Howard Zinn - You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train- A People's History

Welcome to books of our times produced by the massachusetts school of law today we shall discuss two books by one of america's most famous historians of any political stripe and certainly the most famous american historian from the left howard inn the two books are you can't be neutral on a moving train a personal history of our times and failure to quit reflections of an optimistic historian professors zinn is also the author of one of the most famous and in the schools one of the most widely adopted works of american history called a people's history of the united states which has sold over a million copies howard thank you very much for coming up here you know on this show howard i've had people uh... or this and other shows i've had people as famous as uh... eugene mccarthy and the famous federal judge richard posner and uh... I want to say that it's a real privilege to have you because what you have done you have worked something of an intellectual revolution in this country no less than posner has in a different field and and no less than uh... than eugene mccarthy worked a revolution in politics uh... in nineteen sixty seven and eight so i'm delighted to have you here and let me start out by asking you this as a man of the left as they used to say in the britian one would think that that that somebody with your views uh... would be extremely disappointed with the way history has gone and uh... with the way in which you might foresee that it could go in the future and yet you're not you are a very optimistic guy and you talk a lot about uh... things always change and uh... the importance of small acts which cumalativley mount up why don't you get into all these reasons why you're so optimistic about american history in the future for the future ok probably probably the word optimistic is a little misleading because it... suggests something that i don't really believe and that is things will be ok tomorrow next week next month i'm optimistic in the long run in the short run i see what everybody sees i see all the things that make people depressed i see all the things that make people pessimistic i see the wars i see the starvation i see the of the uh... the terrible violence that is going on the sickness of society i see all of that but uh... but i think the reason that i am optimistic for a long run is that i've also in my lifetime i don't like to say this but my lifetime has now spanned many decades and in my lifetime i've seen enough change to suggest that more change is possible i was in world war two i saw a victory there when it looked impossible i was in the civil rights movement involved there for seven years living in the south and saw marvelous developments and triumphs that nobody ever expected i was in the movement against the war in vietnam and there too it seemed impossible but the war finally ended and we had a great movement against that war and uh... and also maybe more important even today as we are in the midst of a war a war which is very depressing because we see no end to it and we see an administration in power which seems determined to have war after war after war in order to maintain american supremacy in the world and yet in the midst of the situation today i see signs in the united states and certainly all over the world of people who are aware of what is happening and who do not go along with it then they're not going along with it doesn't mean that that they have yet succeeded in changing our policy right howard I want to go back to that the whole question of war in just a moment but before we before we get there and and i think that what i'm about to ask relates to it you talk a lot about the importance of what you call small acts that do not receive national publicity and the way in which those acts show that there's something stirring underneath and ultimately cumulatively cause people in the nation to change and you've seen a lot of this in your own history why don't you elaborate about that when i was talking about that i guess i was thinking primarily about my experience in the south moving to atlanta georgia in nineteen fifty six before there was a civil rights movement the montgomery bus boycott had taken place but now things were quiet and there was no real expectation of a tumultuous change in the south but uh... i saw it in atlanta signs of unrest of dissatisfaction my students at spellman college were quite reserved polite you might say controlled yeah at the same time it was and is a woman's college it was a woman's spellman college is a woman's college at the same time it was obvious that these students although they were not get breaking out of they're controlled situation had enormous resentment inside at the segregation in the south at the humiliation the people of color endured every day in the south and uh... and they began to act in small ways that were not noticed and i was involved with them though they the social science club at spellman college decided uh... we'll try something small we'll try desegregating the atlanta public library and they carried on a campaign which ultimately succeeded yeah it's the kind of thing that didn't make headlines n like the sit-ins or freedom rides and so on but these little forays and these later on I discovered these had taken place will over the south to put it another way before the famous nineteen sixty sit-ins there were many sit ins that didn't attract attention yeah before the freedom rides they were attempts at freedom rides which didn't lead to anything big right so i came to the conclusion that it's very important that people engage in even the smallest of actions even if they don't seem to bring any immediate results because its these small actions that build and build and build that eventually come to fruition you talk a lot on a related subject about the need of human beings in this democracy and i suppose it would go to any democracy to seize the day as it were and if necessary in the street and build a democracy themselves because you say democracy will not be handed to you by the courts by the congress by the executive by the governors it is not given to you by the constitution and therefore people must go out and sometimes in the streets earn democracy themselves why don't you elaborate on that point of view that you express i think the way you express is is an accurate representation not everybody expresses accurately what i say but you're doing it funny i have the same problem on my point is that we grow up we go to school we got a junior high school and the teach us about uh in my day they used to call it civics I don't know if they still do yeah but they teach us about government they teach us about democracy they talk about the three branches of government and the you know the checks and balances and they give you the impression that this is what democracy is about that you can put democracy on the blackboard yep and make a diagram and show the executive and the judiciary and the legislative and the arrows going well of course historically that's not how changes come about the experience of black people is one striking example of it even after the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments were added to the constitution after the civil war it didn't matter the law wasn't going to be enforced by the president of the united states and so in order to make the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments come alive black people had to take it unto themselves which is what they did in the fifties and sixties yeah yeah and this is also true of the labor movement with the labor movement perhaps even more dramatic because the labor movement didn't even have amendments to the constitution that gave them rights in a way that black people finally got rights in the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments and working people with no constitutional rights the constitution after all is not a document that favors the economic needs of people roosevelt saw that that's why he proposed at one point an economic bill of rights no the constitution does not provide a right to health care or to housing or to food and so our working people had to go out and strike and boycott face the police face the national guard they had to do it themselves that's how the eight hour day was won you know you make a point that i find very striking because it's exactly the same point made by the most capitalistic of people but they make it from the other direction you make the point that that people overvalued the present and extrapolate that the future will be exactly like the present and taint so which is one of the reasons that you are optimistic in your love for the long term and the funny thing is you read about the stock market and they say yeah that's exactly the problem that people have on the stock market day they think whatever's going on today is just going to keep going on and its not true it's just a a sort of a typical uh... human typical human thing but let's talk just a little bit about the war since you did bring it up and then we'll go back to a couple other things you say that the some method of well i'll put it this week doing away with what if we can is is the central issue of our time your not a pacifist as i understand it but you do have a great revulsion uh... at war as do some of the rest of us what caused you to develop to develop this revulsion let me say for the audience's sake you'll elaborate this that actually in in world war two when you were a young kid you were eighteen you just graduates from high school you had a job in a shipyard building american naval which would have deferred you from combat and from joining the service in fact you worked on the u_s_s_ iowa which is one of america's most powerful battleships it the one that the turret blew up just a few years ago and yet you you went off you took one of the most dangerous jobs in the war you were flying i think a bombardier if i remember correctly b-17s those people did not have a long life span there was the worst casualty rate probably in that then them in the infantry so you started off as sort of gung ho in favor of our military and you've gone a hundred and eighty in the other direction why don't explain what what motives what has motivated you and what continues to motivate you when i was gung ho as you say and enlisting in the force in world war they called it the army air corps at that time in world war two it wasn't because i was a militaristic general it was because i believed that this war this specific war world war two was absolutley necessary in order to defeat you know what seemed the most horrible phenomenon of modern times and that is fascism nazism and so enthusisastically i joined and and i flew bombing missions over europe and but what happened is that at the end of the war uh... i began to have more complicated thoughts about war i say more complicated thoughts because it's not that i went simply from being pro or to antiwar it's just that it seemed to me looking back on the world war two as i did shortly after it was not simply a good war you may notice that studs terkel in his oral history which is entitled a good war puts quotation marks around the good war so many other people he interviewed who were in world war two later expressed doubts about the purity of that war if I may interject something we've had a historian a fellow who wrote a history of world war two on these shows howard and there seems to be absolutely no question whatsoever that in the pacific on both sides it was a race war joh i dont know if you had john dower on no we had donald miller on you had donald miller i said i see well john dower hum wrote a book about that fact just what your talking about there were atrocities on both sides and history is always written almost always written from a nationalistic point of view and so when we write our history or when journalists talk about world war two it always the japanese cruelties the bataan death march and so on which is true of course but what they omit of course is our cruelties and our atrocities and uh... so in john dower wrote a book called war without mercy which deals with that redresses that balance in fact what begins my thinking rethinking about war was right after the war when i read john hersey's hiroshima mmm-hmm and john heresy had gone to hiroshima after the bombing and he interviewed the people who were the victims of that bombing and who were still alive and his account of it was so personal so human so harrowing that i who had accepted thee bombing of hiroshima when it happened in our world i don't have to go in the pacific now yeah the wars over yeah and i didn't think about the human consequences of that bombing and that made me rethink my own missions and realize that i had never understood the human consequences of the bombing missions that i was flying yeah i didn't realize that i was bombing really indiscriminately and all this talk about which they still talk about you know precision bombing accurate bombing we only bomb military targets was all nonsense it was nonsense then and its still nonsense now they started saying that in those days because of what was then a big new device but norden bombsite that's right and actually we were engaging as were the british in area bombing to a large extent you know when you talk about hiroshima there are people who can say and its not my purpose to get into that discussion here but merely to point out that there are people who say that that that the atomic bombs may have saved millions of lives on both sides but be that as it may you participated in the bombing of rouen afterwards you could find no legitimate excuse for that bombing at all and it took hundreds as i understand it of uh... allied french lives on the ground yes I don't want to bypass hiroshima ok because it is still one of the great myths in american culture that we saved lives by bombing hiroshima and nagasaki we did not i've done a lot of research on that the most elaborate research job on that done by gar alperovitz and a crew of scholars makes it clear we did not save lives japanese were about to surrender we killed several hundred thousand people unnecessarily and i want to say something else about that which goes not only to hiroshima but to bombing in general i think i would ask people who say we had to do it in order to save lives i would say well if it was in august nineteen forty five and you knew that we could end the war with japan more quickly because that's what it was about ending it more quickly not ending it we knew it would end the japanese were on their way to defeat but ending it more quickly by dropping a bomb would you be willing to kill a hundred thousand american children to end the war more quickly well the answer to that is obvious nobody would say yes but you're willing to kill a hundred thousand japanese children in order to and the war the war more quickly what does that mean what does that say about the way we think about other people what does that say about war was it say about a willingness to kill other people because their lives are not as important as ours okay i i know you didn't want to hiroshima but i couldn't let that go because it's such an important myth in american culture what what that brings me to is this and i must say i think there should be more writing on one side of the other about the question of whether the japanese were about to surrender and what would the casualties have been but putting that to one side for a moment my understanding is that and i think you probably agree with this and my intent here is to ask why you think it's true is that that much of the rest of the world much is an ambiguous wrod i don't know what other word to use much of the rest of the world considers america as the premier terrorist in the world today and uh... and the as i understand that has a lot to do with our use of bombs and other kinds of really vicious weapons whether it's uh... better or worse to kill people one way or another that's another question but uh... an i right in thinking that that you yourself because of the massive bombs because because of the fact that you inevitably kill civilians thats what i'm trying to say you inevitably kill civilians do you think that it's fair to say that and americans certainly don't want to hear this we certainly don't want to hear this do you think it's fair to say that much of the rest of the world considers us major terrorists i think there's no question about it but i mean recent polls of the past few years have have shown that people of other parts of the world consider president bush more dangerous then osama bin laden more dangerous than saddam hussein now why is that i mean to american ears that's unimaginable but what they see they see the united states having suffered a terrorist attack nine eleven terrible terrorist attack they see the united states responding by its own terrorism not by focusing upon who did this attack let's find a not treating it like a police operation or an international police operation but simply going ahead and bombing afghanistan killing three thousand or more civilians in afghanistan without any particular effect on al-qaeda osama bin laden terrorism and then they see us going into iraq and now i have not just recently seen figures by an organization that has worked very hard to compile figures on the civilian dead in iraq as a result of this very short war and they come up with figures like ten fifteen twenty thousand civilians americans don't even know this because all we focused on is the fact that everyday we lose another two one three soldiers you know several hundred by now but when the rest of the rest of the world knows this better than we do they get better news than we do they don't listen to fox television they don't listen to c_n_n_ they have much better news sources they know what the united states has done and also i think this is also true they have a memory of vietnam which is being lost in the united states yeah to me it's interesting that in our culture and on television and in the movies they're bringing back world war two in a very heavy way saving private ryan you know and and the the stories of d_-day and the hundred and first airborne bringing back world war two why because world war two immediately conjures up the image of a just war and the enemy as hitler they don't bring up vietnam and and but among europeans and i think lot of people in the world who opposed the american war in vietnam to a far greater extend and earlier than americans did they still remember that the united states was responsible for killing several million people in vietnam they can't forget that they see the history of the united states in vietnam central america supporting death squads in central america results being hundreds of thousands of lives being lost in guatemala el salvador they know this in a way that american's don't you know there were three million people dead in vietnam and i suppose had we not intervened the figure would have been a few hundred thousand perhaps as many as a million but three million not a chance not a chance and people don't remember the havoc that our sanctions wrought in the last ten years on iraq putting aside the question whether saddam hussein is a good man or a bad man nobody's going to say anything but saddam hussein is horrendously evil but it was children who basically bore the brunt as i understand it who basically bore the brunt of our sanctions there heres another instance of how the media have kept the american people really ignorant of what has been going on because what you talked about the sanctions of going on for ten years and by the way under both democratic and republican administrations you know before people get to idealistic and romantic about the democrats these sanctions according to the u_n_ perhaps a million people and several hundred thousand children we take a quick break for a public service commercial we'll come right back and we'll continue discussing this this subject stay with us we'll be right back with howard zinn those of you who watch books of our time know that many of our programs are about books that deal with history this reflects not just might own interest in history but also the widespread belief that we would do better if our leaders knew more about history this belief is one of the most important reasons the massachusetts school of law is starting a new and unique college called the american college of history and legal studies a c_h_ ls a c_h_ ls will be a senior college offering only the junior and senior years of undergraduate education it will focus entirely on american history including the history of some important fields of american law it will offer specific pathways to law school for those who choose to become lawyers including entrance into law school after the junior year for those who do well at achls and and education which rigorously prepares those who choose other fields than law it's teaching will be entirely by the discussion method in which all students participate as it msl itself and other fine law schools if will have very small classes of only fifteen to twenty students it's tuition will be only ten thousand dollars per year much lower than almost any other college offering a bachelors degree you can view ACHLS's catalogue on line at the web address on your screen achls will be opening in salem new hampshire which is on the new hampshire massachusetts border in august of two thousand ten if you would like further information about achls or would like an application call write or email maureen mooney at the phone number or address on your screen welcome back howard before the break you had mentioned that a we had both mentioned americans don't like to hear certain things about our society because we tend to grow up with a view of america as being almost solely a righteous and virtuous country and to some extent i think that that comes up from the media and to some extent it comes from the vast miswriting for should save one-sided writing of american history and uh... i take it that that this had something to do within a your decision to write the book that's called a people's history of the united states am i my right in that and wanting i'm right or wrong why don't you explain how you came to write that book and what impact it has had it has after all sold a million copies which for and history uh... book is pretty amazing you know i think i came to write that book because i was looking for a book like it and couldn't find it and i suspect that a lot of books are written for that reason you know if if you're looking for a certain kind of book it's not there so i'll sit down and write it take a few days out of my life but why were you looking for a book like that well i was looking for a book like that because and i think this came from my experience in the south here i was in the midst of all sorts of incredible dramatic events going on from atlanta and my students involved in the sit-ins and myself involved too in demonstrations picket lines and then i left atlanta and went down to albany georgia to cover the demonstrations in albany georgia i became involved with sncc the student non-violent coordinating committee they invited me to be on their executive board and i went to selma alabama and various towns in mississippi and and all these amazing things happening you were right in the middle of some of the most i mean that was like being at all the big battles of world war two so to speak yeah i felt like i was john reed writing ten days that shook the in the midst of those crowds at leningrad and so and so i i noticed that so many things that we're going on were simply not being reported and uh... and I realized and extrapolated from that and i said in every year there must be all sorts of amazing things happening that never get into the newspapers that never get into the history books now and what they are mostly are the doings of ordinary people and the resistance of ordinary people and that our historians is like our newspapers and like our television tend to focus on the important people you watch public television and public television is supposed to be better more broad minded then commercial television when you watch commercial television public television and you see let's say the lehrer news hour certainly spending more time on important subjects than commercial real estate but who do you see on the news hour you see important people uh... you know you see experts you se secretaries of state you see congressmen and senators the big shot theory of leading history exactly and history in the history books what are history books written on their writton on presidents this is the age of lincoln this is the age of roosevelt this is the age of jackson here are the founding fathers well instead of the talking about the founding fathers how about talking about shay's rebellion how about talking about the farmers in western massachusetts who rebelled against the rich in boston instead of talking about george washington and the great victories in the revolutionary war or i should say not instead of but in addition to yeah how about talking about the soldiers in washington's army who mutinied against the officers who mutinited because they were being treated like dirt and the officers were getting these resplendent uniforms and all this food etc and high pay where are those soldiers and those new mutinies in the history books and so i extrapolates from all of that than came to inclusion that doings of ordinary people what happens to ordinary people their victimization and also their rebellions aren't there in the history books so i want to write about that i wanted to for instance the history books stress the economic miracle of the united states especially after the civil war that period after the civil war the united states becomes a great industrial power the railroads spanning the country and the steel mills going up but i wanted to read about and hear about the people who worked in the steel mills the people worked on the railroads the irish immigrants the chinese immigrants who worked on the transcontinental railroad who died in large numbers and i want to hear about the strikers of the eighteen seventy seven and the pullman car strikers and here's an interesting thing interesting to me course after i began to read on my own and read the history of labor struggles in this country here and saw that they were not there in the history books i have a p_h_d_ in history went to graduate school as a history major and none of my history books today talk about the colorado coal strike of nineteen thirteen fourteen the ludlow low massacre yeah woody guthrie wrote a a song about the ludlow massacre but it was not in the history books one of the most dramatic events in american history the lawrence textiles strike here we are sitting we are in lawrence aren't we near lawrence yeah we are in lawrence great textile strike in lawrence in nineteen twelve women immigrant women who seemed hopeless striking against the great you know textile companies yeah and winning wasn't there in the history books so i wanted to bring that and and i take it uh... what you've done has had uh... a dramatic impact in the last ten to fifteen years because if i understand right high school teachers and college teachers all over the united states adapt your book as supplemental reading to sort of offset I think the key phrase is what you said in addition to not instead of but in addition to all the laudatory stuff that we read about america and our leaders here were all these other problems and here is what some of the small people were thinking and we're doing and we're suffering while all this was going on it's interesting that when my book first came out high school teachers were very reluctant to use it not for themselves but you know they sort of school committees looking over their shoulders you know what are you giving our kids in fact some schoolteacher high school teacher in on on the west coast in wrote to me lajolla california wrote to me and said she was in trouble because she had used my book and kid brought my book home parents look at looked at the first chapter of the book which deals with columbus and of course there it's a very different story i give of columbus not the great hero but the murderer the kidnapper her parents looked at this and said her mother was horrified you know columbus is a hero this must be a communist book right and she asked for an investigation of this teacher well that's what happened then but over the years more and more high school teachers have begun to use my book and it has become i hate to say this respectable to use my book your done yes so it's used in our schools and of course colleges all over the country but high schools are more difficult to enter because high schools are kind of totalitarian institutions yeah things are so controlled in high schools here but uh... i think you're right that there's been a change in education not enough of a change still but there's been a change in now I would say that there are hundreds of thousands of teachers all over the country who are teaching in a different way they're teaching the story of columbus they're doing more black history more women's history and i don't attribute it simply to my book I attribute it to the movements of the sixties with many people more conscious of race sex all these people the sixties have gotten a really terrible rap from the conservative movement in this country in the last ten to twenty years and i i think the sixties are really responsible for much of a good that has gone on in the country you know in the last forties years its interesting what you say about the treatment of the sixties they're trying to present the sixties and when i look at the sixties treated on television's what i've seen emphasis on crazed kids yeah drugs yeah huh you know wild violence of course there we're there but the sixties by and large a marvelous time in american history of when millions of people became involved in social movements non-violent social movements for change in a time of the flower children a time when generosity seemed to be a more prevalent when you'd stop on the road and give a ride to hitch hikers and people don't do that anymore= the sixties were a wonderful period of new consciousness and social change and when people where much more cognizant of equality whether it's for gays whether it's for a racial minorities and women you name it end of the controlling nature of so much of what we have been taught you yourself seem to feel that education has been largely used in this country by the powers that be whoever they may be people with money people with position to uh... more or less brainwash i hate to use george romneys words brainwash children into accepting a place in the society as these people wanted to be and they gave all kinds of uh... holy toledo to teachers who would teach something different and that do you think there's been any a diminution in this use of education aand the media to control control what the american people think and what the next generation thanks well it's still still going on i just read about the teacher in school in north carolina who lost her job who was simply dismissed because she brought up in class the war she wanted to her students to discuss the war and no if you mustn't talk about that and soon she got a letter saying you know this is unacceptable you're out you know theres something the matter with that carolina because the state university down there and i'm only half kidding the university of north carolina has this new program where incoming freshmen read a particular book and then everybody in university discusses it during the first and two straight years now they've just caught hell because people haven't liked the book that i don't know even remember what the books were that were chosen but uh... the university just caught hades throughout the state for choosing whatever book they chose because these books didn't reflect only well on our society it's interesting that education in our country has always been pro-war pro-war in the sense of exalting military heroism these are our heroes these are the statues in our cities statues of military heroes kids grow up from elementary school on with kinda reverence for know the people who won the war yes can I ask you aquestion howard about that you make the most striking comment in one of the two books that uh... are the subject of today's program maybe in both you say that there are leaders are addicted to war addicted to war why do you say that well sign of an addiction i suppose is when somebody keeps coming back to something that's bad for you and can't seem to get out of it and somebody who sees for instance a drug as a solution to their problems you know not looking for other solutions because a drug drugs are quick solution to problem that you have you know you you're unhappy or depressed you know or you're in pain and yes the drug will be a quick fix but war is a quick-fix war is a quick fix you're attacked uh... her you know as in nine eleven oh what do we do instead of stopping and thinking intelligently about what caused this act what was behind it what can we do to eliminate the causes of it you go to that drug which you have always used and and war was the way to solve howard i was talking to somebody the other day and i was making some of these points that you are making and the person said to me and i'm interested in your response to this the person said to me look its kind of like a a play on the poor you will always have with you you will always have people in this world who want to attack us no matter what we do or how nice we try to be and therefore we we have to attack these people first or vitally or whatever what's your response to that will first when they say there will always be people there will always be government's i think that's an important distinction must be made a lot of i think there's a lot of thinking that goes on which puts the blame for war on people and you know even find biological impulses to violence and aggression and uh... i think that's a lot of nonsense if that were true that is if people had an inherent desire to go to war nations would not have to compell them nations would not have to draft armies they would not have to seduce people with propaganda and persuade them that this is a just cause no no people's natural tendency i think is not to engage in wars you know when they say well we must be engage in war because other countries engage in war well of course that creates the vicious cycle and they are not asking the question how can we get at the roots of war its like the present isreali palestinian situation you know the the palestinians are you know sending suicide bombers you know so we have to then attack palestinian territory and destroy homes and then the palestinians say well you see what they're doing to us it's a cycle and the united states has contributed to that cycle can i interrupt you for a sec excuse me i'm getting wild waves here that i have to break for the second commercial we'll be right we'll be right back with more with howard zinn those of you who watch books of our time know that many of our programs are about books that deal with history this reflects not just my own interest in history but also the widespread belief that we would do better if our leaders knew more about history this belief is one of the most important reasons the massachusetts school of law is starting a new and unique college called the american college of history and legal studies a c_h_ ls a c_h_ ls will be a senior college offering only the junior and senior years of undergraduate education it will focus entirely on american history including the history of some important fields of american law it will offer specific pathways to law school for those who choose to become lawyers including entrance into law school after the junior year for those who do well at achls and an education which rigorously prepares those who choose other fields than law it's teaching will be entirely by the discussion method in which all students participate as it msl itself and other fine law schools if will have very small classes of only fifteen to twenty students it's tuition will be only ten thousand dollars per year much lower than almost any other college offering a bachelors degree you can view ACHLS's catalogue on line at the web address on your screen achls will be opening in salem new hampshire which is on the new hampshire massachusetts border in august of two thousand if you would like further information about achls or would like an application all write or email maureen mooney at the phone number or address on your screen came out has massachusetts school of law at andover offers an accessible affordable legal education to both full-time and part time law students when making admissions decisions msl looks at all aspects of the candidate's qualifications and does not consider the flawed lsat at tuition of less than half of all the other law schools in new england it is by far the most affordable our teaching and standards are rigorous students learn to think clearly to write well and to advoate effectively for others decide today to make a difference welcome back to our discussion with howard inn howard you have taken the position which is awfully hard to argue with really that the media act as the handmaiden handmaidens to war with the latest example perhaps being this embedding of troops so american television was rah rah as we're going forward in riding in the tanks and so forth but why don't you elaborate historically and currently on your view of the media in this country being the handmaiden to war first of all its important to understand that the media the major media little media i'm not going to small newspapers small radio stations but major media have always been owned controlled by the people of wealth and uh... and therefore the the editorial positions the choice of news items has always been determined by the those people who control the press i think was a j liebling the writer who said freeing the press belongs to whoever owns the press and so back in the in the in the early part of twentieth century upton sinclair wrote a book called the brass check the brass check was something used in houses of prostitution in paris and he was talking about the press as prostitutes the press as selling out for money the press has well in fact at that very time talk about a press being pro war you know the hearts news papers and the pulitzer papers revved up the country for war with spain you provide the reporting i'll provide the war exactly the uh world war one again the press played up the german atrocities and some of them turned out to be false you know the lusitania has been sunk a harmless passenger ship later turns out it was carrying war munitions and playing up the atrocities of the germans not saying anything about the british empire and that's been going on today what we see is in this in when the war started in afghanistan to call it a war is actually a misnomer i mean this is the war between two equal parties the united states and afghanistan afghanistan is a helpless miserable country in the united states bombs afghanistan's and its called a war what happens then is that executives in c_n_n_'s send out word to their reporters and i've seen this it was leaked by people in c_n_n_ sent word to the reporters saying let's not reports civilian casualties in afghanistan we were bombing and we were killing civilians they were not to be reported and c_n_n_ began festooning the band the the stand of anchors c_n_n_ with american flags and and the media have been going along with war for a very long time actually the rest of the the rest of the world as i understand it apropos of that you know vietnam was in a sense different because reporters were investigating the truth and their editors and publishers at least didn't block them from publishing from publishing it but the editorial and publishing publishers positions at least early in a war were world's different from what you were reading from the uh... reporters at the new york times in time magazine and so forth but so that's an interesting point in the early nineteen sixty eight the boston globe did a survey of something like twenty nine major american dailies not one of them called for the united states to get out of vietnam I'm particularly conscious of this because in nineteen sixty seven i wrote a book called vietnam the logical withdrawal and and and uh... suggesting strongly the united states would get get no major in nineteen sixty eight supported the idea of getting out of vietnam and you know this this really hasn't changed but the rest of the world sees it sees it thru television see's a very different war than americans see on fox and c_n_n_ c_b_s_ they see the civilian casualties they see the bombs falling and uh... so on so so you have a real disconnect i think between the way we thinking we're a virtuous country see the war and the other countries see the war thats interesting you may remember that in the in the afghan war and in this war in iraq the united states bombed the offices of al jazeera the mid eastern television network they did not want that network too be able to show pictures of the results of our bombing i mean is this is the kind of thing that happens in a totalitarian state the soviet union nazi germany they shutdown newspapers shutdown televisions stations they want to control everything this the way the united states government has behaved in these wars howard what is your response to those people who say that that you and that people who believe as you do in include myself to a large extent in that we don't see eye-to-eye on everything but i see eye to eye with you on an awful lot uh... what do you say to people who say well you're being unpatriotic will you know i i think this also as part of our culture i think and that is a miss guided notion of what patriotism is i think that we grow up in this country very often with the idea which is inculcated from the beginning you pledge allegiance to the flag and say the star spangled banner and exalt military heroism you get an idea to be patriotic means to support whatever the government does and if you oppose the government if you criticize government your being on patriotic to think that way is a violation of basic democratic principles the declaration of independence establishes the democratic principle governments are artificial creations governments are set up by the people to ensure certain rights equality life liberty the pursuit of happiness when governments become destructive of those rights that's what the declaration of independent says it is the right of people to alter or abolish the government if it's the right of the people to alter or abolish the government then certainly it is the right of the people to criticize the government the government and the people you know i see on television young fellows going off to war as i did way back i see the television interviewer asks well young man how do you feel about going off to iraq well i feel that i owe something to my country it's not your country that you're fighting for when you go to war it's your government mhm it's halliburton it's the great corporations it's the people who benefit from war it's the politicians it's the industrialists it's not the country would it be fair to say howard that you think that i know lincoln thought this it loads it up by my having said that but would it fair to say that you think that patriotism essentially consists of loyalty for the underlying principles of the united states and that to some extent at whole notion of patriotism has been hijacked by those who believe in uh... military action lincoln had it right mark twain had it right mark twain said this notion my my country right or wrong is absurd no and patriotism shouldn't mean adhering as you were just saying to the principles of the country and i would i would suggest that one of our principles although we haven't followed it through one of our principles should be to behave in the world like a peace-loving country not to initiate wars we have initiated wars it's one thing when we're attacked it's another thing we initiate wars we initiated war in vietnam we initiated wars in panama and grenada in afghanistan in iraq twice we initiated those wars and tthe mexican the spanish word for the record the mexican war the spanish-american war no question about it the war in the philippines we initiated and uh... that we should consider that to go against principles our country should stand for howard do you think uh... the writing of history is fundamentally such subjective not only in the way that the things are said you know know what your stress in the first part of a sense versus what the tale of the sentence says not only in a way that things are said but also in a sense of what is put in and what is left out of the history books i think that that is the most important way in which history is distorted if you say something false in a historical description it can be verified or not verified be counteracted but if you leave something out the person reading it has no idea that you've left it out and if you you know if it's tell the the story of the civil war and it's all battles then you leave out the fact that during the civil war the u_s_ army did not only fight against the confederacy but it fought against the indians out west mmm-hmm committed massacres during the civil war and during the civil war more land was taken from the indians than any comparable period in american history that is left out of the books and native americans know what is left out black people know what is left out people interested in labor struggles know what is left out and they certainly leave out when they talk about world war one they leave out the huge movement against world war one that took place at that time howard we have to wrap this up this is why i wanted to do two hours rather than one but we cant so we have to warp this uh... i want to thank you very much for coming up here go and uh... recommend to everybody that these books are just intensely interesting failure to quit and you cannot be be neutral on a moving train and again i thank you for what uh you know you've opened the eyes of a lot of people in this country over the last fifteen twenty years thank you larry

Channel: Massachusetts School of Law at Andover

Views: 108,184

Rating: 4.8432655 out of 5

Keywords: a people's history, howard zinn you can't be neutral on a moving train, howard zinn documentary, howard zinn, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Segregation, Upton Sinclair, President Roosevelt, Israel, World War II, Palestine. President G.W. Bush, Osama Bin Laden, CNN, Fox TV, Vietnam, The British Empire, Al Jazeera, Haliburton, Mark Twain, Documentary, America, United States, Civil Disobedience, patriotism, President Bush, Sadaam Hussein, Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Iraq

Id: xxznlv13ZW4

Length: 60min 19sec (3619 seconds)

Published: Wed May 19 2010