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Fair and Balanced: Howard Zinn and Imposing Liberal Ideology on History

9/27/2013

9 Comments

 
In response to yesterday’s post on Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Jesus, I’ve received a range of feedback that breaks down into a couple of camps: One camp feels I am a radical liberal who is out to get conservatives; another camp feels that it is inappropriate to look for political ideology in a history book; and a third feels that since O’Reilly is a well-known conservative, everyone already knows he will have conservative claims in his book.

The political ideology of historians is an interesting question, and one that is worthy of its own discussion. Would anyone question the fact that the late Eric Hobsbawm was a Marxist, or that his work in history was influenced by his Marxist beliefs? An ideology does not make a historian’s work wrong; ideology can provide a lens for interpretation. The question is whether the historian twists facts to conform to ideological ideas or whether the historian uses ideology to guide inquiry. In O’Reilly’s case, he emphasized taxation over many other issues, which to me seems to have reflected ideological concerns that the facts did not exactly support.

Consider the case of Howard Zinn, whose People’s History of the United States is widely celebrated on the political left for its emphasis on issues related to race, poverty, and oppression. Zinn, like O’Reilly, played a bit loose with facts and looser with interpretation in order to support an ideological point of view.

The first chapter of People’s History talks about Columbus and the pre-Columbian Americas, and it opens with Zinn stating that at the time of Columbus’ trip “Spain was recently unified, one of the new modern nation-states, like France, England, and Portugal. […] Spain had tied itself to the Catholic Church, expelled all the Jews, driven out the Moors.” Zinn’s unstated point is that modern nation-states, like the United States, are inherently driven to oppress minorities. But Spain in 1492 was not a nation-state; in fact Spain in 1492 was a geographic, not a legal, expression: officially Ferdinand and Isabella’s two realms, Aragon and Castile, were joined in personal union, not political union. They remained legally separate for centuries to come, and even today regional separatist movements in Spain belie the idea of a united nation-state. Similarly, Zinn implies that the Moors were removed like the Jews, eliding the fact that the Reconquista was a long series of wars between two political powers, not the oppression of a minority by a white majority.

Turning to the Americas, Zinn relies on Bartolome de las Casas to paint the pre-Columbian Americas as a “pacific” paradise of natural socialism, gender equality, and peace. He never acknowledges that Las Casas had his own motivations for depicting Native society thusly; by emphasizing the supposed natural peacefulness of Native peoples he could draw a better contrast with Spanish behavior to draw attention to the horrors of slavery. Archaeology tells us that the pre-Columbian Americas were no paradise but rather like any other pre-modern region occupied by humans, one of warfare, violence, slavery, environmental degradation.

Zinn next tells us that historians have ideological perspectives that shape their use of facts:

My argument cannot be against selection, simplification, emphasis, which are inevitable for both cartographers and historians. But the map-maker’s distortion is a technical necessity for a common purpose shared by all people who need maps. The historian’s distortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world of contending interests, where any chosen emphasis supports (whether the historian means to or not) some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial or national or sexual.

Honorably, though, Zinn admits his own viewpoint and biases, which does not however excuse him from the widespread distortion of facts which follows. For, he next relates his view of the Aztecs, whom he sees as a homogenous and noble people facing genocidal conquest. He leaves out the Aztecs’ own earlier wars of conquest and their empire-building, remembering only their human sacrifices (motivate, of course, by pious belief), in order to portray them as having “a certain innocence.” He therefore accepts without question the myth that the Aztecs believed Hernan Cortes to be the returning god Quetzalcoatl. That belief, originating in Cortes’ own politically-motivated writings and not found in any surviving Aztec text, was still en vogue among Eurocentric scholars at the time of Zinn’s first edition (1980) and yet it remained in the book’s many revisions down to the present despite the widespread scholarly rejection of the myth beginning in the 1980s. Zinn also neglects to note the Native peoples who collaborated with Cortes because they desired freedom from the oppression of their Aztec overlords. In short, the Aztec were not innocent lambs, even though the Spanish were bloodthirsty wolves.

So was Howard Zinn better than O’Reilly for telling readers how historians can dishonestly distort facts and suppress truth to support an ideology while simultaneously doing it himself?

When I was in college, I was taking New World archaeology courses at the same time that I was also enrolled in a course in alternative media. The professor was a huge fan of Howard Zinn and made his People’s History required reading to understand how the media distort truth to support a corporate conservative agenda. I, of course, noticed the contradiction between Zinn’s views on pre-Columbian America and what I was learning in my archaeology studies, but no amount of fact would ever convince my professor that Zinn was wrong, for did not the widespread pro-corporate bias in media prove the rightness of Zinn’s claims?

But, for those who were upset that I disapproved of Bill O’Reilly’s conservative ideology imposed on history, I hope you can see that I also have no love of liberal ideology imposed on history.

9 Comments
Thane
9/27/2013 06:20:56 am

Everyone has biases....and views the world through their unique frame of reference.

As much as many would hope that "academics", "intellectuals", and broader mankind itself can be dispassionate and honestly engage in analysis and interpretation in a completely and totally rational way, it is not very likely as humans are, to paraphrase Alexander Hamilton, "Reasoning rather than Reasonable."

It's important to me to know what historians and authors believe AND, where knowable, the beliefs and leanings of their sources. History as a "rational" discipline is recent. Most history, especially pre 1700's were written by people attempting to curry favour with someone who they believed to be important to them or had patrons that paid for the work they did. This should make us sceptical of those histories and to view them in the context of the time they were written and for whom they were written.

There is a lot of debate in scholarship related to biblical times and around iconic figures like Jesus. For example, there is a belief that King David is more mythic than real and some scholars doubt he ever existed but recent archaeology may have found David's "Palace"/city/home. It's not proven but it's a theory based on new discovery.

My point is, that readers should attempt to understand the viewpoints and beliefs of the author's they read, analyize what they read based on what they understand of the author's bias, do their own research to validate what they read or to learn more about what interested them in the work, and finally, ALWAYS remain open to knew analysis and discoveries even if it refutes what they came to believe.

I speak from expierence. I remember as a youngster discovering that the research showed that Robin Hood didn't exist! I was heart broken. Since then, however, there is new scholarship that shows he might have existed. Or is a composite of multiple people. Or really was a single guy. Or was only a character of folk tale that was co-opted by medieval guilds. Etc.....

::sigh::

Reply
Erik G
9/27/2013 07:08:15 am

Thank you for that, Jason. You had me worried there for a minute... I tend to agree with Thane. If I know the bias of the author, I can make allowances for it and interpret the work accordingly. But unfortunately bias can also mean a selective presentation of evidence. That which does not agree with the author's interpretation of events or conclusions may not be presented at all -- and one might never learn of its existence. By this I don't mean the conspiracy-hidden 'anomalous findings' so beloved of Ancient Astronaut Theorists, but, for example, potsherds that may not belong in a particular stratum, or writings from other sources that contradict the author's own beliefs. Sadly, even scholars themselves are not always immune to this behavior. The "old boy" peer-review mechanism, the success or failure of pending PhD theses, possible tenure, and future funding may render such an approach necessary. Sadly, truly neutral historians tend not to publish much outside of academe. Perhaps the general public welcomes a biased approach. Facts and reasoned interpretations get in the way of snappy soundbites. They take far too long.

Reply
The Other J.
9/27/2013 11:20:37 am

"But unfortunately bias can also mean a selective presentation of evidence."

This reminds me of two examples from opposite sides of the ideological fence where both parties do the same damn thing.

Back when Al Franken wrote "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them," he spent some time on Ann Coulter's claim that the New York Times called Justice Clarence Thomas a "chicken-and-biscuit-eating Uncle Tom." This was one of her attempts to show how the "liberal media" was duplicitous and unfair and racist. But the piece Coulter was drawing from was actually quoting someone else who was quoted in a Playboy interview -- the writer of the NYT article did not call Justice Thomas a chicken-and-biscuit-eating Uncle Tom, despite what Coulter presented. The problem is you'd have to dig through the endnotes to find the citation, and then you'd have to go to the original source itself to learn that it was actually someone else who was quoted in Playboy. Endnotes, I tell ya...

Around the same time, I had to give a presentation in a class about Slavoj Zizek's book "The Puppet and the Dwarf." Zizek is about as opposite of Coulter as you can get, but can be just as loose with his references and assertions derived from them. Except Zizek's overriding framework is a kind of Marxist-inflected psychoanalytical game where the veracity of facts is less important than how interpretation betrays ideology, instead of an outright ideological screech.

At the time, Zizek was embarking on some kind of project to re-define and revive a form of radical Christianity, but much of what he wanted to present early Christians as saying could also be found in Buddhism, so he sets out in the first chapter to tear down Buddhism. In the chapter, Zizek asserts that Zen Buddhism paved the way for both capitalism and early-20th century fascism in Japan, leading to no end of horrors. But although Zizek lays this at the feet of people like D. T. Suzuki and Ishihara Shummyo, you'd have to -- like Coulter -- go to the endnotes to learn that Zizek didn't bother going to the source material he's denigrating. Instead, he just uses one secondary source who discusses those people, Brian Victoria's book "Zen at War." What's more, you'd have to actually read Victoria's book to find that he doesn't at all argue things as Zizek presents them; in fact, in places Victoria offers evidence and arguments that precisely contradict what Zizek presents. In the end, I wasn't convinced Zizek did much more than read the dust jacket and maybe the preface, because that material asked some provocative questions of Zen's role with regard to Japanese fascism, but doesn't answer it. You'd have to read the whole book for the answer, and the real answer is much more manifold and complex (and includes decades of Western influence on on post-feudal Japan).

But Zizek was pushing a particular Christian ideology in the book that he wanted to displace Western Buddhism, so he needed to displace Buddhism in general. To do that, he brought his own already-determined interpretation of Buddhism to his work, and carefully presented evidence to support his assertion in such a way that you wouldn't know the source material he uses states the opposite of what he claims UNLESS you first dug up the sources in the endnotes, AND actually read those sources. Just like Coulter.

This was when Zizek was at his height, writing the copy for Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs and speaking at every other university in the country while writing books as fast as they could be published in between writing articles for scholarly journals and newspapers. It didn't take us long to figure out how he was able to be so damn productive; he, like Coulter, didn't really expect people to actually check him on his facts, and he'd learned the art of burying sources when he only needed the veneer of scholarship in order to push his own ideological position. But given the psychoanalytical games his works play, faithful adherence to facts seemed secondary to his larger project.

It was really disappointing.

Reply
Al West link
9/28/2013 06:03:13 am

You should not be disappointed. It had been clear for some time that Zizek was and is, like many of his continental 'philosophy' ilk, a charlatan.

The Other J.
9/28/2013 09:05:47 am

Al West,

To be fair, this was long enough ago that he wasn't so widely thought of as a joke. It was more that people in the humanities were still trying to figure out what he was about -- the second coming of Lacan with a knack for presenting assertions as negatively-framed questions. He gave a presentation at my university that same year where he argued heaven was an interminably boring prison and that's why god made himself into his own son so he could die and become himself.

My disappointment, though, was less with him, per se, and more with how academics were giving him so much attention despite these glaring flaws, flaws which would be unforgivable for us grad students. There was the tacit blind spot for and acceptance of what seemed like negligent if not fraudulent scholarship, often argued away hand-wavium as an enactment of the Lacanian Real.

And I was disappointed that I had to be the one to point that out in the seminar. It should have been obvious to all of us, and really made me question if I was in the right field.

H
9/27/2013 08:19:24 am

If one counts opinion- then calls it bias- what are you left with?

Reply
Jason Colavito link
9/27/2013 08:22:37 am

Opinions should be based on facts, and good historians present facts that complicate or challenge a position, not just those that agree with it. No one says you can't have a point of view or draw a conclusion, but you need to play fair with the facts.

Reply
Shane Sullivan
9/27/2013 03:11:40 pm

This is a fertile subject. An exploration of the influence of personal ideologies on authors in general, and its ramifications, could make up a doctoral dissertation or three. Conscious vs. unconscious, art vs. academics, ethical implications, whether or not the phenomenon is truly universal...rich indeed.

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Keith
9/28/2013 04:12:44 pm

So, I have a PhD in history, that I never use, but in the course of training I developed a fairly clear opinion on this, which seems pretty close to Jason's. Everyone has biases and strong feelings on political issues, and many historians have strong opinions that they are trying to assert and convince others of. You can try and assiduously remove all or most political leaning from your history (as one example I think some of the US colonial historians have done a fairly good job at this, but it's not my period, so I could be wrong). Or you can declare them, as Zinn more or less does -- and one can argue that O'Reilly is such a public persona that he is de facto declaring his biases. So that's out of the way. Then, the book or paper or editorial can be evaluated just on how good a history it is. And in this, if Killing Jesus is similar to Killing Lincoln, O'Reilly fails miserably. And an argument can be made that his failure is either consciously intentional or sub-consciously driven, arising from his conservative ideology. It can also be, in all honesty, because the man is an amateur through and through -- I have a BA in History, and there is a vast gap between the BA training and the later MA and MPhil and PhD in terms of what sources I use, how I treat sources, and how I construct an argument.

So, I see it as a couple of steps: is O'Reilly doing very good history? If not, what are the gaps? And since we know his biases, are the gaps related to the biases or simply amateur errors? Same could be said of Zinn, although his status as amateur would have been hard to justify. And I think the dialogue is impt because so many people refer to the Bill O books as excellent histories and well-researched and so on. All of this can be done, I think, agnostic to one's beliefs on taxation levels. An example I have taken to using is Richard Carrier, a leading Jesus Myth proponent -- not clear if I buy the argument completely, but the logic is nicely structured and the mechanics of history and argument he uses are very solid. I can respect the historical argument without forming a final opinion on historicity.

Final caveat -- I sat next to Bill O'Reilly at a Knicks game once (the seats were amazing) and he was a pretty charming guy who seemed to be completely and utterly non-crazy. Likeable, even.

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