Maggie's Farm

Having passed that embarrassing moment, Howard moved on to the subject of how the Left in America has always stood for pacifism and resistance to imperialist America's foreign adventures. He cited one of his mentors, Eugene V. Debs and his sojourn in federal prison for refusing to register for the draft during World War I.
At that point, I raised my hand and asked him the following question: "Professor Zinn, in May of 1941 your friend, Pete Seeger, produced an album called Songs for John Doe which was a collection of blue collar songs that included one called The Ballad of October 16th. [At the time, Pete Seeger had formed his first commercial band called the Almanac Singers.] That song demonstrated yours and Pete's pacifist philosophy by excoriating Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt for urging United States entry into World War II to fight Hitler. Shortly after the album's release, you and Pete were desperately trying to retrieve all the copies to take them out of circulation. Exactly what happened between May and June of 1941 to turn you from devoted anti-war activists into sabre-rattling patriots, resulting in your enlisting in the Army Air Force as a bombardier?"

An angry, bemused pall fell over the room. Someone next to me growled, "Who are you?"

A lengthy silence from Professor Zinn finally ended in a muted response: "Well, we've all made mistakes in our lives." He was referring, of course, to his oft-stated repudiation of his role in World War II as a "death dealer" from on high.

I decided to fill in the rest for the stunned audience. "What you mean is that on June 22, 1941, your country was invaded. And by that, I mean the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. On that date over a million German soldiers poured across the border in what was to prove the largest military aggression in history. Suddenly, Roosevelt became your hero because he was now Stalin's ally. It seems that pacifism has its limits, even for you. And that's how you went from orthodox pacifist to imperialist war monger."

Silence from the Professor. Shouts and threats from the audience. I began to move to the exit. I escaped.

"Innocently I became a member of the Communist Party, and when they said fight for peace, I did, and when they said fight Hitler, I did. I got out in '49, though...I should have left much earlier. It was stupid of me not to. My father had got out in '38, when he read the testimony of the trials in Moscow, and he could tell they were forced confessions...... I thought Stalin was the brave secretary Stalin, and had no idea how cruel a leader he was."

Somehow, though, they didn't quite find room to detail Seeger's long habit of following the Stalinist line. Take the best example, his twists and turns during the FDR administration. 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 that called Franklin D Roosevelt a warmongering lackey of JP Morgan.

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

Then within months Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. The album was pulled from the market and reportedly destroyed. The Almanac Singers quickly produced a new album, Dear Mr President, that took a different view of FDR and the war:

Now, Mr President
You're commander-in-chief of our armed forces
The ships and the planes and the tanks and the horses
I guess you know best just where I can fight ...
So what I want is you to give me a gun
So we can hurry up and get the job done!

As the ex-communist scholar Ronald Radosh puts it, "Seeger was antiwar during the period of the Nazi-Soviet Pact; pro-war after the Soviet Union was the ally of the United States; and anti-war during the years of the Cold War and Vietnam".

My reply is that changing one's political opinions on a dime, when Uncle Joe required such a change, is nothing to be proud of.

I also recall from my youth how the same people who were fulminating against "FBI Witch Hunts" were also shouting to the rafters that Alger Hiss was innocent. Weinstein's book in 1978 & Venona files put paid to Alger Hiss's innocence. Witch hunt, switch hunt.

Do you consider it unfair that Pete Seeger's career suffered from reaction to his being a Communist mouthpiece?
What is your opinion of what I previously wrote?:My reply is that changing one's political opinions on a dime, when Uncle Joe required such a change, is nothing to be proud of.