How to resist tyranny, exhibit no. 1

[asakiyume]

Pete Seeger before the House Committee on Un-American Affairs, August 18, 1955 (Thanks to wakanomori for this)

MR. TAVENNER: The Committee has information obtained in part from the Daily Worker indicating that, over a period of time, especially since December of 1945, you took part in numerous entertainment features. I have before me a photostatic copy of the June 20, 1947, issue of the Daily Worker. In a column entitled "What's On" appears this advertisement: "Tonight-Bronx, hear Peter Seeger and his guitar, at Allerton Section housewarming." May I ask you whether or not the Allerton Section was a section of the Communist Party?

MR. SEEGER: Sir, I refuse to answer that question whether it was a quote from the New York Times or the Vegetarian Journal.

MR. TAVENNER: I don't believe there is any more authoritative document in regard to the Communist Party than its official organ, the Daily Worker.

MR. SCHERER: He hasn't answered the question, and he merely said he wouldn't answer whether the article appeared in the New York Times or some other magazine. I ask you to direct the witness to answer the question.

CHAIRMAN WALTER: I direct you to answer.

MR. SEEGER: Sir, the whole line of questioning-

CHAIRMAN WALTER: You have only been asked one question, so far.

MR. SEEGER: I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked, especially under such compulsion as this. I would be very glad to tell you my life if you want to hear of it.


. . .

MR. TAVENNER: I have before me a photostatic copy of the April 30, 1948, issue of the Daily Worker which carries under the same title of "What's On," an advertisement of a "May Day Rally: For Peace, Security and Democracy." The advertisement states: "Are you in a fighting mood? Then attend the May Day rally." Expert speakers are stated to be slated for the program, and then follows a statement, "Entertainment by Pete Seeger." At the bottom appears this: "Auspices Essex County Communist Party," and at the top, "Tonight, Newark, N.J." Did you lend your talent to the Essex County Communist Party on the occasion indicated by this article from the Daily Worker?

MR. SEEGER: Mr. Walter, I believe I have already answered this question, and the same answer.

CHAIRMAN WALTER: The same answer. In other words, you mean that you decline to answer because of the reasons stated before?

MR. SEEGER: I gave my answer, sir.

CHAIRMAN WALTER: What is your answer?

MR. SEEGER: You see, sir, I feel-

CHAIRMAN WALTER: What is your answer?

MR. SEEGER: I will tell you what my answer is.

(Witness consulted with counsel [Paul L. Ross].)

I feel that in my whole life I have never done anything of any conspiratorial nature and I resent very much and very deeply the implication of being called before this Committee that in some way because my opinions may be different from yours, or yours, Mr. Willis, or yours, Mr. Scherer, that I am any less of an American than anybody else. I love my country very deeply, sir.

CHAIRMAN WALTER: Why don't you make a little contribution toward preserving its institutions?

MR. SEEGER: I feel that my whole life is a contribution. That is why I would like to tell you about it.

. . .

MR. TAVENNER: Did you hear Mr. George Hall's testimony yesterday in which he stated that, as an actor, the special contribution that he was expected to make to the Communist Party was to use his talents by entertaining at Communist Party functions? Did you hear that testimony?

MR. SEEGER: I didn't hear it, no.

MR. TAVENNER: It is a fact that he so testified. I want to know whether or not you were engaged in a similar type of service to the Communist Party in entertaining at these features.

(Witness consulted with counsel.)

MR. SEEGER: I have sung for Americans of every political persuasion, and I am proud that I never refuse to sing to an audience, no matter what religion or color of their skin, or situation in life. I have sung in hobo jungles, and I have sung for the Rockefellers, and I am proud that I have never refused to sing for anybody. That is the only answer I can give along that line.

. . .

MR. SEEGER: Would you repeat the question? I don't even know what the last question was, and I thought I have answered all of them up to now.

MR. TAVENNER: What you stated was not in response to the question.

CHAIRMAN WALTER: Proceed with the questioning, Mr. Tavenner.

MR. TAVENNER: I believe, Mr. Chairman, with your permission, I will have the question read to him. I think it should be put in exactly the same form.

(Whereupon the reporter read the pending question as above recorded.)

MR. SEEGER: "These features": what do you mean? Except for the answer I have already given you, I have no answer. The answer I gave you you have, don't you? That is, that I am proud that I have sung for Americans of every political persuasion, and I have never refused to sing for anybody because I disagreed with their political opinion, and I am proud of the fact that my songs seem to cut across and find perhaps a unifying thing, basic humanity,and that is why I would love to be able to tell you about these songs, because I feel that you would agree with me more, sir. I know many beautiful songs from your home county, Carbon, and Monroe, and I hitchhiked through there and stayed in the homes of miners.

. . .

MR. TAVENNER: I hand you a photograph which was taken of the May Day parade in New York City in 1952, which shows the front rank of a group of individuals, and one is in a uniform with military cap and insignia, and carrying a placard entitled CENSORED. Will you examine it please and state whether or not that is a photograph of you?

(A document was handed to the witness.)

MR. SEEGER: It is like Jesus Christ when asked by Pontius Pilate, "Are you king of the Jews?"

CHAIRMAN WALTER: Stop that.

MR. SEEGER: Let someone else identify that picture.

MR. SCHERER: I ask that he be directed to answer the question.

CHAIRMAN WALTER: I direct you to answer the question.

MR. SEEGER: Do I identify this photograph?

CHAIRMAN WALTER: Yes.

MR. SEEGER: I say let someone else identify it.

Because Pete Seeger didn't take the fifth, he was found guilty of contempt for failing to answer the committee's questions and sentenced to a year in prison--a conviction that was overturned on appeal.

Source: peteseeger.net

Comments

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

So much courage.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yep.

[yamamanama.livejournal.com]

Even people who pleaded the fifth were sentenced to prison.
No organization should be given that kind of power.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I so agree.

[superversive.livejournal.com]

‘Pleading the fifth’ is merely a form of refusing to testify. People who do so can be, are, and ought to be (if guilty of offences for which the punishment is a prison sentence) sent to prison despite pleading the fifth, if they are found guilty on other evidence. If pleading the fifth were a sure ticket to acquittal, every single criminal brought before a judge would do it, and your entire system of criminal law would break down.

[marmota-monax.livejournal.com]

When I was 15 years old, I attended a summer residency program for artistically gifted students, approximately half of whom were poor (I fell in that half). About mid-way through the summer, it was announced that Pete would be coming for the day. I knew who he was, despite my tender age, but not much else. In the morning he did an intensive workshop with the music students (I was there for other disciplines), and then after lunch Pete gave us a three-hour-long, wonderful, private, and intimate performance that included music and telling us about his life, experiences, and inspiration. We all sat around him and listened and laughed and cried.

It was a life-changing experience for me. From that day forward, I became politically aware and active. I've cherished my good fortune in meeting Pete in such a meaningful circumstance. He was a great, great man.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

What a wonderful, wonderful story. Thank you so much for sharing that. Wow. Brings tears to the eyes.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Applauding at this very long remove. It seems so strange that I was alive at that time, but all I picked up was the anxiety, and nothing of what was actually happening.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I can completely understand that. You were a kid--the anxiety would have been what registered. How could you understand more at what? Age five or six?

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

If more people had simply refused to answer, that ghastly kangaroo court would have collapsed within weeks.

Democracy? Hah!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Horrifying how fear is a catalyst for the destruction of liberty. (Fear is responsible for *lots* of bad things.)

[superversive.livejournal.com]

In fact, HUAC was not any kind of court. It could browbeat and intimidate, but it could not administer legal punishment. George Kennan said of this period in his memoirs: ‘Whoever could get his case before a court was generally assured of meeting there with a level of justice no smaller than at any other time in recent American history.’

What HUAC could do was give a defendant bad publicity, which would lead to ostracism and blacklisting (official or unofficial). In highly public occupations like the entertainment business, this could and did destroy careers. But it was not the actions of HUAC that destroyed the careers; it was the reactions of studio moguls and industry bosses, who had always treated their talent like cattle, and weren’t averse to killing a few of those cattle to make themselves look appropriately patriotic.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

In my day of trouble, I shall remember his example.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Me too, should that day ever come.

[sovay]

derspatchel showed me that link last night. Everything about it was amazing.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Wakanomori pointed it out to me yesterday, but I only sat down and read it today. Breathtaking and inspiring.

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

Oh to have the courage and presence of mind not to crumble when in a similar situation!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Absolute courage. What a mensch.

Nine

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

*nodding*

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Thanks for sharing!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

My pleasure!

[fpb.livejournal.com]

In 1955, Peter Seeger took his orders from Stalin. This may be your idea of how to resist tyranny, but it certainly is not mine.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I assume there's a shorthand here, and that you're saying that anyone who was in the US Communisty Party took orders from Stalin, or, anyway, from the Soviet Union? I'd have to read up on the history of the US Communist Party, but my instinct tells me that it's maybe slightly more nuanced than that. But I would bet that probably the Soviet Union did have an input. … Stalin, though, died in 1953, and according to Pete Seeger's bio here (http://peteseeger.net/wp/?page_id=10), he left the party around 1950.

From the way Seeger lived his life, I have the impression that his interest in Communism was more in the communitarian principles than in the collectivizing, state-run apparatuses that became tools of oppression in the Soviet Union. But everyone has weaknesses and blind spots, and it's possible he ignored or overlooked the sorry situation in the Soviet Union. But the fact that he (maybe) failed to recognize and oppose tyranny in one sphere doesn't invalidate (to my mind) his struggle against it in another.

[superversive.livejournal.com]

The American Communist Party did in fact take orders directly from Moscow, as did all Communist Parties in the world at that time, except for Yugoslavia and China. (Tito and Mao had made their own revolutions and owed nothing to the Soviet Union; they could afford to take their own lines.) Even on quite minor issues, any decision of a national C.P. would be summarily overruled by Moscow if it conflicted with the CPSU party line.

By voluntarily joining the Communist Party, Mr. Seeger made himself the servant of the most monstrous regime and ideology in the world, with the sole possible exception of Nazi Germany and Nazism. By remaining a Party member until 1950, he gave his implicit support to Communism in its most aggressive imperialist period, the five years after World War II, in which Soviet-backed regimes imposed Communist rule on roughly a third of the world’s population. It does him credit that he left the Party; but it would have been better if he had left sooner.

The late Frederik Pohl, for instance, was a C.P. member in 1939, when the Party line called for resistance to Fascism; but after the sudden reversal of line owing to the Nazi-Soviet Pact (from ‘stop fascism’ to ‘stay out of the imperialist war’), he wisely and honourably left. By 1941, when the Party line flip-flopped again, he was in a position to laugh sourly at the gullibility of those he had left behind.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

*Nodding*

Lots of people joined the Communist Party because they were searching for a way to address the inequities they saw in this country. I don't know how they reconciled their communitarian ideals with the news out of the Soviet Union; I suppose the wrongs and injustices they saw close at hand made them eager to believe in an alternative that claimed to champion the downtrodden and the dispossessed. The fact that reality was playing out differently in the places where Communism was the state ideology--yeah, how did they deal with that? Different people in different ways, I suppose.

It's hard when your ideas of how things should work don't match up with how, in fact, things do work (or, at any rate, are working at any given point). It's tempting to keep making excuses and to say, well, this would work if only-- (etc.)

[c-maxx.livejournal.com]

Until they start putting "vote NO" or "none of the above" or "start your own government" on ballots, we may sometimes find ourselves short on effective choices.

"the American Communist Party [sometimes] took orders from Moscow" is not equivalent to "Pete Seeger took orders from Stalin". We need to separate our cases- subjects of examination.

In 1968 I had a home-made bumper sticker that said "Dubcek for President". This neither made me a Communist, Czechoslovakian, nor did it give me a candidate I could vote for as he was neither 1. here, nor 2. qualified. I did mean to indicate an opinion, which may have been some of Seeger's motivation, very different from "I took orders from Prague".

[deborahjross.livejournal.com]

Wonderful!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I was glad to have had it pointed out to me.