Date: Sun, 25 Aug 1996 22:40:16 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: How history is managed


Back in early 1995, there was a discussion on the Marxism (1)
list about censorship in Cuba and the so-called "socialist"
countries in comparison to suppression of information in
capitalist countries. I was reminded of it by some reading I did
this week.

Friday, August 23, was the 69th anniversary of the execution of
Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in Massachusetts. I put
together a little segment on the case for the Peace and Freedom
Party show on Free Radio Berkeley (Fridays, noon till 2 pm, 104.1
FM, for any of you who live in northern Alameda County or on
Yerba Buena Island). We played some of Woody Guthrie's songs on
the case (now reissued on compact disc by Smithsonian-Folkways)
and read a little information.

Eugene Lyons' excellent little book _The Life and Death of Sacco
and Vanzetti_ (New York: International Publishers, 1927,
reprinted by Da Capo Press in 1977) closes as follows:

"Those who had insisted upon killing Sacco and Vanzetti did not
exult. There was awe in their voices as they talked of their
deed. They avoided the word 'murderers' ... they were conscious
of guilt. Instead they used legal formulas. And they exhibited an
immense anxiety to forget what had happened. The Boston _Herald_
declared:

     'It has been a famous case. It has attracted the attention
     of the world to an extent quite without recent precedent. It
     has presented phases which no serious student of our public
     affairs could fail to regret. But the time for such
     discussion is over. The chapter is closed. The die is cast.
     The arrow has flown. Now let us go forward to the duties and
     responsibilities of the common day with a renewed
     determination to maintain our present system of government
     and our existing social order.'

"The _Herald_ unquestionably expressed the feelings of the New
England ruling class, and the ruling class of America as a whole.
'Our existing social order' has done its duty. Now let us talk
about something else. If we must talk about this case, it is
merely as a reminder that 'a thorough overhauling of nests of
anarchists in this country should be made,' as the Washington
_Post_ demanded.

"Perhaps the most significant example of this anxiety to wipe out
the disturbing memory of August 22* is in a fact which was not
generally known to the public. Visitors to motion picture
theaters noticed a conspicuous absence of scenes from the
worldwide protests or any other phase of the case on the screens
in the final months of the drama. Thousands of feet of Sacco-
Vanzetti newsreels were taken everywhere. But in America they
were burned. The _Exhibitors Herald_, on September 3, carried the
following announcement:

     'The Sacco-Vanzetti case is closed, and that means as far as
     news reel pictures of the events in the case which
     terminated with the execution of the pair.

     'The case is closed on the screen, voluntarily. Executives
     of the news reel companies were unanimous in their decision
     to eliminate all reference to the matter in their releases.

     'The announcement was made following conferences with
     representatives of Will H. Hays, after receipt by the Hays
     organization of requests from overseas that the motion
     picture industry do its share in bringing the case to an end
     by ignoring it on the screen. Films in the vault will be
     burned.'

"But the memory cannot be erased by burning the films. It cannot
be closed by editorial pronouncements that the time for
discussion is over. The case is not ended. In a sense it has just
begun."

(* The execution had been scheduled for 22 August and was
postponed one day to see if the U.S. Supreme Court would
intervene, in an attempt to go through all the formalities
necessary for class justice in the U.S. I assume this is the
source of the error in Lyons.)

Some time ago, a Swedish comrade, living I suppose in a more
capitalist country than we unitedstatesians, asked how
information could be suppressed when it was in the interest of
the capitalist media to compete with each other by publishing
"scoops".  The answer is that the class loyalty of capitalist
publishers is far deeper than their competitive instincts. George Orwell
would understand.

Tom Condit



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