Comments on: Listening to Howard Zinn

By: Matthew Lasar

Matthew Lasar — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:41:16 +0000

If EscapeVelocity actually mourned the death of Josef Stalin, who died almost 60 years ago, he's even older than I am. But at least he's up on standard operating procedure here in blogoland: compare everybody you don't like with Stalin, Mao, or if all else fails, Hitler. Perhaps EV didn't invoke Der Führer because (a) he forgot to, or (b) Zinn was a bombardier for the Air Force during World War II. In any event, here's what Zinn actually thought about Stalin, in case the facts are relevant to anyone.

By: EscapeVelocity

EscapeVelocity — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 04:33:47 +0000

Rest in Peace, Howard, your heart was always in the right place.

I suppose you believe Stalin’s and Mao’s were too. Ill be mourning Zinn as I mourned Stalin and Mao, with a celebratory beverage. Too bad his abysmal propaganda People’s History of the US is now being used as US History texts in US high schools. His history of anti American and anti Western hatemongering will endure.

By: bob mason

bob mason — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 00:43:36 +0000

Howard Zinn may have been a great supporter of community radio, and he made many other rich contributions to the left struggle. But I think he is over-rated as a historian and a leftist thinker, because his overly simple bad-guys good-guys approach has helped the left marginalize itself in the post reagan years. For example, Howard signed petitions for Bob Avakian, who ‘Maoist’ politics are an embarrasment to serious political analysis. A People’s history of the United States, similarly focuses on specific movements – women’s movement, ecology, civil rights, anti-war, etc, and does not tell the real life day to day story of american history — there is little discussion of the nitty gritty details of factory and farm work, no nuanced discussion of the complexities of (e.g.) the new deal, the compromises made, etc. Only the good people in the movements and the bad guys in the corporations and the government. I would go further, and say that Zinn did not just focus on specific movements, somewhat decontextualizing them from their social milieu, he fetishized them — as if the history of the US is the history of how the people organized in these struggles. What about all the other stuff, like the periods and people who did not organize, and the struggles within the upper class elites and within the middle class? This may not be the heroic tale Zinn always wanted to tell, but it is the stuff of history that people must understand in order to develop successful politics.

This is meant as food for thought for leftist thinking, not to trash Howard. Rest in Peace, Howard, your heart was always in the right place.

By: Paul Riismandel

Paul Riismandel — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:55:56 +0000

Howard Zinn was also a great friend and supporter of community radio throughout his lifetime, making countless guest appearances on many of community radio's most prominent programs. You can find many hours of his lectures and even pieces he produced in the Pacifica Radio Archives. He was also a frequent guest on David Barsamian's long-running program, Alternative Radio. He appeared on Democracy Now in early January, and made many more appearances earlier.