By: Trevor Loudon
New Zeal
Howard Zinn, the prominent “progressive” historian who died early this year, has been “outed” as both a communist and a liar.
Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media writes:
The prominent “progressive” historian Howard Zinn, whose books are force-fed to young people on many college campuses, was not only a member of the Moscow-controlled and Soviet-funded Communist Party USA (CPUSA) but lied about it, according to an FBI file released on Friday.
The file, consisting of three sections totaling 423 pages, was made available on the FBI’s website and released in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from this writer.
Zinn taught in the political science department of Boston University for 24 years, from 1964 to 1988, and has been a major influence on the modern-day “progressive” movement that backed Barack Obama for president.
Although Zinn denied being a member of the CPUSA, the FBI file discloses that several reliable informants in the party identified Zinn as a member who attended party meetings as many as five times a week.
What’s more, one of the files reveals that a reliable informant provided a photograph of Zinn teaching a class on “Basic Marxism” at party headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, in 1951. A participant in the class said that Zinn taught that “the basic teaching of Marx and Lenin were sound and should be adhered to by those present…”
Zinn was included on the “Security Index” and “Communist Index” maintained by the FBI. The “Security Index” was more ominous and included individuals who could be detained in the event of a national emergency.
Frank Marshall Davis, the Communist Party USA member who mentored the young Barack Obama, was also on the “security index.”
The files confirm Zinn’s membership in the party from 1948-1953 and one says he was “believed to be a CP member as of October, 1956.” However, he denied membership in the party when interviewed by the FBI in 1953 and 1954 and claimed to be just a “liberal” or “leftist.” He did admit involvement in several CPUSA front organizations, the documents say…
In 1961, it says, Zinn “attempted to recruit students to attend 8th World Youth Festival [a communist-front gathering] and was described as pro-Castro in 1962. He publicly protested United States demand for withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba.”
After WW2 service and an education on the GI Bill, Zinn taught at the all female, all black Spelman College in Atlanta.
According to one of his pupils, far left author Alice Walker, Zinn shocked an audience from a local white college by declaring: “Well, I stand to the left of Mao Zedong.” – this at the height of the communist takeover of China.
Forced to leave Spelman because of his radicalism, Zinn went to teach at Boston University from 1964 to 1988.
On April 28, 1966, Howard Zinn was a sponsor of the Herbert Aptheker Testimonial Dinner. The dinner was held on the occasion of Communist Party theoretician Herbert Aptheker’s 50th birthday, the publication of his 20th book and the 2nd anniversary of The American Institute for Marxist Studies.
It was held in the Sutton Ballroom, The New York Hilton, Avenue of the Americas, 53rd to 54th Streets, New York City. Most, if not all, of the event’s sponsors came from the Communist Party’s intellectual elite.
As at February 28, 1969, Howard Zinn was listed as a sponsor of the Communist Party front Massachusetts Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee.
By the 1980s, Zinn had apparently switched his allegiance to another Marxist group.
At the Boston Democratic Socialists of America Socialist School, Fall 1989, Howard Zinn taught the “History of Socialism.”
By the mid 1990s, Zinn was mixing with ACORN, Democratic Socialists of America and the Communist Party breakaway group, Committees of Correspondence.
With these people, Zinn was a founder of the radical New Party – later made famous by one of its most successful members, Barack Obama.
On September 20, 2001, 500 people gathered at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City to remember the life of Democratic Socialists of America member Richard Cloward – originator of the infamous Cloward-Piven strategy, since utilized by sections of the US left to deliberately wreck the American economy.
Speakers at the event included Cloward’s widow Frances Fox Piven, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West (later a member of Obama’s Black Advisory Council), Gus Newport – (all members of Democratic Socialists of America), New Party founder Joel Rogers, future Obama supporter and ACORN defender Miles Rapoport and Howard Zinn.
In January 2002, a group of San Francisco leftists, mainly involved with Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM) or Committees of Correspondence, and including future Obama “Green Jobs Czar” Van Jones, founded a national anti-Iraq War newspaper – War Times.
Endorsers of the project included Howard Zinn.
In 2004, Howard Zinn was one of 100 “prominent Americans” who signed an October 26 statement circulated by 911Truth.org calling on the US Government to investigate 9/11 as a possible “inside job.”
…we have assembled 100 notable Americans and 40 family members of those who died to sign this 9/11 Statement, which calls for immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.
This is the same petition that got Van Jones into trouble in late 2009 – strangely, Jones’ name at number 46, has been “removed by request.” Fair enough, after all he was “tricked” into signing it.
In the 2000s, Zinn was also listed as a sponsor of the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library in Oakland California, alongside Committees of Correspondence members and endorsers Herbert Aptheker, Anne Braden, Angela Davis, Ann Fagan Ginger, Jack Kurzweil and Maudelle Shirek, plus Communist Party supporters David Bacon, Gerald Horne, Cassandra Lopez and Herb Shore from Democratic Socialists of America.
In 2006 Howard Zinn was an original board member of Movement for a Democratic Society – an organization established to support the newly re-founded Students for a Democratic Society.
Other MDS board members included former Weather Underground terrorist leaders Bernardine Dohrn, Mark Rudd and Jeff Jones, former Students for a Democratic Society leaders Tom Hayden, Carl Davidson (an Obama associate in the New Party and later), Mike Klonsky, Bert Garskof, Mike James, former Obama associate Rashid Khalidi, Bill Fletcher, Jr., Barbara Ehrenreich from Democratic Socialists of America, Gerald Horne from the Communist Party USA, Charlene Mitchell, Noam Chomsky and Angela Davis from Committees of Correspondence.
In early 2008, MDS Board members Carl Davidson, Tom Hayden, Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Bararbara Ehrenreich went on to found Progressives for Obama.
Howard Zinn wrote more than 20 books, which included his 1980 best-selling and influential “A People’s History of the United States.”
Movie star Matt Damon recently worked with Zinn to turn the book into a documentary for America’s history students. Damon, who grew up next door to his idol, stated in Dec. 09 that one of his favorite books was A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, a book he first started reading in 1980 at the age of 10.
No doubt Howard Zinn is currently being appropriately rewarded for his life’s work.
Boyhood mentors can influence a young man for life. Luckily Matt Damon has time left to consider his political direction.
To do so, he will have to be more honest than was his late mentor Howard Zinn.
These Leftist phonies hide under labels like progressive or liberal. One bloger said this jerk flew B52’s in WW2, we did not have B52’s in WW2. Ignorance is bliss for the left.
Zinn was a bombardier on a B-52 in WWII? Huh? Impossible you ignorant twit! The B-52 was a jet bomber not built until 1952. Get your facts straight. Typical Zinnion revisionism. What other miracles did Howie perform?
michael198383 said, in August 3rd, 2010 at 11:00 am “The corporate powers on Wall Street financed the Russian Revolution and kept Leon Trotsky in an apartment in NY City awaiting the revolution in 1918.”
Actually most funding came form Germany, who was looking to end fighting on two fronts.
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You would do well to read Kevin Philips book, The Bush Dynasty..dynasty means it goes back many generations..there are two sides to the Bush family, there is a WALKER component and WALKER was a Wall Street Banker whose partners were Averel Harriman among others..the law firm that represented their banking interests was Cromwell and Sullivan..
John Foster Dulles was an attorney at Cromwell and Sullivan.
They financed Adolf Hitler and for that Prescott Bush (GHW Bush’s father) was prosecuted under the Trading With The Enemy Act..Standard Oil sold oil to Hitler..and yes..they financed the Russian Revolution in 1918..the first attempt at a revolution in Russia was 1905..
We are not enemies, you and I…we are people caught in the tides of changing history..history that we cannot control and have little to say because history is created by the bankers and the interests who want to have complete control over your life..you can call them whatever you like..they are the same..Socialists are not downtrodden folks..they wear three piece suits and are driven around in limosines on Wall Street..
The Socialists on Wall Street have learned to socialize the losses of their companies,, passing their lossses to the taxpayer..to us and they have learned to privatize the profits making themselves ever more wealthy and powerful..The separation between them and us is so great that historically speaking, real revolutions can occur..
Robinhood is a prime example..
Hi Folks,
A possible help in all of the morass of info and alternate info (usually not intentional) is to go back in view of business to end one single institution. Give the corps (corpse is a good word since it is simply a dead document and legal fiction like the US in DC) – give the corps two years to dissolve totally – then no more corporations, neither local towns and counties or governments or business or any at all. You want help with a business start up, you solicit investors and holders of company shares (who are responsible for gains and losses- no insurance or limitation against personal loss) This would be an excellent start. Take away the tools of the small group of “elites” and they will appear as the tiny souls they are.
As to communism being a religion – keep in mind many religious people are simply part of a religious system, not a deep belief in a creator or creative force. I had the pleasure of speaking with a Benedictine abbot in charge of a catholic seminary some years ago. He surprised me when he said that half of the students didn’t really have any deep belief in God, they simply wanted the life style. Communism is an echo of catholicism just with the State as god. Yes it was created – and other religions? True believers are the doers, the rest simply are along for the ride or “support our troops” kind of attitude.
I love how these progressive/commie nitwits think they are more intelligent than conservatives because they read a book or two and have liberal compassionate global views.
“media figures like Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh. Both manufactured media figures whose job it has been to harness the minds of the weak under educated and emotionally deprived Americans”
This is typical liberal elitist view,”under educated” what a crock of BS! I know plenty of people with more degrees than me (3) but they don’t have a single iota of common sense. Reading a book or writing a manifest does not inherently mean you are intelligent. If someone can be under educated, can someone be over educated? I guess liberalism is a mental disorder!
“The corporate powers on Wall Street financed the Russian Revolution and kept Leon Trotsky in an apartment in NY City awaiting the revolution in 1918.”
Actually most funding came form Germany, who was looking to end fighting on two fronts.
“Our bankers sponsored the assassination of the Czar of Russia because Russia was always a threat to the hegmony of American corporate and banking interests”.
I almost fell over after reading this. Can you show me an example of Czarist Russia being a threat to our corporate hegmony in light of the fact that US, French and British bankers were heavily involved in Czarists Russia’s modernization? Can you please explain to me why the US joined the Entente intervention into Russia to stop the Bolsheviks? And better yet why did the US give refuge to dozens of Czarists officers after the revolution? Even establishing anti-bolshevik organizations?
US – Russia antagonism did not start until after the revolution. The US played little role in central asian and European politics prior to this event. As a matter of fact German-Russo relations were far more antagonistic.
Having “certain political beliefs” in America is a crime when those beliefs advocate the overthrow of the American gov’t., which the CPUSA did. I get irritated when I hear people follow the party line that Joseph McCarthy was……… The man’s methods may have been over the top, but he was necessary for the time -when an assist. sec’y. of state was a member of the CPUSA. The celebrity pseudo-intellectuals weren’t enraged because they weren’t guilty; they were furious because they got caught.
Muddled minds of the hoodwinked masses. Just read the comments. Keep up the good work Corporate America. You’ve done quite well so far. In Profits We Trust.
A jew communist….. can’t be true……
CPUSA nov.2006 after democracts took over congress and the senate, they posted on their website VICTORY VICTORY VICTORY WE WON.Nov. 2008 they said we have no use for the anti-communist republican party.They said the only tool they had to take over U.S. government was the democrat party.I am not saying all democracts are communist,but they know their policies will distroy the freedoms we have under U.S. constitution.Useful Idiots are only Idiots when no longer useful.
As soon as I saw this program on the “History Channel” and watch a small portion I knew it was all outright lies and distortion. Damon may be a good actor but he’s a commie. Zinn’s books should be used as toilet paper.
I went to BU and I had the misfortune of running into a few of his zinnions. These people were bolsheviks, mindless robots modeled on the russian commissars. They insinuated themselves all throughout the bureaucracy of that institution. None of them did much work, they sat around and had “meetings” about people who said things they didn’t like and devised strategies on how to give people a hard time. One staff member repeatedly made errors that resulted in false charges to students that probably amounted into the tens, if not hundreds of thousands over the years. The zinnions in the union protected this individual and the zinnions in the administration did as well and welcomed the windfall. It was a game to pretend they were on opposite side and the losers were the students that they sneered at. Some department heads weren’t zinnions,and the zinnions in the union advised some people to be insubordinate to these bosses and one was fired for just this thing. They used intimidation tactics. I was once threatened with physical violence, some goon told me he knew where I lived and I could expect a visit . This is when I was working there after graduation as a staff member and I declared I had no intention of going on strike. These same staff members could often be seen passing out “The Peoples Workers Daily” in Downtown Crossing. Believe me, Zinn may be dead but his zinnions still have a cell at the university.
almost2 said, in August 1st, 2010 at 11:58 pm and the guy above defending FASCIST global corporations who exploit the poor and destroy small family businesses and towns and pay their employees sub-standard and unlivable wages and crush anyone who tries to start their own business – WAKE THE F UP! The coprorations are the oligarchy of the rapidly approaching global slave system – and you are a cheerleader for that, apparently.
Please pardon my double post above I forgot to enter something in the email text box.
I love freedom and justice and truth and(and wish for mankind to shed the shackles of ignorance bondage and “justified murder” by those who consider the rest of us useless eaters to be exterminated), they should TRUMP all the BS political and self-serving agendas
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This is well said, and we can see from the comments posted that underdeveloped souls can’t fathom what the reality of our current global situation is.
These are people who cannot climb out of their comfort zone and read books or venture into the point of view of others than their prescribed leadership from their media figures like Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh. Both manufactured media figures whose job it has been to harness the minds of the weak under educated and emotionally deprived Americans.
People I know are willing to read all kinds of information and sort it out from a position of knowing that the global economy was brought down for a reason. How this all shakes out is anyone’s guess, but one thing is certain, the people are expendable. This civilization was not meant to last, just look at the construction materials used in building housing tracts..it was all meant to be an illusion and to be easily dismantled.
“God bless us, every one!”
~ Tiny Tim
(from Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’)
and the guy above defending FASCIST global corporations who exploit the poor and destroy small family businesses and towns and pay their employees sub-standard and unlivable wages and crush anyone who tries to start their own business – WAKE THE F UP! The coprorations are the oligarchy of the rapidly approaching global slave system – and you are a cheerleader for that, apparently.
Please pardon my double post above I forgot to enter something in the email text box.
I love freedom and justice and truth and(and wish for mankind to shed the shackles of ignorance bondage and “justified murder” by those who consider the rest of us useless eaters to be exterminated), they should TRUMP all the BS political and self-serving agendas
Thanks for the information but I have to take issue with one part of the article. It does not require one to be a Marxist to question the “official story” (lie) of 9/11
http://patriotsquestion911.com
As for the Communist/Jewish/British?Nazi takeover (all run by the same people, believe it or not) here is a link to an interview with a KGB defector who perfectly decribes what is going on
Thanks for the information, however I have to take issue with one part. It doesn’t require one to be a Marxist to have SERIOUS issue with the “official story” (lie) of 9/11
http://patriotsquestion911.com
As for long-term Communist/Jewish/British/Nazi (all run by the same liars and murderers) takeover, heres a KGB defector perfectly describing what is happening NOW and for the last 40+ years
http://uselessdissident.blogspot.com/2008/11/interview-with-yuri-bezmenov.html
I also have to add that those who remain blinded to the fact that neither politcal party or the media or the pentagon care about you at all, are part of the problem. Media owned by same people, politicians bought and paid for (no REAL american gets close to winning an election unless their name is Ron Paul and even he is questionable ESPECIALLY on the topic of 911 and his possible FREEMASON connection) and the Pentagon has no qualms about killing innocent people and killing and poisoning our own troops (research the effects of DEPLETED URANIUM and its relation to GULF WAR ILLNESS/DEATHS and birth defects GLOBALLY, that radioactive dust IS carried by wind so it does not just affect your faceless victims you pretend aren’t human)
I like all these Idiots, that hate so called big corporations. Who are these big corporations they hate is the question? Are they talking about Coca Cola, Sears, Home Depot, Lowe’s, McDonald’s, Budweiser, Pizza Hut, Burger King maybe Wall Mart just to name a few? Then who may I ask, are these evil corporations? I don’t know about a lot of you where you work, but these so called evil corporations are the very one’s that a lot of Idiots work for, that say these stupid comments. Keep it up and deny them to make a profit, and see how long you have a job. Ive been in retail most of 40 years, and let me tell you as a former business owner, that at the end of the day, if a big evil corporation ends up making 3-5% profit for the year is a year to celebrate. Most so called big evil corporations are in this category. Now maybe all you Idiots out there that hate capitalism, maybe its time you get a job with the government, if you aren’t there already!!
Communes? Dont you mean Kibbutzes?
Howard Zinn, like Obama, the Clintons, the Bushes, Nixon and Palin et.al. was a communitarian.
Communitarians promote the perfect balance between capitalism and communism. The communists and the bankers never gave up, they evolved into a synthesis of global sustainable developers and environmental legislators. UN Local Agenda 21 is the communitarian blueprint for regulating the entire world, yet most people have yet to hear of it.
The greatest trick of Communism was to keep us thinking Communism was the biggest threat.
Read the new Bolivian Constitution if you’re unfamiliar with political communitarianism, or peruse the thousands of published docs at the Communitarian Network written by the guru, Dr. Amitai Etzioni. The U.S. Pentagon cites Etzioni in Daily Briefings. He’s a player.
Here we go with ignorant comments from people who assume that all corporations are the same and somehow there is an equation between supporting business & free markets & supporting oligarchist statists. Oh, and of course they have to throw Bush (and even the GOP) into the equation when possible. People seem to believe any sort of junk as long as it supports their beloved ideology–regardless how ludicrous.
Yes, there’s an unholy alliance between some mega-multinational corporations (and other institutions) & those in power in government. The resulting oligarchy and corporatism is the same corrupt system they have in most socialist & communist countries. But this is the result of allowing Federal Government to grow so big & powerful–instead of only leaving it with LIMITED powers as intended. Try to blame Wall St. but it’s government & its excessive regulations that allowed corrupt tyranny to evolve & flourish. Those regs only limit competition, which would’ve cut out the corruption in a free market
Problem? Since certain political beliefs are less about “belief” and more about an action plan to convert the nation to a “new and better” form of slavery.
Seriously? Partisan? You must be one of those fools who believes that the New Slavery is okay, as long as you’ve got the slave owners on your side.
So, Communism is now a “religion?” That would make it one of the few “religions” which depends for its foundation on the categorical denial of God — actually, of any god.
No, it’s not a religion. It’s a scheme. A grand fraud. It’s people control. A scheme isn’t something you “believe” in, rather it’s something in which you participate.
And this scheme has as its ultimate purpose the enslavement of whole nations.
Oh, look, an actual idiot. One of Lenin’s useful idiots.
You know, it saddens me when otherwise intelligent people are so easily fooled.
Uh, dude, since you haven’t been paying attention, it’s my sad duty to inform you that Chomsky is a lying asshat as well. They both specialize(d) in distortion and disinformation. Chomsky is a man so committed to lying with the truth that he would spend months — even years — collecting black grains of sand in a bucket from white beaches so that he could later assert that, since all this sand came from those beaches (true), that it proves the beaches are black (false). Chomsky and Zinn are cut from much the same cloth. And it is the cloth of deception.
Wow. At least now I won’t be the only guy wearing tinfoil at the Conspirators Anonymous meeting.
It’s always a good idea to know who’s been poisoning your water and what poison they’ve been using. That’s “so what.”
With apologies to Charles Baudelaire: The greatest trick of Communism has been to convince free men that it had given up and was no longer a threat.
~~ Arfin
The corporate powers on Wall Street financed the Russian Revolution and kept Leon Trotsky in an apartment in NY City awaiting the revolution in 1918. The first attempted revolution in Russia was 1905. Our bankers sponsored the assassination of the Czar of Russia because Russia was always a threat to the hegmony of American corporate and banking interests. The Czar was going to modernize Russia with manufacturing and exploration of natural resources which Russia has an abundance of.
Wall Street bankers knew early on that Communism was their preferred monopoly. Right wingers have it all ass backwards. It is the corporate powers that want Communism. Communists have always been a means for politicians to control the population in our country by pitting us against them when in reality the human beings should all support each other and the corporations need to be brought to heel.
Read “The Bush Dynasty” By Conservative writer Kevin Philips. He lays it all out there, the Walker part of the George Herbert Walker Bush family financed both Adolph Hitler and Lenin and Trotsky. Sad but true.
Now, Howard Zinn is not alive to defend himself. So I will defend him ..and say .. “SO WHAT” !!!
Geezz…. The guy was a bombadier flying in B52 bombers during WW2. After the war he went back to school and became a long time peace activists as well as Womens College & University Professor. He wrote “A Peoples History of The United States” and many many articles about everything. In 14 years years of writing I have never ever suspected him to be a member of the Communist party. In my humble opinion, in recent days I’ve seen a few articles taking cheap shots at Chomsky and now Zinn. Cheap shots are lies. This article on Zinn looks like something a United States security group would put together to try to discourage people from reading Zinns work. Wouldn’t be the first time they have tried to do that! Read Killing Hope – U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since WW2″ by William Blum. The USA has murdered more people than were murdered in the Shoah.
Gee Craig – spoken like a true progressive marxist… If you love dictators so much, why don’t you immigrate to Venezuela or Cuba?
Zinn was a communist who did nothing but distort history and spread his vile ideals across an educational spectrum. Why don’t you troll somewhere else.
Americans love dictators as long as they can control or do business with them. Why does this writer have a problem with Howard Zinn? US looks more like a communist dictatorship and its largely sponsored by American corporate interests.
Hi Folks,
I very much enjoyed Zinn’s History of the US. He did not touch on the increasingly blatant fraud of the US Corp as it stands today. This fraudulent DC corp is a great path to fulfillment of the religion of Communism and I think Zinn knew it.
There are five great religions – Catholic(Christian), Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and Communist. Seeing it as just another manipulation of the mind to serve an outside master helps to define it in todays chaotic deluge of information.
I liked his style of pointing out the obvious stupidities and “manifest destiny” of the obnoxious industrial charlatans building their little empires in the US.I didn’t need him to do it, However. The fact that he is discovered to be a fervent Communist believer is no great distress since my beliefs are not identical to his. I can still appreciate his exposure of the past even if I don’t worship his solutions.
The history he accurately and sometime selectively points out but interprets differently than I do cannot force you or any student to come to his same religious convictions regarding communism. That’s up to the living man to decide for him/herself.
A Jewish Liberal was a Communist?! Weird.
I have no clue why Rense linked to this garbage article. Whoever wrote this obviously has no clue what is really going on and if Mccain was doing the same things Obama is, they would probably support him. Partisan crap.
You do realize that the FBI was conducting a witch hunt against liberals in this time period? Assuming he was indeed a member, so what if he denied it? That seems smart to me.
Since when is it a problem in America to have certain political beliefs?
Look at the picture, a face of full of calculated evil.
Not a surprise at all.
As I recall, in the Afterward to “A People’s History of the United States,” Zinn states that he will always believe in “From each according to his ability, to teach according to his need.” But that unlike Marx, Zinn no longer believed that this was a historical inevitability, but a choice that a society could freely make.
One of the finest acts of the B.U. President John Silber (a grest patriot – look him up)
was to refuse a merit pay increase for this swine. Of course all the “Progressives” hated him for it.