Diana Johnstone (born 1934) is a American leftist political writer based in Paris, France. She focusesg primarily on European politics and Western foreign policy. Johnstone received a Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota and was active in the movement against the Vietnam War, organizing the first international contacts between American citizens and Vietnamese representatives.
Johnstone was European editor of the U.S. weekly In These Times from 1979 to 1990, and continues to be a correspondent for the publication. She was press officer of the Green group in the European Parliament from 1990 to 1996. Johnstone is also a regular contributor frequently in the CounterPunch online magazine.
Johnstone was the subject of some controversy after 2003 because of the claim that she has denied the Srebrenica massacre,[1] an allegation that she rejects.[2] She denied that genocide-level of killings occurred in Srebrenica in her book, Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions. The book was rejected from publishing in Sweden[3] prompting Noam Chomsky and several other signatories to oppose the withdrawal of the book by its Swedish publisher in an open letter in 2003.[4][5] Johnstone in that book also expresses doubts over the use of systematic rape in the war in Bosnia and the number of victims of rape, the authenticity of the Racak massacre in Kosovo, and the true figure of Bosnian war dead. Richard Caplan of Reading and Oxford University reviewed the work in Internnational Affairs, where he described the work as "a revisionist and highly contentious account of western policy and the dissolution of Yugoslavia".[6]
Johnstone's right to publish was defended in a letter signed by, among others, Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, Tariq Ali and John Pilger. The letter has gone on to spark controversy after a contested interview with Chomsky in The Guardian by Emma Brockes which Chomsky described as "an exercise in defamation that is a model of the genre".[7]
Most of Johnstone's adult life has been spent in France, Germany, and Italy.