Pete Seeger Passes Away At 94

[Leaffan]

@PastTense

Here’s something about “Get up and go”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3J0Q5SMTEM0

The Rutles, I assume? (I’m blocked at work.)

[Esox_Lucius]

@puddleglum

Joining the communists because they were against racial discrimination is like joining the KKK because you are against rape.
By the time he joined the party the USSR had commited the terror famine in the Ukraine which killed 3 times the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. That was right during the time of the show trials in Moscow. Even though the worst was yet to come, communism was already guilty of killing people by the tens of millions. This was not just a youthful flirtation, even though he left the party after fifteen years of so, he remained a self described communist all his life. Even after the full horror of the gulags had been revealed, even after the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and even after the Killing Fields. Idealism is no excuse for aligning with the most bloody movement in the history of mankind.

You’re still conflating the ideology of communism with the worst abuses that some political leaders carried out in its name. Stalin and Pol Pot weren’t made bloodthirsty psychopaths by communism any more than they were by atheism, unless you believe the propaganda of the Cold War. It should be plainly obvious that they didn’t give a shit about human equality of any kind. This is what Seeger has said about being a “self-described communist all his life”:
*“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.”

“I’m still a communist in the sense that I don’t believe the world will survive with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.” *
Sixty years ago, he made the mistake of thinking that just because a country had the label “communist” that it embodied the ideals that he held, but he learned his lesson. You’d do well to follow his example and learn the same lesson about labels.

[Esox_Lucius]

@Leaffan

The Rutles, I assume? (I’m blocked at work.)

It’s Seeger in a more light-hearted vein. You should watch it when you get home.

[Leaffan]

@Esox_Lucius

It’s Seeger in a more light-hearted vein. You should watch it when you get home.

Thanks.

[puddleglum]

@Esox_Lucius

You’re still conflating the ideology of communism with the worst abuses that some political leaders carried out in its name. Stalin and Pol Pot weren’t made bloodthirsty psychopaths by communism any more than they were by atheism, unless you believe the propaganda of the Cold War. It should be plainly obvious that they didn’t give a shit about human equality of any kind. This is what Seeger has said about being a “self-described communist all his life”:
*“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.”

“I’m still a communist in the sense that I don’t believe the world will survive with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.” *
Sixty years ago, he made the mistake of thinking that just because a country had the label “communist” that it embodied the ideals that he held, but he learned his lesson. You’d do well to follow his example and learn the same lesson about labels.

Stalin, Pol Pot, Lenin, Mao, Castro, Mengistu, it must be just coincidence that bloodthirsty psychopaths just happen to become leaders of communists countries. If there were a couple of counter-examples where countries became better off after communism, it would be one thing. However, everytime a country becomes communist poverty and genocide follow. That is because of a defect in communism, not bad luck in leadership. Lots of people of that era were attracted to the siren song of communism. Those with intelligence and a modicum of human decency left. To still call yourself a communist after communism killed 100 million people in under a century if morally indefensible.
If he was so concerned about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer he should have done a better job getting royalties to the guy who actually wrote “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”.

[Esox_Lucius]

It’s a pity that Seeger didn’t have the foresight to have your hindsight.

And that’s all I’m going to say about it in this thread.

[Ulf_the_Unwashed]

You certainly seem to know a great deal about him, puddleglum–more than I would guess most people, fans or otherwise, would know. Did you do the research yourself just now, have you been saving up his controversial statements for some time now, or are you on a mailing list of some kind? I am actually quite curious.

(I’m not a particular fan of Seeger’s, but I don’t dislike him either.)

[Bridget_Burke]

I quoted Dave Van Ronk’s appreciative essay on Seeger some posts ago. More from The Mayor of Bleeker Street on his experiences as a young Leftist:

…within a few weeks was signed up as a full-fledged member of the Libertarian League. (In those prelapsarian days, the word “libertarian” was still in the hands of its rightful owners: anarchists, syndicalists, council communists, and suchlike. The mean-spirited, reactionary assholes who are currently dragging it through the mud were not even a blot on the horizon. We should have taken out a copyright.) The league was a loose-knit anarchist group run by an elected steering committee. Discipline was voluntary—hell, everything was voluntary. It was almost purely a propaganda operation, mainly concentrating on running the forum and publishing an eight-page newsletter, Views and Comments. Unlike the Marxists, who expected “History” to descend like a deus ex machina and pull their chestnuts out of the fire, the anarchists knew how long the odds were, and they went about their business with a kind of go-to-hell, cheerful, existential despair.

Later,

…I continued to devote myself to other literary ventures, acting as editor of a slim, mimeographed folio titled The Bosses’ Songbook: Songs to Stifle the Flames of Discontent. The genesis of The Bosses’ Songbook began with Roy Berkeley, who had written a series of parodies of old folk chestnuts in the Almanac-People’s Artists style, but turned around to make them the targets. His masterpiece was “The Ballad of Pete Seeger,” a viciously funny reworking of “The Wreck of the Old 97” that began “They gave him his orders at Party head-quarters, / Saying, ‘Pete, you’re way behind the times. / This is not ’38, it is 1957, / There’s a change in that old Party Line.’”

So, Dave Van Ronk knew all about Seeger’s political failings–although he was not critiquing from the blacklisting Commie-baiting side. But he truly loved him & considered him a great man. Life is complicated & Van Ronk was there. Really, anybody interested in the era needs to read his book…