Circle in the Darkness

"Diana Johnstone has spent a lifetime trying to write the truth as you will see in this compelling memoir. Her dedication to a broad coalition for peace and against militarism is an inspiration. She continues to suffer attacks from those who, blinded by their sectarianism, cannot abide such a coalition. Readers will learn a great deal from this fascinating, first-hand look at our world from the Second War through the Cold War and, ultimately, to our forever wars of the 21st century." -RON PAUL, MD. Former Member of US Congress "Diana Johnstone is a superb reporter of a kind and calibre that barely exists today. Her principled, eloquent memoirs are often touching, and wise, and bracing in their truth in an age of deceit. I salute her." JOHN PILGER, award-winning Australian journalist, author and broadcaster/documentary maker



Circle in the Darkness recounts veteran journalist Diana Johnstone's lifelong effort to understand what is going on in the world, seeking the truth about our troubled times beyond the veils of government propaganda and media deception. For Johnstone, the political is personal. From her experience of Cold War hostilities as a student in Yugoslavia, in the movement against the U.S. war against Vietnam, in May ’68, in professional and alternative journalism, in the historic peace movement of the 1980s that led to the reunification of Germany, in the transformation of the German Greens from peace to war party and the European Union’s sacrifice of democracy to globalization, her critical viewpoint dissects events and identifies trends.



She recounts in detail how the Western left betrayed its historical principles of social justice and peace and let itself be lured into approval of aggressive U.S. -NATO wars on the fallacious grounds of human rights. Subjects range from caustic analysis of the pretentious confusion of French philosophers to the stories of many courageous individuals whose struggle for peace and justice ended in deep personal tragedy, with a great deal in between.



Circle in the Darkness is a lucid, uncompromising tour through half a century of contemporary history intended especially for those who may aspire against all obstacles to change its course for the better.