In Defense of Pete Seeger, American Communist

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/276-74/21767-focus-in-defense-of-pete-seeger-american-communist

As counterintuitive as it may sound, time after time American Communists such as Seeger were on the right side of history - and through their leadership, they encouraged others to join them there.

Communists ran brutal police states in the Eastern bloc, but in Asia and Africa they found themselves at the helm of anti-colonial struggles, and in the United States radicals represented the earliest and more fervent supporters of civil rights and other fights for social emancipation. In the 1930s, Communist Party members led a militant anti-racist movement among Alabama sharecroppers that called for voting rights, equal wages for women and land for landless farmers. Prominent and unabashedly Stalinist figures such as Mike Gold, Richard Wright and Granville Hicks pushed Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal to be more inclusive and led the mass unionization drives of the era. These individuals, bound together by membership in an organization most ordinary Americans came to fear and despise, played an outsize and largely positive role in American politics and culture. Seeger was one of the last surviving links to this great legacy.

"Stateside Communists were the underdogs, fighting the establishment for justice - the victims of censorship and police repression, not its perpetrators."

American communism was different during those years. It wasn't gray, bureaucratic and rigid, as it was in the U.S.S.R., but creative and dynamic. Irving Howe thought it was a put-on, a "brilliant masquerade" that fought for the right causes but in a deceptive, opportunistic way. But there was an undeniable charm to the Communist Party - an organization that hosted youth dances and socials, as well as militant rallies - that first attracted Seeger. One need only reread the old transcripts from his 1955 run-in with the House Un-American Activities Committee to see the difference between the stodginess of the interrogators and the crackling wit of the young firebrand.

[Smarmie Doofus]

1. It's amazing how malleable the political culture was in those days. Ten years between 1938 to 1948.

So much flip-plopping in USA re. the Soviet Union.

Last week TMC showed The North Star ( written by Lillian Hellman, another "Communist" of the Seeger variety) , produced and distribute in the middle of the war and involving literally half of Hollywood... including MGM.

About 5 years later.... it would appear... one couldn't say "The North Star" out loud w/o looking over one's shoulder to see who might be listening. It's about Ukranians ( USSR Ukranians) resisting the Nazi invasion and occupation.

Hellman depicted the villagers sympathetically.

Imagine that.

[MisterP]

3. the Second Red Scare was no natural outgrowth of the political process

and it strongly intersects with a backlash against integration: the '48 Wallace campaign began registering Blacks in the South so the Dems (especially those around Thurmond) went on a full offensive, claiming this was too much democracy and a third party would let the GOP into office if it exposed the Dems' bankrupt vacuousness; this is why Truman juked left in '48 in fact

Jon Voight's uncle turned to red-baiting to cover up the fact that he'd said we were fighting on the wrong side in WWII, as had Sen. Bilbo; integrationism was as sure a sign of being a Red as being a comic-book artist

in the 30s brass-check preachers would be laughed out of town; afterwards Bircherism increasingly became the norm (though Americans are actually quite resistant--but who do they have to vote for? it's not like electoral outcomes typically match popular will)

[DreamGypsy]

2. I still call myself a communist...

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.

Pete Seeger, 1995.

[eridani]

4. Excellent analogy

Not sure I am myself--I don't think that absolutely everything has to be a public good. Even though we have to fight like hell to defend those that we ahve.