Jane Fonda’s Vietnam Actions Were Worse Than You Think
 

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Back around the time Jane Fonda was giving aid and comfort to America’s Communist enemies in North Vietnam, yukking it up with anti-aircraft gunners who shot down our troops — I wonder if there are any laws against that sort of thing — she also headlined an anti-U.S.O. tour. Despising the actual U.S.O. for its policy of giving aid and comfort to American troops, Fonda went on the road with a hippie rebuttal to bolster the chances of the North Vietnamese Stalinists who, after the war turned out the way she wanted it to, forced 300,000 people into prison camps for reeducation. Fonda’s tour was called “F.T.A.,” and in the opening moments of the documentary of the same name, you can see her on stage with her pal and Klute co-star Donald Sutherland screaming out what it stood for: “F*** the Army.”

Filmed in 1971, the film F.T.A. went over like a rat in the punch bowl when it was released in 1972. It was yanked from theaters and most copies were destroyed; seldom has it been seen since. But the Hollywood Foreign Press Association recently decided to spend some of its Golden Globes money on restoring the film so we can all take a look at it with fresh eyes (it is being released in virtual cinemas). So how does Jane Fonda, who was just honored with a lifetime achievement award by the HFPA, look half a century later? Exactly the same: like a brainless simp for Team Communism. Those who tend to dismiss Hollywood stars as merely stupid, not evil, can consider the other side of that.

Fonda, Sutherland, and assorted tuneless musical acts (songs include “My Ass is Mine” and “Nothing Could Be Finer Than to Be in Indochina”) first went on the road in the U.S., performing in countercultural coffee houses. Next they went on a Pacific tour, aiming to attract off-duty anti-war troops they could influence and leverage while putting on shows near military bases in Hawaii, Tokyo, Manila, and Okinawa. In a new intro to the film, Fonda frames herself as simply an ally to the anti-war troops. It’s evident however, that she and her pals were determined to do everything they could, including encouraging crimes, to depress morale and help boost the Communist side.

Fonda says much but knows nothing; we hear her make all sorts of false assertions. In 1971 footage she proclaims, “The American GIs don’t know why they’re here, don’t want to be here, don’t want to be in Vietnam or Japan or the Philippines or Hawaii.” Hang on, should U.S. troops not defend . . . Hawaii? Is Fonda aware that Hawaii is a U.S. state? Fonda seems to think it’s imperialism for the U.S. to support overseas allies at their invitation, and that imperialism starts in Hawaii. (Okinawa was occupied by U.S. troops after the war, but two years before this film was shot the U.S. agreed to cede the island to Japan. American troops remained there at the request of the Japanese government, not out of imperial aggression.)

Sutherland and guests are seen onstage in their F.T.A. show making larkish jokes about “fragging” — suggesting that it’s hilarious when enlisted soldiers shoot their officers. Other dopey songs and skits absurdly refer to U.S. efforts in Southeast Asia as “genocide,” urge soldiers to commit insubordination, and steer them to refuse to fight. One describes the war as secretly being controlled by “the businessmen you’re fighting for,” in an interlude that features Fonda and Co. singing and dancing in top hats while carrying canes. Singers belt out lines such as, “They’ll lock you up in their stockades, yeah they’ll lock you up ‘cause they’re afraid.” The vibe is half puerile Seventies variety-show, half Maoism; the tour could have been called Free to Be . . . Ho and Me. Or maybe Socialist Sesame Street. Several segments, aimed at black troops, make the absurd inference that losing the war will somehow make things better in Harlem (which remained a dire place to live for decades after we lost the war) and there’s a slam-poetry section that contains lines such as, “I can’t exactly tell you what to do/But there’s the armory. The rest is up to you.”

Sutherland solemnly reads from the (Stalinist) writer Dalton Trumbo’s anti-war novel Johnny Got His Gun, Fonda and three other ladies perform a can-can to protest catcalling, and there’s a loving segment on a communist street march in Manila, as well as a bitter one about the A-bomb attack on Hiroshima. (Fonda et al. do not provide an alternate theory of how the U.S should have ended the war that Japan started.) One performance, amusingly, breaks down when pro-war GI’s start making their voices heard and go up on stage to interrupt the action. “Should we ignore them?” Fonda asks Sutherland. “No, no, no, they have to go,” he explains.

The average starstruck Private Snuffy attending these shows might reasonably have surmised that Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland wanted him to shoot his superiors, refuse lawful orders, maybe even launch a mutiny. Doing any of these things would, of course, likely lead to a court-martial and imprisonment. Fonda says in the intro, “As I became involved in the GI movement, I started to understand its class significance.” Does she understand the class significance of rich Hollywood actors telling uneducated working-class kids to do stupid things that could ruin their lives? As usual when dealing with Bolshie Bourgies, the only connecting impulse is hatred of America. If American troops have to suffer for what they learn from Hollywood dopes, they’re just collateral damage in the larger war against America.