Jane Fonda: Her color’s still red

When I received my Human Events this week, I was troubled to see a very large picture of the aging Jane Fonda holding up her fingers in a peace sign. But what was worse was reading what she meant by her “apology” for participating in the “peace protests” against the War in Vietnam back in the days of Barbarella when she was married to the well-known communist activist Tom Hayden.

In her book, My Life So Far, she says:

” . . .I do not regret that I went. My only regret about the trip was that I was photographed sitting in a North Vietnamese antiaircraft gun site.” (See page 291.)

Jane Fonda sitting on a seat of an anti-aircraft gun

Jane Fonda looking admiringly at an NVA gun crew

Jane Fonda applauds an NVA anti-aircraft gun crew. These guns were used to shoot down American planes and contributed to the deaths of American Airmen.

Pictures from 1stCavMedic. What’s really interesting is you can google up pictures of Jane Fonda and these pictures DO NOT SHOW UP.

mheh! That series of pictures–as disappointing and disheartening as they are–are not the only appalling thing about that trip of hers. The horrible truth is if there hadn’t been so much news coverage, she probably was perfectly ready and willing to shoot down American pilots. At the time she was in Hanoi, Fonda, for all practical purposes, was a Communist herself. She was certainly rooting for Ho Chi Minh’s military to defeat the “imperialist” United States of America involved in the supposedly “criminal” war against that lovely Red regime in the north. She fully embraced Communists, communism and revolutionaries in 1972 and way beyond that date. Her heroes were Black Panther thugs such as Huey Newton and Red dictators such as Fidel Castro.

We know of her revolutionary ardor because she used to run off at the mouth about her views. The Detroit Free Press, for instance, quotes her as saying in a Nov. 22,1969, Michigan State University speech: “I would think that if you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would someday become Communist.” That statement has been quoted for years (in HUMAN EVENTS among other places) and has never been denied and is certainly not apologized for (or explained away) in her new memoir.

Want more? Here’s another red pearl from Fonda: On July 18, 1970, the People’s World, the West Coast’s Communist Party publication, carried a telephone interview with Fonda in which she said:

“To make the revolution in the United States is a slow day by day job that requires patience and discipline. It is the only way to make it. . . . All I know is that despite the fact that I am one of the people who benefit from a capitalist society, I find that any system which exploits other people cannot and should not exist.”

Great. Another one who talks like a socialist but lives like a capitalist. If these regimes that she admires so much produce so much happiness and fairness, why is she still selling her videos and living in the US?

Here’s just a small sampling of her Leninist polemics against America:

To South Vietnamese soldiers she said: “We understand that Nixon’s aggression against Vietnam is a racist aggression, that the American war in Vietnam is a racist war, a white man’s war. . . ” And then: “We deplore that you are being used as cannon fodder for U.S. imperialism.”

To Saigon students: “A growing number of people in the United States not only demand an end to the war, an end to the bombing, a withdrawal of all–all U.S. troops and–an end to the support of the Thieu clique, but we identify with the struggle of your people. We have understood that we have a common enemy: U.S. imperialism. We have understood that we have a common struggle and that your victory will be the victory of the American people and all peace-loving people around the world.”

Again, to the students: “As an American woman, I would like to tell you that the forces that you are fighting against go far beyond the bombs and the technology. In our country, people are very unhappy, People have no reason for living.”

To U.S. servicemen: “I don’t know what your officers tell you that you are dropping on this country. I don’t know what your officers tell you, you are loading, those of you who load the bombs on the planes. But, one thing that you should know is that these weapons are illegal and that’s not, that’s not just rhetoric. They are outlawed, these kinds of weapons, by several conventions of which the United States was a signatory. . . . And the use of these bombs or the condoning the use of these bombs makes one a war criminal.

“The men who are ordering you to use these weapons are war criminals, according to international law, and, in the past, in Germany and in Japan, men who were guilty of these kinds of crimes were tried and executed.”

What boggles my mind is what communism stands for, and the fact that history demonstrates it is the most oppressive and ruthless system ever, in practical reality. The killing fields of Vietnam, China, Russia only punctuate the point, but communists always skirt that reality…people with one iota of sense don’t overlook those simple facts, but then–facts never bother leftists.

She also does not honestly address the immense human tragedy that took place after the North Vietnamese took over South Vietnam and Pol Pot conquered Cambodia. Other anti-war activists had been bothered by what happened. Singer Joan Baez took out full-page newspaper ads in May1979, condemning Vietnam’s Communist rulers in the harshest language, urging them to “end the imprisonment and torture” of innocent men, women and children in the South. In addition to the ads, Baez sent out special packets to reporters detailing the horrors that had been documented in such publications as Le Monde and Le Figaro.

When this reporter asked Peter Necarsulmer, a Baez publicist, whether Fonda had been contacted on the mater, Necarsulmer said that Baez had twice tried to reach her by letter, one a “long and detailed” report explaining the situation. Unfortunately, said Necarsulmer, Jane never did respond. This incident, of course, is not even mentioned in Fonda’s book, let alone apologized for.

In short, Jane Fonda hasn’t really shown she’s sorry for anything, other than being “caught on camera” in a pose she almost certainly intended as an act of defiance against her own country.

Mr. Ryskind, HUMAN EVENTS Editor at large, is writing a book on Communism in Hollywood.

Is it any wonder the recent story of a disabled Vietnam Vet who was arrested for spitting on Jane Fonda?

From Worldnet Daily:

Smith told the Kansas City Star that Fonda is a “traitor” who had been spitting at war veterans for years.

“There are a lot of veterans who would love to do what I did,” Smith told the paper.

From some online messageboards:

# “I would like to pay Mr. Smith’s bail. He is a true patriot.”

# “I don’t like what [Fonda] did and will never forgive her. If I was on a jury to sentence the tobacco spitter I’d say ‘if she deserved the spit, you must acquit.’”