American support of the French revolution.n) White women are treated, quitenseriously, as slaves. Abraham Lincoln isnabused for not freeing all the slaves withnthe Emancipation Proclamation; thenlegal and practical problems facing thenpresident, such as the danger of alienatingnthe Union slave states in the midstnof the Civil War, are not even mentioned.nZinn attributes the defeat ofnthe Confederacy to lack of “will powernand morale” and claims that there wasn”much reluctance to fight” in the ConfederatenArmy. This view of the CivilnWar would seem to bear as much relationnto reality as nazi claims that Germanynwas ruined by defeatism in WorldnWar I. American industrialization isnonly briefly alluded to in crude “RobbernBaron” stereotypes. The Spanish-AmericannWar and our intervention in WorldnWar I are treated as imperialist plots,npartly intended to dampen allegedly explosivenclass conflicts at home.nAn interesting wrinkle in Zinn’snworldview appears in his treatment ofnWorld War II, a struggle usually regardednas a holy crusade by the left.nZinn spends nearly three pages in a verbosenand inaccurate tirade trying tonshow that Americans were deluded innsupposing that their country was peacelovingnand morally superior to the Axisnenemy. He tries to incorporate into leftistnmythology some old conservativenconspiracy theories about our entry intonthe war. As usual, however, he is inconsistent.nFirst he complains that it wasnnot Japan’s invasion of China, but “thenJapanese attack on a link in the AmericannPacific Empire” (his charmingnphrase for our 50th state) that broughtnAmerica in; then he insinuates thatnRoosevelt’s embargo was deliberatelyndesigned to provoke war—for sinisternimperialist reasons, of course. The warnis treated in a strangely sour fashion;neven the nazis cannot galvanize Zinnninto enthusiasm about his country.nBritish and American bombing of Germanynand Japan is deemed inconsistentnwith waging a “people’s war” or a defensivenwar.nThe atomic attacks on Japan arenblandly labeled “atrocities”; followingnCold War revisionists, Zinn removesnthe bombings from context and describesnthem as moves in the Cold War.nHe falsifies the facts as required to sustainnthis thesis. He erroneously claimsnthat the Japanese government was willingnto surrender before the bomb wasndropped and that the Americans knewnthe Soviets would enter the war on Augustn8. Though Zinn mildly condemnsnthe Soviet Union as well as Britain andnAmerica, his treatment of the Cold Warnlargely consists of standard leftist myths.nThe Greek coalition government backednby Truman is mislabeled a “right-wingndictatorship.” All communist insurrectionsnare vaguely dubbed “revolutionarynmovements” independent of thenU.S.S.R. and China—and all revolutionarynmovements are glorious, ofncourse.nThe contemporary American situationnis described in near-hysterical terms.n”Technology is running wild,” Zinnngrumbles. Computers reduce him tonsputtering. “Auto accidents, the decaynof the cities and the breakup of familiesnwere out of control.”nWhile most readers, and particularlynthose who have suspended their criticalnsense, will probably have been reducednto a state of total demoralizationnand despondency by this point, yet Zinnnstill has hope—even hope for Utopia.nThe follies of the “establishment,” henthinks, will drive the whole populationnto rebellion, producing a society innwhich small groups of people willndecide their own fates, creating annew culture: a “neighborly socialism”nof cooperatives. From a hymnnof hate, we have passed into a dreamnworld. The need for government,ndivision of labor and big organizations—andncontrolling those bignorganizations—is simply wished away.nleader’s Power on the Left is largelyna theme-and-variations treatment of thenlast section of Zinn’s work, thoughnLader is less prone to editorializing, andnnnhis Marxist influence is more pronounced.nWhile Zinn rather dislikesnviolence, Lader is a trifle slippery, distinguishingnbetween “destructive violence”n(that of the right) and “constructivenviolence” (that of the left), thoughnhe does condemn “sheer terrorism” likenthat of the Red Brigades. Lader is alsonsomewhat more procommunist, treatingnthe Party’s foibles sympatheticallynthough not uncritically. There isnnothing really wrong with communism;nit’s just “inapplicable” in the UnitednStates. He discourses on Stalin’s “brutalnrealism” in concluding the Nazi-SovietnPact, allegedly “to bring his army intoncombat readiness.” Nikita Khrushchevnwas more truthful. Lader invariably extenuatesnSoviet foreign policy and itsnAmerican apologists. Among othernfeats, he misquotes an article by ArthurnSchlesinger, Jr. as supporting his views.nIn fact, Schlesinger was one of the fewnliberal historians to sharply attack “revisionist”nviews of the Cold War..nLader’s definition of the “left” is remarkablynflexible; it might well have inspirednthe admiration of Senator JoenMcCarthy. Sometimes it seems to meannjust the communists and their sympathizers,nsometimes it is synonymousnwith the Far Left, but when convenientnit seems to expand to include left-wingnliberals and the civil-rights movementnand, still further, to include the 57 varietiesnof cranks who have helped tonmake the last two decades so dismaLnInterestingly, democratic socialists likenNorman Thomas, who affected Americannlife to a considerable degree by theirninfluence on liberalism, are given shortnshrift.nLader tries to portray the civil-rightsnmovement as radical, playing up thenimportance and influence of the organizationsnon its left wing such as COREnand SNCC, i.e. those that became openlynproviolence and antiwhite. ThoughnLader perceives that the guilt and selfcontemptnof white new leftists and theirnself-abasement before black nationalistsnproved counterproductive, he himselfnhas a condescending attitude towardnSeptember/October 1980n