My first wife’s family lived in Laguna Beach. Her parents had retired there, and her father died without ever being able to return to Puerto Nuevo in Rosarito and eat the lobster he loved. He had the same problem as some of my Mexican friends who could leave but the USA but not return, even though he was born in New York. He and his wife were Polish-Americans, their grandpare
nts had fled the anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia, settled in Poland and then emigrated here. He became a union organizer and in the 1950’s he was black-listed during the McCarthy era, and his passport taken away.
I got to know Pete Seeger’s music better through this family, as Seeger had been blacklisted himself. I’d already been familiar with him, since some of his civil rights and anti-war songs had reached the political movements in South America, especially my own Chile.
The banjo, Seeger’s trademark musical instrument, was adopted by some protest singers down there as well. One of the most popular Chilean banjo players, “Payo” Grondona, also recently passed away.
Pete Seeger’s music reached many generations. My oldest daughter grew up listening to his children’s songs. He is best known for his message to make the world a better place, which meant to overcome the legacy of McCarthy’s type of politics. As Bruce Springsteen once told him: “You outlasted the bastards, man.”
The Death of ‘Stalin’s Songbird’
Pete Seeger’s love of Stalinist ideals endured through the nightmare of pogroms and purge trials in the Soviet Union. His totalitarian sympathies should not be whitewashed.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/29/the-death-of-stalin-s-songbird0.html
Yeah, he was born in 1919 and grew up in an era when it was far more common to openly be a Communist. Big deal.
Scare tactics, illegal spying and other methods employed by the FBI eventually drove people to become much more circumspect about openly espousing their Communist sympathies.
“..it’s important to remember that Seeger, once an avowed Stalinist, was a political singer devoted to a sinister political system–a position he held long after the Soviet experiment drenched itself in blood and collapsed in ignominy.”
So, you know for a fact that Seeger was a Communist AND…AND…he approved of the repressive, iron-fisted tactics employed by Stalin and others?
Would you care to direct us to ANY utterance that proves that?
The damn link is in my first comment.
Yeah, I read the damn link and there’s nothing in it that says Seeger supported the tactics employed by Stalin, and others.
It would be like me saying that because you support American-style democracy, you also support the policies of Obama, Clinton, Carter, Kennedy, etc.
Another lesson in basic logic for you, Skally.
So, you’ve never actually listened to any of his songs, then right? Are they too intellectually demanding?
“Si tuviera un martillo…”
“Si tuviera un ciclo…”
More correctly – “Si tuviera un sickle…” – so replies “Uncle Joe.”
anon: ” Yeah, I read the damn link and there’s nothing in it that says Seeger supported the tactics employed by Stalin, and others.”
Yes – it did.
Yeah, OK. Keep on making those leaps.
On top of all that, Mr. Moynihan overstates his case.
Deification? People who like Seeger’s music “deify” him? Really?
Tell us what musicians YOU admire, Skally. Do you consider them “deities”?
We can guess that marriage didn’t work out???? WTF?
“Historian Ron Radosh, a former banjo student of Seeger’s, reminds us that as Stalin cranked up his brutal post-war anti-Semitic pogroms, he was singing of a collective farm (“paradise”) where Soviet Jews lived like kings.”
Same article as liked above –
I think the jolly starry-eyed musician was just a little slower on the draw than some of his comrades at seeing where things were headed over there.
Or did I miss his catchy ditty praising pogroms?
And Seeger wrote a letter to Radosh, stating;
“I think you’re right, I should have asked to see the gulags when I was in U.S.S.R [in 1965].”
Skally, when you can exhibit the kind of humility Seeger was capable of, we’ll be able to take you a bit more seriously. Until that day, I think most of us here at the OJB view you as a bitter, unobjective ideologue.
I view him more as – like I’ve said before – a dog or cat that constantly brings home little dead animals that it finds and leaves them on our doorstep hoping we’ll be impressed.
So what do you have against kibbutzim in principle, skally?
Nothing – PS was propagandizing for Uncle Joe.
“Uncle Joe” being our ally in World War 2 — who lost more of his population in that war than we did by a factor of 20 to 30.
Yes, he was also a brutal dictator. As have been the leaders of many of our own allies past — and present.
“Mr. Seeger .. said in a 1995 interview with the New York Times Magazine, he had apologized “for following the party line so slavishly, for not seeing that Stalin was a supremely cruel misleader.”
“This is an astonishingly lazy defense .. perhaps I am expecting a bit too much, but it seems slightly understated to describe a man responsible for tens of millions of deaths as a “cruel misleader.”
Same cited article –
Just face it–you simply hate someone who sings songs that criticize the hideous results of unbridled capitalism. Maybe you can dig up someone of equal stature who sings of the glory of the Bush tax cuts, but I doubt it.
Seeger was a activist musician for some very good causes in the U.S. Nothing more, nothing less.
If he was slow to catch on to Stalin’s nature, remember the time:
The Red side of the Russian civil war was opposed by U.S., British, and Japanese troops.
The western powers opposed Bolshevik rule with all kinds of spying and sabotage, provoking and enabling the paranoid purges Stalin is known for. The Cold War began in 1918, and only paused from 1941 to 1945.
The western press made up hoaxes to smear the regime any way they could. Knowing this, it was tempting to discount any bad news one heard about the Soviets.
… and it was Bush’s fault too ….
*Peter Paul and Mary said it best: “If I had a hammer…..I’d hammer in the mornin…., hammer in the evenin ….all over this land! I’d hammer out danger, I’d hammer out a warnin…..all over this land!”