Dear Progressive Reader,

“I think we should all know,” said Jane Fonda in the middle of a Zoom program about the film F.T.A., which chronicled the 1971 antiwar tour of performers and musicians during the war in Vietnam, “that Henry Kissinger has died.” It was Wednesday evening and the news of Kissinger’s demise at age 100 was just beginning to break. “Oh my goodness,” replied Holly Near, also on the panel. It was indeed something that had been seeming would never occur. My thoughts immediately went to the quote from comedian Jackie “Moms” Mabley which had circulated widely following the death of Richard Nixon: “They say you shouldn’t say nothing about the dead unless you can say something good. [So I say:] He’s dead, GOOD!”

Hoping to get ahead of all the mainstream media tributes that could be expected, I immediately posted at the top of our website three recent articles we had published looking at Kissinger’s true legacy. National Public Radio’s Tom Gjelten, on the other hand, offered what I can only call a “hagiographic putsch promulgated on the listeners of NPR”—a network that should be providing the most critical view of Kissinger. In a remembrance of the former Secretary of State’s career, Gjeten refers to him as “a foreign policy celebrity,” a “superstar ex-diplomat,” and a “brilliant intellect.” But wait, is this the same man who the late Anthony Bourdain once called a “treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag” who should be tried at The Hague? “Frequently I have come to regret things I’ve said,” Bourdain once tweeted. “This is not one of them.”

Over the coming weeks, there will be many glowing profiles of Kissinger the statesman and Kissinger the diplomat. (In fact, according to The New York Times, he was still speaking with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken by phone; meeting with William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director; and passing along his impressions to Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser.) As Martin Andersen writes in a not-yet published retrospective on Kissinger’s legacy of killing and torture around the globe, “His post-mortem public relations campaign must not stand.”

Andersen was the first to expose details of Kissinger’s support for the brutal dictatorship in Argentina in his 1987 article for The Nation, and later documented it in his 1993 book Dossier Secreto. In The Progressive last April, with various historians and journalists, I reviewed some of Kissinger’s other interventions in Latin America, and Sarah Cords dug into all the other reasons Kissinger’s Nobel Prize should be revoked. As the media delves into the man that was Henry Kissinger, and all that he did to make the world a more dangerous place, I hope the 1976 words and music of folksinger Tom Paxton will be playing in the background: “Oh the white bones of Allende and the scattered bones of Chile / Are not silent, they are screaming, they’re your peace prize, Doctor K.”

On our website this week, Jeff Abbott reports on El Salvador’s new efforts, under U.S. pressure, to stem northward migration; Mike Ervin looks at politicians who cry “wolf” and harm low-income renters; and cartoonist Mark Fiore takes aim at Elon Musk. Plus, as the bombing has now resumed in Gaza, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies examine the threat of a wider war; Jesse Hagopian writes that this is also a war on history; and Bill Lueders studies recent academic censorship of voices that speak out for Palestinian rights.

Here at The Progressive, we are continuing to pressure elected officials and others for a safe exit from Gaza of award-winning poet Mosab Abu Toha and his family. Poems by Abu Toha have recently appeared on our website and in the most recent issue of the magazine. On October 12, Abu Toha spoke with listeners and viewers on Democracy Now! about the conditions in Gaza. As of this writing, he and his wife and young children have been unable to leave the country. I spoke about their story last Thursday morning on WORT-FM in Madison, Wisconsin. We urge you to contact your elected representatives on his behalf.

Please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.

Sincerely,

Norman Stockwell
Publisher

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