Order Jamie Glazov’s new book, ‘United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny, Terror, and Hamas’: HERE.
“And now it is my honor to introduce a lifelong ‘shero’ of mine, the incredible, brave, courageous Jane Fonda.” That was Rep. Ilhan Omar, at the “No Kings” rally at the Minnesota state capital on Saturday. Omar was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1982. Americans of her generation may have seen Fonda on the big screen but remain unfamiliar with her career as a bullhorn for the left.
Jane Fonda was born in New York in 1937, to actor Henry Fonda (The Grapes of Wrath, 12 Angry Men) and socialite Frances Seymour Brokaw. Jane was pretty and talented but there is room for reasonable doubt whether she would have gone anywhere without daddy. In the movie business it’s all relative, but there’s more Rep. Omar’s lifelong “shero.”
For Hollywood types, as Richard Grenier (The Marrakesh One-Two) noted, the United States of America is evil and capitalism bad – except for their bulging bank accounts, Malibu mansions, luxury automobiles and so forth. The belief that America is basically evil comes to the fore whenever the USA acts in the world.
The latest round of protests emerges after President Donald Trump deployed American power against Iran, some 47 years after the Islamic regime invaded the US embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. In the ensuing decades, Iran waged a war against the USA through terrorism, without a response from Washington.
Though often described as “anti-war,” Jane Fonda served as a propagandist for the Communist regime of North Vietnam, which she wanted to win. In 1972 Fonda traveled to North Vietnam and posed smiling on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun. While in Hanoi, Fonda produced radio broadcasts the Communist regime deployed against American POWs such as Lee Ellis, shot down in 1967 and like most POWs endlessly tortured.
During these sessions, the Communists captors piped in propaganda, and as Ellis explains, “the afternoon broadcasts were especially disheartening because they featured Americans spouting words that could have been written for them in Moscow and Hanoi.” American Tom Hayden “was a regular speaker,” later joined by his wife, “film star Jane Fonda.”
Unlike “Axis Sally” Mildred Gillars, who served jail time for broadcasting Nazi propaganda, “Hanoi Jane” suffered not at all. Fonda calls the campaign against Iran a “desperate immoral act” by Trump, a “sad unhinged man” now waging a “war on democracy” and so forth. So if veterans called her “Tehran Jane” it would be hard to blame them. And how about fellow speaker Sen. Bernie Sanders whom David Horowitz called out as a “Rip Van Winkle communist.”
On his visit to the Soviet Union in 1988, Sanders, criticized the way the USA “intervened” in other countries. The Burlington, Vermont, mayor failed to mention Soviet interventions such as the occupation of Eastern Europe, the crushing of the Hungarian revolution in 1956, the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the invasion of Afghanistan in 1980, and so on. Like Fonda, the Vermont socialist only opposes actions by the United States.
“One month ago Trump and his partner, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, started a war with Iran,” said Sanders on Saturday. Sanders called the war “unconstitutional” and proclaimed that “a nation that has committed genocide in Gaza does not need military support from American taxpayers,” and so on. Also appearing was rocker Bruce Springsteen, whose “Born in the USA” led fans to believe he had a patriotic side.
“This past winter, federal troops brought death and terror to the streets of Minneapolis,” the rock star, 76, told the crowd. “The power and the solidarity of the people of Minneapolis, of Minnesota, was an inspiration to the entire country. Your strength and your commitment told us that this is still America. This reactionary nightmare and these invasions of American cities will not stand.”
The aging rocker has more in common with Country Joe McDonald, who passed away in early March at 84. His Communist parents named him after “Joe” Stalin and his band “the fish,” was a reference to Mao Zedong’s view that revolutionaries “must move amongst the people as a fish in the sea.” As the people should know, McDonald’s famed “I Feel Like I’m Fixin to Die Rag” was ripped off from Kid Ory’s “Muskrat Ramble,” first recorded by Louis Armstrong.
Country Joe had a lot in common with strumming Stalinist Pete Seeger, faithful to Stalin even during the Nazi-Soviet pact. Seeger became a big star on the “Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” where he performed tunes such as “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” all about Vietnam. Bruce Springsteen was a huge Pete Seeger fan, hailing the Stalinist as “a stealth dagger through the heart of our country’s illusions about itself” and paying tribute on Seeger’s 90th birthday.
For a sense of the times see Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties, by Peter Collier and David Horowitz. See also Peter’s lecture on “Vietnam and the Rise of the New Left and his book The Fondas: A Hollywood Dynasty.
For Fonda, Springsteen and Sanders, America is evil and capitalism bad – except for their fame and fortune. In 2026 moving forward, it’s all about memory against forgetting.
