Oceania-Has-Always-Been-at-War-with-Eurasia! Pete Seeger Blogging

Oh dear. I love Pete Seeger. But Cato Vice President David Boaz does not, has Pete Seeger in his sights, and assigns him to the Guenter Grass brigade:

Comment is free: Stalin's songbird: The New Yorker has another of its affectionate profiles... the folk singer Pete Seeger.... Somehow, though, they didn't quite find room to detail Seeger's long habit of following the Stalinist line.... Seeger tells Wilkinson that when he was at Harvard during the late 1930s he was trying to "stop Hitler" and he became disgusted with a professor who counselled appeasement. Maybe so. But after the Hitler-Stalin pact, he and his group the Almanac Singers put out an album titled "Songs of John Doe".... [W]ithin months Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. The album was pulled from the market.... The Almanac Singers quickly produced a new album, "Dear Mr President", that took a different view...

---

After the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact, but before the June 22, 1941 Nazi invasion of Russia:

Sunday Worker May 18, 1941: "SONGS FOR JOHN DOE" RECORDED

The ballads of a people are the songs of its working folk. Wherever people have toiled and struggled, ballads have been sung to commemorate their toil and battle.

The Songs for John Doe (Almanac Record Co., three 10-inch discs, $2) are the music of America's fight against the raging imperialist war. Remarkably sung by the Almanac Singers, an excellent group of young balladeers, these seven songs tell of the issue by issue campaign waged by the peace forces of our nation in the past year. Some of them are old tunes for many years, some are new, created by the singers themselves. All of them are authentic American ballads packing a real punch.

In "The Strange Death of John Doe", first side of the album, the Almanac Singers have produced a tragic fragment that will be sung for many a year to come. Told, as are all songs, in simple people's language, this ballad has as bitter an impact as any in the whole literature of people's songs.

Also included in the album are "Billy Boy" and "Liza Jane", both with a new set of words. The others are the Ballad of October 16, Plow Under, C for Conscription and Washington Breakdown. Some are light and savagely ridicule the rulers of America - Plow Under and Washington Breakdown - others speak of the problems of our people faced with the threat to drag them into war and all bluntly rip away the false whiskers with which the warmongers seek to disguise themselves.

The album is very suitable for performance before large bodies of people - peace rallies, union meetings and other gatherings. Simple songs of peace, they should be brought into every town and hamlet of this country, Everyone who would fight this war should consider this group of ballads a 'must.'

Songs of John Doe: Washington Breakdown:

Franklin D., listen to me,
You ain't a-gonna send me 'cross the sea,
'Cross the sea, 'cross the sea, You ain't a-gonna send me 'cross the sea.
You may say it's for defense,
But that kinda talk that I'm against.
I'm against, I'm against,
That kinda talk ain't got no sense.

Lafayette, we are here, we're gonna stay right over here...

Marcantonio is the best, but I wouldn't give a nickel for all the rest...

J. P. Morgan's big and plump, eighty-four inches around the rump...

Wendell Wilkie and Franklin D., seems to me they both agree,
Both agreed, both agreed,
Both agree on killin' me.

Songs of John Doe: Plow Under:

Remember when the AAA
Killed a million hogs a day?
Instead of hogs, it's men today -
Plow the fourth one under!
Plow under, plow under,
Plow under every fourth American boy!...

[...]

Now the politicians rant,
"A boy's no better than a cotton plant;"
But we are here to say you can't
Plow the fourth one under!

Ronald D. Cohen & Dave Samuelson, liner notes for "Songs for Political Action," Bear Family Records BCD 15720 JL, 1996, pp. 77-78:

Songs for John Doe (The Almanac Singers) : In early March 1941 a group was organized to finance and produce the Almanacs' first record album, "Songs for John Doe." Among its members were veteran record producer John Hammond, Earl Robinson and Keynote label owner Eric Bernay (nee Bernstein). The principals invited potential investors to a Sunday, March 19 Almanac performance at Peter Lyons' home north of Washington Square.

"We want you to come and hear the songs, give your suggestions, and contribute toward underwriting the albums," a letter explained. "Those who join us in pledging money will receive a corresponding number of albums which may be distributed to the cause of peace, and in the cause of a new music which has arisen out of the people." The event raised $300 -- a considerable sum for those days.

The day before the session, Seeger approached Josh White about joining them. Not only could White enhance the trio's music, but he would bring a welcome racial diversity as well. According to Lampell, Sam Gary, the Carolinians' bass singer, also joined the session. Six masters ["'C' For Conscription" & "Washington Breakdown" were recorded as one take] were recorded in a two or three hour session in a small Central Park West studio in late March or early April 1941....

Bernay released the album in May 1941. Fearing political repercussions, he was reluctant to release it on Keynote, so "Songs for John Doe" appeared on the "Almanac" label. On June 22, 1941, Hitler's armies invaded the Soviet Union. With the non-agression pact broken, pacifism was out of the question. Bernay quickly pulled "Songs for John Doe" and Paul Robeson's Spring Song from distribution and reportedly destroyed the remaining inventory...

Comments

[Robert Waldmann]

But that was long ago and he was young then. He might have reformed without admitting he was wrong. Marcantonio by the way was Gino Marcantonio the only communist congressman in US history (or so I heard from Brad DeLong once).

[Bloix]

David Boaz makes a false comparison when he asks us to imagine a former Nazi receiving the sort of treatment that Seeger receives in the New Yorker. Nazism never took root in American soil. Ideologies just as evil did, of course, and there are Americans who believed in them but came to understand that they were false. Sen Robert Byrd is one example; Hugo Black is another. It is very likely that, when Sen Byrd dies (as even he must do, eventually) there will be an article filled with heartfelt praise for him in the New Yorker.

As for Seeger, he was 21 in 1941. Anyone who cared at all about racial equality in the pre-WWII era was strongly attracted to Communism, because it was the only anti-racist political party in the country. The Democrats depended on rabid racists in every national election, and the Republicans had made their deal with the devil in 1876. It is not in the least surprising that Seeger joined the communist party. The key facts are:(1)that he quit it by the time he was 30, and never lied about his past (he would not take the 5th before HUAC, and instead refused to testify based on his First Amendment right of association - a virtual admission that he had been a communist and a refusal to name names); and (2) that in his long life he has done more for racial equality, environmental protection, women's rights, and social justice than any other performing artist in the history of America.

[M. carey]

Ah, yes; the mysterious workings of the Party Line. We haven't seen it like since then- except for during the past six years.

[DILBERT DOGBERT]

Interesting about Pete.
Does Cato have anything about the members of the elite that belonged to the German American Bund? - America First?
A lot of people were very impressed by Hitler.
There might be some interesting material that Cato could remind us of. Lindberg comes to mind.

[DILBERT DOGBERT]

Interesting about Pete.
Does Cato have anything about the members of the elite that belonged to the German American Bund? - America First?
A lot of people were very impressed by Hitler.
There might be some interesting material that Cato could remind us of. Lindberg comes to mind.

[DILBERT DOGBERT]

Interesting about Pete.
Does Cato have anything about the members of the elite that belonged to the German American Bund? - America First?
A lot of people were very impressed by Hitler.
There might be some interesting material that Cato could remind us of. Lindberg comes to mind.

[DILBERT DOGBERT]

Interesting about Pete.
Does Cato have anything about the members of the elite that belonged to the German American Bund? - America First?
A lot of people were very impressed by Hitler.
There might be some interesting material that Cato could remind us of. Lindberg comes to mind.

[DILBERT DOGBERT]

Finally figured out how the repeat comments get posted.
When I hit the back button in Firefox a pop up box comes up asking if I want to leave an encripted page. I just randomly push yes or cancel cause I don't know what in the hell the program is asking. If you go thru this process a couple of times trying to get out of the comments page you will have posted multiples of the same comment. Please fix Mr Professor.
To get back to the main page I have to go back to bookmarks or click on the "main" button at the top of the page.

[robertdfeinman]

Pot meet kettle:

Instead of discussing Seeger's attitudes from 65 years ago perhaps Boaz would like to explain the present funding of Cato:

"The Cato Institute has been supported by:

* Castle Rock Foundation (Formerly Coors Foundation)
* Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation
* Earhart Foundation
* JM Foundation
* John M. Olin Foundation, Inc.
* Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation
* Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
* Scaife Foundations (Sarah Mellon Scaife, Carthage) "

These aren't "libertarians". These are right wing oligarchs who are buying a veneer of intellectualism to cover their true intentions. It's so easy to buy the soul of an ideologue they sell themselves out so cheaply.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Boaz doesn't mention that Seeger left the Communist Party in 1950. I had to go to Wikipedia to find that out.

[anne]

Among wild conservatives pernicious characterizations are always in order, whether of John Kerry or Pete Seeger or Paul Robeson or John Kenneth Galbraith, who was of course attacked by Joseph McCarthy. Especially in order at present is attacking Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, but here Pete Seeger and friends are the subject of attack.

[RW]

Perhaps Boaz thinks having both the son and grandson of a Nazi collaborator (e.g., http://tinyurl.com/yczy9n) elected President of the United States is an inferior reward compared to praise in the New Yorker?

Now those were the days my friends! Slave labor, money laundering, war profiteering, all had better names and were integral to the portfolios of all the better families.

If Cato can resurrect an impoverished young American musician's affiliation with Communism in the 1940's as if it had meaning I'm sure they're innate sense of fairness and balance guarantees forthright discussion of wealthy Nazi collaborators in America during the 1940's too. Right?

[Bruce]

According to the New Republic a couple of decades ago, one of the anti-Stalinist leftist folk singers of the early 1940s put out a song saying that Seeger would insist on carrying an umbrella in New York if it was raining at the time in Moscow. (Not that I ever had any use for anyone who made a career out of writing such deliberately simple-minded songs. Ugh.)

[Count Cant]

I'd just like to put in a plug for Malvina Reynold's version of "The Little Red Hen,"

which ends with the beleaguered biddy singing:

"I've plowed and planted this grain of wheat,
thems that works not, shall not eat!
That's my credo," the little bird said,
and that's why they called her Red.

It's a rollicking good tune, even if the politics is all wrong.

[andres]

Hah. I've always found it ironic that "he who does not work shall not eat" is a slogan of both the Russian Bolsheviks and of today's conservative economists (eg Gilder and Murray; they've never used the slogan in so many words, but their books argue exactly that).