Persepolis: Graphic Novel Review

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and The Story of a Return, is a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi. Originally published in France in 2002,Persepol is an autobiographical graphic novel about Marjane upbringing in 1980′s Iran.

The Graphic Novel as a whole is made of short snippets, slice of life stories, woven together to tell of her coming of age. The first half of the book is the strongest and most endearing. Marjane is a smart, adorable, and outspoken child who is raised by intellectual parents. As a small child her and her friends play revolutionaries, pretending to be Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and Trotsky. She also has conversations with God as she dreams of being a prophet.

Her dreams and headstrong nature run head on into the fundamentalist totalitarian regime of Iran. Throughout the story of her childhood, we see the people of Iran struggle through the hardships of the Iran/Iraq war, and the oppressive rules of their own government, including the capture, torture and murder of it’s own citizens. Marjane’s parents must hide alcohol and parties are held in secret. Marjane and her friends listen to illegal cassette tapes of Michael Jackson and other 80s pop stars, and hide western clothing like jeans and sneakers beneath their traditional outfits. This is deadly serious, as people are beaten and arrested for violating these rules. In one tense moment two women from the Guardians of the Revolution threaten to arrest a teenage Marjane over her clothes. She could have been taken to “Committee” where she would have been held and tortured for days without her parents being informed. Her offenses were wearing a denim jacket, jeans, a Michael Jackson badge, and Nike sneakers (They thought Nike was punk). She talks her way out of it. Rattled by the experience but too afraid to tell her parents about it, she vents by blasting the forgotten 80s hit “We’re the kids inAmerica.” A more comical but non the less serious incident is when her parents return from a trip to Turkey. Her father smuggled Iron Maiden posters for his daughter in the lining of his coat. He looks ridiculous going through customs but he gets away. Along the way her mother is shocked to find her father actually likes Iron Maiden.

The art style is very simplistic, similar to Manga style where faces are drawn without much detail. In other stories I’ve read like this I found that style hurts the more dramatic/serious moments, but it’s not so much the case here.

Perhaps the most powerful moment of the book is when she’s older and leaves for Europe to study. Her parents drop her off at the airport, and her mother actually faints. From here we see Marjane’s adolescence, her first loves, her misfit European friends, etc. Later she comes back to Iran and continues to question the local politics and religious mores, like how the government is so strict to women’s clothing but not to men. In one scene she’s running down the street, and a guard says her movements are obscene. Marjane replies “Well then don’t look at my ass!”

The ending isn’t as strong as it could be, and some of her early love life may be slightly mishandled, but overall it’s an incredibly strong story and highly enjoyable read.

Personally, what I took away from this, is that the human spirit will always rebel against oppression, even under the harshest conditions. Or, as Reagan’s Secretary of State George Schultz said of a another regime, the Soviet Union, “The yearning for freedom is the most powerful political force on the planet.” Persepolis is a true life testament to that fact. 9.5/10

Howard Zinn, A People’s Champion? Part 36: The Final Chapter! Closing Thoughts.

Why am I doing this? What made me spend countless hours poring over thousands of pages of history to refute a now dead academic? Part of it is personal. There was a time when I wanted to be a history professor. I wonder, had I gone down that path, could I have turned into someone like Zinn? What offends me is not that he said bad things about America; a whole subculture of people does that. What offends me is he got away with (and was celebrated for) what I was told not to do when I was 20, which is you don’t force your historical research to fit your beliefs. If I’d written a paper in college using a single bullet theory to discuss my topic I’d have failed the course.  For various reasons I’ve given up the dream of a scholarly life, hence this may be my last historical writing. If that be the case, I bid my beloved farewell. Moving on.

A real historian asks questions, then researches and writes as much as possible to try to answer those questions. Why was there slavery in America? Why did the founding fathers not dispose of it? Why did it last so long? Why did the U.S. stay in Vietnam so long? Why did America intervene in places like Grenada and Guatemala? In earnestly trying to answer these questions we see the moral dilemmas and complex decisions faced by people at those times. In other words, as Michael Kazin writes “to make sense of a nation’s entire history, an author has to explain the weight and meaning of worldviews that are not his own and that, as an engaged citizen, he does not favor. Zinn has no taste for such disagreeable tasks.” (1)

Is it possible that Zinn deserved some credit for recording social history, which is often neglected by textbooks? I would dare raise the question of whether it was neglected out of hatred or out of ignorance? I can only speak for my own experience as a high school student in the mid-90s. “People’s History” was originally published in 1980. Maybe before then high school students really didn’t learn about slavery, or the black experience in America, or Civil Rights movement or the Vietnam War and My Lai massacre, but I did. Could Zinn be given credit for this? Maybe, but this brings us to an attitude that seems to be expressed around this book, as if some secret was discovered that no one knew about. Today there’s countless books freely available regarding women’s history, black history, the counterculture movement of the 60s, Native American History, etc. The government is certainly not oppressing this. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee for example, the history of the Indians of the Old West, was published in 1971. Zinn on his best day couldn’t write a book that good.

Even if traditional textbooks neglected social history,  the information it did present, dates, the presidents, the wars, isn’t necessarily wrong. As much as Zinn is praised for being a people’s champion it is my view that he ultimately did his people  a disservice. He exploited them to support his own political ends, he used them to support his own viewpoints on various issues like war, the fairness doctrine, redistribution of wealth, privatization of Social Security, and hot button issues like abortion.

To believe “People’s History” is to believe in an America with absolutely no social mobility. It is to believe that the same monolithic elite, which never changes, has duped us for centuries, and as more and more people come to America the conditions never get better. “The People” in the end are a bunch of suckers.They were suckers for coming to America in the first place, they’re suckers for voting Democrat, they’re suckers for voting Republican, they’re suckers for voting independent, they’re certainly suckers for joining the military, and they’re obviously stupid for waving the flag and falling for tricks like patriotism and national unity. Or as Micahel Kazin continues,

“For Zinn, ordinary Americans seem to live only to fight the rich and haughty and, inevitably, to be fooled by them. They are like bobble-head dolls in work-shirts and overalls-ever sanguine about fighting the powers-that-be, always about to fall on their earnest faces. Zinn takes no notice of immigrants who built businesses and churches and craft unions, of women who backed both suffrage and temperance on maternalist grounds, of black Americans who merged the community-building gospel of Booker T. Washington and the militancy of W.E.B. Du Bois, or of wage-earners who took pleasure in the new cars and new houses those awful long-term contracts enabled them to buy. (2)

In closing, if I were to call Zinn a traitor or anti-American, my criticism would be dismissed as that of a right-wing nut. The thing is it’s not enough to say he was anti-American, he was anti-human. His book is a slap in the face of everyone who came to this country and did indeed find a better life for themselves/the American Dream. He gave a pass to the most nightmarish monstrosities of he 20th century, exploited groups for his own ends, and called any progress ever made was simply a ploy by the elite to dupe others.

In the final analysis, Howard Zinn was a disgrace, in no way deserving of his title of People’s Champion.

1.Kazin, Michael Howard Zinn’s History Lessons  http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=385

2. http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=385

Howard Zinn, A People’s Champion? Part 35: The Issue of Bias and Objectivity.

Supporters of “People’s History” respond to it’s critics by saying it is simply a different point of view than traditionally taught in schools. Is history always written by the winners? Is Zinn’s bias justified against the viewpoints of other textbooks? Or are there other issues to consider?

Zinn himself admits his bias, saying “it is a history disrespectful of government and respectful of people’s movements of resistance. That makes it a biased account, one that leans in a certain direction. I am not troubled by that, because the mountain of history books under which we all stand leans so heavily in the other direction- so tremblingly respectful of states and statesmen and so disrespectful, by inattention, to people’s movements-that we need some counterforce to avoid being crushed into submission.” (1) His take is that all historians make distortions in their work, and that distortion “is ideological, where any chosen emphasis supports (whether the historian means to or not) some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial or national or sexual.” (2) He then declares his intentions early on, saying, “Thus, in that inevitable taking of sides which comes from selection and emphasis on history, I prefer to try to tell my story of the discovery of America from the viewpoint of the Arawaks, of the constitution from the standpoint of slaves, of Andrew Jackson as seen by the Cherokees, of the Civil War as seen by the New York Irish, of the Mexican war as seen by the deserting soldiers of Scott’s army, ….from the standpoint of others.” (3) This sounds like a very noble task, but did he achieve it, and is his view accurate?

E. H. Carr wrote “What is History” a sort of philosophical text on the nature of history, and the issues of objectivity and points of view. Carr concludes that History is “a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the past” (4) He goes on, “The duty of the historian to respect his facts is not exhausted by the obligation to se that his facts are accurate. He must seek to bring into the picture all known or knowable facts relevant, in one sense or another, to the theme of which he is engaged and to the interpretation proposed.” (5) This book goes onto discuss the idea of the writing process, which can be similar for both creative writing and academic writing. That is the concept of input and output. Writers do their research and write their piece, often simultaneously. To separate the two, Carr says makes you fall “into one of two heresies. Either you write scissor-and-paste history without meaning or significance, or you write propaganda or historical fiction, and merely use facts of the past to embroider a kind of writing which has nothing to do with history.” (6) He adds.”Do not suppose that generalization permits us to construct some vast scheme of history into which specific events must be fitted. (7)

Is it possible to call a historian “objective?” Carr says when a historian is called such it means “he has a capacity to rise above the limited vision of his own situation in society and in history,” he says that capacity is “partly dependent on his capacity to recognize the extent of his involvement in that situation, that is to say, the impossibility of total objectivity.” (8)

So how does “People’s History” measure up against these considerations? As I’ve pointed out throughout the series, Zinn’s relationship with his fact is to only use those which support his viewpoint. “But isn’t it just an alternative view to history” you ask? Well what good is an alternative account when so much of it is just wrong? It’s simply not true that George Washington was the richest man in America, that the founding fathers made no attempt to abolish slavery, that the District of Columbia failed to abolish it, that rags to riches stories are a myth, that the US backed Batista in Cuba, that Julius Rosenberg was innocent, that unemployment grew in the mid to late 80s, that crime increased in the 90s, that Clinton’s attempt at healthcare was half assed, and that 9/11 happened because of our foreign policy with Latin America and Israel. In short, 2+2=5 might be an “alternative” view of math, but it’s still wrong.

And as I’ve noted in previous entries, there’s lots of bad things Zinn totally missed. 1950s suburban life/consumer culture/materialism should have been easy pickings, as are the US hiring Nazis, and Kennedy’s false image of an intellect and his fraudulent election. Again, Zinn’s hated textbooks may have neglected the plight of Indians, but to some degree so did he.

Still, what of the bias of textbooks leaning the other way, in that pro-establishment viewpoint that threatens to crush us into submission? Is history always written from the losers point of view?  Benjamin Kerstein writes ‘

It is true that the powerful, wealthy and victorious sometimes write history – and that they sometimes write it very well, witness Caesar’s histories of the Gallic war and Churchill’s numerous historical writings – but it is equally true that, from its very origins, history has also been written by the weak, the poor, and the defeated, who somehow managed this feat without the help of Howard Zinn.

Even the most cursory look at the history of the historians art belies Zinn’s ostensible courage and originality: Thucydides was an exile who wrote the history of the Peloponnesian War from the Athenian, that is the losing, side; and he did not spare the powerful and the wealthy his scorn or vituperation. Manetho was an Egyptian living under a Greek empire, who wrote in order to convey the greatness of his conquered nation. Josephus was an exile, a defeated resistance fighter, and a traitor, propped up by the generosity of others, who happily bared the flaws of his own people, whose extremism he blamed for the war with Rome. Tacitus, while wealthy and noble, was writing without apology for a defeated cause, i.e., the Roman republicans who had been demolished by Caesarian imperialism. Indeed, many of the greatest historians of Rome, such as Polybius, were citizens of the Greek city-states the Romans had unceremoniously conquered. More recently, Edward Gibbon spent most of his life poor, much of it as a religious dissenter, and happily took the abuse that came his way for blaming Christianity for Rome’s decline. As for the “lost cause” historians of the American Civil War, they were no less defeated than Josephus before them, and whatever else they can be accused of, writing a “victor’s history” was not one of them.” (9)

In closing, “People’s History” is a scissors and paste history, in which various historical facts and half truths have been shoe horned into a forgone conclusion, written by someone unable to rise above his own limited vision of his place in 1960s radicalism.

There will be one more chapter with my final thoughts.
1. Zinn, Howard: “A People’s History of the United States” Harper Perennial Modern Classics 2005 p. 632

2. Zinn, p. 8

3. Zinn, p. 10

4. Carr, E. H. What Is History Coun Moon Wha Sa, date unknown, published in South Korea p 30

5. Carr, p. 28

6. Carr, p 29

7. Carr, p. 64, 65

8. Carr, p. 123

9. Kerstein, Benjamin A People’s History of Howard Zinn,        http://newledger.com/2010/01/a-peoples-history-of-howard-zinn/

Howard Zinn: A People’s Champion? Part 34, 9/11 and the War on Terror.

       One popular notion today is that the world hates America because of its foreign policy. A common talking point among intellectuals is that America’s support of Israel, actions in Iraq, and support of right wing dictatorships in Latin America cause terrorism. Further more, some openly say that America deserved 9/11, that the people who died in the Twin Towers had blood on their hands, and some even claim that 9/11 was planned by President Bush, and that Osama is innocent. Howard Zinn in his last chapter of “A People’s History” supports the idea that America caused terrorism, and hints that Osama was innocent. Though he doesn’t explicitly speak of a conspiracy in his book, various speeches he made suggest skepticism of the official story. The most bizarre thing is that he’s said if 9/11 was an inside job, that it doesn’t really matter because it’s past us.

        ”Critics of the bombing campagin (In Afghanistan in 2001) argued that terrorism was rooted in deep grievances against the United Sates, and that to stop terrorism, these must be addressed. The grievances were not hard to identify: the stationing of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, site of the most holy of Moslem shrines, the ten years of sanctions against Iraq which, accodring to the United Nations, had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children; the continued U.S. support of Israel’s occupation of Palenstine land, including billions in military aid” (1) Regarding 9/11, Zinn writes “On the supposition that the Islamic militant Osama Bin Laden was responsible for the September 11 attacks, (WINK WINK WINK) and that he was somewhere in Afghanistan, Bush ordered the bombing of Afghanistan.” (2) A brief look at Osama and his group Al Qaeda.
       In 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait, Osama Bin Laden went to Saudi Arabia to meet with King Fahd.  He offered to free Kuwait with the help of 100,000 Muslims. Osama was asked how they’d defend against biological weapons. Bin Laden’s answer was “through faith.” King Fahd rejected his offer and welcomed American troops. This enraged Bin Laden, who hated to see Americans on Saudi Arabian soil, Islam’s sacred home. Osama dedicated his life to destroying America. He went to Afghanistan and using his family fortune, built his network. In 1993 Al Queda exploded a truck bomb in the World Trade Center, (which Zinn never mentions) bombed the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, (Zinn never mentions that was Al Queda, but instead suggests again it was really because of America’s military bases around the globe) and attacked the USS Cole in October of 2000 (Zinn never mentions) (3)

       The reason Al Queda attacked America was because American soldiers were on Saudi Arabian soil. So, did terrorists attack America out of protest of its foreign policy? If you wanted to be super technical about it, then yes. However, did terrorists attack America because it did something wrong in it’s foreign policy? Definitely not. American troops invited by the Saudi King to Saudi soil certainly cannot justify two embassy attacks, an attack on a battleship, and two attacks on the twin towers, one of which destroyed both of them and killed three thousand people. Finally, it’s simply irresponsible and ignorant to assume that 9/11 was a reprucussion of America’s policies toward Israel, Iraq, Latin America or even the bombings Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

       During various speeches after 9/11, Zinn hinted that he didn’t believe in the “official government explanation,” which is nothing new. Zinn gave a speech at Colorado University on 10/9/08, at which people asked him about a possible government conspiracy and if it existed, how could the people be brought to justice. He said “Do I believe the government version of what happened? Well, I’m skeptical. Do I believe that the government was in a conspiracy to do this? I don’t know. I don’t know enough about the situation, and the truth is, I don’t care that much.. That’s past.. To me that’s a diversion.” (quotes from video below)  On November 19th, 2008, Zinn spoke at UQAM (University of Quebec). In Montreal he attempted to clarify his remarks, saying that maybe a small group of people could investigate it, but that we shouldn’t devote all our research to it. His argument was that people spent a lot of time and resources investigating the JFK assassination which went no where. In the end it comes down to cynicism, Zinn simply believes in both cases we’ll never find the truth. It’s interesting that in “People’s History” he says there was no Pearl Harbor conspiracy, makes no mention of a JFK conspiracy, but in his speeches indicates belief in JFK and 9/11 conspiracies.

       Even long time Zinn supporters started to turn on him at this point. Maybe this was the moment they saw this guy for the clown that he was. 9/11 is past us? Listen, Pearl Harbor is past us. The Alamo is past us. The Boston Massacre is past us. The historical epoch that we live in right now started with 9/11. World politics and military action today is predicated on the events of 9/11. If nothing else, Howard Zinn does not deserve to be called a historian after making such remarks.

       Regarding 9/11 conspiracies, let’s say Bush did plan 9/11. If that’s the case, why would bringing the perpetrators to justice not matter? I don’t know what’s more offensive to victims that day, to say the government did it, or to say it doesn’t matter. In the last chapter of his life, Howard Zinn fully revealed himself to be a sick deranged individual, who, despite his years of experience, had little to no understanding of world events.

1. Zinn, Howard: “A People’s History of the United States” Harper Perennial Modern Classics 2005 p. 681

2. Zinn, p. 678

3. Chafe, William H The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II Fifth Edition 2003 Oxford University Press p. 539

Howard Zinn, A People’s Champion? Part 33: The American Empire

After World War One the United States did not join the League of Nations, the new international body that attempted to keep world peace and prevent another war from starting. Obviously it failed. So it was in the Post World War Two period that, after America emerged as a world super power, it assumed leadership as the leader of the free world. While some saw this as a plot for world domination, FDR wanted to end colonialism, spread prosperity to all countries and decrease arms. This he believed, would prevent a third world war. (Not to mention America did not colonize but actually helped rebuild Japan and Germany, both of which are economic competitors to America today) Ralph Levering in his book “The Cold War: A Post-Cold War History” says

“Roosevelt embodied the liberal ideas of his generation: international cooperation under farsighted U.S. leadership, both in newly crafted institutions (e.g., United Nations, International Monetary Fund) and in less formal ways; increasing freedom of trade and investment, in order to provide the widespread prosperity that would help to maintain social peace within nations and prevent future wars between them; the gradual spread of democratic institutions, made possible by increased levels of education and prosperity; an end to colonialism and other forms of spheres of influence as the world moved closer together economically and politically and a decrease in the worldwide supply of armaments…. Roosevelt articulated these ideals eloquently in his speeches and messages to Congress and in his radio addresses to the American people. ” (1)

In fact this is why Asian experts in the State department warned of the potential hazard of siding with French colonists in Indochina, and early on pressured the French to make concessions. (2) Ho Chi Minh actually sought US help in the 1950s. Unfortunately in the post-World War II world the United States had a major political opponent in the Soviet Union. International politics over the next 40+ years were predicated on a conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. The ugly side of the Cold war was that the United States did indeed side with right-wing totalitarian dictators guilty of human rights abuses and murder against its own people. This is not to be defended, but even here “People’s History’s” analysis is not always accurate, in some cases missing important perspectives.

The two instances where Zinn is most correct is El Salvador and Iran. In February 1981 the State Department issued a “White Paper”, which blamed “Cuba the Soviet Union and other Communist States” for El Salvador’s political instability. This claim was highly suspect, as there were plenty of domestic reasons/causes for a revolution. Cuba and Nicaragua did train and give arms to leftist forces in El Salvador however. (3) The military dictatorship supported under Reagan was responsible for the infamous “death squads,” whose victims included American nuns. In Iran the US government supported a Shah and the CIA trained SAVAK, Iran’s secret police, which tortured its own civilians. This led to the Iran hostage crisis of 1980, when student protesters stormed the US Embassy.

In the 1950s the CIA did suppress a revolution in Nicaragua, where the revolutionaries threatened American business interests, and the revolution had little if anything to do with the Soviet Union. Zinn does make the right call here, however, a brief look at American actions there in the 80s.

In 1984 the leftist Sandinistas movement took power in  1984, after a somewhat rigged election. This time the Soviet Union and Cuba did assist them, helping them build a large army. Zinn claims the Sandinistas were popular with the people, but their tight economic controls angered many business people as well as farmers. Many of these people either left to America or joined the Contras.  Nicaragua faced the same three problems that communist economies faced, rationing, shortages of goods, and a party elite with special privileges. (4) US did not declare war there. Why not, if America was so bloodthirsty? Instead it ended aid, trade, tried to block them from getting international loans, and the CIA mined it’s harbors and disrupted it’s economy. It also gave weapons to an exiled Nicaraguan army called the Contras. The US trained the contras in Honduras, and rich conservatives and other allies of America sent more arms and money. In 1984 Congress cut off US aid, after which Regan funneled profits from secret sales of US weaponry to Iran. (5) This was the Iran Contra scandal. It should be noted Nicaragua had free elections 1990 (6)

Another case where the Soviets intervened was Indonesia, who in 1957 got $100 million in Soviet aid.  Three years later they got another $250 million along with large amounts of modern weapons. They even planned to build a nuclear power plant there, but a right-wing coup ended Soviet aid. (7) Indonesia was in fact the third largest communist party in the world, with 3 million members. (After USSR and China of course) and was the largest outside the communist bloc. Zinn could have pointed out that Indonesia sided more with China in the Sinno-Soviet split, which would make the point against Soviet specific expansion. In the late 60s a right-wing military government took power, some say with the help of the United States. Zinn could have pointed out that the military government killed at least half a million communists and communist sympathisers, and in the 1970s banned newspapers and student political activity. (8)

Zinn’s most dubious claim regarding intervention is Grenada. Grenada received  independence from Britain in 1974. Eric Fairy was it’s corrupt leader, who was thrown out in 1979 in a leftist coup by Maurice Bishop. In 1983? One of Bishops assistants led a coup against him and the country was in chaos. Neighboring countries asked the US to intervene. Aside from that there were 800 American students attending medical school on the island. US officials feared a repeat of the Iran hostage crisis.  (9) There’s no mention in People’s History as to why Grenada was invaded. America invaded, so it must have been bad. He quotes a NY times article saying the students weren’t in danger and they were not mistreated. (10) Yes they weren’t mistreated, but in the midst of a coup whose to say what could have happened. The U.S. government feared another hostage crisis could occur, like the Iran crisis just 3 years prior. Cuba helped build airport at Point Salines. America feared this would lead to a security thread. In autumn of 1983, 784 Cubans were on the island, as well as military personnel from  Russian, East German, Libya, North Korean (11)

I’ve mentioned before how the United States tried and failed to suppress the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. The Bolshevik success led to one of the nightmares of the 20th century, not only for people in the Soviet bloc, but for people in the third world suffering under brutal dictatorships supported from both sides of the Iron Curtain. It’s too late for the victims of El Salvador’s death squads or the victims of SAVAK to speculate on a post 1945 world without a USSR. This brings us to today, what repercussions did the United States face for its foreign policy. How does it appear to the world? Does the world hate America? This will be examined in one of the last chapters of this series.

1. Levering, Ralph B The Cold War: A Post-Cold War History Harlan Davidson Inc, 1994 p. 8, 9

2. Herring, George C. America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975 McGraw Hill 2002 p. 11

3. Levering, p. 175

4. Levering, p. 177

5. Levering. p. 176, 177

6. Levering p. 169

7. Vadney, T.E. The World Since 1945 Penquin Books 1987 p. 217

8. Vadney, p. 379

9. Chafe, William H The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II Fifth Edition 2003 Oxford University Press p. 469-471

10. Zinn, Howard: “A People’s History of the United States” Harper Perennial Modern Classics 2005 p. 589

11. Vadney, p. 519

Howard Zinn, A People’s Champion? Part 32: The Coming Revolt of the Gaurds: Part 2

       Chapter 23, The Coming Revolt of the Guards, re-states an version of America where 99% of it’s people are secretly controlled by the family, schools, the media, work, church, and the voting system, and are turned against each other via economics. This belief sets up a dream of a utopian future of a communal society.

        First of all, let me say I’m not against skepticism or cynicism, there’s perfectly good critiques to be made of the school system, the political process, the mass media, etc. However I believe this chapter (and the book as a whole) expresses a cynicism that is beyond reason, and in a way it seems insulting to the beloved “people” that we’re all unknowingly duped by every single facet of society. In a later chapter he says the idea of striving for success “a mask for greed” (1) Regarding the 99% being divided, there are arguments to be made to economic reasons behind racism, for example, but to explain prejudice by economics only is simply misleading (just as all of history is described in this book via economics). To put it simply people often don’t like each other just because. People mistreat each other by race because they can, men are abusive towards women because they can. Homophobia is a good example of this. Mistreating gays has nothing to do with economics. People are simply mean to homosexuals because they can be.

       Regarding the notion of saviors, it is human nature to look up to people, to find heroes, to decry this impulse is to decry human nature. Zinn seems to completely miss the American creed (unless he believes it to be a myth) of finding your own way in life, or “rugged individualism”. It can be argued that nonconformity and rebellion are in fact key traits of the American character, and not an accidental by product that is supressed.

        This brings me to my final point, is anything really stopping Zinn’s dream from happening? Zinn lived in a rich Boston neighborhood and spent his life calling for redistribution of wealth. Why didn’t he redistribute his own wealth? Religion is conveniently lacking in the account of “People’s History,” but religion in particular provides several examples of people going their own way and making their own society.

              Harmony Pennsylvania for example, hosted a community of German Pietists, they were successful at farming and trading, but opposed procreation and marriage. Needless to say that community didn’t survive. There were the Shakers, who made over 100 utopian communities, didn’t pay taxes, spent no money on police, prisons, poor houses, judges, lawyers, and hospitals (They believed their faith could cure illness). The sexes were separated by dormitories, and as a group danced into frenzy. (2) I’ve mentioned the Jews before, how they were able to prosper in America and maintain their identity, as are the Mormons, who helped found the state of Utah. The most obvious example of an American group living a distinctly different lifestyle is the Amish. The Amish have lived in America for centuries and care for each other, help build each others houses, barns, etc, and to varying degrees forsake modern technology. If the America portrayed in “People’s History” really exists why doesn’t it oppress the Amish, why doesn’t it crush them into submission and force them to adopt the evil American way of life?

              It can be argued that “going your own way” is in fact a distinct part of American life. From the Utopian communities of the 1800s, to the Zinn’s neglected Beatniks of the 1950s, to the communes of the 1960s to the communes of today, America has a long history of people going there own way. If Zinn thinks that the government purposely tries to stop these things from happening, he truly is dreaming.

1. Zinn, Howard: “A People’s History of the United States” Harper Perennial Modern Classics  2005 p 665

2. Johnson, Paul: “A History of the American People” Harper Collins 1999 p 301-302

Howard Zinn, A People’s Champion? Part 31, The Coming Revolt of the Gaurds, Part 1,

 Chapter 23, The Coming Revolt of the Guards, is the culmination of “People’s History’s” account of America, even though the book goes on for two more chapters. Here, Zinn reiterates his viewpoints on history, and concludes that American society should be radically changed into a communal like structure. I will quote extensively from this chapter to let “People’s History” speak for itself.

To begin he suggests that the idea of saviors has been built into American culture, and that traditional histories “weigh oppressively on the capacity of the ordinary citizen to act.” (1) He continues on about how American citizens are controlled “through the voting system, the work situation, the church, the family, the school, the mass media… isolating people from one another, creating patriotic loyalty.”  which is maintained “by all embracing symbols, physical or verbal, the flag, patriotism, democracy, national interest, national security (2) He continues on about 1% of the nation owning a third of the wealth, and the other 99% are “The People,” who are turned against each other by the elite to prevent unity. He claims that in writing his book, where he supposedly represents the 99%, he is doing “what the governments of the United States, and the wealthy elite allied to them-from the Founding Fathers to now, have tried their best to prevent.” (3)  and says they want people to forget “the enormous capacity of apparently helpless people to resist, of apparently contented people to demand change.” (4) Then, in a theory worthy of Fight Club, he hopes that one day The Guards,”/the working people in society, the 99%, revolt and make a communal society, his vision of which as follows. 

              “We would need-by a coordinated effort of local groups all over the country-to reconstruct the economy for both efficiency and justice, producing in a cooperative way what people need most. We would start in our neighborhoods, our cities, our workplaces. Work of some kind would be needed by everyone, including people now kept out of the workforce children, old people, “handicapped” people (Wait a minute wait a minute, is Zinn advocating child labor? And why are there quotation marks around “handicapped?”) Society could use the enormous energy now idle, the skills and talents now unused. Everyone could share the routine but necessary jobs for a few hours a day, and leave most of the time free for enjoyment, creativity, labors of love, and yet produce enough for an equal and ample distribution of goods. Certain basic things would be abundant enough to be taken out of the money system and be available-free-to everyone: food, housing, health care, education, transportation.

              The great problem would be to work out a way of accomplishing this without a centralized bureaucracy, using not the incentives of prison and punishment, but those incentives of cooperation which spring from natural human desires, which in the past have been used by the state in times of war, but also by different social movements that gave hints of how people might behave in different conditions. Decisions would be made by small groups of people in their workplaces, their neighborhoods-a network of cooperatives, in communication with one another, a neighborly socialism avoiding the class hierarchies of capitalism and the harsh dictatorships that have taken the name “socialist

              People in time, in friendly communities, might create a new, diversified, nonviolent culture, in which all forms of personal and group expression would be possible. Men and women, black and white, old and young, could then cherish their differences as positive attributes, not as reasons for domination. New values of cooperation and freedom might then show up in the relations of people, the upbringing of children.” (5)  

 “People’s History’s” account of America leads up to this dream of a utopian society. Is it possible? Is anyone really stopping this from happening? Are 99% of us really divided by the elite, controlled by our families, church, and workforce, and duped by symbols like patriotism? In the interest of space, I’ll save my analysis for the next entry.

1. Zinn, Howard: “A People’s History of the United States” Harper Perennial Modern Classics  2005 p 631

2. Zinn. p 632

3. Zinn. p 632

4. Zinn. p 634

 

5. Zinn. p 639

Howard Zinn, A People’s Champion? Part 30: Clinton and Health Care.

       “People’s History’s” account of Clinton’s attempt at Universal Health Care, “Clinton was reluctant to advocate this. Instead, he put his wife, Hillary, in charge of a commission whose final report was over a thousand pages long, impossibly dense and complicated, and yet offering no answer to the problem: how to assure every American medical care” (663)

                    A brief attempt to explain the real reason why it failed, Bill Clinton put his wife Hillary in charge of a private committee to develop the legislation. They recruited over 600 experts to cover 34 different issues regarding health care. What this did was to develop extremely important legislation in secret. It left out Congress and the normal political process, meaning that Congress would be asked to pass legislation it had no hand in writing. Plus both Hillary and committee member Ira Magaziner had personal reputations of being dogmatic and not open to opposing viewpoints. People that had a long history of health care legislation, like Lloyd Bensten or Sonna Shalala, who was the secretary of Health and Human Services. Zinn criticizes the bill for being complicated, but how could it not be? Because of its naturally complex nature it took a long time to develop in this committee and as a result it lost some political momentum. President Clinton presented it a year later, but by that time suspicion mounted from both Republicans and Clintons own camp, other issues started taking center stage like NAFTA and military action in Somalia, and the bill was defeated. (UF 499 500)

       Zinn also bemoans losing health care in part because Clinton was obsessed with the deficit. Does Zinn have no memory of the public fears of the massive federal deficit? Remember the deficit clock in New York City that showed this 4 trillion dollar deficit that increased every second, along with showing how much “your share” would be? Whether Zinn likes it or not, that was an issue “The People” were concerned about, which Clinton was right to address..

       It was a true tragedy of the Clinton Presidency. If he had given a general outline to the public sooner, it might have worked. But for Zinn to act as if no attempt was made to pass it is just bizarre, but not surprising at this point.

1. Zinn, Howard: “A People’s History of the United States” Harper Perennial Modern Classics 2005 p 663

2. Chafe, William H The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II Fifth Edition 2003 Oxford University Press p 499, 500

Howard Zinn, A People’s Champion? Part 29, Zinn and the Apocalyptic 90′s.

Zinn on the 1990s “the American system seemed out of control-a runaway capitalism, a runaway technology, a runaway militarism, a running away of government from the people it claimed to represent. Crime was out of control, cancer and AIDS were out of control. Prices and taxes and unemployment were out of control. The decay of cities and the breakdown of families were out of control. And people seemed to sense all this.” (1) Reading Zinn’s account of the 90s, it’s a wonder any of us survived.

Was technology out of control? In 1996 a sheep was cloned (named Dolly). It was the first mammal to be cloned, sparking fears and concerns about human cloning and genetic engineering. Aside from this, how did technology progress in a way that seemed dangerous? The 90s saw the rise of the internet. Today people around the world can post videos, writings, music, and express their ideas and opinions for the world to see. I’m perfectly free to show the world why I think “A People’s History of the United States” is a complete sham of a book. Maybe that’s what he’s talking about.

How was militarism out of control? In the 90s American forces intervened in Bosnia/Kosovo in an ethnic war where mass murder was committed. America also intervened in Somalia where there was also civil war and mass famine, and occasionally Clinton would bomb Iraq. Does this warrant declaring runaway militarism? Wasn’t the 90s less militaristic than the Vietnam period? Weren’t they smaller operations than say the Korean War? Remember in the 1940s there was this big war involving a whole lot of countries that ended in the dropping of 2 nuclear bombs? Zinn you might remember that war, look in the mirror you’ll see someone who fought in it, it was called World War II!!

Was Crime out of control? Crime dropped severely after 1993. Next.

AIDS, on this chart here you can see AIDS deaths peaked in 1995. Today North America has one of the lowest AIDS rates. Now this is not to be unsympathetic to AIDS victims, because I know some goofball is going to hit me with that someday. I’m simply asking does that warrant saying somethings out of control?

Cancer on the other hand, is much more prevalent. One out of three people get cancer. We all know someone who had it, if we didn’t have it ourselves. You could say that is out of control, but with cases like breast cancer and leukemia, they are largely treatable if caught early enough.

Prices, taxes, unemployment, it is a simple fact that the American economy was incredibly strong in the mid to late 90s. For Zinn to suggest otherwise is just plain wrong.

A few other notes. It’s extremely interesting to me that the 1992 L.A. riots are given no mention, while every race riot of the 1960s is. The whole incident should have been right up Zinn’s alley, police brutality, race riots, destruction of property. Why is this not covered?

Another curious absence that obviously displays the notion of “two Americas” was the OJ Simpson trial, and the racial divide over OJ’s guilt. Not all whites thought he was guilty, not all blacks thought he was innocent, but the evidence of two Americas in terms of perception of power, law and order, and race emerged in a statistical sample. Whites on a three to one margin thought OJ was guilty, and blacks at the exact same margin, thought he was innocent. To many white Americans, modern science and technology, DNA tests, the blood socks, the car, the glove, was all over whelming evidence of his guilt. The other America was an America where the police could not be trusted, where any black man no matter how wealthy could be pulled over by the police and racially harassed. In this America, where the judicial system seemed to be a means of persecution, where it was perfectly conceivable that Mark Fuhrman planted evidence to frame OJ. (2)Again a perfect illustration of two America’s, so why wasn’t it covered?

Finally I want to mention the Million Man March of 1995, which was a rally for black men on Washington, of which Zinn gives 4 sentences. He says “The march did not have a clear agenda, but it was an expression of solidarity.” (3) Attorney T. Deon Warner of Houston Texas attended. His thoughts on the march as follows; “It wasn’t a march that said we hate. This march really was about being positive about ourselves. So it was very important that we began to start working on making ourselves a healthier part of this society, and so the Million Man March was a shot in the arm to black men.” (4)

What was said at the event itself? It was led by Nation of Islam leader  Louis Farrakhan, who said ” The real enemy in America, is called White Supremacy… Black men, you don’t have to bash white people. All we gotta do is go back home, and turn our communities into productive places. All we gotta do, is go back home, and make our communities a decent and safe place to live.” (5)

Mr Zinn, I’m really sorry you feel a march about encouraging others to be a healthier part of American society has “no clear agenda.” Or, in the words of Mr. T, “Shut up fool!!! You better quit that crazy jibber jabber!!!”

In closing, regarding the “out of control” comments, during the process of writing this series I’ve tried very hard to stick with the facts and not reduce myself to personal attacks, calling Zinn a kook, etc. But at six hundred and thirty eight pages I simply must exclaim out loud “Just what the hell is this guy talking about!!!” It’s one thing to be so far off about a history before your time, to reach erroneous conclusions about the Revolutionary or Civil Wars. It’s another thing to be entirely off about a period of time that literally just happened. My “People’s History” edition was last copyrighted to Zinn in 2003, and reissued in 05, so at the time of first print the 90s literally just happened. So I must ask the question, “Have you lost your dam mind?”

1. Zinn, Howard: “A People’s History of the United States” Harper Perennial Modern Classics  2005 p 638

2. Chafe, William H The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II Fifth Edition 2003 Oxford University Press p 521

3. Zinn p. 668

4. ABC Documentary, Our Century: America’s Time. Volume 6, The 90s’s and Beyond: Then and Now

5. Our Century, The 90′s

Howard Zinn, A People’s Champion? Part 28: Reagan’s America and the End of the Cold War

A brief word on the Reagan presidency before the Cold War. Zinn says “Unemployment grew in the Reagan years.” (1) He follows this by citing a statistic from 1982, his second year in office. This is misleading, unemployment did not continue to grow in the 80s, by the end of the 80s it fell. He could have said that half of the new jobs created were low wage jobs, and half the jobs lost were high wage jobs. (2) In fairness he does point out the various social programs that were cut in favor of defense spending. However Reagan’s defense budget and various social programs could have been maintained via higher taxes, but, despite Zinn’s frequent claims to the contrary, people usually object to higher taxes. (Even though the United States had a low tax rate compared to other countries, which would have helped Zinn’s argument had he pointed it out.)

He also bemoans the FCC’s elimination of the “fairness doctrine,” which required air time on radio for dissenting view points. He further bemoans 1990s right wing talk radio which had 20 million viewers. Zinn seems curiously ignorant that people are free to have left wing radio, not to mention why left wing radio doesn’t find as large of an audience. (3) He also discusses military action in Latin America, but I’m saving that for another chapter.

Now to the Cold War, 1989-1991 was one of the high points of the 20th century. In 1989, East and West Germany were united under one non-communist government, and the Berlin Wall, a horrible symbol of Soviet repression was torn down by the people. Ronald Regan said years earlier, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”  Two years later, an attempted coup failed against Gorbachev, and on Christmas day, 1991, the Soviet Union was formally dissolved.

Zinn quietly mentions this in one sentence on p 584, and quickly dismisses the idea the Reagan ended the Cold War, suggesting it actually continued due to America’s militarism. While Reagan did build up conventional military forces, one of his goals was to reduce nuclear weapons on both sides. All intermediate range missiles were eliminated in a treaty in 1987. (4) More amazing was in October of 1986, in Reykjavik Iceland, Reagan and Gorbachev sincerely discussed eliminating all nuclear weapons. (5) Such details would never make it into an account of a blindly warmongering America.

In the academic world the jury is still out on who deserves credit for ending the Cold War. Conservatives claim that Reagan’s military build up pushed the USSR into bankruptcy as they tried and failed to compete. Vladimir Lukhim for instance, Soviet Foreign policy expert says, “It is clear that SDI (Star Wars, which Zinn criticized) accelerated our catastrophe by at least five years. (6)

Others point to Gorbachev’s reforms of Perestroika and Glasnost (openness) as leading to the end. Gorbachev wanted to improve the Soviet economy, which for him meant shifting resources from defense to domestic needs.

While others simply suggest that the Soviet Union was simply wouldn’t survive in the dawning information age. Reagan’s Secretary of State George Schultz said “As the world gets smaller, the importance of freedom only increases….The yearning for freedom is the most powerful political force on the planet.”(7)

A real academic would examine all arguments and attempt to provide some insight, but after 584 pages I’ve learned not to expect to so much from “People’s History.”

1. Zinn, Howard: “A People’s History of the United States” Harper Perennial Modern Classics  2005 P 584

2. Chafe, William H The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II Fifth Edition 2003 Oxford University Press p 472

3. Zinn p 564

4.Johnson, Paul: “A History of the American People” Harper Collins 1999 p 930

5. Levering, Ralph B The Cold War: A Post-Cold War History Harlan Davidson Inc, 1994 p. 168, 169

6. Levering, p. 183

7. Levering,  p. 186