THE HOWARD ZINN SCHOOL OF HISTORY WRITING

[Valin]

Doc Emet Productions

 Mary Grabar

Sept. 5 2023

The Aha! Moment

On a cold January night in 2019 as I was checking the sources of Howard Zinn’s bestselling A People’s History of the United States while writing my book, Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation against America, I let out a little yell. I had found something to take down a Marxist historian whose America-hating bias had been arousing the ire of Americans since 1980, when it was first published.

I had taught college English for twenty years and I knew that being a leftist was a prerequisite to hiring, publication, and promotion in the humanities. Marxism infused literary theory.

But I had found that Zinn had done something for which my students had faced disciplinary action and possible expulsion.

I had caught an academic historian in the act of plagiarism, pages and pages of passages only slightly altered, lifted from a paperback screed about Christopher Columbus by radical novelist Hans Koning. He did the same with historian Gary Nash. Among Zinn’s papers at New York University, I found a letter from historian Edward Countryman complaining politely about using his essay without acknowledgement.

I had the goods on Zinn! Fake Indian Ward Churchill could not be fired from his position as ethnic studies professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, for calling 9/11 victims “little Eichmanns.” But with assistance from the Board of Regents, he was fired in 2007 for research misconduct involving plagiarism, falsification, and fabrication.

Zinn had done the same. He had distorted what his sources said, for example, twisting Douglas Pike’s portrayal of the Viet Cong as guilty of “genocide” to being teachers of villagers about democracy. Although Zinn had died in 2010, I thought my exposé would take down his propagandistic “history.”

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The Leftist Non-Response and Response

After my book was released on August 20, 2019, the media requests for interviews streamed in from conservative outlets. But the only request from the left was by radio host Thom Hartmann. At the scheduled time, when no call came, I called the producer. Apologizing for the scheduling mix-up, she said that Hartmann would be in touch to reschedule. I am still waiting.

However, I would learn that leftists were aware of my book. They revealed themselves after I had served as a panelist at the White House Conference on American History at the National Archives on September 17, 2020, after a summer of coast-to-coast protests and riots over the death of George Floyd. In my five-minute statement I described Zinn’s “fake history” as “based on falsified evidence, misquotations with critical words left out, and plagiarized, disreputable sources.” President Trump, then in his speech, reiterated that “the left-wing rioting and mayhem,” were “the direct result of decades of left-wing indoctrination in our schools,” namely, “propaganda tracts like those of Howard Zinn. . . .”

On the train ride back to Clinton, New York, as I checked the news I was hit with the flood of attacks on the conference—and on me. The Zinn Education Project, which promotes Zinn’s work through downloadable classroom lessons and lobbying, accused me of traveling “the country attacking Zinn and the Zinn Education Project.” (How did they know I had been traveling?) Repeating the marketing slogans of four decades, they claimed that Zinn’s book helps students “understand the perspectives of workers, women, Black, Indigenous, and people of color.” They accused me of offering “no evidence” for my claim that “Zinn’s writing imposes the false idea that the United States is characterized by ‘systemic racism, wealth inequality, and police brutality.’” I had “fretted” that “’People reading [Zinn’s book] cry and get angry, sometimes taking to the streets.’” However, they pleaded “guilty. Teaching ‘people’s history’ can elicit great emotion about oppression and injustice and may inspire people to move to action.”

Michael Leroy Oberg, who teaches history and Native American Studies at SUNY Geneseo, revealed that he knew that I was from nearby Rochester and dismissed me as a “think-tank denizen” among the mostly white men. The American Historical Association, which publishes the guidelines Zinn had violated, attacked the conference as a “campaign stunt” promoting an old “mythical view of the United States.”

Robert Cohen, a professor of history, social studies, and education at New York University, who had edited Zinn’s diaries, weighed in at History News Network. President Trump “without evidence” accused teachers of promoting a “‘twisted web of lies . . .’” that inspired “’left-wing mobs,’” Cohen charged and claimed that Black Lives Matter protests were “mostly nonviolent.” In contrast to most history instruction, which was “too conservative,” leaving students “bored,” Zinn’s “exciting” book “engages students in authentic historical thought.” Cohen promised that his forthcoming book, being published by the University of Georgia Press, would “show how [Zinn’s] book can be used in classrooms today.”

Ignoring my presentation and the book it was based on, Cohen said that it was “absurd” to think that President Trump had read Zinn’s 688-page book. In a chapter on Zinn’s biography, I revealed that Zinn was a one-time member of the CPUSA but continued as an agitator. I had found some of that information in Cohen’s Howard Zinn’s Southern Diary.

The day after his article appeared, I sent Cohen an email, stating,

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