Members of Pussy Riot receiving the Woody Guthrie Prize in Tulsa Oklahoma on May 6. [Source: Photo courtesy of Jeremy Kuzmarov] As a proponent of peaceful relations with the Soviet Union, Woody Gut…
Woody Guthrie was absolutely a comrade, and he's about the only person I would point to and be like, "He was hiding his power level," because he didn't really even hide it, he just had hillbilly aesthetics and people made/make assumptions. And I don't think those aesthetics were fake or anything, but he definitely saw them as useful and played them up, allowing him to influence people towards leftist ideas and causes without coming across as radical or extreme.
He got fired from a radio station for praising the Soviet invasion of Poland. He wrote "This Land is Your Land," with an often-omitted line, "I saw a sign there, said 'private property,' but on the back side, it didn't say nothing, this land was made for you and me." Not only that, but he explicitly wrote it as a response to "God Bless America," which he said was "overplayed." He once said, "The best thing that I did in 1936 was to sign up with the Communist Party," and, "If you call me a communist, I am very proud because it takes a wise and hard-working person to be a communist." He praised Stalin and never expressed any regret for doing so, and he suddenly switched from anti-war songs to pro-war songs right after Germany invaded the USSR. During the Korean War, he openly expressed his hope for a communist victory. (That's all just from his Wikipedia page tbh)
There's also ofc the famous "This machine kills fascists" and a lot of his WWII songs are supportive of it while very much connecting the war effort to antifascism, like "All Of You Fascists Bound To Lose," and "Tear The Fascists Down."
Then there's the song he wrote about the Ludlow Massacre, with lyrics about the National Guard murdering children while shooting striking coal miners... and then the miners get armed and, well:
The state soldiers jumped us in a wire fence corners,
They did not know we had them guns,
And the Red-neck miners mowed down them troopers,
You should have seen those poor boys run.
"Would be considered the tankiest of tankies," is totally correct. He got away with (edit: I shouldn't say "got away with" considering he was targeted by HUAC and blacklisted, but I just mean in the popular imagination) so much shit just by being like, "Oh you know I'm just a dumb country bumpkin I ain't never got too much schoolin' in, I just calls 'em like I sees 'em, and anyways I just reckon as a redneck hillbilly that things'd be a lot better for us common folk if ol' Uncle Joe hadn't stopped at Berlin." But there's not really any smugness or irony-poisoning or snark to his works. Like he figured out what side he was on and didn't feel the need to justify it to himself or to anyone else, and just committed himself to the role that allowed him to reach people and further the communist agenda. We need a :guthrie-shining:.
At least that's my reading of him. Nobody breathes a word of this to the libs btw.
Woody Guthrie was absolutely a comrade, and he's about the only person I would point to and be like, "He was hiding his power level," because he didn't really even hide it, he just had hillbilly aesthetics and people made/make assumptions. And I don't think those aesthetics were fake or anything, but he definitely saw them as useful and played them up, allowing him to influence people towards leftist ideas and causes without coming across as radical or extreme.
He got fired from a radio station for praising the Soviet invasion of Poland. He wrote "This Land is Your Land," with an often-omitted line, "I saw a sign there, said 'private property,' but on the back side, it didn't say nothing, this land was made for you and me." Not only that, but he explicitly wrote it as a response to "God Bless America," which he said was "overplayed." He once said, "The best thing that I did in 1936 was to sign up with the Communist Party," and, "If you call me a communist, I am very proud because it takes a wise and hard-working person to be a communist." He praised Stalin and never expressed any regret for doing so, and he suddenly switched from anti-war songs to pro-war songs right after Germany invaded the USSR. During the Korean War, he openly expressed his hope for a communist victory. (That's all just from his Wikipedia page tbh)
There's also ofc the famous "This machine kills fascists" and a lot of his WWII songs are supportive of it while very much connecting the war effort to antifascism, like "All Of You Fascists Bound To Lose," and "Tear The Fascists Down."
Then there's the song he wrote about the Ludlow Massacre, with lyrics about the National Guard murdering children while shooting striking coal miners... and then the miners get armed and, well:
"Would be considered the tankiest of tankies," is totally correct. He got away with (edit: I shouldn't say "got away with" considering he was targeted by HUAC and blacklisted, but I just mean in the popular imagination) so much shit just by being like, "Oh you know I'm just a dumb country bumpkin I ain't never got too much schoolin' in, I just calls 'em like I sees 'em, and anyways I just reckon as a redneck hillbilly that things'd be a lot better for us common folk if ol' Uncle Joe hadn't stopped at Berlin." But there's not really any smugness or irony-poisoning or snark to his works. Like he figured out what side he was on and didn't feel the need to justify it to himself or to anyone else, and just committed himself to the role that allowed him to reach people and further the communist agenda. We need a :guthrie-shining:.
At least that's my reading of him. Nobody breathes a word of this to the libs btw.