BY MAX WATTS
Georgi Plekhanov, a Russian who translated Karl Marx's writings and introduced them to Lenin, wrote a lot about the role of the individual, or the accident, in history.
He thought that at certain times when the "masses" moved, certain "roles" opened up and that individuals would — almost inevitably — act to fill them. Plekhanov was thinking, specifically, of the first, great French Revolution and of generals such as Napoleon Bonaparte.
But the concept applies far more widely. In 1968, in Paris, France, masses moved. They made history: they changed France and the world.
Then, a famous, very pregnant, actor in the US quite accidentally changed her own life and that of many others — and also made quite a bit of history. Jane Fonda, looking for her stepmother Susan in Paris met, quite accidentally, a 19-year-old "fresh-faced kid", as she described Dick Perrin in her new book My Life So Far. Perrin turned out to be an army resister from the 1st Battalion of the 64th Armored Division of the US Army, which was stationed in West Germany.
It was Fonda's first encounter with a member of the US Army actively opposed to the Vietnam war, a RITA — resister inside the army. The encounter, discussions with Perrin, and soon other RITA GIs, changed Fonda's life completely.
It ended the indolent, permissive, comfortable life she had lived with her French husband, the famous producer/director Roger Vadim. Soon, once "sex-kitten Barbarella" Fonda became a body, heart and soul anti-war activist — her major focus supporting the resisters inside the US Army. She left Vadim, who, although against the Vietnam War, had cynically opposed any personal engagement. Vadim contemptuously described Fonda as "Jane of Arc".
There was little comfort in her new life. Fonda was vilified, framed, arrested, threatened and spat on.
In June 1972, Fonda was invited by the Vietnamese government to witness the attacks on the Red River dikes, something that the Pentagon denied doing. In July, she flew to Hanoi, which was then being bombed night and day.
Disparaged by the warmongers as "Hanoi Jane", Fonda was cheered worldwide by tens of thousands of rank-and-file GIs when she toured with her radical "FTA" (Fuck or Free the Army) show. GIs had found support and confirmation of their — often dangerous and costly — resistance. The FTA show — which was performed just off base — was a radical counter to the Bob Hope pro-war propaganda touring with full army support and endorsement.
The film of the FTA show with thousands of US soldiers, sailors and air-force people actively participating in Hawaii, Okinawa, the Philippines and Japan was, and is, dynamite. It explodes the widespread myths that the returning soldiers were "spat on" by peacenik women.
In July 1972, almost all copies of the film were destroyed, apparently on orders of the Nixon White House. FTA was suppressed, not because it starred the activist Jane Fonda, but because it showed thousand of GIs on the anti-war, anti-army, RITA, side.
In that militant decade — 1965-75 — Fonda might have anyway become an activist. But if she had not so accidentally met privates Perrin, Klug and Wagner in 1968 in Paris, would she and other actors such as Donald Sutherland, Holly Near and Fonda's close friend Vanessa Redgrave (who played an important role supporting the US air force in England) have so effectively supported RITA and understood its essential role helping defeat US imperialism in Vietnam?
What is the role of the accident in history? Plek and I put a bob each way and leave the answer open.
[For more information about RITA, see Soldiers in Revolt by David Cortright, Haymarket Books, Chicago. Fonda will be in Australia to promote her new book My Life So Far (An Autobiography) from November 10-14. See calendar listings on page 23.]
From Green Left Weekly, October 26, 2005.
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