We had an illustrator in the family and I grew up with Ben Shahn's work. As you probably know, he became famous with his series entitled "The Passion of Sacco-Vanzetti."
While I always knew Shahn was left wing, only later did I learn he was a communist dupe (at best, many of these "dupes" either got paid by or had their work promoted by the Soviet intelligence--Shahn surely fits in that last category at least). Willi Munzenberg was the brains behind the Sacco and Vanzetti communist PR stunt. Concerned over the deportation of communists such as Emma Goldman back to the Soviet Union in the early 1920s, the Soviets instructed Willi to turn the tables and portray America as a bigoted, racist country which regularly violated the civil rights of immigrants. Willi did so with flair and inspiration. Useful idiots such as Ben Shahn lined up around the block to attack America. Felix Frankfurter's wife was friends with a Soviet agent who brought Willi's work to her attention. She needled her husband to write an article for Atlantic Magazine decrying the fascist tactics of the America.Frankfurter wrote that the Sacco and Vanzetti case was America at it's worst. Munzenberg was delighted. He sent the work to the Kremlin and they reprinted copies of it to send around the world.
Willi Munzenberg met his well deserved fate in 1940 when hunters found his body with its eyes bulging out of its head. He had been strangled. Munzenberg's mentor, Karl Radek (who had attempted to overthrow the Weimar Republic, was done in by Stalin, Yagoda and Kaganovich.
As a teenager, I admired Ben Shahn greatly. Today I would spit on his grave. Dupe, agent or one who merely fed himself by gnawing at the rule of law and the American Republic, Ben Shahn has the blood of millions on his soul.