By Mary Grabar
Friday, July 26, 2019
In Tacoma, Washington, during the pre-dawn hours of
Saturday, July 13, 2019, 69-year-old
Willem Van Spronsen attempted to light a propane tank on fire, torched a
vehicle, and threw “incendiary devices” at the outbuildings for the Northwest
Detention Center and vehicles in the parking lot. When confronted by police, he
pointed his rifle at them and was shot dead before he could fire.
Van Spronsen was a member of Antifa (short for
“anti-fascist”), a masked domestic “protest” group. This group’s members
recently beat up journalist Andy Ngo to the point he suffered a brain
hemorrhage and had to be hospitalized. Van Spronsen had been previously
arrested for grabbing a police officer at an Antifa protest. This time, as
reported in the Washington Times on July 15 and then picked up by other
conservative outlets, he left behind a manifesto.
Four days later, the Washington Post published part of
the story in a watered-down article titled “ICE detention-center attacker
killed by police was an avowed anarchist, authorities say.” In the interim,
tributes from Antifa Facebook, Black Lives Matter leader Shaun King, and other
likeminded sources came out describing Spronsen as a heroic “martyr.”
Van Spronsen and Zinn
Admire the Same Violent Vigilantes
It’s apparent from his manifesto that Van Spronsen
believed he was liberating a “concentration camp,” as U.S. immigration
facilities have been described by Democrats including the socialist lightning
rod Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. After rambling on about “the forces of
evil,” “concentration camps for folks deemed lesser,” and the ineffectiveness
of “the centrist” reformer, the manifesto told readers, “see howard zinn, ‘a
people’s history of the united states.’” The book would provide, he alleged,
support for Van Spronsen’s assertion that “we are living in visible fascism
ascendant.”
Van Spronsen named as
his “teachers” Don Pritts, his “spiritual guide,” John Brown, his “moral
guide,” and Emma Goldman, his “political guide.” The first two were quoted on
their calls to “action” and Goldman, on revolution: “if I can’t dance, I don’t
want to be in your revolution.”
As they were to Van Spronsen, Brown and Goldman are
Zinn’s heroes. Both figure prominently in “A People’s History of the United
States,” a book billing itself as a textbook that has sold more than 2.6
million copies since it was first published in 1980. It is frequently bought
with public tax dollars and used in public school classrooms, then and now.
Zinn’s ‘History’ Text
Preys on the Naïve and Uninformed
By any reasonable definition, Zinn’s book does not
deserve to have “history” in the title. Zinn’s book is filled with lies,
omissions, distortions of evidence, logical fallacies, and plagiarism from
dubious sources. In my forthcoming book, “Debunking Howard Zinn,” I detail all
of these critical problems. I also describe Zinn’s life, from budding teenage
communist to Pied Piper professor at Spelman College and Boston University, and
globe-trotting anti-American agitator.
Sam Wineburg, a history education professor, is
simultaneously one of Zinn’s harshest critics and most vociferous defenders. He
notes that Zinn appeals to the “inner Holden Caulfield,” the jaded teenage
anti-hero of the now-classic 1951 novel, “Catcher in the Rye.” As the 2017
movie “Lady Bird” mockingly revealed, if there’s one thing Zinn’s book has been
associated with, it’s self-righteous adolescent pretension.
Seeing the book only in this way, however, ignores the
influence of this work of propaganda. David Horowitz calls Zinn’s textbook “the
Mein Kampf of the Hate America Left.” Yet Zinn’s book is not merely another
leftist version of American history. Zinn succeeded where even Communist leader
William Z. Foster could not (Foster’s 1951 work, “Outline Political History of
the Americas,” shares some stunning parallels). No other leftist professor has
ever produced a book that has vaunted him into a similar degree of rock-star
status.
Zinn’s “history,” although outrageous, appeals to the
uninformed and the vulnerable. Grossly distorting the historical facts and then
skillfully appealing to the reader’s emotions, Zinn convinces many that he has
revealed the long-suppressed, gruesome truth about America’s past.
Hollywood and the
Educational System Prop Zinn Up
The protagonist of the award-winning movie “Good Will
Hunting” says Zinn’s book, unlike traditional tomes, is “a real history book,”
one that will “knock you on your -ss.” The speaker and writer of these lines,
actor Matt Damon, was first introduced to “A People’s History” as a
ten-year-old when it first came out.
The Zinn family lived next door. Damon began visiting them
at age five, getting cookies, and probably reinforcement of his mother’s deep
“social consciousness,” as Zinn presented the political views of the leftist
education professor to biographer Davis D. Joyce.
Unfortunately, Damon was not the last ten-year-old to be
exposed to Zinn’s toxic view of America’s past. High school students taking
Advanced Placement U.S. History are likely to use the book, especially since
the AP guidelines have been rewritten to conform to the Zinn vision of history.
Teachers can even download lesson plans from the Zinn Education Project
Beyond AP classes, Zinn’s book is used in college
education programs and teaching workshops. Recently, I had yet another college
student tell me about a professor recommending the book. In 2008, two years
before he died, Zinn was the keynote speaker at the National Council for the
Social Studies, the biggest gathering of social studies and history teachers in
the nation.
Radical Leftists
Blindly Defend Zinn’s Outrageous Claims
Most of the criticisms of the book are deflected with the
same kinds of objections Zinn used when he received a negative review. In
response to pointed objections from the legendary historian Oscar Handlin, Zinn
replied that Handlin simply disagreed with his pacifist political views.
Others on the left, like Michael Kazin, called the book’s
premise suitable for “a conspiracy-monger’s Web site.” Yet, in a typical
partisan reflex, when it was revealed in 2013 that then Indiana Gov. Mitch
Daniels had sought to keep it out of K-12 public classrooms, Zinn critics like
Kazin and Wineburg turned into Zinn defenders.
Today, Zinn’s view has become accepted in classrooms
across the country, a consequence of its popularity as well as its match with
ideas commonly taught in teacher education classes, which feature some of the
farthest-left professors in academe, according to surveys.
Apparently without any protest, two recently elected
millennials, district attorney Natasha Irving from Waldoboro, Maine, and
Oklahoma City Council member JoBeth Hamon, invoked Zinn as they took office. In
her maiden speech, Irving said her model for service would be Zinn, and as the
sacred object to place her hand on as she took her oath of office, Hamon chose
“A People’s History” instead of the customary Bible.
Testimonials about the “life-changing experience” of reading
Zinn come in every day. Playwrights, songwriters, editorialists, movie
producers, and rock bands are “inspired” by his life. A Zinn biopic will soon
be coming to Broadway. As she explained in a pre-concert interview, Phoebe
Hunt—who was inspired to read “A People’s History” by the 2016 Standing Rock
protests—was so moved by the book that she cried herself to sleep and then
wrote a song.
Zinn Sowed the Seeds of
Antifa’s Violence
From the example of Van Spronsen, however, not all
readers of Zinn’s book react with cathartic cry-sessions. Some resort to
violence. Zinn’s work was a mainstay during the Occupy Wall Street movement,
the precursor to the international Antifa movement in the United States. The
Zinn Education Project quickly came to the aid of the Black Lives Matter
movement by providing inspirational educational materials. In 2015, the PEN
Freedom to Write award was given in Zinn’s honor to Black Lives Matter
activists DeRay Mckesson and Johnetta Elzie.
Zinn glorifies martyrs (like John Brown) who die—and
kill—while fighting “The System.” He regrets the fact that “it was Abraham
Lincoln who freed the slaves, not John Brown.” The latter “was hanged, with
federal complicity, for attempting to do by small-scale violence what Lincoln
would do by large-scale violence…” Zinn fails to mention the innocent civilians
killed by Brown and his gang during their fruitless insurrection.
Zinn calls the 1967 riots “the greatest urban riots of
American history.” The prosecution of H. Rap Brown for making “a militant,
angry speech in [Cambridge,] Maryland, just before a racial disturbance there”
in 1967 is presented as government persecution. In actuality, H. Rap Brown
provoked a riot by saying such things as, “It’s time black folks stopped
talking about being non-violent,” and “don’t be trying to love that honkey to
death. Shoot him to death. …if this town don’t come around, this town should be
burned down.”
In another passage, the deaths by self-immolation of
Norman Morrison, “a thirty-two-year-old pacifist, father of three,” and of
82-year-old Alice Herz, are presented as “a statement against the horror of
Indochina.”
Antifa, Like Zinn,
Wants the End of America As We Know It
“A People’s History” places a wildly disproportionate
amount of focus on the past sins of the United States. The work teaches
students to view history through the lens of toxic identity politics. The
enslavement of blacks and women, exploitation and murder of workers and
Indians, imprisonment of political dissidents, and America’s World War II
treatment of Japanese-born Americans all get prime billing. For Zinn, America
is irredeemable and merits comparisons to Nazi Germany.
Van Spronsen, like many Zinn acolytes before him,
believed this twisted version of history. Van Spronsen believed he was
liberating the real concentration camps, American detention facilities
for foreigners claiming they need asylum.
The power of “A People’s History of the United States” to
inspire revolutionary, violent action should not be underestimated. Antifa is no
mere protest movement. Their goal is a worldwide revolution, a vision Zinn
shared. If he were still alive today, Zinn would be cheering them on.
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