Felix Greene

Felix Greene (21 May 1909—June 15, 1985) was a British journalist who chronicled several communist countries in the 1960s and 1970s.

Felix Greene (1968)

He was one of the first Western reporters to visit North Vietnam when he travelled there for the San Francisco Chronicle in the 1960s. He first visited China for the BBC in 1957.

Greene later produced documentary films, including One Man's China, Tibet, Cuba va!, Vietnam! Vietnam! and Inside North Viet Nam. Libertarian critics have accused these films of presenting a very rosy and one-sided view of communist society.[1] The Wall Street Journal argued that Greene purposely hid negative information about the extent of starvation in China[2] and called him a "fellow traveller."[3]

Commander R.W. Herrick of the U.S. Navy reviewed A Curtain of Ignorance in Naval War College Review, writing, "There can be no question but that [Greene] set out deliberately to 'prove' his contentions that practically everything having to do with Communist China and its policies is good, while Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist regimes are unmitigatedly bad. ... Yet, once the reader understands and allows for this bias, this book is eminently worth reading." Herrick agreed with Greene's observation that "... on matters where great national feelings are aroused, scholars and experts are just as likely as the rest of us to allow their judgments to be swayed by the prevailing climate of opinion." He found the chapters on Nationalist China and the China Lobby to be provocative reading.[4]

In the 1970s, Greene went to Dharamsala to visit the 14th Dalai Lama, who recalled that after three days of discussion, Greene's attitude had changed.[5][6]

Greene was a cousin of the author Graham Greene. He lived in the San Francisco area for 2o years and died in Mexico of cancer.

Books

  • Awakened China: The Country Americans Don't Know. Garden City, New York, 1961.
  • The Enemy: What Every American Should Know About Imperialism. Vintage Books, New York, 1971.
  • VIETNAM! VIETNAM! In Photographs and text. 1966, Palo Alto, California: Fulton Publishing Company, LCCN: 66-28359
  • A Curtain of Ignorance, Cape 1965. Details of how Communist China was reported in the US in the 1960s.
  • The Wall Has Two Sides. A Portrait Of China Today, The Reprint Society, 1963.

Greene's films and photos are distributed by Contemporary Films.

Notes

  1. Hypocrisy in the "Peace" Movement: A Case Study by Chris R. Tame, 1983/1990, Foreign Policy Perspectives No. 16, ISBN 1-870614-00-3
  2. Fathers, Michael (October 26, 2012). "A Most Secret Tragedy". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved May 25, 2020.
  3. How America Was Misinformed About China, in the Wall Street Journal's "Far East Economic Review", published August 29, 2007; archived at archive.org, March 2, 2012
  4. Herrick, R. W. (1965), "(Review) A Curtain of Ignorance", Naval War College Review, 18 (2)
  5. Gyatso, Tenzin; Quaki, Fabien; Benson, Anne (23 February 2016). "Power and Values". Imagine All the People: A Conversation with the Dalai Lama on Money, Politics, and Life as it Could Be. p. 17. ISBN 9780861718764. Felix Green who was quite a close friend to the late Zhou Enlai of China. Mr. Greene had visited China regularly for many years and had great faith in both the country and in Communism. He came to Dharamsala with several films, hoping to show me how happy people were in Tibet, and to explain that things were not as bad as we, the Tibetans in exile, believed. He tried to convince me that everything was okay in my country. We talked and argued for three or four days. After many hours of discussion, he finally changed his attitude on most points. In such cases, a good argument based on sincere motivation can produce a positive result, provided both parties strive to be objective. It is very helpful to talk, talk, talk, until a solution is found.
  6. "His Holiness the Dalai Lama in New York, NY - May 22, 2010". dalailama.com. Archived from the original on May 27, 2010. Retrieved June 11, 2010.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.