[Marxism] My latest comment on the Cliopatria blog

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

KC, I don't think the issue is rightwing professors using the classroom as 
a bully pulpit in violation of the need to uphold objectivity in the high 
school classroom. They don't need to do this. All they have to do is 
lecture the students from the official textbooks.

With respect to Woodrow Wilson's brutal occupation of Haiti, for which the 
Haitian people are paying the price even today, "The American Pageant" 
stated, "Hoping to head off trouble, Washington urged Wall Street bankers 
to pump dollars into the financial vacuums in Honduras and Haiti to keep 
out foreign funds. The United States, under the Monroe Doctrine, would not 
permit foreign [!!!] nations to intervene, and consequently it had some 
moral obligation to interfere financially to prevent economic and political 
chaos."

Goebbels couldn't have written anything to top this.

On the criminal overthrow of Allende and the mass murder of the Chilean 
people, "The American Adventure" has this to say: "Some people, in the 
United States and abroad, said that the United States arranged the 
overthrow of Allende. Indeed, in 1974, President Ford admitted that the 
United States had given help to the opposition to Allende [sic]. However, 
he denied that the United States encouraged or even knew of the 
revolutionary plan." [Well, that's a relief.]

On JFK, "The Challenge of Freedom" puts forward a version of American 
history that approximates official historiography out of the Kremlin when 
Stalin was in power. "President Kennedy and his administration responded to 
the call for racial equality. In June 1963 the President asked for 
congressional action on far-reaching equal rights. Following the 
President's example, thousands of Americans became involved in the equal 
rights movement as well. In August 1963 more than 200,000 people took part 
in a march in Washington, D.C."

After having done some thorough research on this rotten politician's career 
in order to prepare an article for a New Zealand radical magazine, I find 
this whitewashing particularly galling. Here's what I found:

Kennedy saw the Justice Department as the main instrument of his civil 
rights agenda, not the Civil Rights Commission that had been established in 
1957 under Eisenhower as part of the Civil Rights Act. Several degrees to 
the left of Kennedy, the Commission was seen as something akin to 
Reconstruction and, therefore, unwelcome. In his best-selling "Profiles in 
Courage," Kennedy referred to Reconstruction as a "black 
nightmare?nourished by Federal bayonets." When the Civil Rights Commission 
announced its attention to investigate racist violence in Mississippi, 
Robert F. Kennedy likened it to HUAC "investigating Communism."

Not only were the Kennedys hostile to the Civil Rights Commission; they 
appointed 5 segregationist judges to the federal bench, including Harold 
Cox, who had referred to blacks as "niggers" and "chimpanzees." Robert F. 
Kennedy preferred Cox to Thurgood Marshall whom he described as "basically 
second-rate." Kennedy frequently turned to Mississippi Senator James 
Eastland for advice on appointments. According to long-time activist 
Virginia Durr, Eastland would "invite people over for the weekend and tell 
them to 'pick out a nigger girl and a horse!' That was his way of showing 
hospitality."

Even in their selection of voter registration as the least confrontational 
tactic in the South, the Kennedys were loath to put the power of the 
federal government behind it. When the KKK targeted civil rights workers 
trying to register black voters, Robert F. Kennedy bent over backwards to 
appear conciliatory toward the racists. He said, "We abandoned the 
solution, really, of trying to give people protection." This indifference 
was one of the main reasons the racists felt free to kill activists in the 
Deep South.

One such assassination took the life of NAACP leader Medgar Evars, who was 
gunned down in the driveway of his home. In keeping with his 
accomodationist policies, Robert F. Kennedy told the media that the federal 
government had no authority to protect Evers or anybody else. Such 
responsibilities rested with the state of Mississippi! 


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