Howard Zinn, “Outed” as Communist and a Liar

****************************************************************

This is posted with permission and assistance from Trevor Loudon of:


http://www.newzeal.blogspot.com


AND


http://keywiki.org


Howard Zinn, “Outed” as Communist and a Liar

Howard Zinn, the prominent “progressive” historian who died early this year, has been “outed” as both a communist and a liar

Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media writes;

The prominent “progressive” historian Howard Zinn, whose books are force-fed to young people on many college campuses, was not only a member of the Moscow-controlled and Soviet-funded Communist Party USA (CPUSA) but lied about it, according to an FBI file released on Friday.

The file, consisting of three sections totaling 423 pages, was made available on the FBI’s website and released in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from this writer.

Zinn taught in the political science department of Boston University for 24 years, from 1964 to 1988, and has been a major influence on the modern-day “progressive” movement that backed Barack Obama for president.

Although Zinn denied being a member of the CPUSA, the FBI file discloses that several reliable informants in the party identified Zinn as a member who attended party meetings as many as five times a week.

What’s more, one of the files reveals that a reliable informant provided a photograph of Zinn teaching a class on “Basic Marxism” at party headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, in 1951. A participant in the class said that Zinn taught that “the basic teaching of Marx and Lenin were sound and should be adhered to by those present…”

Zinn was included on the “Security Index” and “Communist Index” maintained by the FBI. The “Security Index” was more ominous and included individuals who could be detained in the event of a national emergency.

Frank Marshall Davis, the Communist Party USA member who mentored the young Barack Obama, was also the “security index”.

The files confirm Zinn’s membership in the party from 1948-1953 and one says he was “believed to be a CP member as of October, 1956.” However, he denied membership in the party when interviewed by the FBI in 1953 and 1954 and claimed to be just a “liberal” or “leftist.” He did admit involvement in several CPUSA front organizations, the documents say…

n 1961, it says, Zinn “attempted to recruit students to attend 8th World Youth Festival [a communist-front gathering] and was described as pro-Castro in 1962. He publicly protested United States demand for withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba.”

After WW2 service and an education on the GI Bill, Zinn taught at the all female, all black Spelman College in Atlanta.

According to one of his pupils, far left author Alice Walker, Zinn shocked an audience from a local white college by declaring “Well, I stand to the left of Mao Zedong.” – this at the height of the communist takeover of China.

Forced to leave Spelman because of his radicalism, Zinn went to teach at Boston University from 1964 to 1988.

On April 28, 1966 Howard Zinn was a sponsor of the Herbert Aptheker Testimonial Dinner. The dinner was held on the occasion of Communist Party theoretician Herbert Aptheker’s 50th birthday, the publication of his 20th book, and the 2nd anniversary of The American Institute for Marxist Studies.

It was held in the Sutton Ballroom, The New York Hilton, Avenue of the Americas, 53rd to 54th Street, New York City. Most, if not all, of the event’s sponsors came from the Communist Party’s intellectual elite.

As at February 28, 1969, Howard Zinn was listed as a sponsor of the Communist Party front Massachusetts Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee.

By the 1980s Zinn had apparently switched his allegiance to another Marxist group.

At the Boston Democratic Socialists of America Socialist School, Fall 1989, Howard Zinn taught, the “History of Socialism,

By the mid 1990s Zinn was mixing with ACORN, Democratic Socialists of America and the Communist Party breakaway group, Committees of Correspondence.

With these people, Zinn was a founder of the radical New Party – later made famous by one of its most successful members, Barack Obama.

On September 20, 2001 500 people gathered at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City to remember the life of Democratic Socialists of America member Richard Cloward – originator of the infamous Cloward-Piven strategy, since utilized by sections of the US left to deliberately wreck the American economy.

Speakers at the event included Cloward’s widow Frances Fox Piven, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West (later a member of Obama’s Black Advisory Council), Gus Newport – (all members of Democratic Socialists of America) , New Party founder Joel Rogers, future Obama supporter and ACORN defender Miles Rapoport and Howard Zinn.

In January 2002, a group of San Francisco leftists, mainly involved with Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM) or Committees of Correspondence and including future Obama “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones, founded a national anti – Iraq War newspaper – War Times.

Endorsers of the project included Howard Zinn.

In 2004, Howard Zinn was one of 100 “prominent Americans” who signed an October 26 statement circulated by 911Truth.org calling on the US Government to investigate 9/11 as a possible “inside job”.

…we have assembled 100 notable Americans and 40 family members of those who died to sign this 9/11 Statement, which calls for immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.

This is the same petition that got Van Jones into trouble in late 2009 – strangely, Jones’ name at number 46, has been “removed by request”. Fair enough, after all he was “tricked” into signing it.

In the 2000s, Zinn was also listed as a sponsor of the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library in Oakland California, alongside Committees of Correspondence members and endorsers Herbert Aptheker, Anne Braden, Angela Davis, Ann Fagan Ginger, Jack Kurzweil and Maudelle Shirek, plus Communist Party supporters David Bacon, Gerald Horne and Cassandra Lopez and Herb Shore and from Democratic Socialists of America.

In 2006 Howard Zinn was an original board member of Movement for a Democratic Society – an organization established to support the newly re-founded Students for a Democratic Society.

Other MDS board members included former Weather Underground terrorist leaders Bernardine Dohrn, Mark Rudd and Jeff Jones, former Students for a Democratic Society leaders Tom Hayden, Carl Davidson (an Obama associate in the New Party and later) , Mike Klonsky, Bert Garskof and Mike James, former Obama associate Rashid Khalidi, Bill Fletcher, Jr., and Barbara Ehrenreich from Democratic Socialists of America, Gerald Horne from the Communist Party USA and Charlene Mitchell, Noam Chomsky and Angela Davis from Committees of Correspondence.

In early 2008, MDS Board members Carl Davidson, Tom Hayden, Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Bararbara Ehrenreich went on to found Progressives for Obama.

Howard Zinn wrote more than 20 books, which included his 1980 best-selling and influential “A People’s History of the United States”.

Movie star Matt Damon recently worked with Zinn to turn the book into a documentary for America’s history students. Damon, who grew up next door to his idol, stated in Dec. 09 that one of his favorite books was A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, a book he first started reading in 1980 at the age of 10.

No doubt Howard Zinn is currently being appropriately rewarded for his life’s work.

Boyhood mentors can influence a young man for life. Luckily Matt Damon has time left to consider his political direction.

To do so, he will have to be more honest than was his late mentor Howard Zinn.


=============================================

Howard Zinn on Anarchism and Marxism

An excerpt from the DVD “Theory and Practice: Conversations With Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn” in which Prof. Zinn answers interviewer Sasha Lilley’s questions about a synthesis of anarchism and Marxism, the Paris Commune, and social change.

=========================================

Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, with the [U.S.] Empire proclaiming the end of history and a single system of values, Zinn went against the tide to defend the validity of Marxist ideas. To make his message transcend the boundaries of the academic world, he resorted to a means of expression in vogue: dramatic literature. He wrote Marx in Soho, which played in theaters in the U.S. and around the world. In Cuba, we had the pleasure of enjoying the memorable performance of actor Michaelis Cue, who received praise from the author himself. On that trip to Havana, Zinn spoke about the reasons that led him to write the piece: “I was trying to tell the American public: Marx is not dead, and I will prove it by bringing him back on stage. From there, I would teach the American public what Marxism was really about. I could have Marx himself explaining the difference between Stalinism and Marxism. I would remind the public what Marxist criticism of capitalism was about. I would show that those ideas have much to do with the U.S. today.  In other words, that Marxist criticism of capitalism is still accurate and current.”

Link

============================================

NOT RACIST.

NOT VIOLENT.

JUST NO LONGER SILENT.

The URI to TrackBack this entry is: https://romanticpoet.wordpress.com/2010/07/31/howard-zinn-outed-as-communist-and-a-liar/trackback/

RSS feed for comments on this post.

4 CommentsLeave a comment

  1. Wow. Howard Zinn is and was openly known to be an anarchist. He did attend CPUSA meetings because he sympathized with the cause. But your slander of him in the title of this article is misleading and ridiculous. Saying that his books were “force-fed” to college students (baselessly, I might add.) is like saying that Harry Potter has been force fed to children, his books were never mandatory reading on any college campus, and were the choice of recreational readers, hardly being “shoved down their throats” by any stretch of the imagination. Secondly, you say he “stunned” an audience of “whites” (why inject race into this? Idiot.) by saying that he stands to the left of Mao Zedong. This means nothing more than he IS an anarchist, which is widely accepted to be farther to the left that communism, not insinuating that he is a Chinese dictator-like fiend. Thirdly, you use this accusation (a wrong accusation, because Zinn was public about his anarchist beliefs, you even post a video of him stating them.) to slander Zinn’s work, which you say “influenced” Barack Obama. This is nothing more than a political standpoint used to slander a well-known and widely accepted intellectual and author and to insult the President. It is a sad day that a man can outright lie, and prove his own lie, and state that he did this to bring to light a man’s true identity, not just slander his dead name. You sicken me.

    ======================

    Response by Romanticpoet:

    After his 24 years at Boston University, Zinn taught a “History of Socialism” class at the Boston Democratic Socialists of America’s Socialist School in the fall of 1989.

    In 1992 Zinn co-founded the NewParty, a Marxist political coalition that a rising political star named BarackObama would join a few years later. Other founders included by Daniel Cantor (a former staffer for Jesse Jackson’s1988 presidential campaign) and Joel Rogers (a sociology and law professor at the Universityof Wisconsin-Madison).

    By the mid-1990s, Zinn was working A closely with ACORN,the DemocraticSocialists of America, and the Committeesof Correspondence for Socialism and Democracy.

    On September 20, 2001, Zinn was a guest speaker at a New York City event where some 500 people gathered to rememberthe life of the recently deceased Richard Cloward, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and an originator of the Cloward-PivenStrategy. Otherspeakers at the event included Frances Fox Piven (Cloward’s widow and his collaborator on the Cloward-Piven Strategy), BarbaraEhrenreich, Cornel West, Gus Newport (a community activist and a member of the Committees of Correspondence), New Party co-founder Joel Rogers, and former SDS radical Miles Rapoport.

    In 2006, Zinn served as an original boardmember of the Movementfor a Democratic Society (MDS), an organization established tosupport the newly re-founded Studentsfor a Democratic Society (SDS).

    Other MDS boardmembers included:

    1. former Weather Underground terrorist leaders Bernardine Dohrn, Mark Rudd, and Jeff Jones

    2. former SDS leaders Tom Hayden, Carl Davidson, Mike Klonsky, Bert Garskof, and Mike James

    3. Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi

    4. Democratic Socialists of America members Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Barbara Ehrenreich

    5. CPUSA member Gerald Horne

    6. Committees of Correspondence members Charlene Mitchell, Noam Chomsky, and Angela Davis/

    To the end of his life, Zinn would continue to sympathize with America’s enemies, just as he had supported the Soviet Union in the Cold War. In a pamphlet-like tract published after 9/11 called Terrorism and War,he portrayed the U.S. as a terrorist state, and Islamic jihadists as people valiantly standing up to America’s empire.

    Read more at the link below:

    http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=939

    ============================================

    A Man is KNOWN by the company he keeps………..

  2. TYPICAL RIGHT-WING B***S**!!!

    Response by Romanticpoet:

    Care to EXPAND on what YOU consider B***S***???

    Try using examples and FACTS.

    Typical Communist/Marxist reaction when one of their idolized leaders is outed.

  3. […] Howard Zinn, “Outed” as Communist and a Liar […]

  4. Of course he lied, how else were students to be afforded the right to hear both versions of the significance of the Communist Revolution in Russian. Why are you so afraid of students hearing both sides of the argument and making up their own minds? You own all the media, you write history to suit yourselves, what possible danger could one single man represent to a country of over 300 million, a country that has been involved in mass murder for over a decade, bleeding the country white. The richest country in the world, with 40 million living on the streets and more than that without health cover and where the rich are so rich they need to sell off workers art in Detroit because filthy disgusting rich isn’t rich enough? What could one person possibly say that could make 300 million people take to the streets and over throw the current benevolent, kind, generous government of the USA? I really cannot understand your vitriolic hatred towards someone for expressing his thoughts on a legitimate subject that he is passionate about?

    ============================

    *****************************

    Response by Romanticpoet:

    David,

    Why don’t you state you are Marxist/Socialist? That you side with the Socialists/Marxists? Your own words indicate you support Zinn and his ideology.

    *******

    To my dear brothers and sisters, the workers and peasants of Bolivia

    Dear Comrades,

    You have come so far, you must carry this through to the end and completely smash the bourgeoisie. The world has suffered great inhumanities since the betrayal of the Russian Revolution almost 100 years ago. As we once again find ourselves on the brink of another bloody imperialist war, the workers of the world are watching you—show them the way and they will follow!!

    Viva the workers and peasants of Bolivia!

    David Dieni
    Melbourne, Australia

    ===============================
    =======================================
    Communism can only take hold through Revolution.

    Is THAT what you are advocating by stating “both sides of the argument”?

    “I really cannot understand your vitriolic hatred towards someone for expressing his thoughts on a legitimate subject that he is passionate about?”

    Legitimate? Really?

    Communism ALWAYS is ruled by an Elite tyrant/dictator and their henchmen. Examples Lenin, Stalin and Mao where MILLIONS died. Is THAT what you yourself are advocating?

    Personally liberty and freedom to choose are what I advocate; no dictator.

    Romanticpoet

    ************************


Leave a comment