One of the things Im most proud of about my country is the fact that we did lick McCarthyism back in the fifties."
I still call myself a communist because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it. (1995 interview)
~Pete Seeger
Eulogy to Stalins little Songbird
American folksinger and communist activist Pete Seeger (1919-2014) died a few days ago. To the Democrat Socialist Party Seeger was a venerated hero who possessed his capacity for social justice without ever losing his ability to sing freedom songs including songs about love of a utopian ideal country without racism and poverty hatred and war. To the Left Seeger was a patriot: a champion of social justice. To the Right Seeger was an unremarkable musician a communist a communist sympathizer who used his vast popularity to enable and legitimize murderous dictators across the world while ignoring the desperate pleas of the hundreds of millions Lenin Stalin Mao Hitler and others murdered in the name of communism socialism social justice and evolution atheisms survival of the fittest.
Seegers comment about defeating McCarthyism as his greatest achievement is instructive for Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-WI) was the one man in the 1950s whose Senate Hearings put the fear of God in the hearts of legions of communists and communist sympathizers like Seeger Hollywood the leftist media the academy the unions environmentalists anarchists progressives liberals socialists radicalsi.e. the base of the Democrat Socialist Party and Communist Party USA.
Seeger helped score the soundtrack for the labor and civil rights movements and changed minds by getting people to sing. In 1949 one of Seegers most famous songs was If I Had a Soviet Hammer and Sickle" written in support of the socialist/progressive movement later popularized by Peter Paul and Mary. In 1955 Seeger had appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee and declined to testify. You may be cited for contempt of Congress" the Committee chairman told him. Sir" replied Seeger. I have nothing but contempt for this Congress." This arrogant contempt of Congress particularly to questioning by Republicans would cement the reputation of Pete Seeger as a hero of the Left yet when it came to standing up to and speaking out against some of the twentieth centuries greatest tyrants and genocidal murdersMussolini Franco Mao Hitler Pol Pot Ho Chi Minh Lenin and especially Stalin (whose Soviet Union Seeger repeatedly visited in 1964 1967 1981 and N. Korea in 1972) for these socialist communist and Marxist mass murders all old Songbird Seeger had for them is exalting songs of praise heaped upon these despots by Stalins obedient little minstrel… Pete Seeger.
In a 2012 essay titled The Communist Singer who gave America Obama" I referenced Dr. Paul Kengors notable book The Communist" about the life of Barack Obamas surrogate father (who some like moviemaker Joel Gilbert calls Obamas real father) Frank Marshall Davis (1905-87). Kengor refers to singers Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger as a Potemkin Progressives" who like many famous American progressives in the 1920s-60s had severe misunderstandings of things Soviet and Stalin and effectively used their public notoriety to increase and transmit their misinformation to the public on a grand diabolical scale. Separate from Potemkin Progressives like John Dewey George Bernard Shaw W.E.B. Du bois Paul Robeson Frank Marshall Davis the Columbia faculty and countless numbers of other deceived leftists Seeger accepted the Stalinist line so completely that he went to his grave as a fervent agent of communism for almost 80 years although Seeger gave an insincere repudiation of Stalin later in life.
1930s and 1940s
Seegers love affair with communism dates back to 1936 where at the age of 17 Pete Seeger joined the Young Communist League (YCL) then at the pinnacle of its popularity and power. In 1942 Seeger joined the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). In a June 16 1941 review in Time magazine which under its owner the socialist/progressive Henry Luce had become very interventionist denounced the Almanacs song John Doe condemning it as propaganda to what it called the mendacious Moscow tune that Franklin Roosevelt is leading an unwilling people into a J. P. Morgan war. Eleanor Roosevelt an admirer of folk music allegedly found the album in bad taste. Yet in the academy (which in the 1940s still had a few non-socialist scholars left) the eminent German-born Harvard Professor of Government Carl Joachim Friedrich an adviser on domestic propaganda to the US military who in a review in the June 1941 Atlantic Monthly entitled The Poison in Our System he pronounced Songs for John Doe...strictly subversive and illegal ...whether Communist or Nazi financed and a matter for the attorney general observing further that mere legal suppression would be deficient to stop this form of populist poison the poison being folk music and the ease with which it could be spread.
1950s and 1960s
In the 1950s and with the increasing revelations of Joseph Stalins atrocities notably the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 Seeger became increasingly disenchanted with Soviet communism. In his PBS biography Seeger tried to rewrite his communist associations and falsely stated beginning in 1949 that he drifted away from the CPUSA yet maintained life-long friendships with communists who did not leave the movement.
After the 1950 conviction and imprisonment of the Hollywood Ten for contempt of Congress Seeger was subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) on August 18 1955. And like his Hollywood Ten comrades Seeger refused to plead the Fifth Amendment (which asserted that his testimony might be self- incriminating) and instead refused to name personal and political associations on the grounds that this would violate his First Amendment rights (freedom of speech): I am not going to answer any questions as to my association my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs or how I voted in any election or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked especially under such compulsion as this Seeger testified. On March 26 1957 Seeger was charged with contempt Congress but in May 1962 an appeals court ruled the indictment to be flawed and overturned his conviction.
Vietnam War era and Seegers repudiation of Stalin
According to his biographer David Dunaway Seeger didnt repudiate Stalins genocide until 1982 where he performed at a benefit concert for Polands Solidarity resistance movement. In the late 1980s Seeger also expressed disapproval of violent revolutions remarking to an interviewer that he was really in favor of incremental change i.e. Fabian Socialism and that the most lasting revolutions are those that take place over a period of time. In his 1993 autobiography Where Have All the Flowers Gone Seeger wrote Should I apologize for all this? I think so. He went on to put his thinking in context:
How could Hitler have been stopped? …At any rate today Ill apologize for a number of things such as thinking that Stalin was merely a hard driver and not a supremely cruel misleader. I guess anyone who calls himself a Christian should be prepared to apologize for the Inquisition the burning of heretics by Protestants the slaughter of Jews and Muslims by Crusaders. White people in the U.S.A. ought to apologize for stealing land from Native Americans and enslaving blacks. Europeans could apologize for worldwide conquests Mongolians for Genghis Khan. And supporters of Roosevelt could apologize for his support of Somoza of Southern White Democrats of Franco for putting Japanese Americans in concentration camps. Who should my granddaughter Moraya apologize to? Shes part African part European part Chinese part Japanese part Native American. Lets look ahead.
Seegers moral equivalency arguments here are both grotesque and obscene yet they are typical of liberal fascist arrogance and duplicity. What he fails to establish is a proper historical paradigm and answer this question of ultimate concernWho did many of those terrible things to society which you lament about in song?Answer: the Democrat Socialist Party whom youve supported for almost 80 years of your life. We will not forget all of this history with your flippant phrase Lets look ahead."
1990s to 2014
Seegers devotion to communism remained steadfast 60 years later in a 1995 interview where he insisted that I still call myself a communist because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it. In 2006 David BoazVoice of America and NPR commentator and president of the libertarian Cato Institute excoriated Seeger in an op-ed in The Guardian entitled Stalins Songbird in which he denounced The New Yorker and The New York Times for praising Seeger. He categorized Seeger as someone with a longtime habit of following the party line who had only eventually separated with the CPUSA.
In 2007 in response to criticism from a former banjo studenthistorian Ron Radosh a former Trotskyite who now writes for the conservative National ReviewSeeger wrote a song condemning Stalin Big Joe Blues: Im singing about old Joe cruel Joe. / He ruled with an iron hand. / He put an end to the dreams / Of so many in every land. / … I got the Big Joe Blues.… Im not at all convinced Seeger ever recanted communism; he was just trying not to let history overtake him.
The day he died President Barack Obama called Seeger Americas tuning fork who believed in the power of song to bring social change. Over the years Pete used his voice and his Soviet hammer and Sickle to strike blows for workers rights and civil rights; world peace and environmental conservation and he always invited us to sing along. For reminding us where we come from and showing us where we need to go we will always be grateful to Pete Seeger. Michelle and I send our thoughts and prayers to Petes family and all those who loved him" Obama remarked.
Epilogue to a Useful Idiot
Yet who was largely responsible for much of the mass social upheaval in America from the Loyalist treasonous alliance with King George III against the American colonists to slavery and the KKK to Jim Crow discrimination ghetto gulags the Welfare State voluntary genocide (abortion) deconstructing the U.S. Constitution and Obamacare?Answer: the Democrat Socialist Party thats who nevertheless the Left received very little historical condemnation both then and now as demonstrated by Black people who are slavishly loyal to the Democrat Socialist Party voting for Obama at 96 in 2008 and 93 in 2012. Here in Detroit (currently in Chapter 9 bankruptcy) where I live Blacks voted for Obamas socialist slavery at 98! ... and Black people didnt listen to Seegers music.
Seeger although a very popular folksinger and American communist icon was what Lenin called a useful idiot or what Dr. Kengor called a Potemkin Progressive typically in politics and economics to describe any construction (literal or figurative) built solely to deceive others into thinking that some situation i.e. Soviet communism is better than it really is i.e. genocidal death to millions trapped behind the Iron Curtaina contrived fallacy which countless popular and influential American and European visitors to the Soviet Union naively believed and propagated this communist utopia as good non-racist and an ideal desirable government to be emulated here in America Europe and throughout and the world.
Seegers song faking criticism of Uncle Joe Stalin 50 years after the fact was accompanied by a letter to Radosh in which Seeger stated I think youre right I should have asked to see the gulags when I was in U.S.S.R in 1964 1967 1981 and N. Korea in 1972. Progressive/socialist intellectuals like John Dewey George Bernard Shaw Upton Sinclair Rexford Tugwell Walter Lippmann W.E.B. Dubois Paul Robeson the Columbia faculty and countless numbers of other deceived leftists including Seeger sang the praises of the genocidal butcher Stalin for decades while the craven Democrat Socialist Party here in America glorified socialism and communism calling it Progressive" while slandering the name of Sen. Joe McCarthy and using the propaganda press and Hollywood (i.e. John Frankenheimers1962 adaption of Richard Condons Manchrian Candidate modelled the drunken buffoon Sen. John Yerkes Iselins character after Sen. Joe McCarthy). This progressive conspiracy to destroy the reputation of McCarthy and make him the most hated man in America a tyrant doubtfully driving McCarthy to drunkenness and regrettably to an early grave yet to most Americans Sen. McCarthy was a bona fide American hero who exposed communist infiltration inside the State and Treasury Departments inside the U.S. Military the Academy and throughout Hollywood yet liberals hate him and have unjustly changed his name into a curse word (McCarthyism) that mis-educated cowardly Republicans run away from to this day.
Conservative intellectual Ann Coulter in her celebrated 2003 book Treason had this to say about the legendary legacy of Sen. Joe McCarthyAmericas greatest politician of the twentieth century (and that includes Ronald Reagan) who was vindicated 40 years later by the release of decrypted Soviet cables called the Venona Papers (1995). Coulter writes:
Among the most notorious Soviet spies in high-level positions in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations now proved absolutely beyond question by the Soviet cables were Alger Hiss at the State Department; Harry Dexter White assistant secretary of the Treasury Department later appointed to the International Monetary Fund by President Truman; Lauchlin Currie personal assistant to President Roosevelt and White House liaison to the State Department under both Roosevelt and Truman; Laurence Duggan head of the Latin American Desk at the State Department; Frank Coe U.S. representative on the International Monetary Fund; Solomon Adler senior Treasury Department official; Klaus Fuchs top atomic scientist; and Duncan Lee senior aide to the head of the OSS.
America weve got to stop celebrating American communists communist sympathizers and radicals like Pete Seeger Hollywood Broadway union thugs environmentalist zealots Obama and the Democrat Socialist Party but instead marginalize them and punish them as the traitors they truly are. Dont sing songs to the communist Pete Seeger but sing songs extolling the great name of a forgotten misunderstood yet a renowned heroic conservative Republican… Senator Joseph McCarthy.
One of the things Im most proud of about my country is the fact that we did lick McCarthyism back in the fifties."
I still call myself a communist because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it. (1995 interview)
~Pete Seeger
Eulogy to Stalins little Songbird
American folksinger and communist activist Pete Seeger (1919-2014) died a few days ago. To the Democrat Socialist Party Seeger was a venerated hero who possessed his capacity for social justice without ever losing his ability to sing freedom songs including songs about love of a utopian ideal country without racism and poverty hatred and war. To the Left Seeger was a patriot: a champion of social justice. To the Right Seeger was an unremarkable musician a communist a communist sympathizer who used his vast popularity to enable and legitimize murderous dictators across the world while ignoring the desperate pleas of the hundreds of millions Lenin Stalin Mao Hitler and others murdered in the name of communism socialism social justice and evolution atheisms survival of the fittest.
Seegers comment about defeating McCarthyism as his greatest achievement is instructive for Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-WI) was the one man in the 1950s whose Senate Hearings put the fear of God in the hearts of legions of communists and communist sympathizers like Seeger Hollywood the leftist media the academy the unions environmentalists anarchists progressives liberals socialists radicalsi.e. the base of the Democrat Socialist Party and Communist Party USA.
Seeger helped score the soundtrack for the labor and civil rights movements and changed minds by getting people to sing. In 1949 one of Seegers most famous songs was If I Had a Soviet Hammer and Sickle" written in support of the socialist/progressive movement later popularized by Peter Paul and Mary. In 1955 Seeger had appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee and declined to testify. You may be cited for contempt of Congress" the Committee chairman told him. Sir" replied Seeger. I have nothing but contempt for this Congress." This arrogant contempt of Congress particularly to questioning by Republicans would cement the reputation of Pete Seeger as a hero of the Left yet when it came to standing up to and speaking out against some of the twentieth centuries greatest tyrants and genocidal murdersMussolini Franco Mao Hitler Pol Pot Ho Chi Minh Lenin and especially Stalin (whose Soviet Union Seeger repeatedly visited in 1964 1967 1981 and N. Korea in 1972) for these socialist communist and Marxist mass murders all old Songbird Seeger had for them is exalting songs of praise heaped upon these despots by Stalins obedient little minstrel… Pete Seeger.
In a 2012 essay titled The Communist Singer who gave America Obama" I referenced Dr. Paul Kengors notable book The Communist" about the life of Barack Obamas surrogate father (who some like moviemaker Joel Gilbert calls Obamas real father) Frank Marshall Davis (1905-87). Kengor refers to singers Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger as a Potemkin Progressives" who like many famous American progressives in the 1920s-60s had severe misunderstandings of things Soviet and Stalin and effectively used their public notoriety to increase and transmit their misinformation to the public on a grand diabolical scale. Separate from Potemkin Progressives like John Dewey George Bernard Shaw W.E.B. Du bois Paul Robeson Frank Marshall Davis the Columbia faculty and countless numbers of other deceived leftists Seeger accepted the Stalinist line so completely that he went to his grave as a fervent agent of communism for almost 80 years although Seeger gave an insincere repudiation of Stalin later in life.
1930s and 1940s
Seegers love affair with communism dates back to 1936 where at the age of 17 Pete Seeger joined the Young Communist League (YCL) then at the pinnacle of its popularity and power. In 1942 Seeger joined the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). In a June 16 1941 review in Time magazine which under its owner the socialist/progressive Henry Luce had become very interventionist denounced the Almanacs song John Doe condemning it as propaganda to what it called the mendacious Moscow tune that Franklin Roosevelt is leading an unwilling people into a J. P. Morgan war. Eleanor Roosevelt an admirer of folk music allegedly found the album in bad taste. Yet in the academy (which in the 1940s still had a few non-socialist scholars left) the eminent German-born Harvard Professor of Government Carl Joachim Friedrich an adviser on domestic propaganda to the US military who in a review in the June 1941 Atlantic Monthly entitled The Poison in Our System he pronounced Songs for John Doe...strictly subversive and illegal ...whether Communist or Nazi financed and a matter for the attorney general observing further that mere legal suppression would be deficient to stop this form of populist poison the poison being folk music and the ease with which it could be spread.
1950s and 1960s
In the 1950s and with the increasing revelations of Joseph Stalins atrocities notably the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 Seeger became increasingly disenchanted with Soviet communism. In his PBS biography Seeger tried to rewrite his communist associations and falsely stated beginning in 1949 that he drifted away from the CPUSA yet maintained life-long friendships with communists who did not leave the movement.
After the 1950 conviction and imprisonment of the Hollywood Ten for contempt of Congress Seeger was subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) on August 18 1955. And like his Hollywood Ten comrades Seeger refused to plead the Fifth Amendment (which asserted that his testimony might be self- incriminating) and instead refused to name personal and political associations on the grounds that this would violate his First Amendment rights (freedom of speech): I am not going to answer any questions as to my association my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs or how I voted in any election or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked especially under such compulsion as this Seeger testified. On March 26 1957 Seeger was charged with contempt Congress but in May 1962 an appeals court ruled the indictment to be flawed and overturned his conviction.
Vietnam War era and Seegers repudiation of Stalin
According to his biographer David Dunaway Seeger didnt repudiate Stalins genocide until 1982 where he performed at a benefit concert for Polands Solidarity resistance movement. In the late 1980s Seeger also expressed disapproval of violent revolutions remarking to an interviewer that he was really in favor of incremental change i.e. Fabian Socialism and that the most lasting revolutions are those that take place over a period of time. In his 1993 autobiography Where Have All the Flowers Gone Seeger wrote Should I apologize for all this? I think so. He went on to put his thinking in context:
How could Hitler have been stopped? …At any rate today Ill apologize for a number of things such as thinking that Stalin was merely a hard driver and not a supremely cruel misleader. I guess anyone who calls himself a Christian should be prepared to apologize for the Inquisition the burning of heretics by Protestants the slaughter of Jews and Muslims by Crusaders. White people in the U.S.A. ought to apologize for stealing land from Native Americans and enslaving blacks. Europeans could apologize for worldwide conquests Mongolians for Genghis Khan. And supporters of Roosevelt could apologize for his support of Somoza of Southern White Democrats of Franco for putting Japanese Americans in concentration camps. Who should my granddaughter Moraya apologize to? Shes part African part European part Chinese part Japanese part Native American. Lets look ahead.
Seegers moral equivalency arguments here are both grotesque and obscene yet they are typical of liberal fascist arrogance and duplicity. What he fails to establish is a proper historical paradigm and answer this question of ultimate concernWho did many of those terrible things to society which you lament about in song?Answer: the Democrat Socialist Party whom youve supported for almost 80 years of your life. We will not forget all of this history with your flippant phrase Lets look ahead."
1990s to 2014
Seegers devotion to communism remained steadfast 60 years later in a 1995 interview where he insisted that I still call myself a communist because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it. In 2006 David BoazVoice of America and NPR commentator and president of the libertarian Cato Institute excoriated Seeger in an op-ed in The Guardian entitled Stalins Songbird in which he denounced The New Yorker and The New York Times for praising Seeger. He categorized Seeger as someone with a longtime habit of following the party line who had only eventually separated with the CPUSA.
In 2007 in response to criticism from a former banjo studenthistorian Ron Radosh a former Trotskyite who now writes for the conservative National ReviewSeeger wrote a song condemning Stalin Big Joe Blues: Im singing about old Joe cruel Joe. / He ruled with an iron hand. / He put an end to the dreams / Of so many in every land. / … I got the Big Joe Blues.… Im not at all convinced Seeger ever recanted communism; he was just trying not to let history overtake him.
The day he died President Barack Obama called Seeger Americas tuning fork who believed in the power of song to bring social change. Over the years Pete used his voice and his Soviet hammer and Sickle to strike blows for workers rights and civil rights; world peace and environmental conservation and he always invited us to sing along. For reminding us where we come from and showing us where we need to go we will always be grateful to Pete Seeger. Michelle and I send our thoughts and prayers to Petes family and all those who loved him" Obama remarked.
Epilogue to a Useful Idiot
Yet who was largely responsible for much of the mass social upheaval in America from the Loyalist treasonous alliance with King George III against the American colonists to slavery and the KKK to Jim Crow discrimination ghetto gulags the Welfare State voluntary genocide (abortion) deconstructing the U.S. Constitution and Obamacare?Answer: the Democrat Socialist Party thats who nevertheless the Left received very little historical condemnation both then and now as demonstrated by Black people who are slavishly loyal to the Democrat Socialist Party voting for Obama at 96 in 2008 and 93 in 2012. Here in Detroit (currently in Chapter 9 bankruptcy) where I live Blacks voted for Obamas socialist slavery at 98! ... and Black people didnt listen to Seegers music.
Seeger although a very popular folksinger and American communist icon was what Lenin called a useful idiot or what Dr. Kengor called a Potemkin Progressive typically in politics and economics to describe any construction (literal or figurative) built solely to deceive others into thinking that some situation i.e. Soviet communism is better than it really is i.e. genocidal death to millions trapped behind the Iron Curtaina contrived fallacy which countless popular and influential American and European visitors to the Soviet Union naively believed and propagated this communist utopia as good non-racist and an ideal desirable government to be emulated here in America Europe and throughout and the world.
Seegers song faking criticism of Uncle Joe Stalin 50 years after the fact was accompanied by a letter to Radosh in which Seeger stated I think youre right I should have asked to see the gulags when I was in U.S.S.R in 1964 1967 1981 and N. Korea in 1972. Progressive/socialist intellectuals like John Dewey George Bernard Shaw Upton Sinclair Rexford Tugwell Walter Lippmann W.E.B. Dubois Paul Robeson the Columbia faculty and countless numbers of other deceived leftists including Seeger sang the praises of the genocidal butcher Stalin for decades while the craven Democrat Socialist Party here in America glorified socialism and communism calling it Progressive" while slandering the name of Sen. Joe McCarthy and using the propaganda press and Hollywood (i.e. John Frankenheimers1962 adaption of Richard Condons Manchrian Candidate modelled the drunken buffoon Sen. John Yerkes Iselins character after Sen. Joe McCarthy). This progressive conspiracy to destroy the reputation of McCarthy and make him the most hated man in America a tyrant doubtfully driving McCarthy to drunkenness and regrettably to an early grave yet to most Americans Sen. McCarthy was a bona fide American hero who exposed communist infiltration inside the State and Treasury Departments inside the U.S. Military the Academy and throughout Hollywood yet liberals hate him and have unjustly changed his name into a curse word (McCarthyism) that mis-educated cowardly Republicans run away from to this day.
Conservative intellectual Ann Coulter in her celebrated 2003 book Treason had this to say about the legendary legacy of Sen. Joe McCarthyAmericas greatest politician of the twentieth century (and that includes Ronald Reagan) who was vindicated 40 years later by the release of decrypted Soviet cables called the Venona Papers (1995). Coulter writes:
Among the most notorious Soviet spies in high-level positions in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations now proved absolutely beyond question by the Soviet cables were Alger Hiss at the State Department; Harry Dexter White assistant secretary of the Treasury Department later appointed to the International Monetary Fund by President Truman; Lauchlin Currie personal assistant to President Roosevelt and White House liaison to the State Department under both Roosevelt and Truman; Laurence Duggan head of the Latin American Desk at the State Department; Frank Coe U.S. representative on the International Monetary Fund; Solomon Adler senior Treasury Department official; Klaus Fuchs top atomic scientist; and Duncan Lee senior aide to the head of the OSS.
America weve got to stop celebrating American communists communist sympathizers and radicals like Pete Seeger Hollywood Broadway union thugs environmentalist zealots Obama and the Democrat Socialist Party but instead marginalize them and punish them as the traitors they truly are. Dont sing songs to the communist Pete Seeger but sing songs extolling the great name of a forgotten misunderstood yet a renowned heroic conservative Republican… Senator Joseph McCarthy.