Didn't care for his politics, but he could play. RIP Pete.
Update:
I do not like speaking bad of the dead. But I am not going to pretend I bought onto all of Pete Seeger's politics (he was [profoundly] wrong on many many things). He was right on some things too. But I will give Pete Seeger this, he was honest and straight up what he was about [I withdraw that, he was not fully honest about his activities for communism. As George Orwell said: "I consider that willingness to criticize Russia and Stalin is the test of intellectual honesty."]. And I share Seeger's love of traditional American music, the Hudson River valley, and his spirit of social justice (even if some of the means of getting there he choose are absolutely wrong). I wish him well and rest in peace Pete. Here are some tweets below Donald Douglas and I got today.
@Sarah_May1 @AmPowerBlog @rsmccain Just a coincidence? Sort of like the hundred million or so who died under Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pot
— Evi L. Bloggerlady (@MsEBL) January 28, 2014
@PeggyBrava @AmPowerBlog @rsmccain @michellemalkin I am glad that was said without malice. But I am pretty sure #PeteSeeger would disapprove
— Evi L. Bloggerlady (@MsEBL) January 28, 2014
The 100+ Million lives lost under communism during Mr. #seeger's lifetime could not be reached for comment @PeggyBrava @AmPowerBlog @MsEBL
— Peter Ingemi (@DaTechGuyblog) January 28, 2014
I cannot lay the deaths of millions communist victims at Pete Seeger's feet (he did not participate in them) but once he became aware of them he was obligated to speak out. And he only reluctantly and sparingly criticized communism in later years. He says he confronted his Communist friends in private after he "drifted away" from the movement. I am sure he did. But would people show the same spirit of celebration for someone aligned with the Nazi party who said that? Pete Ingemi makes a very valid comparison with Seeger and Leni Riefenstahl. As former socialist and communist traveler George Orwell once said about Soviet Union: "There is something wrong with a regime that requires a pyramid of corpses every few years."Orwell also noted this (which applies directly to Seeger in the years leading up to WWII): "Since pacifists have more freedom of action in countries where traces of democracy survive, pacifism can act more effectively against democracy than for it. Objectively the pacifist is pro-Nazi."
Just a reminder Pete #Seeger was opposed to US fighting the Nazis ...right up until the day the USSR was attacked http://t.co/ZZxInxP1sr
— Peter Ingemi (@DaTechGuyblog) January 28, 2014
While Seeger did eventually "drift away" from communism, very few on the left acknowledged that their actions in opposing the Vietnam war contributed to the chaos and madness in Cambodia a few years later. Unintended consequences, but foreseeable nevertheless. People on the right put on blinders too and have difficulty acknowledging mistakes they made. But why is it only those on the right are ever called out on it and those on the left mostly get a pass? Jim Lindgren has a good post at Volokh Conspiracy-WaPo
JOHN FUND: Pete Seeger, Totalitarian Troubadour. “We shouldn’t forget that Pete Seeger was Communism’s pied piper.”
Related: Spengler: Pete Seeger: A Mean-Spirited and Vengeful Recollection. “I was not just a Pete Seeger fan, but a to-the-hammer-born, born-and-bred cradle fan of Pete Seeger. With those credentials, permit me to take note of his passing with the observation that he was a fraud, a phony, a poseur, an imposter. The notion of folk music he espoused was a put-on from beginning to end. There is no such thing as an American ‘folk.’”
Related: We Are The Folksong Army. “It sounds more ethnic if it ain’t good English, and it don’t even have to rhyme.”
Related: Spengler: Pete Seeger: A Mean-Spirited and Vengeful Recollection. “I was not just a Pete Seeger fan, but a to-the-hammer-born, born-and-bred cradle fan of Pete Seeger. With those credentials, permit me to take note of his passing with the observation that he was a fraud, a phony, a poseur, an imposter. The notion of folk music he espoused was a put-on from beginning to end. There is no such thing as an American ‘folk.’”
Related: We Are The Folksong Army. “It sounds more ethnic if it ain’t good English, and it don’t even have to rhyme.”
Posted at 10:00 am by Glenn Reynolds 
Ed Driscoll: Seeger was a Communist trifecta... 
He only admitted, what ?, 5 years ago Stalin was a bad guy.
ReplyDeleteAnd there were better banjoists.
I thought he denounced Communism in the fifties. Like I said, he was delusional about politics, and he was a useful idiot for many evil folks, but that said I still liked him (I like Woodie Guthrie too).
DeletePete was a pretty fucking good banjo player. Don't get fooled by the glamour of the three finger players (which most morons do). Pete's clawhammer style is every bit as capable, in a lot of ways more so because it's capable of playing with feeling versus just trying to blind with speed.
Delete