With the exception of Noam Chomsky, perhaps no intellectual has been more influential on today’s American neo-communists and radical progressives than Howard Zinn. The far-left academic, who died in 2010, literally wrote the book on the left’s revisionist history of the United States.
With his A People’s History of the United States, a bestseller thanks to generations of academics forcing their students to buy it, Zinn outlined a comprehensive vision of this history—likely drawn from Stalinist propaganda—that portrays the United States as a conspiratorial fraud got up by white racists and rapacious capitalists.
The conspirators, Zinn claims again and again over hundreds of pages, brutally exploit the American people, who are too duped or stupid to realize the truth of their plight. Thankfully, Zinn is there to enlighten them.
It is impossible to overestimate the power this vision exercises over today’s radical left. They have effectively adopted Zinn’s claims wholesale without the slightest question. Zinn’s influence is palpable in the tearing down of statues, demonization of the US as a racist and genocidal entity, and even “mainstream” efforts like the New York Times’ 1619 Project. If the radical left has a vision of what the US is, it is Zinn’s vision.
Katie Couric is apparently a fan, not surprisingly: Couric and Ken Burns Lament Left’s Declining Influence In History Education.
One of the bigger criticisms of PragerU appears to be a video where a cartoon version of Christopher Columbus says slavery is better than death in a conversation with time-travelling children from the present day. PragerU has defended itself by saying that is simply what the real Columbus would have believed. Indeed, one of the child characters immediately follows up by debating Columbus and telling him that slavery was “evil.”
Nevertheless, Couric rolled on, “And I’m just curious to hear your thoughts on this reversion to a brand of history that is not factually accurate, that presents American history, you know, through rose-colored glasses and gives the impression that Americans never did anything wrong.”
She also stated that, “Howard Zinn kind of tried to turn it on, turn this on its head with, you know, talking about history from the point of view of the oppressed instead of the oppressor, but it seems like we’ve made so many strides in giving a more inclusive and a more accurate view of our history, and now we’re going backwards, and it’s so frustrating to me, and as a historian, I can only imagine how you feel.”
Couric tried caricaturizing conservatives by claiming we don’t believe anything bad ever happened in American history, yet she was promoting someone who thinks nothing good ever happened.
For his part, Burns accepted Couric’s dishonest framing of the conservative perspective, “Yeah, it’s terrible and it happens. It’s the course of human events. You go forward, you go back, and yes, it’s simple. It’s in an autocrat’s interest to want to simplify this story and make it only one thing, but it’s, you can’t do that.”
Dennis Prager, “autocrat.”
Oh, and speaking of Couric: Katie Couric faces mounting criticism for cozying up to Jeffrey Epstein at his private dinner with Prince Andrew AFTER pedophile was convicted.