Posted by
Jessica ChinK
• 01.28.10 11:32 am 
Anti-war leftist, civil rights activist and badass historian Howard Zinn passed away yesterday at 87 from a heart attack. Best known for his controversial manifesto A People’s History of the United States, Zinn gave voice to the struggles of people unrepresented in traditional history books.
Anti-war leftist, civil rights activist and badass historian Howard Zinn passed away yesterday at 87 from a heart attack. Best known for his controversial manifesto A People’s History of the United States, Zinn gave voice to the struggles of people unrepresented in traditional history books.
I for one am glad this pedantic messiah of white guilt is gone. FUCK THAT GUY. I saw him do a reading of that stupid book at Cooper Union and it was just a big “We Suck” fest. When you’re preaching to the converted you can say shit like “Andrew Jackson LOVED killing Indians” and everyone smiles. He literally said that. WHAT!?
Andrew Jackson said to the Indians “no offense but, like it or not. This is called America now. You have to be Americans to live here. Are you ready to be Americans?” They said “Fuck that” so he said “OK well you realize we’re at war now then? You’re in foreign territory.” And go to war they did. It wasn’t pretty and I don’t necessarily agree that was his only option but to jump to “Love killing Indians” is fucking absurd.
Zinn noticed that middle class white students enjoy feeling bad about themselves and he built a career on it. Glad he’s dead.
fuck howard zinn? glad hes dead? dude youre so punk. i wanna subscribe to your zine.
saying jackson loved killing indians is kind of a stretch ill give you that but remember white folks back then didnt really consider indians human. at the very least jackson didnt mind killing indians and didnt lose any sleep over it.
The winner of this (or any) argument is the man who uses punctuation.
actually jackson loved it, he looked forward to it in the mornings and shit
^ ha.
So are we supposed to believe that BJ is a really articulate guy who takes a lot of adderall and refreshes his browser 20 zillion times a day, or is it a given that this is just Gavin “getting a discussion” going”?
PS: Your Andrew Jackson argument is comparable with having Hitler say “Sorry Poland, like it or not this is called Germany now. Are you ready to be Germans?”
He’s been fittingly upstaged by someone who gave the world something real…JD Salinger. Rest in peace Howie, but you were not my kind of guy.
ugh, yes. just heard salinger news. feel a bit queasy. irreplaceable voice.
The Brad Renfro to Salinger’s Heath Ledger.
Salinger gave the world 1.5 good books but that’s 1.5 more than Zinn’s 600 “White people are evil” diatribe. What a fucking bore. Just like Jared Diamond’s whinefest.
Did Zinn ever publish an edition of his great book that included endotes of footnotes?
that should read “or”
where have u been bj? white people ARE evil, they ruin everything cool- rap music, the aztecs, japanese horror movie remakes, africa, mexican food on the east coast…
This guy was one of the most intellectually disingenuous academics I’ve ever read. He didn’t invent ideological (propagandized) history, but he certainly perfected it.
bj’s right. the world really is in desperate need of more histories by and for the victors.
You can’t kill ideas. Viva la Amerikan Revolution. RIP Prof. Zinn
no doubt, yo. i fucking hate it when bitches complain they can’t vote and work and not get beat up by their spouses. we don’t need to hear why shit isn’t like that anymore. it’s fucking over, move on. fuck hearing about africans getting whipped, beaten and killed. fuck a genocide. motherfuckers say those who don’t know their history are more likely to repeat that shit. shit. i hope we go back to that shit, yo. ignorance is bliss, yo. join me on this dumb-fuck movement. it’s awesome. just ignore what’s happened in the past and shit. it is what it is. on that note. nobody can ever bitch about anything. the world is fucking perfect people, and anyone who says different is fucking crybaby or a weak ass liberal guilty of their privilege.
Zinn is an important figure since he really helped demonize the great evils of European/white imperialism in the New World. After all, Indians had a great life living in tee pees before the white man came.
I don’t understand how you can re-write history without divulging your sources. Say what you will about Jim Goad, he at least takes the time to write his audience a map to his conclusions. Still, he’s not particularly rare in doing that. You can’t get a bachelor’s degree in history without citations, but you can write this hugely influential book that thousands of teachers use to debunk everything? It makes no sense you see, none at all. Oh, but that’s right, it does make sense. Liberals are nothing more than a shady collection of brainwashed jugheads who think that low level propaganda = the truth. All Zinn does is bitch about the profit motive, yet no one has ever called him out for being a shyster who made a tidy fucking profit by bitching about the cynical profit motive. You’d have to be a complete fucking moron to not notice that slight conflict in the blatherings that formed his career. But hey, who cares? Show us your goddamn sources and everything will be okay. Let us check to make sure that your not pulling our chain. Throw a bone to the smart people who possess standards.
V,
His sources are in biblio. And they are plentiful. Clearly you’re a fan of the almighty $ and that’s your true beef with Zinn. Which is cool. Make that money. Just know there’s almost always a social, environmental, and/or economic cost associated with the cold pursuit of that dollar. And I’m pretty sure Zinn has donated most of the money he’s made to causes fighting against current injustices.
Man, I can’t stand it when people pick on Andrew Jackson. It just gets my goat.
White american pride boys are putting on a show of toughness to cover up their guilt and annoyance at people who are willing to discuss the shortcomings of their nations past.
The worst, most backwards people in the world comment on this site (from their cubicles at whatever crappy bank branch they work at). Privileged loudmouths. But saying something because it isn’t PC isn’t the same as saying something smart or right.
“the most… …dipicible of leftists, he used leftist propaganda for his own gain” – penny rimbaud on malcolm mclaren +richard branson
Just want to say that I am a shallow, inarticulate teenager, not familiar with Zinn at all, but I read Catcher in the Rye and hated it. I guess it was well-written, but it made me want to jump out of a window. Most of Salinger’s short stories arn’t any better, although I enjoy a few autobiographical ones.
Vane$$a, Ke$ha ripped you off with the dollar sign gimmick. And I’m having a really tough time believing you’re “short attention span” when you start arguments like this, you fucking queermo.
fuck Salinger, RIP Zinn
If you don’t like that real history has to be written from the perspective of “losers,” it’s because there are so few winners and so many “losers” in history. Maybe channel some of your idiot rage into confronting that fact rather than going after a nice old guy who hid the Pentagon Papers in his house (helping end the war) AND supported black students in their library sit-ins in the 50′s helping catalyze civil rights.
There is NOTHING more slap-worthy than the “right-wing hipster.”