In the early 1970s, many American leftists openly supported a Communist takeover in Vietnam and Cambodia. Among the most notable spokespeople for this position were the popular actress Jane Fonda and her husband Tom Hayden. Fonda's public comments were unambiguous in their expressions of contempt for America and sympathy for the Communists. On November 21, 1970, she told a large University of Michigan audience, "If you understood what Communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would some day become Communist." At Duke University, she elaborated, "I, a socialist, think that we should strive toward a socialist society, all the way to Communism." The dual villains of Southeast Asian conflicts were, in her view, "U.S. imperialism" and "a white man's racist aggression."

In July-August 1972 Fonda made her infamous trip to North Vietnam. By this time, over 50,000 Americans had been killed in the war. While there, she posed for pictures on an anti-aircraft gun that was used to shoot down American planes, and she volunteered to do a radio broadcast from Hanoi. She made approximately eight radio addresses, during which she told American pilots in the area, "Use of  these bombs or condoning the use of these bombs makes one a war criminal…Examine the reasons given to justify the murder you are being paid to commit…I don't know what your officers tell you...but [your] weapons are illegal and that's not just rhetoric...The men who are ordering you to use these weapons are war criminals according to international law, and in the past, in Germany and Japan, men who committed these kinds of crimes were tried and executed."  She also quoted Ho Chi Minh at times, referred to President Richard Nixon as a "new-type Hitler," and advised South Vietnamese soldiers to desert: "You are being used as cannon fodder for U.S. imperialism."

These radio addresses were broadcast repeatedly by the North Vietnamese Communists, for whom propaganda was a key tool of psychological warfare strategy; they used these broacasts not only to hearten their own citizens, but also to dishearten Americans -- to undermine the American public's will to go forward with the war, and to crush the morale of American and allied forces. 

In an effort to explain why she made her broadcasts over Radio Hanoi, Fonda writes in her autobiography that she mainly wanted to educate U.S. pilots about the great harm their bombing campaigns were inflicting on innocent people. But in fact, most of what Fonda said was of a highly political nature; clearly, many of the statements had been scripted for her by the North Vietnamese. Among these statements were the following (as catalogued by Henry Mark Holzer):

.  The Vietnamese people were peasants—leading a peaceful, bucolic life before the Americans came to destroy Vietnam. 
.  The Vietnamese seek only "freedom and independence"—which the United States wants to prevent them from having.
.  The million infantry troops which the United States put into Vietnam, and the Vietnamization program, have failed. 
.  Patrick Henry's slogan "liberty or death" was not very different from Ho Chi Minh's "Nothing is more valuable than independence and freedom." 
.  President Nixon had violated the 1954 Geneva Accords. 
.  The United States must get out of South Vietnam and "cease its support for the . . . Thieu regime." 
.  "I want to publicly accuse Nixon here of being a new-type Hitler whose crimes are being unveiled." 
.  "The Vietnamese people will win." 
.  "Nixon is continuing to risk your [American pilots'] lives and the lives of the American prisoners of war . . . in a last desperate gamble to keep his office come November.  How does it feel to be used as pawns?  You may be shot down, you may perhaps even be killed, but for what, and for whom?" 
.  Nixon "defiles our flag and all that it stands for in the eyes of the entire world." 
.  "Knowing who was doing the lying, should you then allow these same people and some liars to define for you who your enemy is?" 
.  American troops are fighting for ESSO, Shell and Coca-Cola. 
.  "Should we be fighting on the side of the people who are, who are murdering innocent people, should we be trying to defend a government in Saigon which is putting in jail tens of thousands of people into the tiger cages, beating them, torturing them . . . . And I don't think . . . that we should be risking our lives or fighting to defend that kind of government." 
.  "We . . . have a common enemy—U. S. imperialism." 
.  "We thank you [the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese] for your brave and heroic fight." 
.  "Nixon's aggression against Vietnam is a racist aggression [and] the American war in Vietnam is a racist war, a white man's war." 
.  Soldiers of the South Vietnamese army "are being sent to fight a war that is not in your interests but is in the interests of the small handful of people who have gotten rich and hope to get richer off this war and the turning of your country into a neocolony of the United States." 
.  "The only way to end the war is for the United States to withdraw all its troops, all its airplanes, its bombs, its generals, its CIA advisors and to stop the support of the . . .  regime in Saigon . . . ." 
.  "There is only one way to stop Richard Nixon from committing mass genocide in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and that is for a mass protest . . . to expose his crimes . . . ."
.  "In 1969—1970 the desertions in the American army tripled.  The desertions of the U.S. soldiers almost equaled the desertions from the ARVN army . . . ." 
.  American soldiers in Vietnam discovered "that their officers were incompetent, usually drunk . . . ." 
.  "Perhaps the soldiers . . . who have suffered the most . . . [are] the black soldiers, the brown soldiers, and the red and Asian soldiers." 
.  Recently I talked to "a great many of these guys and they all expressed their recognition of the fact that this is a white man's war, a white businessman's war, that they don't feel it's their place to kill other people of color when at home they themselves are oppressed and prevented from determining their own lives." 
.  "I heard horrifying stories about the treatment of women in the U.S. military.  So many women said to me that one of the first things that happens to them when they enter the service is that they are taken to see the company psychiatrist and they are given a little lecture which is made very clear to them that they are there to service the men."
.  "The POWs appear to be healthy and fit. . . . All of them have called publicly for an end to the war and signed a powerful antiwar letter . . . ." 
.  "A few of them [the POWs] tell me they, too, are against the war and want Nixon to be defeated in the upcoming elections.  They express their fear that if he is reelected, the war will go on and on . . . and that bombs might land on their prison." 
.  "I am asked to convey their hopes that their families will vote for George McGovern." 
.  "I ask them [POWs] if they feel they have been brainwashed or tortured, and they laugh."
. "We read with interest about the growing numbers of you [South Vietnam Army troops] who are understanding the truth and joining with your fellow countrymen to fight for freedom and independence and democracy [i.e., with the Communists]. . . . We think that this is an example of the fact that the democratic, peace-loving, patriotic Vietnamese people want to embrace all Vietnamese people in forgiveness, open their arms to all people who are willing to fight against the foreign intruder.

Such statements could have had only one purpose: to provide aid and comfort to America's Communist enemy. Fonda's propaganda efforts played a major role in prolonging the war and increasing the death toll. As North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin explained in a postwar interview with The Wall Street Journal, the American antiwar movement "was essential to our strategy.  Support for the war from our rear [China] was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable.  Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda . . . gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses."

As Henry Mark Holzer details, Fonda, while in Hanoi, also spent time doing the following:

. Touring the so-called "War Crimes" museum in the company of North Vietnamese Communist civilian and military officials and members of the international press, and there making pro-Communist and anti-American propaganda statements.
. Touring a North Vietnamese hospital in the company of North Vietnamese Communist civilian and military officials and members of the international press, and there making pro-Communist and anti-American propaganda statements.
. Touring dikes and populated areas in the company of North Vietnamese Communist civilian and military officials and members of the international press, and there making pro-Communist and anti-American propaganda statements.
.  Touring the North Vietnamese countryside in the company of North Vietnamese Communist civilian and military officials and members of the international press, and there making pro-Communist and anti-American propaganda statements.
.  Touring a textile center in the company of North Vietnamese Communist civilian and military officials and members of the international press, and there making pro-Communist and anti-American propaganda statements.
.  Being interviewed by a French journalist and continuing to make her pro-Communist, anti-American propaganda statements
.  Holding a press conference in Hanoi, where she described her activities since arriving in North Vietnam, and continuing to make her pro-Communist, anti-American propaganda statements.
.  Meeting with North Vietnamese Vice Premier Nguyen Duy Trinh and continuing to make her pro-Communist, anti-American propaganda statements.
.  In the company of Communist civilian and military officials and members of the international press, posing in the control seat of a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun, feigning taking sight on an imaginary American aircraft, and, by her conduct and words, continuing to make her pro-Communist, anti-American propaganda statements.

Fonda also visited American prisoners of war and credulously believed that they had neither been tortured nor brainwashed - beliefs that were demonstrably false. When Fonda returned to the U.S., she told college students, "I bring greetings from our Vietnamese brothers and sisters," and she lamented the war damage that she had seen in North Vietnam - inflicted, she said, by U.S. forces.  She also sported a necklace given to her by the North Vietnamese, made from the melted parts of a U.S. aircraft shot down over Hanoi.

Whenever stories about POWs getting tortured emerged, Fonda called them lies. When the POWs began coming home in 1973 and stories about torture began to gain credence, Fonda called the returning soldiers "liars, hypocrites, and pawns."  She dismissed any charge that these men had been tortured: "Tortured men do not march smartly off planes, salute the flag, and kiss their wives.  They are liars.  I also want to say that these men are not heroes."

In 1973 Fonda and Tom Hayden together organized an "Indo-China Peace Campaign" (IPC) to lobby Congress to cut off American aid to the regimes in Cambodia and South Vietnam. The IPC worked tirelessly to help the North Vietnamese Communists and the Cambodian Khmer Rouge emerge victorious. Hayden and Fonda took a camera crew to Hanoi and to the "liberated" regions of South Vietnam to make a propaganda film called Introduction to the Enemy, whose purpose was to persuade viewers that the Communists were going to create an ideal new society based on justice and equality, once American troops had left.

Aided by the Watergate scandal that brought down the Nixon presidency, the IPC was successful in helping to persuade Congress to cut U.S. funding for South Vietnam and Cambodia, both of which were quickly overrun by the Communists as a result; the Communist takeover led to the slaughter of 2.5 million Indochinese peasants.

Fonda's activism was not limited to protests against American military involvement in Southeast Asia. She was also immersed in radical chic causes like the American Indian movement and Black Power. When Alcatraz Island was taken over by 79 American Indians on November 20, 1969, Fonda visited to show her solidarity with their occupation.  Fonda was also a strong supporter of Huey Newton and the Black Panthers, calling the latter "our revolutionary vanguard." "We must support them with love, money, propaganda and risk," she said. Fonda claimed that Newton was the only man she would trust to lead America, and also campaigned for the incarcerated Angela Davis and other black "political prisoners."  Fonda spoke frequently and proudly about her radicalism, saying in 1970: "Revolution is an act of love; we are the children of revolution, born to be rebels. It runs in our blood." In 1972 she declared, "I am not a do-gooder.  I am a revolutionary.  A revolutionary woman."