Interesting theory.
Chuck Berry & Elvis as defenders of freedom.
Posted on 07/30/2009 4:48:44 PM PDT by chessplayer
I bet you thought rock and rollers in the '60s were all left-wing radicals advocating the violent takeover of America in order to replace our style of government with communism.
According to Ralph Benko, a conservative human rights advocate, you couldn't be more wrong:
[T]he evidence is that the greatest musicians of the golden age of Rock (to whose work we’re all still listening since nothing better has come along) are, where it counts the most, deeply conservative.
Taking this further, Benko believes the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Who may have stopped America from installing a Marxist dictatorship (h/t Paul Chesser):
With the Cultural Revolution in full cry in China, and French students throwing Molotov cocktails in Paris (as in the image above, which, full disclosure, is of anarchist rioting after the Sarkozy election, not from the 60s), there was a great deal of agitation among students in the US in opposition to the Vietnam war, the draft, and in favor of civil rights and the sexual revolution. There was also a lot of passion for Marxist thought.
We’ll never know exactly how close America came to installing a Marxist dictatorship. But the failure to do so certainly wasn’t from any lack of effort by the self-avowed Marxist/Leninist student leaders.
Who stopped them?
The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and The Who. That’s who.
Some examples?
The most explicit pull on the “emergency chord” was The Beatles “Revolution,” from The White Album (1968) and the flip side to their mega-classic “Hey Jude” which guaranteed lots of airplay. Some lines:
You tell me that it’s evolution Well, you know We all want to change the world But when you talk about destruction Don’t you know that you can count me out
You ask me for a contribution Well, you know We’re doing what we can But when you want money for people with minds that hate All I can tell is brother you have to wait
You tell me it’s the institution Well, you know You better free you mind instead But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow
Nobody was hipper than John Lennon. If Lennon ruled out Lenin … revolution was officially un-hip.
Read on for more.
I find this very foolish.... and backwards as to reality
Lennon was clearly a commie sympathizer...at least. That, along with being one of the greatest singer/songwriters of all time.
My personal favorite...the commie bastard:)
Yep, commie and WELL over hyped.
When the Boomers die out, so does his “genius”.
I don’t know if rock and roll saved America from Communism but it made a man out of me.
First line from the song:
A woman on the radio talked about "Revolution",but it already passed her by.
The woman referred to in the line is Tracy Chapman, a black Cambridge, MA marxist.
“You tell me it’s the institution Well, you know You better free you mind instead But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow”
Does`nt sound very pro-commie to me.
“left-wing radicals advocating the violent takeover of America in order to replace our style of government with communism”
That would be Bill Ayers and his protege’ Barrack Obama
We give these Rock and Rollers WAY too much credit for ‘changing the world’.
They were nothing more than a diversion from real threats like the SDS.
By the way, The WHO rule!!
Mick and Keith were never commies.
And neither was Elvis or Jerry Lee Lewis.
I’m not sure about the rest of them.
That song always seemed to me quite an anomaly in the Lennon oeuvre.
I do know, however, that the redneck contingent of the "Conservative" spectrum would never, could never, countenance such a premise.
However, one ought to consider, amongst other things, Paul McCartney's organizing of the Concert For New York and who played there. It was a lot more than Bruce "Born in the USA" Springsteen.
Compared to today, the Who and the Beatles are oases of sanity.
Boomers like Sarah Palin may go on for another 60 or more years.
YAF was publishing big posters of these quotes back in the early 70’s - lots wound up on dorm walls.
I wonder what kind of music barry-o listened to? And Ayers?
I would think that during his fromative years the bulk of it was muslim ... and that sweetest music at dusk...
Interesting theory.
Chuck Berry & Elvis as defenders of freedom.
BS!
One word: IMAGINE!
The most leftist song ever penned. Yeah it was released after the Beatles broke up, but it discredited Lennon in my mind.
Being born in ‘60 and growing up in the midwest I kinda hated hippies but really liked punk...Iggy Pop’s “I’m a Conservative” and such. Then there was the band The Screaming Blue Messiah’s(named after the WW2 warplane the Grumman TBM-3E Avenger I think it was)that had a song with the lyrics: “If I die in the combat zone/ box me up and ship me home. If I die on the Russian Front/ Bury me with some Russian c***” That had this great martial beat. Hard to admit how we used to trash anything hippy in that most hippy of all places Madison Wisconsin. It was glorious.
“Who will stop the rain” by Creedence is another big anti commie song.
I think Street Fighting Man by the stones is anti revolution too - “What can a young man do but to play in a rock in roll band cause the streets of london town there aint no place for street fighten man...noooo”
Rock always celebrated the Free Spirit in man and it really was anethema to communism.
Mao was passe at that time. You had to be carrying pictures of Che. You weren’t hip if you didn’t.
This piece is total lies. Lennon and the rest of the beatles were Marxists. They hated Jesus Christ. Lennon was asked directly what he thought about Christ, and paraphrased he said “Jesus Christ was a dirty smelly yellow $#$%.”
Rock and Roll didn’t save us from anything. Rock and Roll helped bring depravity into the mainstream. And that is one of the communist goals to undermine our society.
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