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Felix Greene (21 May 1909 – 15 June 1985) was a British journalist who chronicled several Communism countries in the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1933, Greene joined the BBC, working in the Talks Department. In 1936, he was sent to New York City, and subsequently remained in North America for the next two decades. That year, he was seconded to the Foreign Office to visit all major capitals in South America and prepare a report for the Cabinet on German and Italian propaganda exercises taking place in the region. In 1938, he was asked by the Canadian Government to assist in the preparation of a draft constitution for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Resigning from the BBC in 1940, he remained in the United States, joining the Quaker American Friends Service Committee in 1941 and helping Gerald Heard establish Trabuco College in California the following year.
Greene produced many during this period, including One Man's China, Tibet, Cuba va!, Vietnam! Vietnam! and Inside North Viet Nam. His first documentary, China! (1963), together with the accompanying book The Wall Has Two Sides: A Portrait Of China Today, helped to embellish his reputation in the United States as a supporter of the various communist regimes and insurgencies then emerging in the Third World. Unable to get his film shown in the USA, he resorted to hiring a small New York cinema to broadcast it, a gamble which, according to The Times, paid off triumphantly when queues snaked "around the block" to see it.
When Greene's documentary films on China and Vietnam were initially released many on the liberal left appreciated them for (again in the words of The Times) "exposing the falseness of Washington's presentation of its differences with 'Red China' and the pliant gullibility of the American press, which was then leaving the official accounts unchallenged." Right-wing critics, however, have accused his works of presenting a one-sided view of communist society. Hypocrisy in the "Peace" Movement: A Case Study by Chris R. Tame , 1983/1990, Foreign Policy Perspectives No. 16, The Wall Street Journal argued that Greene purposely hid negative information about the extent of starvation in China and called him a "fellow traveller." How America Was Misinformed About China, in the Wall Street Journal's "Far East Economic Review", published 29 August 2007; archived at archive.org, 2 March 2012
Commander R. W. Herrick of the U.S. Navy reviewed A Curtain of Ignorance in Naval War College Review, writing, "There can be no question but that Greene set out deliberately to 'prove' his contentions that practically everything having to do with Communist China and its policies is good, while Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist regimes are unmitigatedly bad. ... Yet, once the reader understands and allows for this bias, this book is eminently worth reading." Herrick agreed with Greene's observation that "... on matters where great national feelings are aroused, scholars and experts are just as likely as the rest of us to allow their judgments to be swayed by the prevailing climate of opinion." He found the chapters on Nationalist China and the China Lobby to be provocative reading.
In the 1970s, Greene went to Dharamsala to visit the 14th Dalai Lama, who recalled that after three days of discussion, Greene's attitude had changed.
Greene lived in the San Francisco area for twenty years, but returned to Britain before eventually moving to Mexico, where he died of cancer. The Times described him as a man who began his professional life as an establishment centrist but who then veered leftwards, while still "remaining basically a liberal". Others, such as the journalist Brian Crozier, openly considered him an unreformed fellow traveller. He was a cousin of the author Graham Greene.
Greene's films and photos are distributed by Contemporary Films.
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