This is a letter I got from a friend on facebook about a sick and demented Jewish political science professor:
Emeritus Professor of Political Science at Boston University
Marxist
Author of A People's History of the United States, one of the most influential books on college campuses today
Born in August 1922 to Jewish immigrant parents in Brooklyn, New York, Howard Zinn is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Boston University. The author of more than twenty books, he is best known for writing A People's History of the United States (1980), a Marxist tract which describes America as a predatory and repressive capitalist state -- sexist, racist, imperialist -- that is run by a corporate ruling class for the benefit of the rich. The book claims to present American history through the eyes of workers, American Indians, slaves, women, blacks and populists. A People's History has sold more than a million copies, making it one of the best-selling history books of all time. Despite its lack of footnotes and other scholarly apparatus, it is one of most influential texts in college classrooms today -- not only in history classes, but also in such fields as economics, political science, literature, and women's studies.
Professor Zinn announces the overtly political agenda of A People's History in an explanatory coda to the 1995 edition: "I wanted my writing of history and my teaching of history to be a part of social struggle. 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."
Zinn describes the founding of the American Republic as an exercise in tyrannical control of the many by the few for greed and profit: "The American Revolution … was a work of genius, and the Founding Fathers ... created the most effective system of national control devised in modern times, and showed future generations of leaders the advantages of combining paternalism with command." In Zinn's reckoning the Declaration of Independence was not so much a revolutionary statement of rights as a cynical means of manipulating popular groups into overthrowing the King to benefit the rich. The rights which the Declaration appeared to guarantee were "limited to life, liberty and happiness for white males" -- and actually for wealthy white males -- because they excluded black slaves and "ignored the existing inequalities in property" (in other words, they were not socialist rights).
In Professor Zinn's view, Maoist China is "the closest thing, in the long history of that ancient country, to a people's government, independent of outside control"; Castro's Cuba "had no bloody record of suppression"; and the Marxist dictators of Nicaragua were "welcomed" by the people, while the opposition Contras, whose candidate triumphed when free elections were held as a result of U.S. pressure, were a "terrorist group" that "seemed to have no popular support inside Nicaragua."
In A People's History, greed is the explanation for virtually every major historical event:
Regarding America's separation from Great Britain, Zinn writes: "Around 1776, certain important people in the English colonies … found that by creating a nation, a symbol, a legal unity called the United States, they could take over land, profits, and political power from the favorites of the British Empire."
Zinn describes antebellum America as a uniquely cruel slaveholding society whose goal was subjugating man for profit. On the other hand, the war of the Union against the slaveholding system is portrayed in exactly the same terms: "It is money and profit, not the movement against slavery that was uppermost in the priorities of the men who ran the country."
The same explanation is given for America's entry into World War I: "American capitalism needed international rivalry -- and periodic war -- to create an artificial community of interest between rich and poor."
According to Zinn, it was America and not Japan that was to blame for Pearl Harbor. The fight against fascism, he says, was a manipulated illusion to conceal America's real goals, which were empire and money: "Quietly, behind the headlines in battles and bombings, American diplomats and businessmen worked hard to make sure that when the war ended, American economic power would be second to none in the world. United States business would penetrate areas that up to this time had been dominated by England. The Open Door Policy of equal access would be extended from Asia to Europe, meaning that the United States intended to push England aside and move in."
In 2004 Zinn published Voices of A People's History of the United States with Anthony Arnove.
To this day, Zinn continues to sympathize with America's enemies, just as he supported the Soviet Union in the Cold War. In a pamphlet-like tract published after 9/11 called Terrorism and War, he portrays the U.S. as a terrorist state and today's Islamic jihadists as people valiantly standing up to America's empire. He strongly opposed the post-9/11 U.S. invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan, and he opposes the Patriot Act as an assault on civil liberties.
In a 2006 interview published in AlterNet, Zinn suggested that Children's Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman would make a better presidential candidate than either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, stating: "She's the epitome of what we need. A very smart black woman who deals with children, poverty…. She's in the trenches, and she ties it in with militarization."
Just as Zinn holds the United States in contempt, so does he despise America's closest ally in the Middle East, Israel. According to the professor, Israel's creation in 1948 "meant the dispossession of the Arab majority that lived on that land," and led not only to "the occupation and subjugation of several million Palestinians," but also to "what we would today call 'ethnic cleansing.'"
Zinn recalls that "after the Six-Day War of 1967 and Israel's occupation of territories seized in that war (the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, the Sinai peninsula)," he personally "began to see Israel not simply as a beleaguered little nation surrounded by hostile Arab states, but as an expansionist power."
With regard to the ongoing Mideast conflict today, Zinn places most of the blame for "the cycle of violence" on Israel's allegedly provocative use of disproportionate force: "a rock-throwing [Palestinian] intifada met by [Israeli] over-reaction in the form of broken bones and destroyed homes, [Palestinian] suicide bombers killing innocent Jews followed by [Israeli] bombings which killed ten times as many innocent Arabs."
Zinn laments that "in the occupied territories ... a million and more Palestinians live under a cruel military occupation, while our [U.S.] government supplies Israel with high-tech weapons."
According to Zinn, Israeli society is replete with deep-seated "xenophobia, militarism, [and] expansionism." Adds the professor:
"Some of the wisest Jews of our time -- Einstein, Martin Buber -- warned of the consequences of a Jewish state. Einstein wrote, at the very inception of Israel: 'My awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power, no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain....'"
In February 2009, when Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts became the first American college or university to divest its financial holdings in U.S.-based companies because of their alleged role in promoting Israeli injustice against Palestinians in the Middle East, Zinn endorsed the measure along with such notables as Noam Chomsky, Rashid Khalidi, Cynthia McKinney, Ilan Pappe, and Mustafa Barghouti (a Palestinian political figure who founded the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees). Resulting directly from the efforts of the campus group Students for Justice in Palestine, the Amherst divestment targeted a total of six corporations on grounds that they were providing equipment and services for Israeli military personnel stationed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Those corporations were Caterpillar, United Technologies, General Electric, ITT Corporation, Motorola, and Terex.
In a March 2009 speech, Zinn spoke positively about President Barack Obama, and said the following about capitalism:
"Obama has become president at a very special time, when the American capitalist system is falling apart. And good! I'm glad it's falling apart, because unless the system falls apart, we're not going to do anything about it. We're not going to fix it.... The market system--be wary when you hear about the glories of the market system. The market system is what we've had. Let the market decide, they say. The government mustn't give people free health care; let the market decide.
"Which is what the market has been doing--and that's why we have 45 million people without health care. The market has decided that. Leave things to the market, and there are 2 million people homeless. Leave things to the market, and there are millions and millions of people who can't pay their rent. You can't leave it to the market. If you're facing an economic crisis like we're facing now, you can't do what was done in the past...."
In September 2009, Zinn was one of 59 clients of the the multi-billion-dollar financial services and retirement firm TIAA-CREF (Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association, College Retirement Equities Fund) to sign a letter calling on the Fund to divest the $257,000 in stocks it held in the company Africa-Israel. The signatories objected to Africa-Israel's role in funding the construction of Israeli settlements in disputed territories in or near the West Bank. Also signing the letter were such professors as Noam Chomsky, George Bisharat, Joel Beinin, and Juan Cole.
Topic: Profile: Howard Zinn (Read 1878 times)