Original Zinn

Lieutenant Howard Zinn, 1943

  Nearly a decade ago, I encountered Howard Zinn on the street in Harvard Square, one of his favorite stomping grounds.  I remember the old Brattle Theatre on weekend afternoons in the 1960's where the cognoscenti would wile away their afternoons thumbing through the current issue of World Marxist Review waiting for The Battle of Algiers or The Seventh Seal to start.  I asked Howard why he was so indefatigable in his denunciations of Israel.  He  replied, simply: "I've never hidden the fact that I'm a Jew."

I had just come from a lecture (more like an adulation) of Professor Zinn's in the spring of 2002, a year after U.S. forces entered Afghanistan under Operation Enduring Freedom. He was speaking at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study on the Harvard Campus.  His topic, in line with his colleague, Noam Chomsky, was the "genocide" that the United States was perpetrating in that country.  9/11 was still fresh in the minds of most of the nation, but apparently, had quickly faded from memory for most of the assembled fans.  Without supplying any evidence whatsoever, Zinn railed against the "latest U.S. imperialist move" to subjugate a native people by "bombing them into the stone age."  Such facile comments have been the bread and butter of the New (and old) Left for decades, but that afternoon, one listener was having none of it.  A dark-skinned young man raised his hand from the back of the hall.   Instantly identifying him as a representative of "The Third World", Zinn called on him first, obviously expecting enthusiastic validation of his thesis.  The young man rose determinedly and said, "Professor Zinn, I am a student here at Harvard.  I come from Afghanistan.  Were it not for the courageous actions of George Bush and American soldiers, my Mother and Sisters would no doubt have been killed by the Taliban."
Needless to say, the room fell silent.  Professor Zinn waited what seemed an eternity and quietly said, "I'm sorry you feel that way."  One wonders what reply would have come from him had the questioner been  a white male.
Having passed that embarrassing moment, Howard moved on to the subject of how the Left in America has always stood for pacifism and resistance to imperialist America's foreign adventures.  He cited one of his mentors, Eugene V. Debs and his sojourn in federal prison for refusing to register for the draft during World War I.

Pete Seeger and the Almanac Singers

 

At that point, I raised my hand and asked him the following question:
"Professor Zinn, in May of 1941 your friend, Pete Seeger, produced an  album called "Songs for John Doe" which was a collection of blue collar songs that included one called "The Ballad of October 16th".  At the time, Pete Seeger had formed his first commercial band called the Almanac Singers.   That song demonstrated yours and Pete's pacifist philosophy by excoriating Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt for urging United States entry into World War II to fight Hitler.  Shortly after the album's release, you and Pete were desperately trying to retrieve all the copies to take them out of circulation.  Exactly what happened between May and June of 1941 to turn you from devoted anti-war activists into, sabre-rattling patriots resulting in your enlisting in the Army Air Force as a bombardier.
An angry, bemused pall fell over the room.  Someone next to me growled, "Who are you?"

A lengthy silence from Professor Zinn finally ended in a muted response: "Well, we've all made mistakes in our lives."  He was referring, of course, to his oft-stated repudiation of his role in World War II as a "death dealer" from on high.
I decided to fill in the rest for the stunned audience.  "What you mean is that on June 22, 1941, your country was invaded.  And by that, I mean the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.  On that date over a million German soldiers poured across the border in what was to prove the largest military aggression in history.   Suddenly, Roosevelt became your hero because he was now Stalin's ally.  It seems that pacifism has its limits, even for you. And that's how you went from orthodox pacifist to imperialist war monger."
Silence from the Professor.  Shouts and threats from the audience.  I began to move to the exit.  I escaped.

Three years earlier, Howard Zinn recounted what he said to a Jewish audience when asked to speak on the subject of The Holocaust.  This is what he said:
"I spoke that evening, but not about the Holocaust of World War II, not about the genocide of six million Jews. It was the mid-Eighties, and the United States government was supporting death squad governments in Central America, so I spoke of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of peasants in Guatemala and El Salvador, victims of American policy. My point was that the memory of the Jewish Holocaust should not be encircled by barbed wire, morally ghettoized, kept isolated from other genocides in history. It seemed to me that to remember what happened to Jews served no important purpose unless it aroused indignation, anger, action against all atrocities, anywhere in the world... Zionists have used the Holocaust, since the 1967 war, to justify further Israeli expansion into Palestinian land"
  Bravo, Mr. Zinn.  The murder of 6 million of your brothers and sisters functions merely as a metaphor, a road sign pointing to the more significant, real atrocities in your universe - those qualifying as examples of  classic, Marxist class struggles.  Imagine Howard Zinn speaking before an African American audience on the subject of the Atlantic slave trade and suggesting that it was merely a metaphor, a call to action for the real struggle against the oppression of Guatemalan and Salvadoran peasants.

I can't recall any petition not bearing Howard Zinn's signature advocating a boycott or divestment from Israel.

Incidentally, when he told me that he had "never hidden the fact that he was a Jew", I answered him, "And why would you hide the fact?"

Lyrics to "The Ballad of October 16th"

It was on a Saturday night and the moon was shining bright
They passed the conscription bill
And the people they did say for many miles away
'Twas the President and his boys on Capitol Hill.
CHORUS:
Oh, Franklin Roosevelt told the people how he felt
We damned near believed what he said
He said, "I hate war, and so does Eleanor
But we won't be safe 'till everybody's dead."
When my poor old mother died I was sitting by her side
A-promising to war I'd never go.
But now I'm wearing khaki jeans and eating army beans
And I'm told that J. P. Morgan loves me so,
I have wandered o'er this land, a roaming working man
No clothes to wear and not much food to eat.
But now the government foots the bill
Gives me clothes and feeds me swill
Gets me shot and puts me underground six feet.

CHORUS

Why nothing can be wrong if it makes our country strong
We got to get tough to save democracy.
And though it may mean war
We must defend Singapore
This don't hurt you half as much as it hurts me.

Listen to the song: