{"id":1886,"date":"2020-10-27T18:49:47","date_gmt":"2020-10-27T22:49:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/v01_2020\/staging\/?p=1886"},"modified":"2020-11-01T22:18:23","modified_gmt":"2020-11-02T02:18:23","slug":"the-radical-legacy-of-howard-zinn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2020\/10\/the-radical-legacy-of-howard-zinn\/","title":{"rendered":"The radical legacy of Howard Zinn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"dropcap-speaker\">Phil Gasper:<\/span> Howard Zinn died over ten years ago, but in a major speech in September, Trump launched a broadside against him, essentially accusing him (along with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2019\/08\/14\/magazine\/1619-america-slavery.html\"><i>New York Times\u2019<\/i> 1619 Project<\/a> and proponents of critical race theory) of corrupting the youth. What\u2019s behind this attack?<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap-speaker\">Anthony Arnove:<\/span> In a way, I am surprised we haven\u2019t seen Trump attack Zinn before.<\/p>\n<p>The right\u2019s campaign against <i>A People\u2019s History of the United States<\/i> has a long legacy. In 2010, as just one example, Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, who is now the president of Purdue University, tried to eliminate the teaching of <i>A People\u2019s History of the United States<\/i> in Indiana\u2019s schools.<\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.insidehighered.com\/news\/2013\/07\/17\/e-mails-reveal-mitch-daniels-governor-tried-ban-howard-zinn-book\">an email exchange with top Indiana education officials<\/a>, Daniels wrote with glee, shortly after Howard\u2019s death in 2010, \u201cThis terrible anti-American academic has finally passed away.\u201d After he described <i>A People\u2019s History of the United States<\/i> as a \u201ctruly execrable, anti-factual piece of disinformation that misstates American history on every page,\u201d he asked, \u201cCan someone assure me that it is not in use anywhere in Indiana? If it is, how do we get rid of it before more young people are force-fed a totally false version of our history?\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, that attack backfired, just as Trump\u2019s has. In both cases, the reaction of many librarians, teachers, and readers has been to buy more copies of the book, and bring it into wider public consciousness. We have also seen an outpouring of statements of people\u2014including Reverend William J. Barber II, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, and Dave Zirin, among many others\u2014talking about the importance of engaging with Howard\u2019s work.<\/p>\n<p>[In addition to Trump\u2019s attack] you\u2019ve seen various authors attempt to write \u201cpatriotic histories\u201d that aim to \u201cdebunk\u201d Howard. And this is not just from the right fringes that Trump has brought into the mainstream. Liberals such as Jill Lepore\u2014the author of <a href=\"https:\/\/wwnorton.com\/books\/9781631496417\"><i>This America: The Case for the Nation<\/i><\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/wwnorton.com\/books\/9780393357424\"><i>These Truths: A History of the United States<\/i><\/a>\u2014have consciously worked to sideline Howard. You can find attacks on Zinn in the <a href=\"https:\/\/newrepublic.com\/article\/112574\/howard-zinns-influential-mutilations-american-history\"><i>New Republic<\/i><\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dissentmagazine.org\/article\/howard-zinns-history-lessons\"><i>Dissent<\/i><\/a>, and even, quite recently, <a href=\"https:\/\/inthesetimes.com\/article\/howard-zinn-peoples-history-of-the-united-states\"><i>In These Times<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I am sure Howard would have taken it as a badge of honor, though, to be attacked by Trump. This is a good example of the old Billy Bragg line: \u201cIf you\u2019ve got a blacklist, I want to be on it.\u201d I think he\u2019d also be pleased to be connected in this latest attack to the important anti-racist work of Kimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw, critical race theory, and the 1619 Project. Anti-racism was fundamental to Howard\u2019s life and politics.<\/p>\n<p>He would have understood that what Trump and his utterly venal allies really fear is not just education that encourages critical thinking about history, but the massive multiracial movement openly challenging the systematic, institutional racism that is foundational to US capitalism and the mythology of American exceptionalism that props up their corrupt rule.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pullquote\">The attacks on&#8230;high school teachers, university professors, and journalists&#8230;are energizing Trump\u2019s base, and go hand in hand with the paranoid rhetoric about cities run by anarchists, whites as the true victims of racism, police under siege from protestors, and children being brainwashed by teachers seeking to destroy \u201cthe American way of life.\u201d<\/aside>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap-speaker\">Phil Gasper:<\/span> I think you\u2019re right that Trump\u2019s attack will increase the sales of <i>A People\u2019s History<\/i>. But Trump is all about political polarization\u2014do you think this will also energize his base? Or are these attacks on books and academic currents that offer alternatives to the way in which history has long been taught in the U.S. too esoteric to have much effect? Will teachers, academics, librarians who use or promote this material get more heat from right-wing politicians and pressure groups? Can the attacks largely be laughed off, or do they need a more serious response?<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap-speaker\">Anthony Arnove:<\/span> We should not laugh off the right\u2019s attacks. We need to take them very seriously.<\/p>\n<p>We have seen Trump\u2019s base activated into violent acts by some of the most marginal and outlandish of his conspiracy theories, scapegoating, and not even thinly veiled calls for violence. High school teachers, university professors, and journalists have been targeted by racists making violent threats against them and their families.<\/p>\n<p>The attacks are energizing Trump\u2019s base, and go hand in hand with the paranoid rhetoric about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/opa\/pr\/department-justice-identifies-new-york-city-portland-and-seattle-jurisdictions-permitting\">cities run by anarchists<\/a>, whites as the true victims of racism, police under siege from protestors, and children being brainwashed by teachers seeking to destroy \u201cthe American way of life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not just [from] Trump. It\u2019s William Barr, Mike Pompeo, Stephen Miller, Tom Cotton, Donald Trump Jr., Kimberly Guilfoyle, all Trump\u2019s proxies. They are very actively encouraging a toxic mix of polarization, vigilantism, and white nationalism to win this election and lay the basis for their agenda well beyond it.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap-speaker\">Phil Gasper:<\/span>The 1619 Project on the history of American slavery and its continuing legacy raises some interesting questions. It\u2019s hosted by the <i>New York Times<\/i>, one of the mainstays of liberal capitalist propaganda in this country. What do you think Howard would have made of this apparent contradiction? Does it tell us anything interesting about divisions within our ruling class?<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap-speaker\">Anthony Arnove:<\/span> I think Howard would have welcomed the 1619 Project and seen its publication by the <i>New York Times<\/i> as a sign of people of color fighting for internal change at the paper (as has been happening at newsrooms around the country) and, more broadly, the <i>Times<\/i> feeling the impact of changes in society that mean the whitewashed liberal narrative of U.S. history is no longer tenable.<\/p>\n<p>It is a reflection of the hard work of historians, teachers, and social movements, especially those challenging racism, and is connected to the remarkable toppling of racist monuments, Confederate flags coming down, and a number of institutions being forced into a reckoning with their racist pasts \u2014 and how their institutional racism continues today.<\/p>\n<p>That said, I think Howard would have pointed out that the United States was founded on both slavery and genocide and that we need to tell the story of 1492 and 1619 together. I think he would have had concerns about the marginalization of indigenous perspectives and settler colonialism in how the main 1619 articles framed US history.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap-speaker\">Phil Gasper:<\/span>Trump\u2019s attack misrepresented the work of critical historians like Zinn as \u201cpropaganda.\u201d But it seems to me that Howard wanted to encourage people, especially students, to think for themselves\u2014to question the historical narratives that are presented as beyond question in schools and history textbooks. Trump and the right want to ban alternative perspectives and turn students into true believers of national myths. By contrast, Zinn wanted students to challenge his version of history as well\u2014to hold it up against the historical evidence and to evaluate it for themselves. He was confident that his views would hold up very well against the evidence, but he also wanted to develop students as critical thinkers. Does that capture Howard\u2019s approach to education?<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap-speaker\">Anthony Arnove: <\/span>Definitely. Marx once responded to a popular questionnaire of his day. When asked \u201cYour motto,\u201d he wrote, \u201cDe omnibus dubitandum,\u201d doubt everything. I think that\u2019s absolutely in keeping with how Howard viewed his teaching and writing.<\/p>\n<p>The right, which only understands history as propaganda, and believes so thoroughly what W. E. B. Du Bois called \u201cthe propaganda of history,\u201d cannot acknowledge this.<\/p>\n<p>This is far from a new conversation. In the afterword to <i>A People\u2019s History of the United States<\/i>, Howard wrote:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There is a certain drumbeat of scolding one hears these days, about the need for students to learn facts. \u201cOur young people are not being taught facts,\u201d said presidential candidate Robert Dole (and candidates are always so scrupulous about facts) to a gathering of American Legionnaires. I was reminded of the character in Dickens\u2019 <i>Hard Times<\/i>, the pedant Gradgrind, who admonished a younger teacher: \u201cTeach nothing but facts, facts, facts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But there is no such thing as a pure fact, innocent of interpretation. Behind every fact presented to the world\u2014by a teacher, a writer, any-one\u2014is a judgment. The judgment that has been made is that this fact is important, and that other facts, omitted, are not important.<\/p>\n<p>There were themes of profound importance to me which I found missing in the orthodox histories that dominated American culture. The consequence of those omissions has been not simply to give a distorted view of the past but, more important, to mislead us all about the present.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He added, \u201cWhat we learn about the past does not give us absolute truth about the present, but it may cause us to look deeper than the glib statements made by political leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the last thing the right wants.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap-speaker\">Phil Gasper:<\/span>Let\u2019s turn this around for a moment. What do you think Howard Zinn would have made of Donald Trump? Howard was always a master of using history to shed light on contemporary developments. Are there historical events or figures that he might have referred us to in order to make sense of the Trump phenomenon?<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap-speaker\">Anthony Arnove:<\/span> That\u2019s an interesting question. There\u2019s a tendency among liberals to see Trump\u2019s actions as unprecedented, a departure from democratic norms, and so on. This is a common refrain in the <i>New York Times <\/i>and especially on MSNBC.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pullquote\">Howard would be asking deeper questions about the undemocratic institutions that brought Trump to power, such as the Electoral College, and enabled him to cause so much harm to so many&#8230;about the violence and racism that were foundational to the country\u2019s history, and which still profoundly shape our politics.<\/aside>\n<p>Given the president is a mendacious and corrupt clown, a malignant narcissist, and a genuine sociopath, it\u2019s easy to understand that line of thinking.<\/p>\n<p>But the problem is, it\u2019s based on a distorted view of how democratic and wonderful things were before, and it fails to understand the conditions that made Trump possible in the first place. Naomi Klein has written very perceptively about this in her book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.haymarketbooks.org\/books\/1145-no-is-not-enough\">No Is Not Enough<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>We do see discontinuity with Trump. I think Sam Farber was onto something important when he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jacobinmag.com\/2018\/10\/donald-trump-lumpen-capitalist-class-elections\">called Trump a \u201clumpen capitalist.\u201d<\/a> There\u2019s a distinctive inflection to Trumpism that comes from the fact Trump is a grifter, a troll, a conspiracy theorist, a racist of the crudest sort, and is surrounded by other grifters.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s become especially clear in the criminal way he has mismanaged the coronavirus pandemic, leading to the loss of tens of thousands of lives, perhaps\u00a0 more than a hundred thousand.<\/p>\n<p>But I think Howard would have also had very important things to say about the continuity, as well, with all the other political leaders in US history who displayed, in his words, \u201ca reckless disregard for human lives in pursuit of something called \u2018national interest.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly, all earlier presidents seem like brilliant humanitarians and statesmen when placed beside Trump, no matter their records. George W. Bush is now made out to be some sort of hero.<\/p>\n<p>All the criticisms we made of Obama\u2019s drone program and targeted assassinations, his deportations, his ties to Silicon Valley billionaires, were hard enough to communicate when he was president, but now, with four years of Trump, it\u2019s much harder.<\/p>\n<p>I think Howard would also be asking deeper questions\u2014not about personalities, presidents, and corrupt individuals, but about the undemocratic institutions that brought Trump to power, such as the Electoral College, and enable him to cause so much harm to so many, about the unchecked power of the executive (expanded under Obama), about the profound inequality of our society, clearly so linked to the rise of Trumpism, about the violence and racism that were foundational to the country\u2019s history, and which still profoundly shape its politics.<\/p>\n<p>I think he\u2019d also be saying that we have to look to history to understand how people have come together in social movements, here and internationally, to fight against injustice, oppression, and greed; to bring down tyrants, and to bring about sweeping changes that seemed impossible to even some of those most dedicated to achieving them.<\/p>\n<p>As Angela Davis reminds us, freedom is a constant struggle. And we are lucky that we have Howard\u2019s writings, speeches, and his example to help us as we do the critical work ahead.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap-speaker\">Phil Gasper:<\/span>Apart from <i>A People\u2019s History of the United States<\/i>, what else by Howard Zinn do you recommend people read? And what resources are available for teachers who may want to use his books and be ready not just for questions from students, but to respond to potential right-wing attacks as well?<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap-speaker\">Anthony Arnove:<\/span> To start, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.haymarketbooks.org\/books\/494-howard-zinn-speaks\"><i>Howard Zinn Speaks<\/i><\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sevenstories.com\/books\/3837-voices-of-a-people-s-history-of-the-united-states\"><i>Voices of a People\u2019s History of the United States<\/i><\/a><i>.<\/i> The new edition of his memoir, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beacon.org\/You-Cant-Be-Neutral-on-a-Moving-Train-P1409.aspx\"><i>You Can\u2019t Be Neutral on a Moving Train<\/i><\/a><i>,<\/i> is terrific, and features an excellent foreword by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.<\/p>\n<p>Howard\u2019s book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.haymarketbooks.org\/books\/533-sncc\"><i>SNCC: The New Abolitionists<\/i><\/a> is a great read, and for folks who want to dig deeper into Howard\u2019s civil rights organizing, Robert Cohen\u2019s book <a href=\"https:\/\/ugapress.org\/book\/9780820353289\/howard-zinns-southern-diary\/\"><i>Howard Zinn\u2019s Southern Diary<\/i><\/a> is also first-rate.<\/p>\n<p>I recommend teachers check out the excellent free resources on the websites of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zinnedproject.org\/\">Zinn Education Project<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/peopleshistory.us\/\">Voices of a People\u2019s History of the United States<\/a>. Teachers might also want to check out the documentary I worked on with Howard, <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/174426996\"><i>The People Speak<\/i><\/a><i>.<\/i>\u00a0In terms of responding to potential attacks from the right, I\u2019d suggest checking out the forthcoming Haymarket Books title <a href=\"https:\/\/www.haymarketbooks.org\/books\/1554-black-lives-matter-at-school\"><i>Black Lives Matter at School<\/i><\/a>, edited by Denisha Jones and Jesse Hagopian. And then to understand the right today, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.haymarketbooks.org\/books\/1261-the-new-authoritarians\"><i>The New Authoritarians<\/i><\/a> by David Renton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Phil Gasper<\/strong> interviewed <strong>Anthony Arnove<\/strong> about Donald Trump\u2019s recent attack on the radical historian Howard Zinn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":1908,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[48,92,93,62],"class_list":["post-1886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","tag-history","tag-howard-zinn","tag-interview","tag-trump"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/arnove-zinn.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}