OPINION:
She’s been called Hanoi Jane and Joan of Woke.
Jane Fonda, doyenne of the Hollywood left, has almost 60 years of left-wing activism under her Gucci belt: anti-war, anti-nuclear, climate-change, anti-corporation, population control and pro-abortion. If there’s a trendy cause she’s missed, it hasn’t been for want of trying.
Appearing on ABC’s “The View” last week, Ms. Fonda was asked what advocates of “reproductive rights” could do, besides marching and protesting. Scowling, she replied, “murder.” Even the loony-left co-hosts were taken aback.
The lady later said it was hyperbole, and that from her body language viewers could tell it was said in jest. That’s not the way it seemed, but let’s take her at her word. Still, who jokes about political violence? Or perhaps she thinks the firebombing of pro-life centers and attacks on Catholic churches are amusing.
It’s been less than a year since Nicholas Roske traveled to the DC-area intending to kill Associate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. At the very least, Fonda’s comment was in inexcusably bad taste.
But it’s also typical. The celebrity activist drifts through life causing chaos in the lives of others, while living a life of privilege herself, as she has from birth.
During the Vietnam War, Ms. Fonda went to Hanoi to make propaganda broadcasts calling U.S. pilots “war criminals” and “murderers.” When ex-POWs spoke of being tortured for refusing to meet with her, Fonda called them “liars” and “hypocrites.”
She later attributed that chapter of her life to poor judgement.
Was it also poor judgement when she refused to sign an ad by fellow anti-war activist Joan Baez criticizing the communists for setting up tropical gulags in which 100,000 were incarcerated after the war?
And was it poor judgement when she told college audiences of that era that if they really understood what communism was that they would “pray on their knees,” that they would someday live under communism – while millions were being butchered by that system.
Since Ms. Fonda came of age, for every decade of her life there’s been another cause and more lies, betrayals and pain.
In the 1960s it was Vietnam and communism. In the 1970s, it was the Campaign for Economic Democracy, which she ran with then-husband, SDS co-founder Tom Hayden. Corporations were evil, the group maintained, while using the products of IBM, AT&T and Xerox to get out the word.
Following the 1979 release of her movie “The China Syndrome,” she went on a 52-city anti-nuclear speaking tour – ironic, since it’s one of the cleanest forms of energy and Jane is a climate-change hysteric.
Even for a Beverly Hills Bolshevik, some of the things that come out of her mouth leave one gasping for air.
After 9-11, Ms. Fonda said that rather than retaliating we should be trying to “understand the underlying reasons” for the attacks. Let’s see: They hate us and want to kill us. That wasn’t hard.
In 2015, Fonda told the Associated Press, that patriarchy, not terrorism, was “the most intractable problem that humanity faces.” Given that each of her three husbands divorced her, her feelings about the toxicity of masculinity are understandable.
With President Donald Trump’s election, she said “white supremacy” is “closer to the surface than I ever realized.” A decade earlier, she accepted Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Award, named for the organization’s founder, a committed eugenicist who wanted more of the so-called Nordic race and fewer people of color.
Ms. Fonda can see the positive side of any horror, as long as it doesn’t affect her personally.
The COVID-19 pandemic “has an upside. In giving us the chance to examine what is essential. The ongoing ecological catastrophe is a ‘meta-crisis’ the massive extinction of life on earth is no longer in doubt, and all indicators point to a direct existential threat.” Thus, the death of one million worldwide becomes a teachable moment to help us understand the coming apocalypse due to our failure to eliminate fossil fuels.
For Ms. Fonda, everything is the end of the world – imperialism, capitalism, overpopulation, environmental degradation, the patriarchy. It has to be. How else will she have a chance to save us from ourselves? A Messiah complex is defined as the belief that an individual is destined to save humanity.
Come, Jane — lead us to a land without nuclear energy, toxic masculinity, justices who can read the Constitution and man-made climate change. Your people await salvation.
Ms. Fonda called her 2006 autobiography “My Life So Far.” Apparently, the blessings never end.
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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