Friday, August 6, 2010
In case you didn't already know, it's official. The author of one of the most influential American history books was a card carrying member. Ron Radosh: Howard Zinn's FBI Files: What It Reveals
...So what is in these files? First, the FBI had evidence that Zinn was a member of the Communist Party of the United States, and lied about his membership when being interviewed by FBI agents. The first file on the subject appeared in March of 1949, when an informant noted "that he (ZINN) is a Communist Party member and attends meetings five days a week." Zinn was then employed by the American Labor Party, which itself gives credence to the informant's report. By that date, the ALP -- created in the early forties to give NYC labor a left-wing ballot on which to vote for FDR -- had been taken over lock, stock and barrel by the CP. It never would have hired non-Party members as full-time employees.
Another informant described Zinn as a "person with some authority" in the CP group to which they belonged. Zinn, he said, taught a course for his comrades on "basic Marxism." On June 12, 1957, another informant told the Bureau that when he was transferred to the Williamsburgh branch of the Party in 1949, "HOWARD ZINN was already a member of that section." It was his impression that "ZINN was not a new member, but had been in the CP for some time."
Zinn, however, denied he was a Communist when questioned by the FBI in 1953. It is important to note here that unlike those who testified before Congressional investigating committees, Zinn was not under oath. The reason Zinn denied his membership was the same as that for other Communists. The Party instructed them not to, even when asked to testify before committees like HUAC. As some of the Hollywood Ten members revealed years after their own investigations, if they said they were Reds, that would only prove that the Red-baiters were right when they called them Communists! It would undermine their pose as good liberals, who were only taking pro-Soviet positions because they genuinely believed in them, not because it was the Party line...[More.]
Also, at Gateway Pundit: Howard Zinn, Left's Favorite Historian Now Proven Member of US Communist Party, and The Other McCain: FBI Files Reveal Historian Howard Zinn Lied to Hide CPUSA Membership.
Pretty surprising that Solomonia would link to Robert Stacy McCain's website for any reason.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/34660_Robert_Stacy_McCains_Angry_Departure_From_the_Washington_Times
Charles Johnson's smears have very little credibility here.
Let me be clearer. Charles has been having a great time now doing the guilt by association thing. I followed this controversy when it came out. Does McCain have some things in his past I probably wouldn't be comfortable with? Maybe. But have I seen anything from him since he's been writing and I've been watching, anything racist at all? No. And I'm not going to anathematize him just because Charles Johnson has declared him unclean.
Solomon, if you don't want to rely upon Charles Johnson's anathematization of Robert Stacy McCain (I just linked to the LGF post because it came up on Google and was convenient for this purpose), then why don't you look for yourself at what other birds RSM has flocked with over the course of time. They are not the sorts most Jews of any political persuasion would feel comfortable with, but ones that Pat Buchanan finds very copacetic. (I'm very much with you in despising Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and their ilk. My concern is that you damage the case against them by bringing in the likes of RSM, and lend credibility to to some who are anything but trustworthy friends, e.g., "paleocons" like Buchanan.)
dcdoc, I don't want to do an ideological purity test every time I link to someone. The only people with a bug up their butts about RSM (or, with apologies to RSM, even really know who he is) are followers of Charles. To everyone else he's just one name among many.
You can go through my link list and find any number of people on there who you could say, "I don't think a blog like Solomonia should link to that" -- either because they're too far left, too far right, post dirty pictures, might be somewhat friendly to a paleo-con...any number of reasons. I bet you could go back through my archives and find a time when I approvingly linked to something by Buchanan (as a for instance) before I finally decided, "OK, that's enough of that" with him.
I'll take it under advisement that there may be some substance behind the smear on this, but I'll tell you that though I'm not a regular reader of his by any means, I've followed any number of links back to RSM's blog and never seen anything that I thought was past some kind of red line. I'm also, I should tell you, open minded enough to be able to say, "Well I disagree with this," or "I disagree with that," before I just excommunicate someone completely.
Ideological purity?
Please.
With respect, Zinn has just been tarred and feathered because he was a Communist.
So? So was my aunt. She was also a patriotic American citizen who raised four beautiful children and was married for over 60 years to a GM executive.
So duh.
RSM on the other hand is a racist.
I think it's VERY IMPORTANT, if one is going to hold ideology against an interesting and creative person (like Zinn) that one not use a real worm with which to lambast him.
RSM's been accused of being a racist. That's the smear. Whether it's true or not is the question.
Zinn, on the other hand, was a Communist, and he not only had very bad ideas, he worked to subvert America on behalf of a foreign government.
She was also a patriotic American citizen who raised four beautiful children and was married for over 60 years to a GM executive.
BTW, you know people say exactly the same thing about their racist relatives (other than the GM thing). "My grandfather was a great guy. Love him to death...didn't like Black folks much, though."
Sophia, what was your late aunts view of Stalin especially after the nazi/soviet non-aggression pact and the invasion of Poland?
Did your aunt approve of that socialist non-aggression pact?
"The only people with a bug up their butts about RSM...are followers of Charles." Really? I have been a casual visitor (don't recall ever registering and leaving a comment) to LGF, an unabashedly pro-Israel blog recommended to me by an unabashedly pro-Israel friend, no more than a dozen or so times over the course of years. And since it has been a good while since I have looked at LGF, I am uninformed as to Johnson's more recent peregrinations. So, there is no way I can be counted a "follower() of Charles." As for having "a but up (my) butt() about RSM," I don't think that apt either, since I have never before had occasion to remark upon him in any way, anywhere other than here, and I do so for a very limited, but serious purpose.
"the guilt by association thing..." Yeah, the "guilt by association thing." You think no inferrences can be drawn from those with whom someone choses to keep company? I very much doubt it, and would bet you have any number of times suggested ones in your posts here. So, it's a question of how damning evidence of this sort is in a a given case (e.g., how bad are the individuals with whom they have associated, how close are the associations, are there plausible alternative explanations for the associations, etc.)
Alec Cockburn, a determined enemy of Israel, is in my opinion as despicable as they come, and CounterPunch has about the same regard for truth and decency as Der Sturmer. If someone chose to write for Cockburn's CounterPunch, you would have a hard time convincing me that they were neither antisemites, nor comfortable around antisemites because that is the nature of Cockburn and CounterPunch. Now, Cockburn is of the Left, Robert Stacy McCain of the Right, so no possibility of "guilt by association" there, but over on the Right there are unsurprisingly execrable types too, and RSM seems not uncomfortable around them. For example, RSM has written several times for Taki Theodoracopulos, no friend of Jews or Israel, which I think isn't much different but for the polarity in writing for Cockburn's CounterPunch. If you it doesn't cause you concern that RSM is linked to the like of Taki, Sam Francis, Buchanan, and other "paleo-cons," then there can be no "guilt by association" for you.
Now, if the case against Zinn is a strong one, and unlike Sophia I think it is a strong one, then why link to an RSM for support? That's like an attorney with a good case weaking it because he presents experts with dubious credentials when he could have presented ones with good credentials (e.g., Radosh).
I submit to you that the only reason you know who RSM is is through lefty sites using him to unfairly tar others, and it mostly comes through Charles (RSM is a racist, X links to RSM, therefore...). I simply can't believe he's that well known outside a small sector of the blogosphere.
You are closer to something of substance in what you say about his associations, and it's true that guilt by association is sometimes useful if the association is meaningful -- something that separates a helpful shortcut to knowing who someone really is from a simple smear.
There's an easy solution. Kindly show me on RSM's blog where he has shown himself to be anti-Jewish, Black, or Israel. That will show very quickly whether it is purely a matter of association, or something more.
Please remember that not everyone shares our obsessions and priorities. Some people might not be fully aware of how offensive some of Taki's positions are. Should I write off anyone who's written at Kos or Huffington Post or yes, even Counterpunch if they wrote there on other subjects and because they were told the site was a good left wing one without being fully aware of the implications? No.
If he associated with Taki or the like in a way that matters to me, there should be current evidence of his ideological impurity. It may exist, I'm just not aware of it. So, OK, for dcdoc, if you link to RSM, it's a very bad thing. I'm not yet convinced.
"I submit to you that the only reason you know who RSM is is through lefty sites using him to unfairly tar others, and it mostly comes through Charles (RSM is a racist, X links to RSM, therefore...). I simply can't believe he's that well known outside a small sector of the blogosphere." I can't say why RSM's name rang a bell, faintly, for me. I'm pretty confident, though, that it wasn't per any lefty site, since I don't frequent any save for Tikun Olam, Richard Silverstein's odious blog, to inform myself from time to time about the latest attacks on Israel from the Left, especially from the "progressive" Jewish Left. (Silverstein, who has pilloried you and Hillel Stavis for your involvement with this "hasbarist" website, actually claims to be a "Zionist," which is one of the most remarkable instances of self-delusion I think I have ever encountered.) And sometimes I wind up looking at HuffingtonPost or Greenwald at Salon because I have followed links there from elsewhere, e.g., the definitely "non-Left" Volokh Conspiracy. So, believe me or not, you are wrong about "the only reason you know who RSM is..." But if you were right, which you aren't, what would it matter?
[Perhaps you or someone else will tell me about Charles Johnson and LGF, where they were and where they are now. All I know is that LGF was a very pro-Israel site with long threads that offered little by way of reasoned discussion.]
Must go for the present, but I'll offer you the following challenge...I will look around for more on RSM, if you will bring to my attention someone who has written for CounterPunch, preferrably more than once (as RSM has for Taki'sMag), that I shouldn't see as beyond the pale. It is not beyond imagination that some naif may have done so, but I don't have the time, patience, or stomach to peruse Cockburn's website, which champions Finkelstein, Chomsky, and worse (yes, worse!).
As for your wanting to know more about Charles Johnson and his hissy-fits wherein he banned certain people from his site, just google for "charles johnson robert spencer" or search for Charles Johnson at Spencer's JihadWatch.
I'm sorry, when did I become the one who needed to do homework? Here's the bottom line for me: Present something in the modern era from McCain that his past associations will illuminate or put into dangerous perspective. If all I have is the past to go on, I'm not too worried about giving him a link if he's presenting something interesting.
If the occasional link to RSM puts Solomonia beyond the pale, given what I've said about it, then so be it. Everyone makes their own decisions. This is an awfully big deal to make over one link.
Solomon:
I'm sorry, but this dog don't hunt. All that Radosh establishes is that Zinn lied about being a member of the communist party, and that Zinn defended folks like Rosenberg and Alger Hiss. He doesn't establish that Zinn did anything that aided the Soviet Union.
I'm not a fan of Zinn, hardly, but I'm also not a fan of the 1950s witch hunts. One of the things I hate most of all about the folks on the so-called lefts who criticize zionists like me is that we are disloyal to this country. I feel the sting of that kind of garbage now, and I learned about the danger of that kind of thinking from what I continue to understand about what happened in this country in the 1950s.
Correct me if I'm wrong but, respectfully, please tell me what Howard Zinn did to support the Soviet Union at the expense of the United States.
I don't understand your question, actually. Let's shift it. "I was a secret American member of the Nazi Party, taking direction from agents from Berlin. Before and during WW2 I taught and wrote about Nazi ideology, joined and advocated on behalf of a number of front groups where we either tried to subvert existing organizations to our purposes or founded our own. When asked, of course I denied I was a Party member. After Hitler was overthrown, I spent the next 65 years of my life advocating for those same principles I had fought for during the Hitler years, only now there was no further danger of being accused on being on a foreign payroll, and I was free to continue my efforts to undermine faith in American democracy and substitute Nazism in its place."
Zinn dedicated his life to undermining faith in American democracy, and in the 40's he did so under the direction of one of the 20th century's greatest mass murderers. What more do you need to know?
Joe McCarthy is an American Hero and Patriot. Joe McCarthy was right, their were Communists in the State Department, and he named correctly a bunch of security risks.
You might disagree with his style, but his substance is unassailable. (Robert Kennedy was his right hand man....but somehow Robert Kennedy came away unscathed from McCarthyist smears.)
Zinn is an America hating piece of filth. He not only hated America, but damned all of European Civilization.
If you hate it, then please leave, I say. Instead of trying to destroy it from within by misleading and indoctrinating kids in the education system and empowering far Left policies and takeover of the Democrat Party.
If Joe McCarthy were alive and Senator today, he would be pointing out security risks in the US government by Islamists and those with ties to Islamists.
And he would be attacked and smeared the same as he was before, and people like Bruce would be complicit in the falsification of history in smearing Joe McCarthy as anything other than an American Patriot.
Get Real!
Eddie, my aunt was appalled by Stalin once the truth of his enormous misdeeds was revealed.
I have no idea what she thought of the Nazi/Soviet non-aggression policy. She was a very young woman at the time and far wiser (and older) people than she were fooled by both Hitler and Stalin.
Regardless, many people were Socialists and Communists during the 1920's and 1930's. Both the Depression with its crushing poverty and the willingness of people to explore alternative economic and political ideas were part of the modern era so it should hardly come as a huge shock to learn that many Europeans and North and South Americans, Africans and Asians were more sympathetic to workers than to capitalist robber barons.
In fact one could even vote for Socialist candidates in the 1950's in spite of the evils of McCarthyism. My mom voted for Norm Thomas.
So?
It isn't a crime to have economic ideas that do not support laissez faire capitalism is it. The fact is most of the modern world depends upon a mixture of free enterprise and socialism, otherwise the system wouldn't work.
And, in spite of Stalin's misdeeds the Soviet Union took the brunt of the Nazi war efforts (along with the victims of the Shoah).
Twenty million Soviet citizens died in WWII. Their sacrifice defeated the Nazis in at least equal measure to that of the Allies in the West and their losses were enormous. I have had friends from the Soviet Union - Jews in fact - who fought at Stalingrad and Moscow.
I suppose that makes me a bad person because, in addition to my aunt, I played chess with some actual Soviet communists and was proud to have counted them as friends.
So feh to this whole discussion.
Oh by the way: the fact is the Nazis were specifically an anti-Communist movement. Left wing they were not.
And, since somebody mentioned Israel - can somebody please tell me, what is a kibbutz? A moshav?
And furthermore:
EV, claiming Joe McCarthy as a hero is also nauseating. Shame on you. McCarthy would be a witch-hunting, anti-freedom, anti-free speech, brute-power government goon today just as he was in the 1950's.
Indeed the thought that we have not only the government but private corporations spying on us these days really frightens me.
So feh also to the paranoia that's crept into our national consciousness. It is flat out nuts.
Finally: as to LGF: Johnson's "crime" has been to expose the real insanity that's cropping up in politics lately especially on the far right but also among some middle of the road Republicans who should know better.
I wish more Conservatives would step up and join him.
He is no less proIsrael than before, however he insists upon being a) sane b) part of the modern scientific world and c) thinks certain people have gone off the deep end, an assessment with which I fully agree.
Geert Wilders is a modern day Joe McCarthy.
Bruce,
He doesn't establish that Zinn did anything that aided the Soviet Union.
I suppose that those revisionist history books used to teach children have done more to help split America in the interests of the USSR than in actually spying.
Then again a lot of your journalists who wrote all those tall stories about the Soviet empire aided the Soviet disinformation campaigns and foreign policy exploits which certainly did not make things easy for the USA in its sphere of influence.
You get the drift?
Sophia,
She was a very young woman at the time and far wiser (and older) people than she were fooled by both Hitler and Stalin.
My late father was a thirty something young man in 1921 studying in Berlin when he witnessed Hitler coming to life and he got out that same year while friends laughed at him and stayed.
As for the fact is the Nazis were specifically an anti-Communist movement. Left wing they were not.
That is just so wrong. Hitler was a Socialist and was only anti-Communist in that in his racist state he hated the Russians.
Maybe take a look at this link
HITLER WAS A SOCIALIST
Scroll down to Iconography and see the Russian use of the Swastika.
Carry on down and one gets to Hitler's May day 1927 speech quoted from John Toland's biograpghy:
AS my father impressed on me in discussions about the War that in dealing with Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini one was dealing with sects of the same ideology.
As I choose to put it Socialist Sects cause the end result was the same slaughter of people.
A tree is known by the fruit it bears: of international and national forms of socialism, Fascism and Bolshevism are obverse sides of the same coin.
Not only was Mussolini both the intellectual and political force behind Fascism, he was a dedicated Marxist for ten to fifteen years, prior to spawning his Fascism. Mussolini's Fascism was a direct morphing of Marxist praxis and a modified morphing of Marxist theory - from the praxis and theory employed by Lenin during that era. That praxis included proselytizing and coercing into ideological and practical conformity, into the ranks; motivating the committed and demonizing any opposition, real or perceived; instilling a salvific cult of personality into the leadership; creating totalitarian conceptions involving Fichte's and others' "higher moral order" *** (Hitler's "Higher Law of the Party" and Lenin's "Revolutionary Consciousness").
(Hegel followed Fichte, both formally and academically, in Fichte's chair in philosophy at the Univ. of Berlin as well as philosophically, elaborating upon Fichte's sense of culture and history. Marx's historical conceptions obviously traded off Hegel's dialectic and other conceptions. The academic and intellectual genealogy is prima facie apparent enough.)
As to tree and fruit, the historical/empirical facts in that vein are apparent enough as well. Even a "minor" Leninist/Stalinist and Maoist ideologue such as Ho Chi Minh murdered approximately 800,000 of his own people, from the 50,000 murdered during his "land reforms" c. 1954, to those murdered via assassinations and terror by route of the Ho Chi Minh trail into the South in order to kill-off non-conforming southerners, to the euphemistically intoned "boat people," and onto tens of thousands of other Vietnamese civilians variously killed. And those are numbers murdered only, never mind other lives variously destroyed.
*** from Fichte's salus et decus populi suprema lex esto - the well being and glory of the nation/state (the people, it's always for "the people," the people's democratic republic, etc.) is the supreme moral law (i.e. and that supreme law is to be determined by the ruler, the leader, and is a "supreme" law in the sense that it transcends common morality)
But those are two or three historical allusions only; volumes are available on the subject.
Succinctly put, from the French revolution to Marx's 20th century: regicide culminates in democide.