Debunking all redemptive violence

I was saddened to learn of Zinn's death. I was influenced by his books, and also by his presentations at professional history meetings. I used his People's History as an alternative text for four or five years in my U.S. history survey class at Bethel College.

But then I moved away from requiring it, for a number of reasons. When I began teaching at Bethel in 1966, I was convinced my calling was to demythologize the heroic triumphalist narrative of U.S. history that dominated American public life and American history textbooks. Zinn was helpful in working at that goal. But somewhere in the 1970s I realized that a goodly number (perhaps a majority?) of the students in my history classes were already disilllusioned and even cynical about America. What they needed was a sensible and balanced basis for understanding the strengths and weaknesses displayed in our national past. Zinn's People's History was helpful for deconstruction. But shouldn't I do more than offer students a choice between triumphalism and cynicism?

Another problem with Zinn was that his People's History was still trapped in the myth of redemptive violence. That book had a dim view of the violence of the oppressors, but assumed that the violence of the oppressed should be welcomed. Zinn lamented the fact that the victimized underclasses in American history (unskilled workers, slaves, immigrants, etc.) were perpetually disorganized and demoralized. They unfortunately never got themselves together for effective resistance against the ruling powers. This viewpoint, perhaps more of an underlying assumption than an explicit argument in Zinn's book, became less and less attractive to me as I sought for more peace-minded ways to interpret and to teach American history.

Over the last decade or two, Zinn shifted his thinking and intepretations in a more peace-minded direction. I noticed it first in his autobiographical book, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train. In recent speeches he seemed to be signalling that he was working on a book that would demythologize the violence of three of the United States' most holy wars: the Civil War, World War I and World War II. It is unfortunate that he did not get that book written. It is doubly unfortunate that he never undertook a thorough peace-minded revision of his People's History.

Zinn was an inspiration for Carol Hunter and me as we worked on The Missing Peace. I hope that in coming years a peace-minded American historian with the passion and literary skill of a Howard Zinn will emerge to write a more comprehensive pacifist re-interpretation of American history. The myth of redemptive violence remains so strong in our culture that it is hardly imaginable that such a book would sell as many copies as Zinn's People's History. As things stand, both the patriotic triumphalists and the radical critics in America look to salvation from the hands of an effectively violent military establishment or benevolent and reluctantly violent avatar. — James C. Juhnke