimillionaire disinfo agents of the Federal Reserve bank.

Their job is to shift the blame for the bankers' crimes onto the American middle class, and stir up resentments and grievances in our population, and cause mistrust between the people and their leaders, so that we take our eyes off the puppetmasters. Both opposed questioning of 9/11. Such radicals they are.

Zinn was a dirtbag whose greedy little hands never turned away a buck. Mr. Communist lived in a mansion. Chomsky is cut from the same cloth. His lukewarm opposition to a war with Iran is unconvincing. He says the "corporations" want their oil and that Israeli interests are inconsequential. He even blames Christian Zionists for Israel's transgressions against its neighbors. He tries to guide his flock away from the puppetmasters and onto the puppets.

Zinn, like Chomsky, is disinfo all the way, a globalist propagandist and agitator who was paid handsomely for his services.

[Sola_Fide]

"According to Zinn, the main casualty of the Civil War was not slavery but “class consciousness,” which the drums of war drowned out. Zinn argues that it was “money and profit, not the movement against slavery, that was uppermost in the priorities of the men who ran the country.” He explains World War I thus: “American capitalism needed international rivalry—and periodic war—to create an artificial community of interest among rich and poor.” Columbus’s discovery of the New World, World War II, and every other significant event in American history is similarly described through the lens of Marxism."

LOL cry me a river.

Zinn's book on American history is a required reading for anyone who wants to hear an alternate perspective that balances against the traditional, propagandized, nationalist, mythological history of the United States. Of course, it also pissed off a lot of people who'd rather not see the underbelly of America and their perspective of (then) current events.

That article presumes that we are all right-wing babies who are so afraid of "communism" we are willing to instantly dismiss anyone who has ever associated with that ideology. Sorry but people on this forum aren't that dumb. Zinn was a great man.




Ah.....


I knew you would be the first one to leap to defend Howard Zinn. How appropriate.

[RedStripe]

Ah.....


I knew you would be the first one to leap to defend Howard Zinn. How appropriate.

And I knew that your post would be yet another fluff of nothing, because you have nothing intelligent to contribute to most threads.

Of course Howard Zinn deserves defending on this forum, just as I defend Ron Paul on the leftest boards I frequent. It's telling how people immediately want to condemn anyone associated with left-radicalism or communism usually have the most shallow and self-serving understandings of those ideologies.

[Sola_Fide]

Everyone reading this thread should go to a used bookstore and pick up a copy of A People's History - it's a great read and I couldn't put it down. Sure, it's ideological, but he admits that in the very beginning, unlike most historians who pretend to have some "objective" view of history. He was truly one of the greatest Americans to live.



Hey guys, here's a "no fluff" assessment of Howard Zinn. ^^^

[Seraphim]

I just invented a test to determine whether or not one is a delusional nut-job:

The question is: which has been a more immoral nation - "communist" Cuba (since the revolution), or the United States (for the same period)?

Anyone with 1) an elementary understanding of world history, 2) a sense of basic morality, and 3) the ability to disregard ignorant appeals to patriotism will know the answer.

American military doesn't shoot it's own people who's fleeting desires force them to SWIM to Florida. The cuban military rifle down their own people trying to ESCAPE.

[lucius]

Yea, but like grandpa sell-out Chomsky, still created landmark works and is due all the respect he has earned--jeez just read between the lines...