Jane Fonda? Lee Winfrey? David Bassett? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: U.S. actress and activist Jane Fonda spoke on college campuses during the 1970s about the Vietnam War. I have seen claims that Fonda said something like the following:
If you understood what communism was … you would pray on your knees that we would someday become communist.
I am skeptical because I have not seen a solid citation. Would you please explore this topic?
Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest match known to QI appeared in the “Detroit Free Press” of Michigan on November 22, 1970, in an article by staff journalist Lee Winfrey. The newspaper article commented on Jane Fonda’s speaking tour:1
Miss Fonda swept through Detroit and East Lansing this weekend near the end of a 25-day speaking tour to raise money to defend American soldiers who get in trouble with the Army.
The article presented the following remarks spoken by Jane Fonda to local students:2
“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,” she told about 2,000 students at Michigan State University.
The peace proposal of the Vietcong, she told them, “is the only honorable, just, possible way to achieve peace in Vietnam.”
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
On November 23, 1970, the student newspaper “State News” of Michigan State University reported on the speech delivered by Jane Fonda:3
Jane Fonda, speaking to a restrained audience of 2,000 in the Auditorium Friday, said the United States must become a socialist state if world-wide disaster is to be avoided.
Reporter David Bassett presented the following remark from Fonda’s speech to community members:
“First, we must establish a socialist economic system, a socialist system that will eliminate private profit-oriented control, which will give us leaders that are truly answerable to the people, which will put technology into the hands of the people for the good of the people, where workers will benefit, will profit, where there will be no exploitation, where the foundation can be laid for equality.”
On November 24, 1970, the student newspaper of Michigan State University published an interview of Jane Fonda conducted by reporter David Bassett who also attended her speech. Bassett asked Fonda about her viewpoint on communism:4
Q. You made a statement that if more young people knew what communism was about, they would be procommunistic, rather than anticommunistic. Why did you make this statement?
Fonda. … Americans thought that Russia was propagandized but not America. I went to Russia five years ago, and I was shocked at my surprise to see it’s not even something you see, it’s something you feel in the streets of Moscow, which anyone who has never been out of a western city can understand. People, despite the fact that they are drab, because they don’t have the luxuries we do, aren’t furrow-browed and jostling each other and nervous and unhappy. There is a kind of festive quality, a kind of relaxation in the streets.
Fonda highlighted the potential of communism in China and North Korea:
And in China, the delegation that recently came back from China and North Korea and Hanoi, they were asked about the cultural shock, and they all said that the cultural shock was when they came back to this country. There is an incredible feeling of noncoercion, of people together working, a new man that is developing, and I think this is what we have to work for. We mustn’t continue with this idea that communism is the enemy.
Communism ideally is the most perfect form of society. Governments exist, of course, only because there are problems, and one would hope eventually that we won’t need flags or states or boundaries.
Fonda suggested that communism had not yet been fully implemented anywhere:
Q. Then you don’t think communism is a dictatorship?
Fonda. I think it is in some countries, but that’s not communism. There is no country today which is communist. A Russian, if he was honest, would not say that Russia is communist.
Fonda suggested that her viewpoint was not idealistic. Fonda believed that there were already positive changes occurring in China and North Korea:
Q. In other words, you’re talking idealistically, instead of communism as we see it now.
Fonda. It’s not idealistic, because I think it’s starting to happen in some countries. This is second hand information, you know, because I’ve never been in China or North Korea, for example, or in Cuba, but I’m told by people who have been there that there are problems, but when you consider the economic difficulties they have had to overcome, there are extraordinary things happening. That in China, for example, or in North Korea, technology is really being used to help the people.
The North Koreans, for example, apparently are trying to do away with drudgery, with labor, trying to give people the free time to expand as human beings.
On November 28, 1970, the “Detroit Free Press” printed a letter which referred to the remark from Fonda which was printed in the same newspaper a week earlier:5
My attention was caught by your front page story on Jane Fonda. She said, “I would think that if you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would some day become communist.”
In February 1971 the “Boston Herald” of Boston, Massachusetts printed the quotation while crediting Fonda:6
According to a reporter for the Detroit Free Press, who was present but not observed by the actress when she recently spoke to a group of students at Michigan State University, her advice to them was as follows: “I would think that if you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would some-day be communist.”
In March 1971 “The Independent Record” of Helena, Montana printed a letter that included the quotation with an attribution to Fonda:7
Miss Fonda told 2,000 students at Michigan State University: “I would think that if you understood what Communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would some day be Communist.” (Detroit Free Press, Nov. 22, 1970.)
In conclusion, QI believes that Jane Fonda did deliver the remark about communism that was printed in the “Detroit Free Press” on November 22, 1970. Also, during the interview published in the “State News” on November 24, 1970, Fonda made the following thematically related remark: “Communism ideally is the most perfect form of society.” However, Fonda also indicated that: “There is no country today which is communist.”
Image Notes: Public domain illustration of the hammer and sickle symbol.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to the Project Wombat mailing list participants who inquired about this topic and participants who identified key citations. The discussion inspired QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.
- 1970 November 22, Detroit Free Press, Jane Fonda–an LP Record with a Socialist Sermon by Lee Winfrey (Free Press Staff Writer), Quote Page 1, Column 2, Detroit, Michigan. (Newspapers_com) link ↩︎
- 1970 November 22, Detroit Free Press, Jane Fonda–an LP Record with a Socialist Sermon by Lee Winfrey (Free Press Staff Writer), Quote Page 1, Column 2 and 3, Detroit, Michigan. (Newspapers_com) link ↩︎
- 1970 November 23, Michigan State University – State News, Fonda favors socialism by David Bassett (State News Staff Writer), Start Page 1, Quote Page 1 and 11, East Lansing, Michigan. (Accessed archive.lib.msu.edu on November 4, 2019) Large PDF link ↩︎
- 1970 November 24, Michigan State University – State News, Fonda praises communism, hits drug use by David Bassett (State News Staff Writer), Quote Page 5, Column 3 to 5, East Lansing, Michigan. (Accessed archive.lib.msu.edu on November 4, 2019) Large PDF link ↩︎
- 1970 November 28, Detroit Free Press, Jane Fonda: Performer or Reformer? Letter from: Edward W. Morey of Charlotte, Quote Page 6A, Column 3 and 4, Detroit, Michigan. (Newspapers_com) link ↩︎
- 1971 February 3, Boston Herald, Editorial: Me Jane, You Capitalist Pig, Quote Page 20, Column 2, Boston, Massachusetts. (GenealogyBank) ↩︎
- 1971 March 4, The Independent Record, Letters to the Editor: Jane Fonda Throws Curves (Letter from Chester K. Shore, Counter-Subversive Activities Chairman, American Legion of Montana), Quote Page 4, Column 1 and 2, Helena, Montana. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎