Howard Zinn at MIT 2005 - The Myth of American Exceptionalism

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Yeah Zinn has written some interesting stuff but he's quick to ascribe collective guilt to races or nationalities, which is pretty bad imo.

👍︎︎ 6 👤︎︎ u/[deleted] 📅︎︎ May 28 2021 🗫︎ replies

It pretty much been this way since post Civil War. We really haven’t changed all that much other than adapt society and the economy to modern capitalistic needs. However, at the core of our capitalist system is and always has been a relationship of corruption between politicians and wealthy businessmen who have lobbied legislators for favorable politics and policy.

The middle class tried its (still biased) best to remedy the conflict between the rich and the poor, but all they did was create institutions and empower professionals to oversee the more favorable (but still biased) economic pathways to success into the middle and upper classes. The middle class has acted as a spigot to economic success and it’s clear today that the rich have had their hands on it the entire time.

👍︎︎ 8 👤︎︎ u/lolderpeski77 📅︎︎ May 28 2021 🗫︎ replies

We are a genocidal corporate oligarchy, willing to kill our indigenous and Arabs for daring to want to control their own oil. Greed and short memories keep us from recognizing we are killing the planet herself.

👍︎︎ 13 👤︎︎ u/Postdoom-4444 📅︎︎ May 28 2021 🗫︎ replies

I don’t care about historic sins until Europe, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand also start caring

👍︎︎ 2 👤︎︎ u/Front-Chemistry-7833 📅︎︎ May 29 2021 🗫︎ replies

We need better propaganda to make US past look good!

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/bbbrrffff 📅︎︎ May 28 2021 🗫︎ replies
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[MUSIC PLAYING] SANYAL: Welcome to the opening lecture of the series Myths About America. This lecture series has been organized by MIT's Special Program for Urban and Regional Studies-- in short, SPURS. SPURS is institutionally located in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. I'm Bish Sanyal, director of SPURS, and it is an honor for me to welcome Professor Howard Zinn, the speaker this evening. I also want to welcome all of you, the fellows, the students, faculty, and staff. Perhaps there are others in the audience who do not fit any of these categories, but are eager nonetheless to participate in our deliberations on myths about America. A welcome to you all. Let me provide a very brief description of SPURS, the program which is hosting this lecture series. For some of you who may not know, SPURS was created in 1967, a critical historical moment, much like the time we are living now. And it just created for MIT career professionals from around the world who wanted to spend a year at MIT reflecting on their work experience in a setting very different from their work environment, and one which provided opportunities for reflection and learning. Now, a majority of the fellows in the program are supported by the Fulbright Exchange Program for practitioners, named after the late senator, Hubert Humphrey. One key objective of this program is to cultivate international understanding of the US by other nations in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. As you well know, the need for such an understanding is more important now than ever before. The selection of the team and the speakers for this year's lecture series was made with this particular objective in mind. We assumed that most international fellows and students come to the US with certain preconceived opinions and perceptions regarding American society, politics, and economy. The goal of this lecture series is to subject such perceptions to critical scrutiny, drawing on historical evidence. We hope that such scrutiny of both negative and positive myths about America, as held by others, and also by Americans themselves, will help the fellows better understand this nation. A few individuals and institutions deserve thanks for the organization of this lecture series. First, the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, which is currently Professor Larry Vale, who I see is in the audience. [INAUDIBLE] and [INAUDIBLE],, without whose help we could not have organized this lecture series. And finally, I want to thank the fellows themselves for their intellectual curiosity and eagerness to better understand the US. We are honored that this process of critical understanding is to be started with a lecture by Professor Howard Zinn, who does not need much of an introduction. A People's History of the United States, which Professor Zinn published in 1980, is a book that has inspired many who could, for the first time, see their own contributions to the nation's historical evolution thanks to this new history from below. But Howard Zinn is not a person whose experience is confined to non-traditional social groups at the bottom of American society. He's a decorated war veteran who flew bombing missions in Europe during World War II, returned from the war and attended New York University on the GI Bill, and then went on to attend Columbia University, where he earned a master's degree and PhD in political science. Later, he became the chair of history and social science at Spelman College in Atlanta, a college for black women, where he became deeply involved in civil rights movements. Howard Zinn's understanding of the US is based as much on such concrete firsthand experience as on academic studies of historical events. The combination of these two sources of knowledge has cultivated a mind which is at once sharply analytical, deeply empathetic, and patriotic too, in a way in which is necessary for our times. So with much admiration, I present to you the opening speaker of our lecture series, Professor Howard Zinn, will speak this evening on the topic of the myth of American exceptionalism. Professor Zinn will speak for an hour-- or 45 minutes to an hour-- at the end of which he will have an exchange of views with you. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] ZINN: Thank you, Professor Sanyal, for that nice introduction. Can you all hear me? And also for inviting me. Not everybody invites me. And sometimes I have to go places uninvited. But it's good too good to be here at MIT. Are any of you back there having trouble hearing me? No? One person? Okay. American exceptionalism-- the myth of American exceptionalism-- and by the way, when I told a friend of mine that I was going to give a talk on American exceptionalism, she immediately got in touch with somebody who had been a student of hers, and I think who is now teaching, and who sent me a paper on American exceptionalism. But I will not read her paper, although she has some interesting good and useful things to say. And one of the points she makes is that, by American exceptionalism, we don't mean that the United States is simply unique, simply different. All countries are unique. All countries are different. Exceptionalism suggests more than that. It suggests superiority. It suggests something that all of us living in the United States have encountered a lot, and that is self-congratulation. We are fond in the United States of congratulating ourselves for how wonderful we are and how we are the best, we are the greatest, we are the strongest, we are the most prosperous, we are the freest, we are the most democratic. And yes, we are number one. And we are, in fact, number one in many things. And we are very good-- really, very good-- in many things. And those are the things I probably don't have to tell you about, because anybody who is in the United States, even for a short time, knows, because the things that the United States is good about are immediately apparent. But that's not enough. That doesn't tell the whole story. And if we only dwell on what we all acknowledge are some of the remarkable things about the United States, we will be missing something very important-- something, in fact, so important that we'll be shocked if something happens one day that arouses us from our complacency and that makes us wonder how it is that a country so gifted, so special, so superior, should experience suddenly a disaster that nobody can explain. And yes, when 9/11 happened, that was an occasion perhaps for reflection on ourselves-- a sober and critical reflection on ourselves. That did not happen in the higher reaches of government. The people at the top of the government are not given to self-reflection or to self-criticism. No. Instead, the reaction was a kind of hysterical reaction, a reaching out-- well, reaching is a euphemism War, violence, attack, do something-- but no, no reflection. So I think that that kind of examination of who we are as a country is needed, so we won't be unguarded, so we won't be shocked when something terrible happens-- so we will perhaps begin to understand. This idea of self-congratulation sometimes manifests itself this way, that if you criticize the United States government-- a lot of people here have probably experienced this, as anybody who has ever uttered a word of criticism-- you're met with the exhortation. Well, why don't you go somewhere else? Well, sometimes, they say, why don't you go back to where you came from, which might be Brooklyn. But it's somehow go somewhere else. A friend of mine who's a comedian-- I have friends of mine who are comedians, but who don't know it-- but this is a guy who is a comedian and who knows it, but he's also serious. Some of you maybe have maybe even encountered him, because he used to do comedy here in the Boston area. His name is Barry Crimmins. And in his serious comedy, he would very often be critical of certain things that the United States had done in the world. And people would say to him, well, why don't you move somewhere else? And he would say, I don't want to move somewhere else, because I don't want to become the victim of American foreign policy. Well, this notion of superiority and exceptionalism starts early. And [? Sarah ?] [? Murton, ?] who wrote this book, points out that it starts as early as-- well, here in Massachusetts Bay Colony, in 1630, the colony had just begun and the Governor Winthrop utters those words, which centuries later, will be repeated by Ronald Reagan, who was a great student, as you know, of early American history. And the Winthrop talked about the Massachusetts Bay Colony as a city on a hill. I think Reagan embellished a little and talked about a golden city on a hill. Well, the idea of a city on a hill-- you probably heard that expression a number of times-- the idea of a city on a hill is a nice one, because it suggests a model. It suggests setting an example. Actually, it suggests what, in fact, George Bush has spoken of, when he said, we are a beacon of liberty and democracy. And if that was what we were, if that's all we are, if that's-- we're a city on a hill that people can look to, and the people can learn from, and people can admire, and people can emulate, that is a wonderful thing to be. But it doesn't stop there with just being a city on a hill. In fact, you can see it, because just a few years after Governor Winthrop utters these words about being a city on a hill-- just a few years later, the people in the city on a hill move out to massacre the Pequot Indians, who seemed to think they belong on this land. And there's a description of that, which was William Bradford, one of the early settlers in Massachusetts at that time, a contemporary of Winthrop, wrote a history of the Plymouth Plantation. And he talks about how Captain Mason, attacking a Pequot village, said, "We must burn them." And then Bradford reports, "Those that escaped the fire were slain with a sword, some hewn to pieces, some run through with their rapiers, as they were quickly dispatched, and very few escaped. It was conceived that this thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them frying in the fire, and the streams of blood quenching the same. But the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them and given them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy." And very early on, there's an association between what the government does and what God approves of. And that process of not being justice city on the hill, but of moving out, of expanding, continued. That's a persistent fact of American history going all the way back to those first settlers, and coming down to the present day-- the persistence of expansion into somebody else's territory, and occupying that territory, and dealing harshly with the people who resist that occupation. And one of the things that, when you study the American Revolution in school, one of the things they don't tell you-- although we know about the good things of the American Revolution-- independence from England, and the Declaration of Independence, and all of that-- but generally, they skip over the fact that independence from England for the colonists was disastrous for the Indians. Because it meant that, from now on, the colonists, who had been restrained by the British in their Proclamation of 1763, setting a line, a boundary within which the settlers were supposed to stay so as not to encroach into Indian territory, this boundary line was now erased. And now, the colonists-- now, with the revolution victorious, with independence from England, the colonists could move westward into Indian territory. And of course, that process continued on and on with the kind of description that you heard of the Pequot massacre occurring again and again in American history, as we moved across to the west coast and down to the Gulf of Mexico. And this notion of God being involved, this notion of being divinely ordained, that notion continued. In the middle of the 19th century, on the eve of the War with Mexico, when the United States had just annexed Texas-- a lot of Americans don't know that Texas was just part of Mexico. A lot of people in the United States don't know that California was once part of Mexico. They wonder, why do they have all these Spanish names out there? San this, and Santa this, and-- yeah, well. But on the eve of war with Mexico, this famous phrase was coined by a writer and editor named John O'Sullivan. He spoke about manifest destiny. And he said, "It was our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions." Providence, God, continued to be involved in an expansion. When the United States went into the Philippines at the beginning of the 20th century, President McKinley-- some of you may know this, because it's-- not everything that I say to people is an obscure fact and sometimes I tell people that they really know. Maybe often, I tell people things that they really know. Sometimes I think everything I tell people is something they really know, but I say it anyway. But you may have heard that McKinley said that the decision to invade the Philippines came one night when he prayed, and God told him to take the Philippines. And so this is a very dangerous kind of idea. Once you have God's permission to do what you want, you need no criterion of human morality. And with President Bush-- if you don't mind me skipping immediately a lot of American history to President Bush-- and it's well known that Bush has a special relationship to God and that Bush invokes God every chance he gets. He's not the only president. I mustn't be too hard. He's not the only president who does this. The invoking God is a very common thing all through American history, but Bush has made a specialty of it. Now, I'm going to tell you something where I don't know if this is true. Not all historians will admit that the things they tell you may not be true, but it sounds true to me. How's that for scientific bit of evidence? And that is an article appeared in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Any of you remember an article that appeared in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in which the reporter talks about talking to Palestinian leaders who had met with Bush? Okay, finally I'm telling you something that is not only fairly new, but dubious. But according to this reporter, he spoke to his Palestinian leader, and the Palestinian leader reported on his conversation with Bush. And as he reported, Bush told him, "God told me to strike at al-Qaeda, and I struck them. And then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did. And now, I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East." Well, as I say, who knows? It's one of the situations where you get something second and third-hand. It's just that it's plausible, knowing Bush. Whether it's true or not, it's plausible. It fits everything else. Now, I'll give you a piece of evidence, which is I think, more credible. That is that it's closer to home. This is the president of the Ethics and Religious Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, a friend of Bush, and says that Bush told him during the election campaign, quote, "I believe God wants me to be president." Now, I would consider that interference in a free election. And God wants me to be president. And this actually was reported in the newspaper. And this man, Richard [? Lamb, ?] who says that Bush told him this during the election campaign, he resented the fact that it was quoted, "I believe God wants me to be president," but it was quoted out of context. Context was that Bush followed this up by saying, but if that doesn't happen, it's Okay. Well, I thought that's reasonable. He's willing to change his mind, if God changes his or her mind. Okay. This idea of God giving strength to whatever the government does is something that is true not just with Bush, but at the higher reaches of American government, the people around the bush, and Justice Scalia. Justice Scalia, I don't know how closely you watch him, but-- this is an aside because I just got this in the mail today, and that was something-- a publication of the Dramatists Guild, in which they haven't-- they reproduce a talk that the playwright Tony Kushner gave at Bard College, and it's all about Scalia. But that's just an aside. Scalia seriously believes that God is the source of governmental power. And he has said this again and again. He spoke in-- well, two years ago, at the University of Chicago Divinity School, said, "Government is the minister of God. Government derives its moral authority from God." And this is a dangerous idea in anybody's hands. Scalia seems to be overlooking the fact that the Declaration of Independence suggests that government gets its-- gets authority-- excuse me-- from the people. Government gets its authority from the people. It's answerable to the people. If the government doesn't make sure that people have an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it is then the people who have the right to, as the Declaration of Independence says, to alter or abolish the government. But I suppose Scalia's a strict constitutionalist, and the Declaration of Independence is not part of the Constitution. In fact, the Declaration of Independence is not a legal document at all. It's just the most idealistic statement to come out of the American Revolution, and one to be put aside as soon as you win the revolution. So this idea of God being a source of governmental power, it's always dangerous in anybody's hands. It's dangerous when people call themselves the chosen people. It's dangerous there too. But if these people don't have a lot of power, there's not much they can do with that. They can enjoy the fact that they are the chosen people. If there's some point in history where they develop the power to do something to somebody else, well, then it becomes serious. And we've seen that there are people who in Israel who have-- who justify the occupation of the West Bank on very pragmatic grounds of security and self-defense. But there are others-- there are religious fanatics who justify the occupation on the basis of yes, being the chosen people, and being chosen by God to do this. Of course, there are important people, important Jews who have opposed this idea of calling themselves the chosen people, considering what terrible things have been done in the name of being selected by God. After all, the Nazi storm troopers had on their belts Gott mit uns-- God with us. So it's a dangerous concept when-- especially when the people who believe they are structured by God have great military power. And the Nazis, with their military power. And with that kind of divine ordination, we know what they did in Europe. And now, you have the United States, and you have a government which assures us gets its power from God. And in the hands of the United States, this is a dangerous doctrine, because [INAUDIBLE] simply-- because of the great power of the United States to do whatever they think is God's will, that is a nation with 10,000 nuclear weapons, a nation with military bases in 100 different countries with its warships on every sea. When you couple that power with the notion of divine sanction, then the world is in danger. And this idea that the United States should use its power in the world, should revel in its being number one, that [INAUDIBLE] became especially important that at the end of World War II. Because at the end of World War II, the United States did become the preeminent power in the world. Yes, there was a Soviet Union, but it was the United States that was the greatest economic and [INAUDIBLE] atomic weapons, the greatest military power in the world. And at the end of World War II Henry Luce, who is of the I guess most important nongovernmental people, one of most powerful nongovernmental people in the country-- the owner of a vast chain of media enterprises, the man who owned Time, Life, and Fortune-- not just the magazines, but the things themselves. But Henry Luce said that this would be the American Century. As he put it, the victory now, at the end of World War II, gave the United States the right to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence for such purposes as we see fit, and by such means as we see fit. And that idea, that we do what we want, that this is the American Century, that in fact, persisted, and was acted out through the rest of the 20th century, because the United States continued to expand. Even with the Soviet Union there and soon acquiring its own nuclear weapons, the United States continued to expand into-- its influence into the oil regions of the Middle East by this special arrangement with Saudi Arabia, into Asia with Japan, and into-- certainly into Latin America. And there were some setbacks-- the setback in Vietnam. But the Philippines remained a very important base for the United States. And yes, and soon, the United States had military bases all over the world, and soldiers and sailors stationed all over the world. And the Cold War with the Soviet Union did not really do much to stop this expansion. In fact, the Cold War, the existence of the Soviet Union as a rival, the existence of something called a communist threat in the world gave the United States a justification for doing so much of what it was doing in the world-- for expanding its power in the world, for overthrowing this government or that government, or moving troops here and moving troops there, and all justified by the necessity of stopping communism. Now, you can see that-- I think-- historically, that this was an artificial justification. And by that, I mean that this wasn't the real reason for American expansion in the world. The real reason for American expansion was not to stop communism. After all, that expansion was a continuation of expansion which had gone on for a long time. If you want to see the limits of that idea that it was the Soviet Union and Cold War which was the reason for America United States expanding its power in the world, all you have to do is ask the question, what was going on before 1917? What was going on before there was a Bolshevik Revolution? At that point, the United States was just being minding its own business? No. Not long before there's a Bolshevik Revolution, the United States was engaged in expanding its power into the Caribbean, into the Pacific. So what happened, of course, is that the Cold War ended. That justification ended. But very soon after, 9/11 happened. And once 9/11 took place, another justification appeared. Terrorism replaced communism as a kind of simple answer to the question of, why are we going here? Why are we going there? Why are we making war here? Why are we sending troops there? And in the '50s, it was why are we overthrowing the government of Guatemala, the government of Chile, or the government of Iran? Well, it's communism. And now, it's terrorism. And it has a certain plausibility, because there was a reality to communism, but what we did in relation that reality went far beyond what the real threat was. There's a reality to terrorism, but what we do in relation to terrorism does not quite meet the requirement of having an effect-- serious effect on terrorism. And it does suggest that there are motives deeper than the idea of fighting terrorism for the American move into the Middle East in these past few years. So one year after 9/11, President Bush announces the national security strategy. And this basically lays out the principles for American foreign policy, and lays out the principles of unilateralism, and the preemption, and making sure that no power can rival the power of the United States in the world. And essentially, this is a declaration that the United States could ignore the UN Charter, because if you accept pre-emption, then you are violating the principle of the UN Charter that you're only supposed to make war in self-defense. And I suggest you're also violating the principles laid down in the Nuremberg trials, for which then Nazi leaders were put on trial and hanged. And that is for aggressive war, for preemptive war, [INAUDIBLE] war not in self-defense. So this is a very serious thing, this declaration of principles and national security strategy. And we shouldn't think it was just a Bush Republican idea. Very often, we like to think that before Bush, things were okay and that Bush represents a dramatic departure from whatever we had before. But in fact, preemption is something that-- after all, the United States has made war before, had invaded countries before-- well, as we did in Southeast Asia, which was certainly not a matter of defending ourselves. And the United States has done-- has made war unilaterally-- and this was before Bush-- made war unilaterally or carried out bombing missions unilaterally. Sometimes creating a kind of cloak of internationalism, by bringing NATO or something or by bringing in the UN, as in Korea, but basically an American enterprise. And in fact, under Clinton, Madeleine Albright said at one point-- some of you may remember this-- she said, we will-- if possible, we will act in the world multilaterally. But if necessary, we will act unilaterally. And Clinton was not averse to acting unilaterally and preemptively. And what happens in the present situation is that-- I must say this, that very often, liberals in the United States-- people who are not for Bush-- yes, liberals in the United States accept-- with qualifications here and there-- but accept basically the Bush principles. And the reason for this, I think, is that 9/11 had a very powerful psychological effect on everybody in America. But I think there are many people in the United States-- liberal intellectuals who are really, I think, so affected emotionally by what happened on 9/11 that I think it began to distort their thinking-- I know they wouldn't like me saying this-- distort their thinking about what was happening in the world and about America's role in the world. And they were sort of becoming hysterical over terrorism. And again, yes, there's a reality of terrorism. There's a difference between dealing with terrorism in a intelligence and real way and becoming hysterical over terrorism in the way that actually liberals in the 1950s-- those of you who know some of the history of the United States in the 1950s during the Cold War period, during what is called the McCarthy period, you might remember that there were not just McCarthy people, but liberal people-- Democrats-- who reacted hysterically to what they considered the communist threat. To the point where Hubert Humphrey, who was sort of a quintessential American political liberal-- Hubert Humphrey suggested the notion of internment camps for dangerous people in the United States in times of crisis. And I think we're seeing something of the same phenomenon. Because I was reading in the liberal magazine, The American Prospect, where the editors, in their recent issue, they-- their premise is that the greatest immediate threat to our lives and liberties are Islamic terrorists with global reach. And therefore, when facing a substantial, immediate, and provable threat, the United States has both the right and the obligation to strike preemptively, and if need be, unilaterally against terrorists or states that support them. Preemptively, and if need be, unilaterally-- well, that is the Bush doctrine. And of course, they qualify this by saying, facing a substantial, immediate, and provable threat. The problem is that those who decide whether a threat is, in fact, substantial, immediate, provable-- people who decide that will not be the liberal intellectuals who formulated this, but the people who run the government of the United States. They will decide it, just as Bush decided it when he decided to go to war in Afghanistan, and when he decided to go to war in Iraq. These ideas of unilateralism, and preemption, and-- these are not new. The whole history of the United States in the world is a history of expansion based on these, and rationales given like the rationales given today when we go to war, about spreading liberty, and democracy, and civilization. And we declared war on Mexico in 1846, again, for the purpose of teaching civilization to the Mexicans. And then we went into Cuba in 1898 to bring liberty to the Cubans. In fact, there's always-- or a lot of times-- a certain measure of truth to these statements. As we did expel Spanish domination from Cuba, we liberated the Cubans from Spain, but not from ourselves. Because once Spain was gone, the United States moved in, corporations moved in, the American military moved in, Americans wrote-- rewrote the Cuban constitution. But their rationale was we are bringing freedom to the Cubans. And then, of course, going into the Philippines and bringing civilization. As McKinley said, "We will Christianize and civilize the Filipinos." Because we are different, we are better. At the time of the invasion of the Philippines, the American Secretary of War, [INAUDIBLE],, said a very classical statement of American exceptionalism. He said, "The American soldier's different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the world began. He is the advanced guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness." American soldier is different. Well, of course, now, right now-- immediately now, in the wake of Abu Ghraib, in the wake of all these revelations coming out every day about torture, and atrocities, and so on, that's-- doesn't sound right. But you might say, well, [INAUDIBLE] could not anticipate Abu Ghraib. But he didn't have to anticipate, because at the time, he was saying this the United States was already committing atrocities and massacres in the Philippines by these American soldiers, who were different from soldiers all over the world. The history of American expansion in the world is not a history which is taught very much in our schools, or even in our colleges and universities. We have something called diplomatic history. That's a discipline. Discipline is diplomatic history, and that's what our history is very often. It's diplomatic history, and we diplomatically treat the American foreign policy in the world. Because if young people in our schools learned the history of United States expansion in the world, if they learned the history of the massacres and invasions that accompanied American expansion in the world, they could not possibly believe the President of the United States when he gets up before the nation and says we're going into this country to-- for liberty and democracy. This is Operation Enduring Freedom, and so on. But that history is not there. And this misuse of history is-- it continues to be perpetuated by our political leaders, and not really caught or criticized by that part of the American culture which is supposed to check up on and criticize what the government does-- that is, the press, the media. And so you have Bush appearing, as he did a couple of years ago, before the Philippine National Assembly and saying to the Philippine National Assembly, the-- I don't know. He said, "America is proud of its part in the great story of the Filipino people. Together, our soldiers liberated the Philippines from colonial rule." Well, the people in the Philippine National Assembly sitting there-- you wonder, must have taken a lot of self-restraint to just sit there and listen to this-- liberated the Philippines. 600,000 or so Filipinos died in this long war against the Filipinos. And at the end of it, when the United States was triumphant, it did not bring liberty to the Philippines. It brought decades and decades and decades of military dictatorship for the Philippines. I remember there was a point, I don't know, about a year ago, where the Mexican ambassador to the UN said something undiplomatic about the United States and Mexico. He said something about how the United States has been treating Mexico as its backyard. He was immediately reprimanded by Colin Powell, who said that he-- this man did not understand the history of US-Mexican relations. And in fact, he was soon removed from his post. That's how much clout we have. He was then removed from his post as Mexican ambassador to the United Nations. So yes, without that history, you might actually believe Bush when he says, in his recent inaugural address, that it is-- how did he put it-- [INAUDIBLE] mission of the United States to spread liberty around the world. Spreading liberty around the world, as he put it, is the calling of our time. And if you read the newspapers, including calling the so-called liberal press-- The New York Times, The Washington Post-- right after the-- Bush's inaugural address, you saw a flurry of praise for what Bush had said as if people were in the editorial rooms of these newspapers were so eager to hear those words about spreading liberty in the world, and as if everything else that has been reported from Iraq over the past two years is meaningless in light of these beautiful words uttered by George Bush. But all I would have to do would be to just, with a very short memory, remember that a couple of days before Bush's inaugural address-- a couple of days before that, there was a photo in the New York Times, which some of you may have seen. It showed an Iraqi girl crouching, bleeding, and according to the caption, she was screaming because her parents had just been shot to death by Americans firing on their car. And of course, [INAUDIBLE] well, we-- claim the military-- we'll investigate. There were warning shots. How do you distinguish a warning shot from a shot? But in any case, to me, this was some remarkable juxtaposition of-- but also a testament to the loss of memory, even a memory that can last a couple of days, to see this eager acceptance of Bush's words about liberty and this idea of American exceptionalism. You were told I would speak for an hour or so. I'm taking advantage of every minute of it. Because when I heard it, I said, no, I'm not going to speak for an hour. Actually, I want to speak for two hours. What this idea of special American dispensation in the world-- what it leads to is an abrogation of all sorts of responsibilities to the human race, to everybody else in the world. And it means that the United States is exempt from these responsibilities. I told you about Madeleine Albright declaring that we have a right, if necessary, to be unilateral. When she said that, Henry Kissinger said, this principal of our right to take unilateral action, he said, should not be universalized. That's an interesting thought. It's a good principle for us. But no, it shouldn't be universalized. No. There's a long list of instances in which the United States has declared itself exempt from international agreements, and international laws, and the UN Charter, and the Convention on Biological Weapons-- which was actually signed some years ago, but which didn't have any teeth, didn't have any force. And when it was proposed to enforce this Convention on Biological Weapons a few years ago, the Bush administration said no way. It wouldn't go along with that. And I think most of us know the United States has not gone along with the 100 or more nations that have outlawed landmines. And just the other day, I spoke to a-- listened to actually-- and spoke with-- presentation by a surgeon-- an Italian surgeon who, for 15 years, has been doing surgery on war victims in every possible war zone of the world. Most of the people he operates on, which includes a lot of amputations, are children, and much of that comes from landmines, 100 million of which are strewn around the world. But the United States wants to be exempt from the notion that we should outlaw landmines. And of course, we continue [INAUDIBLE] things outlawed by the Geneva Convention, and cluster bombs, and napalm. So what's the answer? What's the answer to this very dangerous notion of American exceptionalism, of our right to do as we will in the world? Well, I guess the answer is sort of obvious. That is, the answer is that those of us in the United States, and in the world, who don't accept this idea must declare very forcibly, and act very vigorously against this idea, and insist that the ethical norms that most decent people can agree on should be observed, and that no country should be an exception to the rule of morality in world affairs, and that the children of the world should all be seen as part of a family, and that the children of Iraq, or the children of China, or the children of anywhere in the world have the same right to life as American children. Those a very fundamental moral principles which, if our government doesn't uphold them, we must uphold them. Fortunately, there are people all over the world who want to uphold those principles, and who oppose it when the United States does not. And we saw on February 15, 2003-- on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, we saw that amazing moment when, on one day, 10 to 15 million people around the world, in 60, 70 countries around the world, demonstrated against that war. So there are people all over the world who do not accept the idea of American exceptionalism. When last week, the State Department issued its report on human rights abuses-- some of you may have seen it in the newspapers-- State Department issued this report on-- it does this every year. It lists countries which are guilty of torture and other abuses of human rights. And so it lists a bunch of countries. A number of those countries are countries which are allies of the United States. A number of those are countries to which the United States has sent prisoners. And I think, by now, you know that this notion of extraordinary rendition, where we're not going to torture these people-- we'll send them to countries which will torture them. And so the State Department issues this list of countries which have violated human rights. And then when the report came out, there were responses from around the world which said, hey, there's one country which is missing from this list. Yes, what about the United States? A Turkish newspaper said, there's not even a mention of the incidents in Abu Ghraib prison. No mention of Guantanamo. A newspaper in Sydney, Australia pointed out that the United States Senate sends suspects-- remember suspects are not people who have been tried and found guilty of anything, just people who are suspected of doing something-- sends suspects to prisons in Morocco, Egypt, Libya, Uzbekistan, countries that the State Department says uses torture. And so people around the world, yes, and here in the United States. And this is something that we very often are deprived of. We're not only deprived of history. We're very often deprived of immediate history, because we're deprived of things that happen in this country that people are doing that we don't know about, because this is a big country. But that would be an easy excuse, that we're a big country and that's why we don't know about them. No. We don't know about these things that are happening around the country-- these protests, these declarations of humanity, we don't know about them because they're not really reported. And so if you go to the internet, you might find out. If you go to a rally, you might get some of this information. If you travel around the country, you might learn that-- this coming weekend, there are going to be demonstrations in cities all over the country. There's going to be a demonstration in New Orleans. There's going to be a demonstration in Fayetteville, North Carolina. And there's a resistance movement in the United States to this war. And you see only the superficial, you might say, recognition of this, when you read public opinion polls, which show that now, about half the country does not believe in the war. And if half the country does not believe in the war, then somewhere among that 50%, there must be many, many people who are actively opposing that war. And those people are, in fact, engaged in protests all over the United States. And what's perhaps most significant is that, in the armed forces and in the families of the armed forces, there is more and more defection from this war. The Iraqi Veterans Against the War formed in kind of reprise of what we had during Vietnam-- Vietnam Veterans Against the War. And we have military families speak out of the families of soldiers organizing, and who now have thousands of members. And GIs themselves, GIs in the field-- and you've read about instances of mutiny and GIs who say, we don't want to-- who've been to Iraq, who are being sent back, who don't want to go back. And some of them go to Canada, and some of them get court-martialed. This is important, because I think of what Einstein said when-- after World War I, horrified by that war and by the idea of war itself, and by the knowledge that now, modern warfare would be indiscriminate and massive. And Einstein said, wars will stop when men refuse to fight. And so the refusal to fight, and refusal of families to let their kids fight, and the insistence of the parents of high school kids that they will not let recruiters come into the high schools and approach their kids, all of these things-- these things are consistent with what Einstein thought was ultimately the way that wars would stop. So I leave you with the idea that we're not alone, and that there are people all over the world and people in this country who do not accept the idea of a special dispensation to do whatever we want in the world, and that we'll insist on human equality of people everywhere. And I think of William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist. And I think of what was on the masthead of his antislavery newspaper, The Liberator. On his masthead were the words, my country is the world, my country are mankind-- a good thing to remember Thank you. [APPLAUSE] SANYAL: We have around 15 minutes for questions. [INAUDIBLE] AUDIENCE: Hi, professor. My question was, do the people in our government-- do they believe their own rhetoric? Because I feel it must take an extreme suspension of belief to believe a lot of this rhetoric of democracy and American freedom being spread everywhere. Or do they act knowingly? And if they act blindly, is it because of the structure of our educational systems and our government, or do they simply act with the knowledge of disbelief [INAUDIBLE]? ZINN: [INAUDIBLE] This will be just between us. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] they actually believe what [INAUDIBLE] ZINN: Oh, oh. AUDIENCE: And if they didn't believe it, [INAUDIBLE] educational systems [INAUDIBLE] government [INAUDIBLE] MODERATOR: Please use the microphones for the video tape. ZINN: Did you hear the question? Okay. Do the people in government, to do what they do, do they believe in what they do, or are they brainwashed by themselves? That's a tough question. And I don't think I have an answer to this. I don't know if anybody has an answer this, because I think there's-- I think the answer varies from person to person. I think there are people who do understand what they're doing and don't care. They know what they want and they're going to get it. And they don't care, and they're willing to lie. But the lies are acceptable because it's going to achieve the results that they want. These people are cynical people. They know what they're doing. And there are other people, I think, who persuade themselves. The human mind has an infinite capacity for self-deception, and therefore, there are people-- I'm sure there are people in government who really believe in what they're doing, who actually believe that they're advancing the cause of liberty and democracy in the world about what they're doing. But as I say, I don't think there's anyone to answer for this great conglomeration of decision makers. AUDIENCE: My name is [INAUDIBLE].. I'm one of the [INAUDIBLE] fellows. I'm from Israel. And I wanted to ask, which kind of institutions in American society do you think needs to implement these moral norms? Because I was looking at the United States policy in the last two years-- the detainees at Guantanamo and about the judiciary-- and I was seeing that the judiciary was more interested in gay marriage than in detainees' rights. And I was asking myself, which kind of institutes will handle these kind of moral issues that you're speaking about? ZINN: You say what kind of-- AUDIENCE: Institution. ZINN: Institution. Especially in countries that have institutions that seem democratic and that, on the surface, will guarantee our liberties, I think that a country like the United States, we tend to overvalue institutions. And very often, we think that, if a situation is bad, we can correct it by setting up another institution or by amending the Constitution. I can't tell you how many times people have approached me and said, I have the following amendments to the Constitution. Don't you think that, if we adopted these amendments, that everything-- no. Institutions are all malleable, subject to interpretation. We can see that with the Constitution. We can see that with even the Supreme Court, which claims to be a strict interpreter of whatever the Constitution says. And no, all these institutions depend on who has the power. And laws are violated with impunity by the government. It doesn't matter what laws you pass. You can pass a law limiting the powers of the FBI. Won't matter, because the FBI doesn't have to obey the law, because if the FBI violates the law, who will go after it? The FBI? We have a long history of government a violation of law, and so the answer doesn't lie in institutions or even in laws. Now, it helps to have some laws, rather than other laws, but the-- those aren't critical. We changed the Constitution at the end of the Civil War to give black people, well, freedom from slavery, presumably equal rights, with the 14th Amendment, the right to vote, with the 15th Amendment. And so there, we had institutionalized racial equality. Didn't matter, because the 14th and 15th-- and even to a certain extent, the 13th, because blacks were really put back in a semi-slavery by their lack of resources-- but the 14th and 15th Amendments was simply unenforced. Not only were they unenforced, but the 14th Amendment, presumably passed to assure equality for black people-- 14th Amendment became a tool for corporations, to protect corporations against governmental regulation. And so the laws, institutions are not critical, as I say, sure, it's better to-- if you can set up better institutions, if you can put better laws in, fine. But that is never enough. It takes citizen action. When we've had changes-- important social changes take place in this country, it hasn't come as a result of changes in institutions-- certainly not changes in who is elected. No, it's come through the growth of social movements. And that was true of winning a degree of freedom for ex-slaves, and it's true of winning rights of workers, and true in-- well, in recent years, whatever rights have been won by women, or by disabled people, or by black people. They have not come simply through the change in institutions. Although that may accompany the social movements. That come out of the social movements. But basically, it's citizen action, and organization, and willing to take risks on behalf of important values. Those have been crucial. AUDIENCE: My name's [INAUDIBLE]. I wouldn't think it would be exceptional to think that this problem is a uniquely American problem, and that, over the course of history, that numerous societies assumed that they were exceptional-- the Romans, the British, the Japanese-- at different points in time. So as a historian, can you give us any examples where societies have successfully climbed down from this progenerating myth about themselves to actually assuming that they're equal with other people? Is there any success stories? ZINN: Historical examples of where nations have divested themselves of this exceptionalism, and accepted the idea of equality with other people? Only when they were forced to. That is, the British Empire was dismantled, but not out of sheer generosity. But it was forced to dismantle. And no, I don't know of any government which has claimed exceptional position for itself, which has given up that in deference to human rights. But governments and empires in the past have fallen and have been forced to retrench, as the Belgians in Africa, and the British and French in Asia, but only when compelled to by resistance. AUDIENCE: When speaking about exceptionalism, you were talking about a outside threat helping to justify a lot of US aggression and taking on imperial actions. I was wondering, prior to the justification of communism, what was the US justification for expansion? And what was it-- as part of a reflection of the time that we all live through, what was the prevailing thought between the fall of communism and the prevailing idea of terrorism now? ZINN: Well, so two questions, I guess. What was our justification before communism? [INAUDIBLE] different justifications over those several centuries. In the case of, for instance, our wars against the Indians and our expansion there, very often, the justification was that we were civilizing them. They were savage group, and we were-- and therefore, we were civilizing them. And when we conquered them, we tried to take the young people and put them into special schools to teach them civilization, and so on. So as civilizing other people who were backward, there was a certain amount of justification for that in the Mexican War certainly, in the Philippine War. And as I pointed out, in Cuba, the justification was liberating the Cubans. In the case of our forays into Central America-- of which there were many, many marine forays into Central America in the early part of the 20th century, culminating in, you might say, the long occupation of Haiti and a long occupation of Dominican Republic-- the justification was that there was disorder and we were bringing order to these countries. And in the case of, for instance, of Theodore Roosevelt, who developed something called the Roosevelt corollary, the justification was-- corollary to the Monroe Doctrine-- justification was, well, he's-- they're unstable. They're not able to take care of their own finances, which means they really can't take care of their obligations to the United States. We don't like that. Sort of their varying sparing reasons given for all of these foreign policy actions before communism became a easy, monolithic excuse. And you're asking about what about between the fall of the Soviet Union and the war on terrorism. Well, I guess you see an example in the war on Panama, or the first Gulf War. The war on Panama takes place just at the point with the Soviet Union is falling apart. The justification of the war in Panama is, well, Noriega bad man. He no longer likes us. He did at one time. He worked for us. Doesn't want to work for us anymore. And furthermore, he's involved in the drug trade. And we want to get him, and we want to do something about the drug trade. Well, if you know what's happening with the drug trade today, you'd be dubious about that. By the way, there's a-- if you want to read something more interesting than the kinds of things I tell you about history and about Panama, read Johns le Carré's novel, The Taylor of Panama. In John le Carré's novel The Tailor of Panama, he has a small section in which he deals with the American invasion of Panama and the mayhem that we created in Panama. But then, of course, the first Gulf War took place between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the war on terrorism. What was the reason there? Well, the reason there-- the justification given for that was that Iraq had invaded Kuwait, which is certainly true, and certainly not justifiable. But there's an interesting leap that takes place in thinking about war. It's a leap from a just cause to a just war. A cause may be just, and that is that-- keeping Kuwait out of Saddam Hussein's hands is a just cause. But then you're making a jump, if you immediately rush from that to the idea of, therefore, war is required. Just as in Korea, we-- it was unjust for North Korea to move into South Korea, but-- so there was a just cause there, but that leaves open the question of whether then, the proper response, the human response the best response to that was to go to war, and therefore, would be a just war. Well, not quite. We know now [INAUDIBLE] have three years of war in Korea. Two or three million people dead in Korea, and at the end of it, we were back where we were when the war started back, back to North Korea dictatorship, South Korea dictatorship. So it was a just cause. The question is, should we have gone to war? Motivation is important. It is important to ask whether motivations that are expressed are honest ones. And I think it's worth thinking about this question-- did George Bush Senior go to war against Iraq in 1991 because he was heartbroken over the invasion of Kuwait? That's hard to believe. There've been other invasions. There've been other occupations. We don't go to war over every invasion, every occupation. Is it possible that there's something about Iraq and its oil reserves and the Middle East that prompted, again, the real taking over of Kuwait, but made that a very convenient excuse to move into Iraq and then to establish bases there? And the bases that we established in Saudi Arabia came directly out of that war. MODERATOR: [INAUDIBLE] Last question. ZINN: Last question. Oh. AUDIENCE: My name's James. There's a current of American exceptionalism, if I'm not mistaken, that has to do with trying to explain why there hasn't been a strong social democracy in America like there has been in some, if not many, European countries. And I think probably the most-- the best-known exponent of this is probably if-- and correct me, if I'm mistaken-- Seymour Martin Lipset, the Canadian political scientist, I think, is one of the best-known to put forward this attempt to explain American exceptionalism, ie the absence of a strong social democracy, or even a stronger socialist movement. What's your take on this current of what is sometimes referred to as American exceptionalism? But more importantly, what's your take on the whole idea of trying to come to terms with quote, unquote, "why there hasn't been a stronger movement for social democracy-- realized social democracy in the United States? And parenthetically, how much would you say the incredible diversity in this country is part of the challenge that anybody interested in that programmatically has to come to terms with? ZINN: Well, James, you know that's a big question. And I don't deal with big questions. [INAUDIBLE] little ones. I like little questions. Well, you mentioned diversity. This is an issue which American historians and political scientists [INAUDIBLE] have grappled with for a very long time. So here I am MIT on this day, and I'm going to give the definitive, final-- after all these people have worked on this, I am going to tell you what the real truth is. Yes, of course. You can give a number of reasons why we haven't had a very powerful, radical, left movement in the United States. And you can find, yes, diversity-- the size of the country, all the conflicts between immigrants and native-born, they use the pitting of people against one another-- black against white-- the reformism of the United States, the doling out of little goodies to the middle class to create a large enough middle class to act as a buffer between the very rich and the very poor. There are a number of reasons, I think, for the fact that there hasn't been a powerful movement in the United States. But I would add one more thing. I think there's a tendency on the part of a lot of people-- I would never accuse you of this, James-- but there are people who, I think, make too great a distinction between the United States-- [INAUDIBLE] who see too much exceptionalism there-- too great a distinction between the United States and other post-industrial countries. As if, well, these countries have great social movements-- England, France, Italy-- but the United States lags behind, I don't-- I reject the idea of that sharp a distinction between these countries in Europe. Granted that, sure, there's a big powerful trade union movement in France, and there isn't a powerful trade union movement here. But we had important social movements in this country from time to time, and we'll probably have one again, especially if things continue the way they are. And I think it's too easy to denigrate the amount of social protest, and social organization, and resistance that there has been in this country throughout our history. At the beginning of the 20th century, we had a very powerful socialist movement in this country. We had a radical labor unions at the beginning of the 20th century, and then again in the '30s, with the CIO. The great movements of the '60s are very important social movements You might say more-- certainly more-- which had no counterpart really in Europe, except France '68, and so on. But I guess what I'm saying is I don't think we're as exceptional as a lot of people make us out to be in lagging behind in the development of social movements and social consciousness. We have a long way to go. That's the last question? [APPLAUSE] Okay.
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Channel: MIT Video Productions
Views: 403,085
Rating: 4.4890208 out of 5
Keywords: MIT, video, education, science, massachusetts, institute, of, technology, school, college, university, history, people’s history, social sciences
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Length: 93min 12sec (5592 seconds)
Published: Mon Jul 29 2019
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