Jane Fonda Issues New Apology for Controverisal, Anti-American Vietnam Photo From 1972
Actress Jane Fonda has issued a new apology for one of the most infamous aspects of her 1972 trip to North Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
Although she did not say she regretted the trip itself, which earned her the nickname “Hanoi Jane,” she did tell the Television Critics Association’s Summer Press Tour that one part has given her second thoughts.
“I am proud I went to Vietnam when I did,” she said, according to Fox News. But she said she regretted a notorious photo that emerged from the tour: One of Fonda at an anti-aircraft gun used to shoot American planes out of the sky.
“I am so sorry that I was thoughtless enough to sit down on that gun at that time and the message that that sends to the guys who were there and their families – it’s just horrible for me to think of that,” she said.
Fonda said her anti-war activism grew from meetings with U.S. soldiers in Paris that led her to believe that in Vietnam, the U.S was not on “the side of the angels,” Stars and Stripes reported.
“I didn’t like it that there were men in France that knew better than I did… I said, ‘I feel betrayed by this country’s leadership. We’ve been lied to, and I want to do anything I can to expose that,'” she said.
https://twitter.com/PeteSantilli_/status/1022559983148261377
During her time in Hanoi, she made propaganda messages for North Vietnam.
“After 4,000 years of struggling against nature and foreign invaders – and the last 25 years, prior to the revolution, of struggling against French colonialism – I don’t think that the people of Vietnam are about to compromise in any way, shape or form about the freedom and independence of their country, and I think Richard Nixon would do well to read Vietnamese history, particularly their poetry, and particularly the poetry written by Ho Chi Minh,” she said in one message, according to Breitbart.
However, the photo has remained something from which she has tried to distance herself and has even apologized for before.
As noted by The Daily Wire, Fonda once said she was “manipulated” into posing, while in 2011 she called it “a two-minute lapse of sanity that will haunt me forever.”
Twitter users did not respond well to Fonda’s latest apology.
“Remember Jane Fonda who supported our enemies during the war?” #WednesdayWisdom pic.twitter.com/s1hH6QQ4on
— NRATV (@NRATV) July 25, 2018
“Remember Jane Fonda who supported our enemies during the war?” #WednesdayWisdom pic.twitter.com/s1hH6QQ4on
— NRATV (@NRATV) July 25, 2018
https://twitter.com/JAB069/status/1022218124060499968
"Jane Fonda calling for American soldiers—American POWs, men defending your freedoms—calling for their executions while we were at war."
–@stinchfield1776 #ViolentLeft pic.twitter.com/BIZiHD0f65— NRATV (@NRATV) July 25, 2018
Fonda said that before speaking out against the war, her life was empty.
“Prior to me becoming an anti-war activist, I had lived a meaningless life,” she said. “So when I decided to throw in my head in with the anti-war movement, everything changed.”
Fonda is the subject of an HBO documentary “Jane Fonda in Five Acts.” In the trailer for the show, she says, “I’m very sorry for some of what I did.”
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