ANTHONY ARNOVE

Voices of a peoples history OF THE UNITED STATES

 

John LeKay:   How did you meet Howard Zinn and come to write "Voices of a peoples history of the United States"?

Anthony Arnove:   I first encountered Howard Zinn, like so many people, through reading his remarkable book  A People's History of the United States. But then I was fortunate to be able to work with Howard to publish his remarkable play Marx in Soho, when I was an editor and publisher at South End Press in Boston. I saw a reading of the play, loved it, and then helped bring it out as a book and helped stage it with my friend Brian Jones. After that, I worked with Howard on the book Terrorism and  War, a collection of interviews about politics, history, and war after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

When the idea of Voices came up in a conversation with the publisher of terrorism and War, Dan Simon, I immediately agreed to work with Howard on the project. It was a rare opportunity to work again with Howard again, and to be involved in a fascinating research project. Howard had long thought readers would be interested in and could use a primary source companion to A People's History of the United States, but earlier attempts to get the project off the ground had not succeeded, in part because of how daunting an undertaking it would be. It is a tribute to the persistence of Dan Simon of Seven Stories Press that the book came together. He really pushed to make this great idea a reality.
 

JL:  In the beginning of your book, the chapter entitled - Columbus and Las Casas - you state that there is no more glaring distortion in the history learned by generations of Americans - in textbooks, in schools, in the popular culture - than the history of Christopher Columbus.  You also say that what is essentially missing from this story is his ruthless quest for gold and spices that led to enslavement, misery, genocide, barbaric torture and much more wickedness to a population of native Indians.
 
Why do you think that up to this point, not too many historians have challenged the conventional his-story of Columbus, such as Washington Irving's iconic, statuesque, bold and ingenious explorer and underdog triumphant over circumstances etc.   How do you think that your book will alter America's perception of celebrating Columbus Day and its jovial Columbus parades?
 
AA:  I hope our book might be able to have an impact as part of a broader reconsideration of the dominant history we are taught in the schools and in the mainstream media. Most history we are taught is "victor's history," history from the standpoint of Columbus, for example, rather than from the standpoint of the native peoples he rather brutally suppressed.

That is why we chose in Voices to include the words of Bartolomé de Las Casas, who witnessed the devastation wrought by Columbus's "discovery" of Hispañola: "[I]into this land of meek outcasts there came some Spaniards who immediately behaved like ravening wild beasts, wolves, tigers, or lions that had been starved for many days -- killing, terrorizing, afflicting, torturing, and destroying the native peoples, doing all this with the strangest and most varied new methods of cruelty."

But we also wanted to include Columbus's own words, which are often ignored. In his dairies, Columbus describes his own interest, "to seek gold and precious stones."

With regard to the native  people of the islands, he writes that "with 50 men all of them could be held in subjection and can be made to do whatever one might wish."

Fortunately, many people are now challenging the hero myth of Columbus and the traditional story of the discovery of the Americas. Even the official Columbus Day celebrations now have to make some concessions to the reality of the conquest, but still much remains to be done, in large part because the Columbus myth is just a prologue to a whole series of patriotic myths that support nationalism and imperialism in this country, and which political elites still very much rely on today.
 
JL:  In 1823, the Supreme Court ruled that Indians' "right of occupancy" was not as important as the  government's "right of discovery". 
 
You state "In 1825, a little Indian boy living on Ward Creek sold a gold nugget to a white trader, and the nugget sealed the doom of the Cherokees.  In a short time the country was over run with armed brigands claiming to be government agents, who paid no attention to the rights of the Indians - who were the legal possessors of the country. Crimes were committed that were a disgrace to civilization. Men  were shot in cold blood, lands were confiscated, homes were burned and the inhabitants driven out by gold hungry brigands".
 
In the 1868 treaty, signed at Fort Laramie and other military posts in Lakota country, the United States recognized the Black Hills as part of the Great Sioux Reservation, set aside for exclusive use by the Sioux people. However, after the discovery of gold there in 1874, by General Custer and his unlawful expeditions,  the United States confiscated the land in 1877.

Do you think that anything has changed since then, which enables political leaders of today, "the right to discover the land (s ) of other civilizations, indigenous
cultures and take it away";  the right of occupancy and the right to confiscate and control its natural resources" (gold, uranium, oil, etc.)?

AA:  Under capitalism, property rights, and rights of "capital," take priority over all other rights, especially human rights. This is especially the case where the human rights in question are those of oppressed groups, such as African Americans, immigrants, or Native Americans. Might has historically made right, and continues to do so today.

Rights now, the federal government owes billions of dollars to Native peoples of this country for extracting resources from native lands the government held "in trust," claiming the Native people could not manage the lands themselves. For decades, the government has not been paying the money owed (or the interest) on these enormous holdings. But year after year nothing has been done, the government has found loophole after loophole to avoid its debts.  We also see how rapidly environmentally protected lands are being turned over to oil exploration, logging, and commercial development. The right wing has come up with the argument that such protected land is a drain on potential profits that could be earned through commercial exploitation, and have developed a number of effective legal maneuvers to erode environmental restrictions.

And Native peoples continue to live in fourth world conditions, on marginalized lands, often far from their ancestral homes. The government then preys on people's poverty, with the complicity of corrupt native American councils and politicians who see opportunities to enrich themselves by allowing mining or government dumping of toxic wastes on their lands.

Unfortunately, the story of the dispossession -- and genocide -- of Native Americans continues today, with new outrages being added to the long train of earlier ones.

JL:  You write The Lithuanian immigrant, Emma Goldman was an anarchist and a feminist orator. She was jailed many times for her speeches. An outspoken critic of war. In 1908 she wrote "Patriotism. A menace to society". In which she quotes Tolstoy as saying "patriotism is the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers".

Post 9/11, at the beginning of the "War on Terror" and the so called "liberation of Iraq", there was a climate of fear and massive displays of patriotism in the US. Do you think that the present administration with their  "Your either with us or against us" rhetoric fueled the fear and championed that patriotism as a way to stifle dissent and suspend rational thought? Or was this outpouring of patriotism a natural response of collective bonding in a time of threat and uncertainty?

Did the media become cheerleaders for the cause? Were they able to maintain their objectivity in such a climate and do you have any thoughts on the so called
embedded reporters?

AA:  In the speech you mention, Emma Goldman makes some other remarks that are remarkably applicable to our present situation: "Conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism  assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot.It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.

The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that, from early infancy, the mind of the child is poisoned with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood, he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition.

We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that it will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations.

Such is the logic of patriotism. . . ."

In the last four years, the media have acted like home team sports reporters covering their local football team as they battle their biggest rivals. They have been
cheerleaders, or at best stenographers, to those in power. This is nothing new, but the flag waving and subservience to power has taken extreme forms since 9/11.

Dan Rather, the former CBS news anchor, for example, said with no sense of irony, “George Bush is the president, he makes the decisions, and, you know, as just one American, he wants me to line up, just tell me where.” Rather also went on Larry King Live, and said, “[W]hatever arguments one may or may not have had with George Bush the younger before September 11th, he is our commander in chief, he's the man now. And we need unity, we need steadiness. I'm not preaching about it. We all know this.”

Then, of course, in Iraq, U.S. military planners realized they could more effectively control how the media would cover the war  by in effect enlisting them in military service.

They coopted journalists, who willingly became propagandists for the war. Did anyone "embed" with Iraqis, with doctors treating the maimed, with peace activists? Of course not. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting did a study of ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS news programs in the lead up to the March
2003 invasion of Iraq.

 

Of the 393 interviews about the war over a two-week period, only three were were anti-war voices. No wonder so many people believed the lies about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and the enormous danger it posed to the United States.

It is natural that people were emotionally effected by 9/11, but the government has manipulated that emotion to support a project of imperial expansion that has nothing to do with 9/11 but has to do with interests and designs that long preceded it. In Iraq, for example,Bush says we are "fighting terrorism." But the real reasons for the invasion of Iraq is domination and control of the Middle East, which has two thirds of world oil reserves. Oil is vital to the functioning of the world capitalist system, and is becoming more difficult to extract. So there's competition over who will control the main oil supplies, and the United States has long been determined that it alone will be able to use oil as a weapon.