“I’m sure there are more constructive things he could do with his life.” So said Pete Seeger, who was criticizing me for making a career out of “exposing the crimes of Soviet communism.” Even if it was so- and it isn’t- I would respond that it’s far better to have engaged in that effort than for more than fifty years serving as an apologist for one of the most criminal regimes in the 20th Century. Evidently, by Seeger’s logic, I am the one who should apologize, while he is given a green light to simply brush his own amnesia off.
So on one day before his 90th birthday- and the gala bash which PBS has announced they will film for broadcast- I am presenting to PJM readers an assortment of my own past comments on Pete, so you can read them on your own.
First, the article that started the recent debate off. Here is my analysis of last year’s film that Jim Brown made on Pete’s life. I was interviewed by Brown and am on screen—but as I point out, Brown edited out every critical comment I made about Seeger’s politics. Here is what I wrote.
Next, I wrote about Seeger’s response to my criticism of Brown’s film, and the news that got major press coverage: Pete-perhaps a half century too late-finally made critical comments about old Joe Stalin. I gave Pete the benefit of the doubt, taking the old adage that it is better late than never. Many of course, disagreed- with good reason. In NRO online, the brilliant Mark Steyn, with his usual acerbic sense of humor, hit me hard. Let me go on record. Mark Steyn is right. Everything he writes is on the button.
Yes, and Seeger still doesn’t get it. Four years ago, he told the press that the School of the Americas—the US Army training facility that engages in joint exercises with Latin American soldiers- teaches Latin American soldiers “how to torture, how to massacre, how to assassinate.” He brings this up in answer to the reporter’s question about how he could have supported Joe Stalin. In other words, we’re just as awful, if not worse. Read the rest of this interview. The diligent reporter, Jeffrey Weiss, keeps hitting Pete and trying to get him to say anything that shows he understands that he had an obligation to oppose totalitarianism. You can judge Pete’s answers for yourself.
And today, the latest comment is by the writer Michael Ybarra, in the Weekend Wall Street Journal. Ybarra’s review of a new short hagiography on Seeger, has a great last line. Ybarra writes: ” One of the benefits of a long life is the opportunity for mature reflection on youthful error. On the evidence of “The Protest Singer,” Mr. Seeger is truly ageless.”
And finally, my friend and Reason editor Michael Moynihan had a great blog, with a title spoofing the slogan inscribed on Pete’s banjo: “This Machine Surrounds Hates and Fills it with Love,” which is a take-off on the slogan on Woody Guthrie’s guitar: “This Machine Kills Fascists.” Moynihan’s title: “This Machine Loves Communists!” And so, I join Michael in wishing Pete on his 90th Birthday: “Happy Birthday, Comrade!”
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Note to my blog readers: I am attending the AIPAC National Conference, and will not be back to regular blogs until Tuesday or Wednesday. I might, if I have the chance, file some impressions of the meeting on Sunday or Monday.
Pete Seeger apparently believes that all should be forgiven—and forgotten because he meant well. His heart was in the right place. Seeger and his buddies were seeking to build a utopian society. That a few eggs were broken while the omelet was being prepared is supposedly a minor inconvenience. Seeger is also a postmodernist who rejects the idea that we can learn from the mistakes of the past. Modern adults are wasting their time studying history. Today is all that matters.
Ha, ha. What is it with American folk singers and communism? I say, send him to Red Korea for writing “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”? Please.
Studying history is no more relevant than learning advanced sewing techniques if human beings meaningfully evolve psychologically and spiritually over a period of time. The Judeo-Christian traditions consider human beings as inherently flawed—and the at least metaphorical reality of Original Sin is alive and well on planet Earth. Progressives reject this pessimistic view of our nature. They prefer to believe that we are getting better every day. That is why they are normally historical illiterates. On a practical level, if you embrace their view of human nature, this is entirely sensible. Worrying about what the Communists did decades ago is simply so “yesterday.”
I only met Pete Seeger, around 1962, at the Institute of Western American Culture run by Sonoma State College, where he was performing and I, as a teenaged member of a local historical society, was a conference attendee. I’m not quite sure how it happened, but we ended up playing pool together with a group of people after his performance. I’m not even sure how it came up, but we got into a political discussion that was exceptionally lively. I was very conservative, and vigorously challenged Seeger’s communist positions, all with logical arguments. Perhaps it was just the venue, and my youth, but he treated me with great respect in vigorously disagreeing. I knew who he was as a folk singer, of course, but had no idea at the time he was such a leading Stalinist.
Jeepers, President Obama apologised for everything but inventing evil in the first place. You’d think Ol’ Pete could manage at least one small mea culpa. We all may have had some leftist leanings in our youth but this guy actually joined the Communist Party and was a member and public apologist for that party for many years. You have to admire his verbal judo, however. Just when you think you may have him pinned down he reverses the hold. Sure, Stalin was “big” but there’s all sorts of bad guys everywhere and the USA supported some of them. It’s a version of the children’s game that answers every taunt with … yeah, I know you are but what am I?
His image/music pulls up the shock I felt when realizing how duped and indoctrinated I’d been through my school years. Try Dylan on for size. That’ll take you places to untangle.
Pete Seeger played his banjo while tens of thousands of real artists in Russia were hounded, murdered, tortured, and declared insane. He played his banjo while millions of decent people were rounded up and deported to certain death in Siberia. I’d like to make a movie where Pete Seeger makes his proclaimations about Communism and have each scene juxtaposed with interviews of the people who survived the brutal treatment by the Bolsheviks telling their accounts. 90 minutes of Pete’s childish remarks followed by the detailed description of the mass murder he pretends not to know about.
You’re right, but he HAS written some good songs. My Israeli-born daughter thinks a Hebrew translation of “Waist Deep In The Big Muddy” would be a perfect metaphor for the Oslo agreement.
He would have beed better off if he’d just shut up and sung.
I confess. I never liked folk music. How could listening to it possibly compare to the joy of Mozart or Verdi, The Gershwins, Richard Rogers or Cole Porter? HOwever, as a young man, I felt a visceral repugnance to folk music that reached beyond its banal mediocrity. Although I did not understand it at the time, I was reacting to the smug pretentious moral superiority it was projecting, and to its not so subtle political propaganda. I remember going to a concert by “The Weavers” at Queens College circa 1960. Had I not been with a date, I would have walked out before the end.
All of this happened long before I understood or even knew anything about politics, before I knew that I was a conservative, or knew that my latent political phiosophy was the target of the music.
Mr Radosh, I know that unlike me, you have always had a passion for folk music, (I have read your wonderful books), yet we now both share the same political and moral outlook. I would be interested in your thoughts on this subject in some future article.
I’ve never really paid any attention to Seeger but it comes as no surprise to me that he’s a commie. I wonder if he’s ever bothered to study the history of communism, you know, the part where they killed thousands of Polish Army Officers in the Katyn forest, or the part where they slaughtered millions of their own citizens or deliberably allowed Ukranians to starve, or the part where the Chicoms killed thousands of Catholic Vietnamese and Laotian citizens for trying to practice their faith, or the part where that good old boy Pol Pot slaughtered millions of Cambodians. I suppose all that reading is just too much for old Seeger he’d rather write sappy songs about peace and love and understanding. Hey I have a message for Seeger. Go screw yourself.
It would probably be a waste of time but I’d like to have Mr. Seeger take a look at the google map of the Korean Peninsula. I”m sure you know the one I’m referring to, the one that was taken at night from a satellite. It shows the entire Korean Peninsula, the northern part almost completely black with just a pinpoint of light at what is Pyongyang. The Southern side is lit up like a Christmas tree. Now that must cause some small synapse in his fried out old brain to fire off just a little, maybe enough to make him wonder why that is. Could it be that the South Koreans enjoy capitalism and the fruits that it brings them? Could it be that the North Koreans are too busy trying not to starve to worry about electricity. Nahhh…Mr. Seeger is too busy worshipping his commie hero’s to be worried about whether or not the brutalized, tormented and starving people of N. Korea will make it through another winter without eating their first born. Hmmmmm…I wonder how you say SCUMBAG in Hangul?
ah, but “where have all the flowers gone” is so much fun to parody, as also is “this land is my land”.
“I wonder if he’s ever bothered to study the history of communism”
The odds are that Pete Seeger and the vast majority of his ideological allies have never done so. They are anti-intellectual and psychologically similar to religious extremists who let snakes bite them. Adhering to ideology is deemed far more important than engaging in intellectual inquiry. As mater of fact, they have zero interest in having their secular faith tested. Seeger subconsciously, if not even consciously, does everything to run from reality. Why should that surprise anyone? How would you feel if, even unwittingly, you actively cooperated in the torture and murder of millions? And that’s exactly what he did! Seeger lost his innocence once he changed his pacifist lyrics to those sounding more belligerent simply to satisfy the demands of Joseph Stalin.
I’m still trying to figure out why no one seems to think it relevant that that only people who advocate for communism (historically and today) are those who are filthy rich, from Karl Marx to Che Guevara, not to mention the slew of Hollywood celebrities, artists, writers, etc. The very people who benefit the most from a free market, open society like the United States seem to have nothing positive to say about it. Even Obama’s Rev. Wright, afer bashing the United States during Sunday sermons pulling out every age-old anti-American propaganda straight from the USSR, goes home at the end of the day to his million-dollar home in a gated community. When I mention this to people, they scoff at me for bringing up trivialities. Is mentioning people’s life styles as hypocritical to their preachings trivial? Isn’t it relelvant to point out that people–especially minorities–who insist the US is the bastion of oppression and despair are some of the most free, wealthy people on earth? Any sensible person would wonder what kind of a society that is as oppressive as the US is claimed to be would permit those it oppresses to become millionaires. Either the Left Wing anti-Americans are completely insane or the US is doing a horrible job at being oppressive.
What is it about artists and entertainers that they are attracted to totalitarianism like moths to a flame?
It’s my impression that the reason these guys became the focal points in American culture they did was just because they lacked the kind of real investments of life’s percious energies… sweat, toil, tragedy an blood that the people that constituted their artistic palettes had suffered an’ made. There’s really not much true compensation nor measures involved between a middle class doctor’s son an’ the ruling industrial aristocracy,(an that includes the University curriculum and Music Executives Market anylasis) irregardless of their fancies….Pete Seeger/Bob Dylan/Bruce Springsteen=safe bet + House rules.
Ole Pete never had enough Hatred in him that couldn’t keep a bunch of rapists an’ looters from usin him to acquire power.
Jest another swine flu millionaire…
The irony, of course, is that Pete Seeger became a millionaire – back when it was not commonplace – from the capitalistic, free-enterprise revenues from sales of his records. Stalin would have told him which Russian folk songs he could sing,only songs of praise for the Soviets, and just paid him a government stipend.. Always, of course, with the awareness that if crossed Joe it wold be off to the Gulags.
What is with it NPR and the newspapers, going all soppy over the passing of the noble pre-and-post WWII “activists” – the card-carrying Reds, Some heroes!
That said, all my family loved the albums of the Weavers- You couldn’t tell from those songs that he was a dirty Commie Pinko.
Well ya gotta remember that it’s pure crass comercialisim when the entertainment industry gets wind one of it’s franchises (read “celebrities”) is about ta choke the worms…Time ta drag out an’ dust off all that stale merchendise sittin’ there on the counters an’ repackage it as reissues an’ retrospectives..Whip up a few TeleVishy wishy washys with a few popular nonsequiturs like Brittany Spears, the Jonas Brothers, Snoop Dogg or T-Pain ta wax telepromts about the great influence the merchendise has had upon their careers, (funny thing about that is that these days most of them nonsequiturs can’t even pull of that duty correctly..Witness Snoop Dog trashin’ Johnny Cash at the MTV awards back in 2003 then pumpin’ his fist for BB King because of “black pride”…Witness any an’ every breath Obama takes.)An’ that’s all jest fer the sake of boostin’ sales….(Hey maybe I can wring an I-tune or two out of some of them lovable liberals of the 60′s generation…or even better yet, slum dog some of their kids into a whole damn catalouge!)…
I met Pete Seeger when I lived in Woodstock New York many years ago. He really believes all of it. He an old “union forever” guy and a real communist. By the way, so is the whole town.
Three comments about Pete Seeger. (1) He did his best work as a member of The Weavers and added a nice free-wheeling high end to that group. (2) I learned to play the five-string banjo with his instruction book and tapes. (3) He’s a garden-variety Utopian with all the myopia that point-of-view requires.
I see very little difference between Seeger and our current crop of liberal entertainers.
Look at the idiots that campaigned for Obama and now we see Obama destroying our economy.
In years to come will they ever see that they were wrong. I certainly hope so, but have very little faith that any of them will.
Socialist/liberals never admit being wrong. When they fail, they just say they were not liberal enough to get the job done or if it hadn’t be for conservatives fighting them everything would have been fine.
I disagree with a lot of Seeger’s popular front leftist politics. But he showed himself in his letter to you, Radosh, to be the thorougly decent human being everyone has always known him to be in his letter to you. And a humble, self-critical one, too. I was especially impressed that he chose to blame Lenin, rather than Stalin, for the failing of the USSR.
You, meanwhile, have shown yourself to be the mean-sprited, axe-grinding jerk I have always suspected you to be, by continuing to write about your Pete Seeger obsession.
There are a lot of jerks on the left, Pete isn’t one of them.
“What is it about artists and entertainers that they are attracted to totalitarianism like moths to a flame?”
Wow, that’s a question that has been discussed often in blogs and a few books and magazine articles. You could fill volumes answer that one.
Here’s a few prominent reasons:
1) artists like to create “perfection” and “beauty” therefore they believe they can create perfection and beauty through socialism (as a writer, even I went through this period when I was in my 20s). America is ugly to them because it’s a nation where little green and red houses can be seen side by side. Freedom, in other words, is not pretty. It’s sloppy, disorganized, and haphazard. The Left HATES that!
2) artists hate the free market because it means the “bourgeois” masses have power over them, and not the reverse. It angers them that the “stupid” unwashed masses can decide what is worth and or not. Yet, underneath each artists, is perhaps some of the most money hungry people you’ll ever meet. I have not known one artist, writer, singers, whatever, who did not dream of making millions.
I’d just like to offer a small correction on your subtitle:
“A die-hard apologist for Soviet communism blows out the candles.”
Just leave out the last three words and you will have nailed it.
If Peter Seger truly believed in Communism he would have left the United States of America for the Soviet Union (in the 1970′s or 1980′s), North Korea, China, or Cuba a long time ago; however, he did not. He’s a hypocrite of the worst order: Do as I say, not as I do.
Typical glitterati Socialist. All puff, no stuff.
W-a-a-y back in the early 70′s ol’ Pete came to speak n sing at my very small Jesuit run college. In
retrospective, I too realize how indoctrinated I was at the time by the peace/love/dove movement at that time.
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Ron, as the premier Seeger exposure in the universe, you better hope Pete lives to be 100 or you will need a new calling. I bet 10 to 1 these are not your “Last Words” on Pete.
Pete Seeger is a national icon. He stood up for workers rights and a tireless worker for the Civil Rights Movement. He along with Arlo Guthrie were blacklisted by the likes of Joe McCarthy. I am proud to have met him as well. I hope he lives to be 100. God bless him.
No suprise that Pat J. would admire an old Stalinist. I’m sure he probably has wet dreams about Che too.
A character in a Eugene O’Neill play said it about the English, but it suits morally blind leftists like Pat even better: they can’t live without a master’s backside to kiss, the dirty slaves.
Seeger kissed the boot of one of the 20th century’s greatest monsters. But then the left has no problem with that, as long as the murderers are anti-American and spout a lot of horse manure about “The People.”
Hey, Chris Gersten. You won’t remember me but we once called each other “comrade.” (Explanations supplied on request but it’s nothing you or I should be ashamed of.)
And Markus, I trust you aren’t giving in to the fantasy that either Lenin twisted communism or that Stalin did; what both of them did, namely establish terror and murder as state policies, was inherent in their ideologies, not perversions of it.
There’s a new book about Seeger’s life out; I saw it at Border’s today. Forget the title; I wasn’t going to buy it. Anyway, the index contains no reference to
my favorite Seeger work, “Songs for John Doe.” It came out in mid-June 1941 and he and his group strived mightily to recall it. The book consisted of songs about how the war then raging was an imperialist war and nothing but…after June 22, of course, it suddenly became a people’s struggle or, in words Seeger hasn’t actually used but has certainly exemplified, Oceania is at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia and always has been.
I have several of his records, I enjoy most of the songs, but he has always been an active apologist for the most hideous oppression imaginable and his second thoughts, expressed to Radosh not that long ago, were hardly self-searching.
These wealthy lovers of the poor laugh all the way to the bank as they step gingerly over the bodies murdered by their buddies.what was it..some 100 million last century..boggles the mind..wonder how many times creeps like this have been over to Nam and helped in the rice fields etc for those poor souls they helped become slaves..yeh sure!!!! In the next world evil men like this will feel the torture they helped and abbated to those millions….smirk and all…