Howard Zinn and the Book That Poisoned a Generation
One book and one author have changed how American history is taught. America is no longer the good guy but the cause of everyone’s problems. Who is the author? What is the book? And why has it become so popular?
🚨 PragerU is experiencing severe censorship on Big Tech platforms. Go to https://www.prageru.com/ to watch our videos free from censorship!
SUBSCRIBE 👉 https://www.prageru.com/join/
Take PragerU videos with you everywhere you go. Download our free mobile app!
Download iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/prageru/id1115115779
Download Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cappital.prageru
To view the FACTS & SOURCES and Transcript, visit: https://www.prageru.com/video/howard-zinn-and-the-book-that-poisoned-a-generation
Join PragerU’s text list! https://optin.mobiniti.com/prageru
SHOP!
Love PragerU? Visit our store today! https://shop.prageru.com/
Script:
The writer of the most popular and influential history book of the last quarter-century was a radical, leftist professor who despised his subject.
The writer’s name is Howard Zinn.
And his subject is America.
Zinn died in 2010, but his toxic theme lives on: America is and has always been a cesspool of racism, imperialism, and capitalist exploitation.
You may never have heard of Zinn, but I assure you a history teacher at your local high school or college has. And probably teaches his text or ideas.
The book Zinn wrote is entitled A People’s History of the United States.
If you’re trying to understand why so many young people lack patriotism—or worse, regard America with contempt—you don’t have to look much further than Zinn.
Columbus was evil?
Lincoln wasn’t really interested in freeing the slaves?
The Allies weren’t any better than the Nazis and the Japanese in World War II?
The Vietnam War was not about stopping the spread of communism, but about promoting American imperialism?Â
Zinn.
How do you take an essentially decent country and turn it into the source of much of the world’s evil?
You just have to lie, distort, and falsify.
Zinn did all three.
A life-long and passionate leftist, everything he ever said or wrote was in service of the Marxist dogma that life is a class struggle. Distilled to its essence this simply means that those who have power are bad and those who don’t are good.
Therefore the downtrodden working class, the proletariat, are a heroic, but faceless mass. The villains—the capitalist ruling class—in contrast all have names and faces. They are the heroes of the nation—Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Kennedy, and others.
Zinn, as any Marxist true believer would, saw his task to tear down the latter and promote the former.
But is such a simplistic approach really history? Noted liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger didn’t think so. Zinn, Schlesinger wrote, was “a polemicist, not a historian.”
As a polemicist, a propagandist, however, Zinn had few peers.
Columbus turned out to be a perfect target. Before Zinn, Columbus was widely extolled for his foresight and bravery. Now, thanks to Zinn, he’s considered a genocidal maniac.
Zinn takes the explorer’s ship logs and twists them to say the opposite of what Columbus clearly intended. In Zinn’s dishonest rendering, Columbus had contempt for the natives and wanted to enslave them.
Read the explorer’s observations in context and in full, and their true meaning emerges. Columbus had deep respect for the Taino (Zinn calls them the Arawaks) and insisted that his men treat them well. Furthermore, he chronicled how terrified the Taino were of the neighboring tribe, the Caribs. For good reason. The Caribs not only enslaved the Taino (immediately and decisively refuting the idea that Europeans introduced slavery to the New World) but ate them. Yes, they were cannibals.
Much excellent scholarship on Columbus had already been done before Zinn turned the explorer into evil incarnate. Not surprisingly, the picture painted by respected historians like Samuel Eliot Morison was complex. Columbus was not faultless, but neither was the world he discovered a new Eden.
But if you’re preoccupied with propaganda rather than truth, what does it matter? It didn’t for Zinn. His monsters change, but never their motive: more power for the capitalist ruling elite.
Nowhere is this view more clearly expressed than in his discourse, the longest section of the book, on the Vietnam War.
In Zinn’s view, it was just this simple: mighty, imperialist America bad; the North Vietnamese, the fearless peasants, good. That the Communist North Vietnamese slaughtered and tortured tens of thousands of South Vietnamese is not allowed to upset the equation.
For the complete script as well as FACTS & SOURCES, visit https://www.prageru.com/video/howard-zinn-and-the-book-that-poisoned-a-generation
source
Lincoln quite literally writes that his intention was preserving the union with or without slavery. His words not Zinn’s.
And Zinn gives multiple examples in the book of the working class people behaving evilly as well. He literally provides examples of victims victimizing others, for example, poor European peasants creating race hatred against other poor Europeans who happened to migrate to the US later.
I recommend that people read The book themselves and come to their own conclusions instead of listening to a very poorly prepared YouTube video.
PragerU taking the time to make this is the biggest compliment and recommendation the book could get!
If you think Zinn was a propagandist, boy, you should take a look at PragerU. Now that is propaganda in its purest form.
Well, I’m gonna read it now.
really?
Who first introduced legislation to tax the income of the American citizen?
Each country had its version of exceptionalism, its version of how their actions were just, we were the good guys. Which country has in its offical history we unjustly masacred these people? None. A peoples jistory of america tells the stroy from the common person perspective, not from the perspective of the rulers. These people are mad because it questions the exceptionalist narrative that is ike 3rd grade history
Love Zinn! PragerU's a joke, though.
This lady is delusional
Thanks for the laugh PragerU!
It's not in my classroom because I won't allow it
Most leftists cherry pick and ignore facts that do not support their own views. You can see exactly that happening in the democratic party in the USA today (November 2023).
lol. I love praeger u talking about other things as propaganda….all while trying to convince scared, conservative parents that there children are reading some new anti-American book.
1.) this book was published in 1980. Why didn’t it corrupt the previous generations? Why wasn’t the high school class of 1983 “woke”?
2.) Howard Zinn is not being taught in high schools, I guarantee it. I’m a history major (from a university in a very liberal town) and I somehow made it through all 4 years w/out this book being taught.
You guys are hilarious. Keep making videos for folks afraid of anything changing—the rest of the internet love getting to laugh
Peace be with you ✌️
Zinn didn’t lie about a single thing. You on the other hand have done an amazing amount of Columbus white washing in these 5 minutes.
The truth can be unpleasant sometimes. And Zinn told the unpleasant truth.
Greatest book ever written on American history I’ve ever read. It points out the fundamental truth about why sanctifying our constitution is a childish idea always propagated by the wealthiest people in the country, such an amazing quintessential read for any REAL American and not history re-writing cult-like children who hate free thought.
How dare he tell the truth of history from the peoples perspective not and the perspective of the victorious ruling government! How dare he teach people history so that future generations know not to repeat it, the whole point of history being taught in the first place. But no, in your minds history should only make you feel warm and fuzzy about your country and demonize every aspect of our perceived enemies (people with different skin tones on a different patch of dirt)
You’re all propagandists. You’re in denial about the horrors of history and refuse to learn from it because you wish to be on the dominant side of that abusive power dynamic
Zinn’s theme is eternal—facing facts about the clash of East and west that occurred here in the Americas is the only way to make the east, west, and the Americas a better place. A lot of unbelievably toxic stuff went on that no one would touch but Zinn—give him a decent obituary! Please don’t be a Nazi bitch.
Howard Zinn did something that angers many people- he told the truth. There is nothing I've seen to indicate that he "hates America". To characterize America in terms so simplistic as good or bad is a mistake, as is thinking of it as a single entity to be judged. It's government has engaged in some foreign policy which has been brutal and destructive and some which has been heroic and beneficial. To pretend any different only denies it's members the opportunity to do better in the future. There seems to be a recent trend against acknowledging and teaching uncomfortable history (which may spur feelings of guilt, though it shouldn't). This is precisely what is most important to accurately teach, and the real guilt lies in NOT doing so.
It's pretty hilarious that this polemical, propagandist disinformation channel is characterizing Zinn as same.
This is so silly. Very funny
You are full of lies
We have Columbus's journals where he describes how he tortured and slaughtered natives (he fed them to dogs in some instances). How can she defend that?
Christopher colombus implemented the gold standard. Read about that.
Prager University is propoganda and who the Hell is this woman. I've heard of Zinn, never her.
Her narrative is very one-sided. Zinn did not hate America. I've read the book. He clearly loved America. He cleared loved the working people, people of color, and told us their side of the story.
The main reason I think she's a propagandist and lousy educator is that she doesn't want you to read different viewpoints. Why is she so threatened by students reading Zinn? A good educator wants to share many points of view not just the Maga corporate view.
if ur watching this and aren’t heavy into politics the creator of this video is heavily right leaning, go watch another video or form your own opinion. No need to be skewed by propaganda
Im reading it for a class I thought would a fun class, history of the British empire, I though ohh fun this class is gonna be cool, we will talk about wellington, nelson, sailing, line battles global trade ect no Im stuck in an anti progress leftist hellscape
This video looks like Fox News propaganda or a Trump campaign ad – a prime example of pure Republican vitriol. Anyone criticizing mistakes made by the US government is immediately branded as anti-American. No one should hesitate to speak the truth, to discuss real history openly and without fear. Zinn did it. For instance, the Vietnam War was the outcome of a plan involving mass murder and mass destruction, orchestrated by the United States of America. Period. Do not try to embelish it. The U.S. lacked a legitimate reason to engage in Vietnam. It capitalized on an opportunistic mission, seeking to replace the French and invade under the false pretense of defending capitalism while eradicating communism. And who bore the brunt of this? Countless impoverished American men were coerced into participating and losing their lives, alongside millions of Vietnamese farmers who had no stake in the conflict – all perished without justification, with Americans sacrificing their lives for a land that was not theirs. If you defend this war and the US actions, you might be excessively gullible, you're uneducated, devoid basic humanity, or you are just a plain fascist. And Don't get me started with Hiroshima or Chile. Grabar tried to ban this books from schools back in 2017. Read more about right wing Mary Grabar here: https://academeblog.org/2020/08/10/debunking-mary-graber/
He told the ugly truths about American history… plenty of textbooks teach only the good noble truths… what’s wrong with showing all sides of history? It’s literally FACTS… if it makes u annoyed it’s because you recognize that the government you claim to love (even tho the right is supposed to be anti big government… ) did wrong things…
If anything you should be happy that it’s showing the American PEOPLEs stories, from the masses point of view versus the elite gov