Seeger’s Stalinism
Commentary Magazine ^ | January 21, 2009 | James Kirchick
One hates to dampen the feelings of national euphoria that have taken hold over the past few days, but there’s one moment from the week’s festivities that still sticks in my craw: the worshipful attention heaped upon Pete Seeger, icon of American folk music and lapsed Stalinist.
Seeger was a prominent campaigner in the struggle for African-American civil rights, and his legacy there ought be applauded. But racial equality was not the only cause to which Seeger committed himself. International communism, and in particular its Stalinist variant, was an equal, if not more, significant cause in Seeger’s public life. He was “Stalin’s songbird,” as David Boaz describes, writing about how Seeger zigged and zagged, with the rest of American communists in the 1930’s and 1940’s, in blind obedience to orders from Moscow. Seeger’s vaunted opposition to American “militarism” has persuaded him to oppose U.S. military intervention wherever and whenever it has occurred, including, for instance, the mission to displace the Taliban.
Commentary Magazine ^ | January 21, 2009 | James Kirchick
One hates to dampen the feelings of national euphoria that have taken hold over the past few days, but there’s one moment from the week’s festivities that still sticks in my craw: the worshipful attention heaped upon Pete Seeger, icon of American folk music and lapsed Stalinist.
Seeger was a prominent campaigner in the struggle for African-American civil rights, and his legacy there ought be applauded. But racial equality was not the only cause to which Seeger committed himself. International communism, and in particular its Stalinist variant, was an equal, if not more, significant cause in Seeger’s public life. He was “Stalin’s songbird,” as David Boaz describes, writing about how Seeger zigged and zagged, with the rest of American communists in the 1930’s and 1940’s, in blind obedience to orders from Moscow. Seeger’s vaunted opposition to American “militarism” has persuaded him to oppose U.S. military intervention wherever and whenever it has occurred, including, for instance, the mission to displace the Taliban.