REFLECTIONS
Zinn, Howard
REFLECTIONS Howard Zinn A Murderous Word In 1948, the House Committee on Un-American Activities distributed a pamphlet entitled One Hundred Things You Should Know About Communism. (I found a...
...The pamphlet had 100 questions and answers...
...They kept files on me...
...People accused of liberalism should not be afraid...
...Richard Arens, the staff director, interposed: "We are not saying that William Shakespeare was a communist...
...Asked whether he had ever introduced any communist stuff into his plays, he replied, "Well, I do Shakespeare...
...But there's a difference between the kind of reasonable criticism you could have of communism and socialism as practiced in the Soviet Union and other states and the kind of murderous, indiscriminate hatred that leads us to threaten to drop bombs and kill all of the citizens of these countries...
...We're apparently prepared to kill all of them to save them, as we have always been prepared to kill people to save them from communism...
...The use of the word communism was designed to stop rational discussion, even rational discussion of communism...
...This question particularly interested me, because there have been times when I was in need of a communist...
...I think we do need a sober, serious discussion of communism and socialism...
...The answer was probably drawn up by the people who later founded the Trilateral Commission...
...Now I don't think there should even be a thing called war, because it messes up a person's mind...
...Let's skip to 1987 and the Iran-contra investigation...
...I kept files on them...
...This country does not react the same way now to the word communism as it did when the Vietnam war had just begun...
...Question 1: What is Communism...
...There is so much to do, so many problems to solve...
...Listen to the later thoughts of Hutto, the infantryman who was at My Lai and who now has a wife and two children: "I was nineteen years old and I was always told to do what the Government, what grownups had told me to do...
...I believe we need anger and indignation at the Soviet Union for some of the things that have been done to people over there...
...The policies of the Soviet Union have given socialism a bad name, and I want socialism to have a good name...
...Socialism to me got a good name from Karl Marx, Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, Helen Keller (a lot of people don't know Helen Keller was a socialist, how she was redbaited, how she was put down because of her views...
...We should talk about class, we should talk about internationalism, we should talk about racism, we should talk about one world, we should talk about unilateral disarmament...
...This really worries me...
...Question 86: Is the YMCA a Communist target...
...They can't whip up sentiments the way they used to...
...But now I'll tell my son, if the Government calls, user your own judgment...
...Where can a Communist be found in everyday life...
...People don't really go along with that...
...He said, "Educating Americans through the means of the library service could bring about a change in their political attitude quicker than any other method...
...As a result of the Vietnam war, millions of Americans have learned to think twice about the cry of communism...
...Or take Joseph Papp, who was being questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee...
...He said, 'Everything in the village was communist.' So we shot men, women, and children...
...The word is used to prop up dictatorships all over the world, to invade other countries, to bomb peasant villages, to destroy an economy of a small neighboring country (I'm talking about Nicaragua), and to rob the hard-earned salaries of so many Americans to finance these trillions of dollars worth of stupid weapons...
...Nothing should stand in the way...
...It's only fair...
...He said, "Succinctly put, where I went wrong was in not having the guts to stand up and tell the President that...
...These remarks are adapted from the keynote address he gave last November at a conference on anticommunism in the United States that was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts...
...Answer: A system by which one small group seeks to rule the world...
...We need an open debate-no holds barred—of communism, socialism, capitalism, democracy, liberty, everything...
...Robert McFarlane, the national-security adviser to the President, said he knew the policy of getting arms to Howard Zinn is a professor of history and the author, among other works, of "A People's History of the United States...
...A man named Charles Hutto told U.S...
...To tell you the truth, probably the reason I didn't is because if I had done that, Bill Casey, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Cap Weinberger would' have said I was some kind of commie, you know...
...The history of anticommunism is such a rich, poor history...
...I have always wondered why there was so much chlorine in the YMCA swimming pool...
...Answer: Yes, so is the YWCA...
...Army criminal investigators, "I remember the unit's combat assault on My Lai 4. The night before the mission we had a briefing by Captain Medina...
...Answer: Look for him in your school, your labor union, your church, or your civic club...
...I found a copy in my files...
...We need a discussion of the Soviet Union, we need criticism of the Soviet Union...
...During the Vietnam war, the term communist was used to justify everything: a ten-year war, the dropping of seven million bombs, the dispatch of500,000 troops, and the destruction of a country...
...Communism is one of those words that are calculated to stop rational discourse, words that are murderous...
...Robert McFarlane, some kind of a commie...
...Let me skip to Question 76...
...the contras illegally wouldn't work—not that it was wrong, but it wouldn't work...
...While it is a little bizarre, a little laughable, anticommunism represents something terribly serious...
...that's why the American people are not ready to support an invasion of Nicaragua just because it is "a Marxist dictatorship and communism is bad and it's on our southern flank" (which is, you know, a very deft threat to our biological functions...
...People accused of communism should not be afraid...
...Murderous words...
...Nobody should be afraid...
...I'm thinking of Representative Harold Velde of Illinois, who stood up in the House to oppose money for mobile libraries in rural areas...
...The basis of communism and socialistic influence is education of the people...
Vol. 53 • February 1989 • No. 2
