Party Animal

BY RON RADOSH
Time for Pete Seeger To Repent
June 12, 2007

Today, Jim Brown's new documentary, "Pete Seeger: The Power of Song," opens the annual American Film Institute/Discovery Channel Silverdocs Festival near Washington, D.C.

We come out of the film viewing Mr. Seeger as a man who always stood for peace. The truth was that he called for peace when the Party line demanded it, changed to supporting military intervention when the Party line changed, and then resumed the campaign for peace during the Cold War, when he regularly endorsed disarming America and excusing the Soviet arms buildup. Now, he constantly tells interviewers that he is a communist with a small c. He has finally gotten off the Stalinist bandwagon — a little late to make any difference, but better late than never.

Radosh has known Pete Seeger since childhood.

I've always thought those who fell for Communism out of idealism during the Depresssion should be given a pass, depending on how they performed on certain tests that occurred along the way. The first test was the Great Terror of the 1930s, including the show trials by which Stalin eliminated all possible competitors for power by torturing (to get "confessions") and executing all the key figures and original heroes of the Bolshevik Revolution. (It took him a little longer to get Trotsky.) Some Communist idealists in the West became disillusioned by these events, and they redeemed themselves by leaving the Stalinist fold. More probably would have left, except that what was happening in Russia was the subject of systematic misreporting by the New York Times. As was later shown, the Times' man in Moscow, Walter Duranty, was a propagandist and shill for Stalin; he had been blackmailed into covering up every crime of the regime, including the mass starvation murder of the Ukrainian Kulaks. The Times admits all this today, but still refuses to return Duranty's Pulitzer.

The second test was more demanding. It was whether you stuck with Stalin when he allied himself with Hitler in the 1939 pact that launched WWII. (Among other things, Stalin and Hitler agreed to divide Poland, and Poland was attacked from both sides shortly thereafter; Stalin also got to grab the Baltic states in return for securing Hitler's eastern front.) The idealists had been following the Party line by urging the US to enter the war as an anti-fascist ally of Russia against Germany. They had seen the beloved Soviet experiment being threatened by Hitler, and they believed the tripe about Communism being the bulwark against Fascism. Save Uncle Joe! So the 1939 Stalin-Hitler pact was a shocking betrayal of every idealist principle, and Western idealists abandoned Communism in droves. Those who remained Stalin loyalists followed the new, reversed Party line that called Churchill and FDR war-mongers in the pocket of industrial interests, pursuing a "Capitalist War" against socialism (Nazi = National Socialist, recall). The remaining Stalin loyalists instantly became dutiful anti-war advocates for "peace," doing everything they could to keep the US out of the war. Those anti-war efforts were orchestrated by the domestic Communist Party, which as in every country, was completely a creature of Moscow.

Those relatively few who STILL stuck with Stalin had to be pretty hard-core loyalists. But they got a third, even tougher test two years later, when Hitler pulled a double-cross and attacked Russia in 1941. The Party line again turned on a dime, and all good Stalinists in the US instantly became vehemently...wait for it...Pro-War! Save Uncle Joe! This was another chance -- and not one requiring much in the way of deep thought -- to recognize what kind of unprincipled pawn a Communist sympathizer and fellow traveler was expected to be. But, bless his heart, Pete Seeger passed every single test of Stalinist loyalty with flying colors, hanging proudly out there, Blowin' in the Stalinist Wind for all he was worth.

To paint this dedicated Communist hack as an idealist is a scandal, an vicious insult to all the true idealists (Natan Sharansky, et al.) who stood up to the evil of Stalinism in countries all around the world, and who suffered or died doing it. Just a few more corpses on the stack of 100+ million.

Where's your song for them, Pete?

Seeger may be a good musician, but he's a nasty piece of work otherwise.

Byron