R.I.P. Pete Seger

Pete Seeger wrote and sang songs asking FDR not to fight the Nazis, because the USSR was Hitler's ally.
He was a Stalin apologist most of his adult life - including singing other propagandist songs that covered up Stalin's treatment of Russian Jews.

Here is a story about some of it, if interested
He loved him some Stalin
 
Joe Fan is correct

Sad to read of anyone's passing but this man hated the values America stood for and fought for.
How people can confuse wanting opportunity for everyone including the common man with communism is amazing yet he did .
 
Yep. A dead communist. Good. Shame he didn't die before now.

Not every death is tragic or a loss. In this case, it's long overdue.
 
If anyone has any information to the effect that he ever quit being an unrepentant Stalinist I will be happy to read it. Until then, one less Stalinist apologist, which is just as bad as a Hitler admirer in my book.
 
I have been hopping around reading some obits and it seems he left the C Party in 1950 and much later said he was a small c communist. I guess it becomes a capital C when they take over and start shooting the capitalists, starving the kulaks and burning down churches.

He wrote some sweet tunes and was big on civil rights for the black people so I guess I will forgive him but it still bothers me that he tried to silence Bob Dylan for using electricity. Folk music was such garbage, though not as bad as the pop of the day and of today.
 
Some people on this thread need a course in remedial humanity. A singer who had political views you disagreed with -- not a person who overtly oppressed anybody -- has died and your glad he's dead because of his Communist sympathies exhibited 70 something years ago? I don't consider the death a tragedy because Seeger lived a long time and has made contributions that he knew would live long after him. I liked his music and tolerated his politics. I'm glad Saddam Hussein, Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot are dead. I'm not going to be dancing with joy over the deaths of folk singers who may have naively supported them early in their rise to power.
 
I grew up the son of liberal democrats in conservative Dallas of the 1950's. He was one of the heros of my household. He was passionate about his music and his politics like Bob Dylan who followed him. Their passion was what made them great song masters. Neither could sing worth a damn. R.I.P. Pete Seeger.
 
further research shows that he participated in events in support of the Polish Solidarity Union at a time when they were locked in a death struggle with the Stalinists running Poland.

That was noble of him and suggests he was no kind of 'Stalinist the last thirty years at least.

I also found that later in life he said he wished he had left the party ten years earlier than he did in 1950. Thus, he was saying he wished he had left in 1940 or so. The Hitler and Stalin agreement to carve up Poland was in 1939.

He finally saw the light in other words.

RIP Pete Seeger, a fine songwriter with a cruddy voice and a soft spot for the working man.
 
As I understand it, he did say some time in the '90s that he regretted having bought into the Stalin story. The fact that it took him that long apparently is disturbing, but as Crockett pointed out, it was relatively harmless in itself.

The message to me is the idea that whenever you put an entertainer into a position as a voice of social consciousness, you have a real risk of elevating to influential voice someone who is driven by part ideology, part naivety and part ignorance. None of that means you can't remember him as an influential and clearly talented folk singer and appreciate that aspect of his life.
 
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