Evidently yes:
Posted on 01/19/2004 8:23:49 AM PST by Sir_Humphrey
I was wondering how the hell anybody would have known such a thing took place, if it was a secret meeting, until I got to the end.
That's just awful.
Good post. Paul Robeson was a real modern-day "Renaissance Man" -- skilled in athletics, academics, and the arts. Too bad he was a communist.
I think you're right. From the link FormerlyAnotherLurker provided below:
In March, 1956, after Khrushchev outlines Stalin's crimes against humanity, Robeson suffers an emotional collapse. Over a two-month period, he swings from a manic state to a severe depression.
Among America's more significant actors and singers was Paul Robeson, born a century ago. His centennial is being celebrated with film retrospectives, museum showings, and book reissues.
Robeson, an impressive talent who struggled against pervasive racism, had a less presentable side: he was an avowed communist, He promoted leftist causes in the United States, frequently visited the Soviet Union, and was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize in 1952.
Anyone can make a mistake, but Robeson knew what he was doing. In 1949 he met in Moscow with his friend Itzik Feffer, a Yiddish author who warned of the start of Stalin's anti-Semitic purges. When Robeson returned home, he told reporters that "I heard no word about" anti-Semitism, He later accepted the Stalin Peace Prize despite Feffer's murder at the hands of the regime.
It is impossible to know how Robeson, who died in 1976, would have reacted to the collapse of communism. But true believers remain. Sunset Hall in Los Angeles, a small apartment home for the aged begun 75 years ago by Unitarians, could provide the plot for a terrible sitcom. Filled with unrepentant communists and socialists, Sunset Hall sports a picture of Robeson, bust of Vladimir Lenin, and books on Marxism, Mao Zedong, and Leon Trotsky. There is also literature on the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Soviet atomic spies in the United States who were executed early in the Cold War.
Sunset's residents demonstrate on behalf of janitors' pay, lobby for Social Security, endorse national health insurance, circulate petitions over Sunset Hall's dismissal of an employee, object to the purchase of tablecloths as wasteful, and collectively decide what food is to be served. But they don't just want more government in a liberal democracy. They pine for the good ol' days of communism - the real thing.
At age eight Glady Foreman, now 90, was proclaimed a "little socialist" by her father. She has written a book - as yet mercifully unpublished - titled "How Adam and Eve Lost Their Social Security." Says Foreman: "Socialism, crushed to the earth, will rise again."
Jacob Darnov, a messenger in the Bolshevik army decades ago, expresses his continuing admiration for Lenin. "He's the greatest politician we ever had in this world."
Wayne Friedlander, a former member of Students for a Democratic Society who once ran Sunset Hall, says he owes the residents a debt. They "are the giants," he explains.
In one sense, he's right. These people are "giants." Giant fools. Lest that seem harsh, what else can one say about people who promoted-and continue to defend-the most murderous philosophy ever to disgrace human history? To back the communists in 1917 was an understandable, if tragic, mistake. But the twentieth century has demonstrated that the philosophy is inherently totalitarian and its implementation is inherently destructive and violent. Everywhere and every time, the experience has resulted in a charnel house. To support communism still, despite decades of mass murder, is inexplicable.
In his book, Death by Government, University of Hawaii professor R.J. Rummel catalogues the catastrophic record of the regimes so beloved by Sunset Hall residents. The Soviet Union, figures Rummel, killed somewhere between 28 million and 127 million people. His best estimate is 62 million. Even those who believe that Rummel's figures are exaggerated still offer mind-numbing figures - 20 million, according to French scholar Stephane Courtois's Black Book of Communism.
Rummel figures that the second most murderous regime, also surpassing the Nazis, was that of Mao Zedong. Rummel estimates that the communist Chinese killed somewhere between six million and 102 million people most likely about 35 million. Courtois actually puts Mao Zedong in first place, with between 45 million and 72 million dead. Rummel and Courtois also offer estimates for other great communist killers. Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, wiped out an estimated two million to 2.3 million people; the Vietnamese murdered 1 million to 1.7 million, while the North Korean regime killed 1.7 million to two million.
There's more. Communist Poland slaughtered 1.6 million (through extensive ethnic cleansing after World War II). At about the same time, Yugoslavia killed around 1.1 million. African governments have accounted for 1.7 million.
Then there were the many lesser communist tyrannies that dotted Asia and Eastern Europe. In some of those states the dead numbered "only" in the hundreds of thousands. In a few, "merely" tens of thousands-truly representing the velvet glove of communism. But Glady Foreman still hopes that socialism "will rise again."
It is astounding enough that true believers remain. What could prompt the New York Times to put a story about Sunset Hall on its front page, however? Observes syndicated columnist Michael Kelly, "If a Times reporter found a brave little band of aging Nazis, who kept a bust of Hitler in the living room and who declared that fascism would rise again, and wrote this up cute-well, this simply could never happen." He's right, even though there is no difference in the moral culpability of the true believers of left and right.
Indeed, the ongoing effort to rehabilitate former communists suffers the same myopia. There are, for instance, the Rosenbergs. A number of leftists long proclaimed the Rosenbergs' innocence. Unfortunately for the true believers, Soviet archives indicate that the husband-and-wife team were, yes, spies. The long campaign conducted on behalf of Alger Hiss, a Soviet spy convicted of perjury after serving in the State Department, also ground to an ignominious close with overwhelming evidence of his guilt.
Then there are those who were blacklisted by Hollywood during the Cold War. Many did suffer, and suffer unfairly. But private sanction is very different from public prosecution. The national security state committed excesses; the refusal of some studios to hire apparent communists was something quite different. Indeed, those who laud the blacklisted writers often act as if being denied public credit for one's script, a common result of blacklisting, was akin to being sent to the Gulag - as were tens of millions by the rulers so beloved by those who were blacklisted.
This is the central issue. As the Washington Post's Stephen Rosenfeld points out, "What is missing from the discussion is an evaluation of the substance of the political views many of the movie people had." Those blacklisted were supporting a monstrous tyranny, one that oppressed, slaughtered, and destroyed at will. That someone would refuse to hire them is as unsurprising as, say, refusing to hire a professing Nazi. The real victims were the tens of millions gunned down by tyrants.
The twentieth century, filled with so much horror, is mercifully coming to an end. While we may choose to forgive those who supported the murderous totalitarians who wreaked human devastation, we should never forget. However charming, talented, or even cute they now may seem to be, their hands remain covered with blood.
At the time of the original publication, Doug Bandow, a nationally syndicated columnist, was a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author and editor of several books, including Tripwire: Korea and U.S. Foreign Policy in a Changed World.
Reprinted with permission from The Freeman, a publication of The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., November 1998, Vol. 48, No. 11.
The Washington TimesThe new stamp of RobesonJanuary 13, 2004Section: COMMENTARY Page: A17 Arnold Beichman, THE WASHINGTON TIMES On Jan. 21, the United States Postal Service will issue a stamp honoring a man who:
- Greeted the promulgation of Josef Stalin's "Constitution" in 1936 as "an expression of democracy, broader in scope and loftier in principle than ever before expressed." - Supported the Stalin-Hitler pact and the Soviet invasion of Poland along with Hitler's invasion which started World War II.
- Supported as "defensive" the Soviet invasion of Finland.
- Was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize in 1952.
- Denounced the Hungarian uprising as instigated by the "same sort of people who overthrew the Spanish Republican government," meaning the revolutionaries were fascists.
- Recalled in a 1953 memorial tribute on Stalin's death an episode in 1937 when he saw Stalin enter a box at the Bolshoi Theater: "I remember the tears began to quietly flow and I too smiled and waved. Here was clearly a man who seemed to embrace all. So kindly - I can never forget that warm feeling of kindliness and also a feeling of sureness. Here was one who was wise and good - the world and especially the socialist world was fortunate indeed to have his daily guidance." This was at the height of the infamous Moscow Trials.
- Defended in a Daily Worker interview the Moscow trial frame-ups and executions in these words: "From what I have already seen of the workings of the Soviet government, I can only say that anybody who lifts his hand against it ought to be shot."
- Rejoiced in the Great Terror with these words: "It is the [Soviet] government's duty to put down any opposition to this really free society with a firm hand, and I hope they will always do it, for I already regard myself at home here [in Moscow]. ... It is obvious that there is no terror here, that all the masses of every race are contented and support their government."
- Characterized the 1947 Truman Doctrine intended to rescue Greece and Turkey from communist coups, "as remarkably similar to the anticommunist smokescreen of the fascist aggressors. ... "
- Declared in 1949: "I am truly happy that I am able to travel from time to time to the U.S.S.R. - the country I love above all. I always have been, I am now and will always be a loyal friend of the Soviet Union. ... the country I love above all."
I could cite dozens and dozens more of similar quotations from the collected speeches and writings of Paul Robeson, the African-American concert artist who died in 1976 at age 78. To the end, he remained an unrepentant Stalinist despite the revelations by Stalin's successor, Nikita Khrushchev, of the Great Terror. And it is this man, Paul Robeson, whom the U.S. Postal Service honors with a commemorative postage stamp.
The homage accorded Robeson, so goes the Postal Service alibi, is due to his achievement as an artist on stage, screen and in the concert hall. It is part of the Postal Service's Black Heritage Series.
In last Oct. 18's People's Weekly World, there is a report on the Postal Service approval of the commemorative postage stamp. Present at a celebration was Jarvis Tyner, executive vice chair of the Communist Party USA. "This is a great victory," Mr. Tyner told the Weekly World. "The U.S. Postal Service could not have honored a greater American. Now, every schoolchild will be told about Paul Robeson, the great fighter for equality and world peace, the great athlete, singer, actor." Mr. Robeson, he added, "embraced all the advanced ideas of the Communist Party USA, the need for a socialist transformation of society, the need for unity of black, brown and white."
Let's put it simply: The radical left in America has won a great propaganda victory in getting an arm of our government to honor a man who dedicated his artistry to a bloody tyrant just as Leni Riefenstahl dedicated her moviemaking talents to Adolf Hitler.
Arnold Beichman, a Hoover Institution research fellow, is a columnist for The Washington Times.
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Perhaps his political judgment was a captive to the racism of the times.
He lacked the judgment to see that the flaws in the American system were amenable to correction by legislation and judicial decision
Perhaps he was too impatient to wait around for that to happen.
The question remains: why did other blacks who faced trials similar to Robeson's keep faith with America while he surrendered his to a political system that ended up on the ash heap of history?
Again, perhaps it was his impatience. From his perspective, Russia treated him well. Any system that treated him well and wasn't racist, earned his respect.
Evidently yes:
Lindbergh's "Nazi sympathy" is questionable. As a brief example, Barry Goldwater in his book "With No Apologies" wrote:
When Lindbergh went to Germany to make his appraisal of Hitler's Force, I was pleased. When he attempted to tell the American people about the real purpose of the Nazi glider schools and detailed technological superiority of the new aircraft the Germans had developed, I hoped it would awaken our nation to its peril.
The official reaction, supported by the media, was the exact opposite. Lindbergh was categorized as a Nazi sympathizer. His loyalty to the United States was questioned. We know now that President Franklin D. Roosevelt put Lindbergh on his personal enemies list.
As a result, Robeson was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955, was blacklisted on Broadway and had his passport revoked for eight years at the height of the anti-Communist McCarthy Era.
The writer needs to get some facts straight, such as the proper name of HCUA, associating Senator McCarthy with "blacklisting" of actors and the actions of HCUA, and using McCarthy's name to label the "anti-Communist era" (many of the things we associate with that era, such as loyalty oaths, were started by the Truman administration before he took his seat in the Senate). I know the writer is not directly linking McCarthy's name with Robeson's blacklisting, but using the senator's name to describe the entire era shows that he is of the non-critical camp that lumps everything under one convenient, demonized name, while downplaying the importance of associating with the USSR and CPUSA, in typical snide lefty fashion.
Was Robeson misguided? Of course he was. But he's a tragic case overall and you can't separate the effusive support for Stalin from the context of the rest of his life and experiences.
"In the morning of March 27, 1961, Paul Robeson was found in the bathroom of his Moscow hotel suite after having slashed his wrists with a razor blade following a wild party that had raged there the preceding night. His blood loss was not yet severe, and he recovered rapidly. However, both the raucous party and his “suicide attempt” remain unexplained, and for the past twenty years the US government has withheld documents that I believe hold the answer to the question: Was this a drug induced suicide attempt?"
The article then goes into a bit of MK-ULTRA stuff, which may be a bit too "out there" for this site. Anyway, Paul Robeson recovered from his breakdown, but suffered a relapse soon after, at which point his wife was persuaded to enter him into a psychiatric hospital. More of the article, which was written by his son, Paul Robeson, Jr., and published in The Nation in 1999:
"In May 1963 1 learned that my father had received fifty four ECT treatments, and I arranged his transfer to a clinic in East Berlin."
Fifty-four ECT treatments! And in 1963! Does anyone happen to know how much of your "self" remains after you've undergone ECT treatments? This is so disturbing to me. My mind is reeling at this disturbing revelation.
Article can be found here:
"In 1947, Robeson was nearly killed in a car crash. It later turned out that the left wheel of the car had been monkey-wrenched. In the 1950s, Robeson was targeted by Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist hearings. The campaign effectively sabotaged his acting and singing career in the states. Robeson never recovered from the drugging and the follow-up treatments from CIA-linked doctors and shrinks. He died in 1977."
Hello Sir Humphrey,
I don't know about the dynamics betweeen Paul Robeson and MLK. However, there was a distance between MLK and many African American Civil Rights activist who created the struggle for civil rights going back to the 20s and the 30s. ( ie, Adam Clayton Powell, John P. Davis etc)
I "think" Paul Robeson, whose views on race and class and anti-segregation activities in the thirties were considered radical and "Marxist", placed him in this category.
Put yourself in the shoes of many brilliant, enlightended African Americans nadir the Depression or Roosevelt's New Deal.
I don't think he was unpopular among blacks either.
Regards,
Mdavis
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