In 1992, Horne was a candidate for United States Senate on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket.[4]
Writing
Horne has published extensively on W. E. B. Du Bois and has written books on neglected episodes of world history including Hawaii and the Pacific.[5] He writes about topics he perceives as misrepresented struggles for justice; in particular communist struggles and struggles against imperialism, colonialism, fascism, racism, and white supremacy. Horne is a Marxist.[6] Much of his work highlights and analyzes specific individuals in their historical contexts, including figures such as the blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter John Howard Lawson, Ferdinand Smith (a Jamaican-born communist, sailor, labor leader, and co-founder of the National Maritime Union), and Lawrence Dennis, a man described as "the brains behind American fascism".[7]
While many of Horne's books use an individual as a prism to inspect the historical forces of their times, Horne has also produced broad canvas chronicles of infrequently examined periods and aspects of the history of white supremacy and imperialism. For example, he has written on the post-civil war involvement of the US ruling class—newly dispossessed of human chattels—in relation to slavery in Brazil, which was not legally abolished until 1888.[8] He has also written on the historic relationships between African Americans and the Japanese in the mid-20th century, specifically examining the ways in which the Japanese state gained sympathy and solidarity from people of colour by positioning themselves as the leaders of a global war against white supremacy.[9]
Manning Marable has said: "Gerald Horne is one of the most gifted and insightful historians on racial matters of his generation."[10]
Then, when Washington forced the dissolution of the USSR, this allowed Moscow to cease subsidizing Moldova, Turkestan, Georgia and formerly socialist regimes in the vicinity. This allowed Russia to husband its resources leading to what Stanford scholar, Kathryn Stoner terms in her latest tome: "Russia Resurrected," a self-explanatory title that speaks to the development of hypersonic missiles and an agricultural superpower and a nation that can turn geopolitical tides in Syria among other sites. Imperialism failed to acknowledge that Russia had outgrown the sellout years of Boris Yeltsin and adamantly refused to adapt accordingly. NATO should have collapsed in 1991 when the USSR did but instead extended its remit to Libya, along with destroying the former Yugoslavia and devastating Afghanistan.
That is why, as I write, it is not only regime change in Kiev that is at issue: imperialism seeks regime change in Moscow, with all the dangers attendant with regard to toppling a nuclear power.
The ostensible issue – Ukraine joining the U.S. dominated NATO – would mean a rise in the stock price of Raytheon (former home of Pentagon chief, Lloyd Austin) and Lockheed Martin, as member states are required to spend more on advanced weaponry, which inevitably comes from these corporations.
With Germany pledging to re-arm, we also witness the shortsightedness of world imperialism, which refuses to learn the lessons of the 20th century, especially the catastrophe of world war ending with the uncovering of industrial funeral pyres in 1945. Not only Washington but London, Brussels and Paris should be shuddering right now.
Historiography in and for the radical tradition
At the Black Women and the Radical Tradition conference held at the Brooklyn College Graduate Center for Worker Education, in a session devoted to Shirley Graham Du Bois, he said:
The purpose of my brief remarks this afternoon is to use the life and times of Shirley Graham Du Bois as a vehicle for trying to understand how and why we need to think about revitalizing the radical tradition through the means of revisioning and rewriting our history, our past. I argue in these remarks that like other historians - for Shirley Graham Du Bois was among other things an historian - she tended to stress in her history writing, like most of the writers of her generation, the "Crispus Attucks" aspect of our history, I'm sure you're familiar with Crispus Attucks, he goes down in history as the first person to be slain in the uprising against British rule in then-British North America and a symbol of how black people have shed their blood to help to construct this country. Which of course is true and is accurate. But it only begins to tell part of the story, as I'll try to elaborate on in my remarks. I think today it's particularly important to talk about revitalizing our past so that we can reinvigorate the radical tradition in light of this precipitous downturn that we see in the capitalist economy. Newsweek has been amongst the many journals that have told us "We're All Socialists Now", which some might be surprised to hear. In Latin America, certainly in the most recent election in El Salvador, and in Latin American generally, one can easily espy a shift to the left. The quipsters are suggesting that the recently departed Pres. George W. Bush entered office in 2001 as a social conservative but then after being compelled to nationalize various enterprises he leaves office as a conservative socialist. When you note that in South Africa you have a Communist Party minister sitting in office in Pretoria, and perhaps the same will take place in New Delhi, after the elections that take place in the late spring, it's time to revive that aspect it seems to me reality is shouting at us, time to revitalize that aspect of black history that stresses our ancestors who as early as the 18th century were actually trying to overthrow the government of the United States of America, as opposed to shedding their blood to help to create the government of the United States of America.[13]
In a speech given at an event marking the depositing of the Communist Party USA archives at the Tamiment Library at New York University,[14] Horne remarked at length on the writing of history, its importance, and what he perceives as the grievous proliferation of propagandistic historiography in the US:
Now it is often said that every generation has to rewrite history. For example, at one time there was a prevalent "moonlight and magnolias" version of slavery and Reconstruction that fundamentally portrayed "happy Negroes" during the slave era and portrayed the period following slavery as a dastardly period of Negro misrule and corruption. This began to change in the 1930s with the publication of Du Bois' magisterial 'Black Reconstruction' and changed decisively with the publication of Eric Foner's 'Reconstruction.'"
One of the reasons why I personally – and I daresay future generations – are so pleased by the depositing of these CPUSA archives is because it is painfully obvious that the history of the Communist movement in this nation is long overdue for a massive rewriting and these archives will prove indispensable in that process.
It is easy to see why future generations will be displeased with much of the present history that has been written to this point about the Communist Party because it has been incredibly biased, one-sided, deeply influenced by the conservative drift of the nation – not unlike pre-Du Bois histories of Reconstruction – and, fundamentally, anticommunist.
From 2013 to date, Horne has discussed his historical, socio-economic and political research findings in a series of conversations with Paul Jay.[15][16]
Works
Black and Red: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War. SUNY Press (1986)
Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music. Monthly Review Press (2019)
White Supremacy Confronted: U.S. Imperialism and Anti-Communism vs. the Liberation of Southern Africa from Rhodes to Mandela. International Publishers (2019)
The Bittersweet Science: Racism, Racketeering, and the Political Economy of Boxing. International Publishers (2020)
The Counter-Revolution of 1836: Texas Slavery & Jim Crow and the Roots of U.S. Fascism. International Publishers (2022)
Armed Struggle? Panthers and Communists; Black Nationalists and Liberals in Southern California through the Sixties and Seventies International Publishers (2024)
On The Global Civil Rights Struggle at the conference, The Long Civil Rights Movement: Histories, Politics, Memories, given by the Southern Oral History Program, April 2–4, 2009 (Video)
