Okay, so, I remember reading online how American folk singer Woody Guthrie held nazi sympathies during the early part of world war 2Woody supported Stalin and the USSR and as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact developed a liking towards the NSDAP and even wrote a song praising the joint invasion of PolandI can't remember at what point it was during the war but eventually he realized the nazis were fascist bastards and knocked on the door of one of his friends that shared his views and basically said "we got to switch sides now"Now, the reason I'm making this thread is because I can't find fuck all related to this It was on his wikipedia page, various online biographies and articles and even a scholarly articleNow I can't find anything mentioning itDoes anyone else remember this shit?
>>18002164What a fucking cringelord that guy was.
I assume it was like that Trumbo cunt, their beliefs on Nazi Germany followed whatever the current party line was in Moscow.
>>18002207Everyone outside Nazi germany was indifferent to what they did within their country so long as they kept to themselves essentially. “If we see Germany is winning we should help Russia and if Russia is winning we help Germany” - Harry Truman
>>18002164It's talked about here.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=This_Land_Is_Your_Land&wprov=rarw1
>>18002540>attacking President Roosevelt's loans to Finland in defense against the Soviets, and ridiculing Lend-Lease aid to the United Kingdom. >By 1944, after Germany had invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Guthrie returned to vigorous support for U.S. involvement in Europe and a more anti-nationalism stanceWhat absolute dickMay he rest in piss
He was never pro Nazi but there was the awkward period for American commies after the Molotov Ribbentrop pact where they couldn’t ally with the fascists they spent years fighting, so they came out for “peace” and denounced FDR the warmonger and Lend Lease to Britain. Guthrie and the Almanac Singers cut an album of peace songs that was quickly shelved once Hitler invaded Russia. There was never any real alliance but both the far left and the America First right were hardcore peacemongers together for a minute.
>>18002668That makes senseThank you
>>18002164Woody "this machine kills fascists" Guthrie was a Nazi sympathiser? Do you fuckers stop and hear yourselves?
>>18002679Maybe read the other links and comments before commenting you fucking retard
>>18002674No prob. Woody Guthrie: A Life by Joe Klein is the standard biography even though it’s decades old. There’s crazier stuff about him than what we’re discussing. His uncle and possibly his father took part in a well known lynching in Oklahoma, and he was jailed for writing pervy letters to a fan in Southern California,,which put him on a long list of suspects in the Black Dahlia murder.
>>18002691What links and comments show he was a Nazi sympathiser fucker?
>>18002716>write a letter>go to jailAAAAAAAAND THE HOME OF THE BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAVE
>>18002716>which put him on a long list of suspects in the Black Dahlia murder.lmao what
>>18002739https://stevehodel.com/2019/11/20/a-little-levity-guthriegate-and-authors-lapd-pre-employment-mug-shot/Quickly dismissed as he wasn’t in California st the time of the murder, and he was on their radar for his bust for sending obscene material through the mail.
>>18002755Interesting
>>18002237>“If we see Germany is winning we should help Russia and if Russia is winning we help Germany” - Harry TrumanThis is a correct take tho and the Roosevelt Admin fucked up by continuing Lend Lease post 1943
>>18002164I remember reading about this. Antifa folk punks conveniently seem to hand waive this sore subject away. But I guess that also means he was also kind of a NazBol before the memes
>>18002806The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact shows that nazis and commies can work hand in hand if they have a common enemy.
>>18002814Yeah well, they have different goals at the end of the day. Wouldn't have worked out and history shows that.
>>18002164Did he ever denounce his Stalinist ways too?
I think the main takeaway is that Guthrie was a mainstream Communist, which means that in the 1930s and 1940s he owed his allegiance to the Soviet Union and to Stalin. Like >>18002668 says, Communists in Western Europe and the United States got owned hard by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which turned them into brutal hypocrites for life, all for the sake of Stalin's short-term geopolitical interests.
>>18002169Ya he was a massive faggot
>>18002974By the time most of the American far left turned against Stalin he was too far gone with Huntington’s disease. Pete Seeger and his other comrades backpedaled, just like they memory holed the weird “peace” stance they took from 1939-41.
>>18003270His life is a lot weirder than anything his adoring fans or haters could imagine. An incredibly tragic childhood spiraling down from small town Oklahoma middle class to teenage homelessness, a mainstream country musician in the 30s, politics as discussed here, WWII service in the Merchant Marine where two of his ships were sunk, marrying a Jewish modern dancer and living on Coney Island for years, then a neurological disease that left him a vegetable. He was one of those scrawny cocky little dudes that women find irresistible—lots of hookups, three wives and a shitload of kids. We mostly just get a simple myth from things like a biopic in the 70s and the recent Dylan movie.
>>18002207This.Same with Seeger
>>18002164there’s a building in downtown Tulsa with a giant mural of him on it
>>18004143>>18002207100% This. After the molotov-ribbentrop pact, the newsletter went out through comintern channels to stop all talk of taking down nazis. This is when Trumbo wrote "Johnny Got His Gun" an anti war story about WW1. At this point, the war was a "capitalist" one for the moneymen in wall street...All until Germany invaded the USSR and then all these same people were all about war.
>>18004194Yes and President Truman opposed war with Germany and even suggested allying with them until it was politically expedient to him. Everyone across the aisle was like that.
Your first mistake was relying on Wikipedia. It's possible that earlier versions contained more detailed accounts of Guthrie's early pro-Soviet sentiments, which were later removed. This could be due to an attempt to focus on his later, more widely accepted anti-fascist stance. However, scholarly works and biographies continue to acknowledge this period of Guthrie's life.
No one’s talking about a musician’s music so I’ll pitch in. He can be so cloying and preachy, but his lyrics get better the less political he tries to be. His disciple Dylan does it so much better, with far deeper lyrics and songs with more than three major chords. He could write straight country songs like “Philadelphia Lawyer” and “Oklahoma Hills” and did good covers of trad material. John Lomax, born in 1867 on the Texas frontier, said Guthrie was his favorite singer of cowboy ballads. Interesting to wonder if he had just stayed a mainstream country singer.
