Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Zapping Zinn

He wrote of his commitment to “value-laden historiography” and declared that historical research should be carried out to serve present-day political ends.

... Having long ago disavowed objectivity, having dismissed even the hope of unpoliticized scholarship, Zinn stated plainly that he meant to take sides. Since “selection, simplification, [and] emphasis” were “inevitable,” what mattered was only which selections, simplifications, and emphases the historian chose. And while the canons of academic culture might hold that those choices, those acts of historical interpretation, were “technical problems of excellence,” Zinn said that they constituted “tools for contending social classes, races, nations.”

Source 


He's the type of 'intellectual' to think this:


I think the Jewish State was a mistake, yes. Obviously, it’s too late to go back. It was a mistake to drive the Indians off the American continent, but it’s too late to give it back. At the time, I thought creating Israel was a good thing, but in retrospect, it was probably the worst thing that the Jews could have done. What they did was join the nationalistic frenzy, they became privy to all of the evils that nationalism creates and became very much like the United States—very aggressive, violent and bigoted. When Jews were without a state they were internationalists and they contributed to whatever culture they were part of and produced great things. Jews were known as kindly, talented people. Now, I think, Israel is contributing to anti-Semitism. So I think it was a big mistake.

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