Hero #151: Howard Zinn … (01/03/16)
Howard Zinn was an American historian, political science professor (Boston University), playwright, and social activist. While witing extensively about the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war movement, and the labor history of the United States, Zinn penned more than twenty books — including his best-selling, immensely insightful, and highly influential A People’s History of the United States (link thereto in the first comment box below). The book depicts the struggles of Native Americans against European and U.S. conquest and expansion, slaves against slavery, unionists and other workers against capitalists, women against patriarchy, and African-Americans against systemic racism. It was highly regarded and was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1981.
Zinn said his experience as a wartime bombardier sensitized him to the ethical dilemmas faced by soldiers during wartime. He also openly questioned the weak justifications given for military operations that inflicted massive civilian casualties, including the Allied bombing of cities such as Dresden, Royan, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II, Hanoi during the War in Vietnam, Baghdad during the war in Iraq, as well as the persistent civilian casualties during bombings in Afghanistan during the current war there.
“Recall that in the midst of the Gulf War, the U.S. military bombed an air raid shelter, killing 400 to 500 men, women, and children who were huddled to escape bombs. The claim was that it was a military target, housing a communications center, but reporters going through the ruins immediately afterward said there was no sign of anything like that. I suggest that the history of bombing — and no one has bombed more than this nation — is a history of endless atrocities, all calmly explained by deceptive and deadly language like ‘accident’, ‘military target’, and ‘collateral damage’.” ~ Howard Zinn
To his credit, after Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, Zinn was one of the first to immediately name him for what he indeed turned out to be, stating that, “If Richard Hofstadter were adding to his book The American Political Tradition, in which he found both ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, maintaining for dear life the two critical characteristics of the American system, nationalism and capitalism, then Obama would fit the pattern.”
Contemporaries held Zinn in high esteem, with fellow Boston University professor Caryl Rivers (who with Zinn was threatened with dismissal after refusing to cross the picket line during a clerical workers strike in 1979) saying, “[Zinn] had a deep sense of fairness and justice for the underdog, and yet he always kept his sense of humor. He was truly a happy warrior.”
“The lesson of that history is that you must not despair, that if you are right, and you persist, things will change. The government may try to deceive the people, and the newspapers and television may do the same, but the truth has a way of coming out. The truth has a power greater than a hundred lies.” ~ Howard Zinn
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