Rev Left Radio - The Folk Singers & The Bureau: The FBI, Folk Artists, & the Communist Party USA

Episode Date: October 19, 2020

Aaron J. Leonard returns to the show to discuss his newest book "The Folk Singers and The Bureau: The FBI, The Folk Artists, and the Suppression of the Communist Party USA (1939-1956)".  We cover a lot of fascinating history and then we link that history up with the present!  Here is Aaron's playlist mentioned in the show: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHCUjL6Jr73FNc_ak3MyOV_V-6Khic2u4 Music featured in order of appearance: Woody Guthrie - I Ain't Got No Home In This World Anymore Pete Seeger - Which Side Are You On Paul Robeson - No More Auction Block Woody Guthrie - All You Fascists Bound To Lose Woody Guthrie - Tear the Fascists Down Pete Seeger - Solidarity Forever -------- Please Support Rev Left Radio HERE LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com

I ain't got no home, I'm just a roaming round, I go from town town to town, and the police make it home, I'm just a roaming round, just a wandering worker, I go from town to town, and the police make it home. wherever I may go, and I ain't got no home in this world anymore. A hot and dusty road at a million feet of trod Rich man took my home and drove me from my door And I ain't got no home in this world anymore Was a farming on the farming on the shares and always I was poor, my crops I lay into the banker's store, My wife took down and died up on the cabin floor And I ain't got no home in this world anymore

Now, as I look around, it's mighty plain to see. This world is such a great and a funny place to be. All the gambling man is rich and the working man is poor, and I ain't got no home in this world anymore. Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. We have a very special treat for you today, and that is an interview with Aaron J. Leonard on his new book, The Folk Singers and the Bureau, the FBI,

the folk artists, and the suppression of the Communist Party USA from 1939 to 1956. We talk about so much fascinating stuff. Woody Guthr, Pete Seeger, Paul Robeson. We talk about the FBI's crackdown on these folk artists, their connection with the Communist Party. And then we pull lessons from this fascinating history that we can learn from and apply in our own very reactionary time.

One of the things you realize when you go back into American history is that none of the shit that we're dealing with now is new. You know, the hatred of black people, the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, the deep anti-communism, the vile, violent, dead-eyed reaction in the face of even the slightest movements for progress for oppressed people. None of this is new and it'll continue recurring until we, in my opinion, overthrow the very system itself. But yeah, I loved this interview. It will be dotted throughout

with songs from the very artists that we discuss. But again, this history is so complex and so deep that, you know, this is just an interview. So if you You really want to dive into this history. If this interview is fascinating to you, this book will be that much more fascinating to you. It's called, again, The Folk Singers and the Bureau. And here's my interview with its author, Aaron J. Leonard. Enjoy. My name is Aaron Leonard.

I'm a writer and historian dealing with matters of governmental repression and radicalism. I've just completed a book on the folk singers of the 40s and 15. 50s and the efforts of the government against them, you know, all wrapped up with the overall efforts to suppress the Communist Party in the United States. Yeah, absolutely. And long-time Rev. Left listeners might remember Aaron from our interview on his previous book entitled Heavy Radicals. It was about the Maoist movements in the 60s and 70s. So this is a second time having you on. We're honored to have you back. I really loved this book. So let's go ahead and dive into it because there's a lot of history to cover. So first and foremost, as I said,

I really, really enjoyed this one, and like your previous book, Heavy Radicals, it really stands as an unprecedented deep dive into a rarely studied aspect of left-wing history in this country. Coming off your last book, why did you decide to write this one, and what were some of the unique obstacles you had to overcome in researching and writing it? Well, first, thank you for that. I finished Heavy Radicals, which I co-wrote with Connor Gallagher. I think that came out in 2015. seen. In the interim, we had had an abundance of material that we still wanted to use actually

led to a second book that never made its way into a discussion with you called Threat of the First Magnitude. That book actually documents how informants have historically, we go back to the Bolshevik Revolution, have penetrated into the upper echelons of organizations, you know, of opposition against the standing authorities, including revolutionary organizations. So I did two books on radicalism, both of them with a heavy tilt toward Maoism in particular, although the second book had a broader range of focus. So having finished those two books, I wanted to try to change it up a bit. I was going to do a book on music in the 60s and 70s, which I may still do.

But at the time, when I started researching it, I couldn't get FBI files on the principal people, you know, like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, you know, MC5, Jefferson Airplane. It wasn't, you know, and some of the folk artists, I couldn't get enough files to actually justify trying to write a book. And I didn't want to just do a whole lot of supposition. But in the course of researching it, I read Sean Walentz's book on Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan's America, and he has a passage about Woody Guthrie, who was a big influence of Dylan. So, you know, and he makes the point that Guthrie was very close to the Communist Party. So that kind of piqued my curiosity. So I asked the FBI for Guthrie's file, and I got it back pretty quickly because it had been previously released. And in the course of reading it, it's fascinating.

You know, there's like a couple hundred pages. And the FBI is looking at Woody Guthrie, this iconic American folk singer from like 1941 up until 1967, although most of the file ends in 1955. So I thought, well, you know, that's interesting. You know, I had heard that Pete Seeger's file had got released. So I quickly, you know, found a copy of that. And then I asked for people lesser known, like Lee Hayes, Millard Lampel, Ronnie Gilbert, Fred Hellerman, Sisto, Houston. And what was, you know, striking was they all had files.

It was just a matter of where they were and how I had it to wait, how long I had to wait to get them. So that set me on the course of this next book. But then in parallel to that, I'd been reading some histories of the Communist Party in the United States and was fascinated at the way that the government essentially, you know, just took the wind out of the sales of that group. I mean, they didn't smash it,

but they just really subjected it to such an onslaught that it was nothing like, you know, it had been. And they did this all under the facade of, you know, what Marx is called bourgeois democracy. So I was like really intrigued with that. And it seemed to me that the two stories were interconnected. So that is what got me on that path. Well, fascinating.

And one of the things I like about all your work, but particularly in this one, is you put in the FBI files that you received as you talk about them. So, you know, they'll be like a screen printed version of the files you got back from the FBI about the person you're talking about at that moment in the book. And I just found that fascinating. And I did want to mention your second book did slip past me,

but it sounds utterly fascinating. So they'll probably be a future. I'll have left episode on that if you're willing. Oh, for sure, for sure. All of these books are still in the publishing industry. They call them Evergreen. So, yes. Wonderful.

All right, well, let's go ahead and move on and talk about this book for right now. And let's really talk about the folk musicians themselves. Who were some of the most notable figures in your book? And what were their connections with the Communist Party, USA? Well, it all kind of evolves. I mean, they all meet the Communist Party. in the 1930s, the era of depression, high unemployment, in Europe, hyperinflation, climate disasters like the dust storms in Oklahoma, high eviction rates, just general, well, it's a

depression, and it's affecting how everybody's looking at, you know, life in the United States and what the possibilities are. And it's all in the context of, you know, this white supremacist set up, you know, most startling in the South with the Jim Crow restrictions. So, well, let me start with Guthrie. He comes out of Oklahoma, and his mother is afflicted by this disease, Huntington's Korea. She dies while he's still a young man, and it has a very disorienting effect on him. He ends up moving with his new family, first to Texas and then California. In California, gets a radio show with, I believe it's his cousin, Maxine Christman. They call her Lefty Lou because she is left-handed. So Woody's on the radio in Southern California, and he meets this guy,

Ed Robin, who works for People's World, the Communist Party's West Coast paper. And it seems like Ed Robin introduces Guthrie to the Communist Party. Guthrie also meets the actor Will Gear in Southern California. Will Gere is famous for this 70s show, the Waltons. He plays Grandpa Walton. Guthry becomes a Communist Party partisan. And then around early 1940, he sets out for New York City. And it's there that, you know, his future gets decided as the Woody Guthrie. We know him. Similarly, Pete Seeger goes from, you know, he comes from a intellectual background. His father's a professor of music. He's also, his father is in the composers collective, which works closely with the Communist Party. His father's in the Communist

Party, though he quits in 1939. Guthrie is a young man, joins the Young Communist League. He sets out to become a journalist, but he attends Harvard. He drops out of Harvard, and he ends up joining the party and moving to New York City. That's where he meets Guthrie. Sis Cunningham is, she's a teacher in Oklahoma, young woman teacher, middle class background, who becomes radicalized around the issue of sharecropping and the rights and freedoms of African American people. She is an active in the Communist Party in Oklahoma, but after the authorities conduct raids in Oklahoma and communist under the justification of clamping down on criminal syndicalism, you know, i.e., trying to overthrow the government,

the party there gets seriously disrupted. Sis Cunningham and her husband, Gordon Friesen moved to New York. And then, you know, there's other people like Lee Hayes, Millard Lampel, Cisco, Houston. And they all end up, you know, migrating as if, you know, by magnetic force in his historical retrospect to New York City in 1940, you know, right at the point when, you know, the Communist Party in the United States has abandoned its popular front anti-fascist strategy to be in unity with the Soviet Union's non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union and Germany had signed a non-aggression pact to try to stave off, you know, war. You know, Stalin had thought that, you know, Britain was pushing Germany to attack the Soviet Union. So tactically, they made this maneuver and all the communist parties around the world basically put all in. So this is the point historically when all these people are getting together. And it actually gives rise to the what's now called a mini red scare.

From like 1930 to up until the point when the Germans break the treaty and invade the Soviet Union, the leader of the party, Earl Browder, sent to prison for passport violations. You know, the folk singers are coming under fire for singing anti-war songs. So, you know, that's kind of a very rough sketch in the book details, how they all kind of came together. You know, I mean, they're all like young. I mean, they're in their early 20s, and they're very socially. conscious and they think there's an alternative to U.S. society, which is at that point not really meeting the needs of most people. And the alternative is the socialism of the Soviet Union and

the Communist Party seems to be the vehicle to be with to realize that. I really enjoyed when you were talking in the first chapter about the different folk artists and sort of their different comprehensions of the politics of communism. And Sis Cunningham stood out as one of the more advanced thinkers when, you know, she would write about how she would go to the library read capital. She mastered surplus value and she was just beginning to grasp dialectical materialism. And you ended chapter one really sort of beautifully, I think, and I'll quote from the book, you said, what is remarkable here is the expanse of music comprehended in this widely divergent mix of individuals. Okies, Jewish intellectuals, waspy Harvard men, ex-convicts, grandsons of slaves,

football stars, and country teachers. What is even more remarkable is how they came to work together, drawing on one another's art to propel forward their individual work and their collective output. And I just really enjoyed that because they really did come from a divergent mix of backgrounds and experiences, and it wasn't just the music itself that brought them together, but the sort of communist politics operating at the time, right? Yeah, I mean, no, I'm happy you kind of highlight that point.

It really is a trip. you know, how else could these folks have come together? I think I make the point later. It's like, you know, even being in the same room in 1939, 1949, where you have, you know, people like Leadbelly who had been imprisoned in Louisiana, African American man, or Josh White, who came out of South Carolina, you know, Jim Crow, South Carolina. How could you have them guys in the same room with, you know,

Sis Cunningham, Best Lomack? Pete Seeger. I mean, this is like the matters of, you know, race, ethnicity, gender, you know, all these various terms that we use now. You know, there's no way they're going to be in the same room, one, in that kind of United States. And two, you know, making music together would be totally out of the question. And the unifying thing here is this Communist Party. And the Communist Party is, you know, it's, boy, it's, it's got a lot of room for criticism. It's just not that radical, and it's awfully chauvinist toward the U.S. government. I mean, and it's very servile to the Soviet Union.

I mean, there's a whole discussion to be had about, you know, what I believe to be the shortcomings of that group. But then, you know, there's the positive side of the thing of, you know, because they had this vision of a socialist society, of equality, of breaking down divisions, of not. not oppressing people just for coming from a certain background, they were able to do things no other force was able to do, which is not to say there weren't other forces that were trying to do good things and maybe touched on aspects, but the Communist Party actually was able to do this. And I make this point too, which is, I mean, I think if I had been 20 years old in 1939, that's where I would have gone, you know. And your quote from Sis Cunningham, kind of blew me away.

I mean, she actually said, like, I forget the exact quote, but she could see a new world coming. You know, she could see the possibility of something great, and it excited her. You know, it's bittersweet looking back, given the way things developed. But the sweetness, I mean, I think it prevails in the sense of, you know, we are alive

and we need to keep reaching for something better. We can't just accommodate to the way things are. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you did great as always with bringing this really nuanced approach to analyzing the Communist Party at that time, you know, talking as openly about its failures as you do its successes. And, you know, some of the things were definitely sort of cringeworthy and chauvinistic that the party did, but other things were deeply inspiring. And you can't have a full picture of it without understanding both sides of that coin. Which side are you on, boys? Which side are you on? Which side are you on, boys? Which side are you on? They say in Harlan County,

there are no neutrals there. You'll either be a union man or a thug for J.H. Blair. Which side are you on, boys? Which side are you on? Tell me, which side are you on, boys? Which side are you on? My daddy was a miner, and I'm a miner's son.

He'll be with you fellow workers until this battle's won. Tell me which side are you are you on. Which night are you on? Sing it Which slide are you on? Which light are you on? Oh, workers, can you stand it? Tell me how you can.

Will you be a lousy scab or will you be a man? Which side are you are? Which side are you on? Tell me which side are you are you on? Which side are you on? Come all of you good workers, good news to you, I'll tell of how the good old union has come in here to dwell. Tell me which side are you on, boys, which side are you on? Tell me which side are you on, boys, which side are you on?

So I was hoping that you could talk a little bit more about the party itself, but importantly talk about the party in relation to the bigger historical forces at play that really shaped the party, its line, and really shaped the relationship these artists had with the party over time. Yeah, I don't know how concise I can make this, but it's very much on my mind. I mean, writing this book, and now I'm in the process of, promoting it. And, you know, I'm just struck by, in 2020, just how much the Communist Party

doesn't exist and how communism of the last century almost doesn't exist. I mean, it's just this very ethereal thing. But as far as an actual material force, it's not given much credence. I mean, a lot of what you, you know, in researching this, you know, you would come to the conclusion that nobody was ever in the Communist Party. It's always like, oh, alleged to have ties to, you know. I mean, what I discovered in the book is that, you know, these alleged to have ties to meant these folks had been, you know, by and large, card-carrying members.

And, you know, so what? You know, I mean, I mean, to say that in the 50s or 60s would be, you know, risking ruined professionally or being put in prison, but, you know, looking back with some perspective of, well, so what? They were in this party, which was really more social democratic than communists, I think, for a lot of the rank and file. But the party itself, you know, it exists in a world in which there's actually this country that's ostensibly socialist. I mean, we can leave the discussion of Stalin for another time. I mean, there was a good deal the mythology of what the Soviet Union was, and the reality was, I think, a lot harsher,

but I think it was also in tandem with some real constraints. You know, it was never like a really rich country. I mean, and so this notion that, you know, a very poor peasant-based country would overnight turn into this, you know, advanced model is somewhat fantastical. But saying that, the Soviet Union was social. It had a different model, and it served as a center for communist parties around the world under the authority of the communist international. So you had communist parties and countries all around the world. And then in 1949, you know, Mao Zedong leads the Communist Party in China in, you know, transforming that country into this socialist model.

Suddenly one third of the world is under this type of rule. I mean, the analogy is, and I'm kind of drawing on some stuff from my previous experience working with the Revolutionary Communist Party, you know, the analogy is how Islam took over the world. I mean, in the last century, we had this whole other ideology take over a big chunk of the world. And, you know, the United States, which was, you know, the bastion of Western capitalism was not pleased. It was not going to just stand back passively and let that happen. So, you know, you had this whole other model setting terms, you know, such as it was, and it was in contention with, you know, this whole other model of, you know, Western capitalism, which wanted to maintain itself.

And, you know, that was sharp contention. And who won was the capitalist forces. So as a result, they've written a history on this whole phenomenon. Yeah. Could you talk a bit about specifically, I was thinking, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, but also just World War II specifically, and sort of the pressures the U.S. government was under to crack down on internal dissent and how the machinations of the lead-up to World War II shaped the Communist Party here in the U.S. in relation to, you know, the Communist Party more broadly. Yeah, well, you know, World War II period is really tough. The Soviet Union in 1939, is very worried about Germany attacking them, and they have good cause. In a couple years, Germany will attack them in the most brutal, probably bloodiest attack in human history.

World War II is the most horrific event in human history to date. Let's hope nothing ever surpasses it. The Soviet Union are very concerned about, you know, how are they going to withstand that? Not even as a socialist country, but as a country. I mean, Hitler has made clear, you know, he wants to annihilate the Slavs and Jewish Bolshevism. You know, so they make a tactical move to say, you know, we don't want to go to war with Germany. And Germany doesn't want to go to war with them right now because Germany wants to, you know, turn its focus on Europe. So as a result, they signed this armistice, or not armistice, but non-aggression pact.

You know, it's the Soviet foreign minister, Molotov, signs it along with the German foreign minister, Joachim Ribbentrop, and all the parties follow suit. You know, I mean, they're all in the same communist international, so they all follow suit with that doctrine. But, you know, what's good for the Soviet Union isn't necessarily, you know, what these particular parties is best for them. So, you know, the Roosevelt administration, you know, had actually wanted to get involved in the war. Europe. You know, they were worried about England. You know, they were an ally of England and they wanted to support that. And, you know, Roosevelt also wanted to have, you know, the initiative in Japan and the Far East. So, you know, they were inclining toward being in this war. The Communist Party was inclining toward not being in this war. And that put him at loggerheads. So, you know,

one of the things Roosevelt did immediately was, you know, instituted the draft, you know, selected service. Pete Seeger and the Almanac singers, you know, they did a whole album, which kind of railed against, you know, the war moves of the Roosevelt administration. The Communist Party, for its part, had a slogan saying the Yanks aren't coming, unlike the First World War. So, you know, the Almanac singers actually did a song, literally C for conscription, you know, and they called the Selective Service Act, that goddamn bill. There's an article in the Atlantic. that appears at the time that says, you know, people making these kind of songs and they name the Almanac singers ought to be subjected to investigation by the Attorney General, essentially

threatening the Almanacs with going to prison for doing this anti-war kind of music. So you see how it's bound up in, you know, with the geopolitics of the time. You know, this folk group is writing these song, anti-war songs that are in sync with the Soviet Union's position of supporting this non-aggression Pact. But then, of course, Hitler invades the Soviet Union. And then the Almanac singers start singing different songs. Peace is out of the door. I mean, the period of, the Communist Party slogan is no imperialist war. But once Germany invades, they no longer see it as an imperialist war. They see it as a war to defend socialism. So it's all very, you know, people are still debating this. Historians are still deep into this. Personally, I'm still trying to understand it. It's

like major, major stuff, which in the United States is just put down to very shorthand. Oh, the Communist Party, you know, signed off on the Communist Party in the United States signed off on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, you know, to their shame, you know. End of story, which, you know, kind of misses the second part, is that, you know, the Communist Party was one of the most passionate allies of the Roosevelt administration in World War II. And, you know, one can ask whether or not that was actually the way to go, you know, especially given that, you know, the big prize for the United States in World War II was, you know, defeating Japan and capturing the East. You know, I mean, the Soviet Union, you know, did the major work of defeating Hitler. They lost 20 plus million

people in that war. The United States lost 400,000. The Communist Party, you know, was a tight ally of the United States, and they essentially ushered in, you know, they ushered in or at least reinforced, you know, the dawn of the American century. So it's filled with paradoxes and complexities. I don't know. I hope that answers, you know, a very, these are very tough questions you're asking. Yeah, no, I think that answers it wonderfully. And again, you know, This is an interview about a book. You want to dive into it. You have to get the book itself and dive deeper.

But I really just want to highlight that point that, you know, leading up to the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the Communist Party, and a lot of these folk artists were making anti-war songs. And in the moment, Germany invades the Soviet line shifts. And then, yeah, they really become cheerleaders, or at least, yeah, like in line with America joining the fight specifically to stop the fascist threat and to help out the Soviet Union. but there were other left factions in the U.S. that were against that. And for example, in your book, you talk about the Trotskyist line at the time. Do you want to talk a little bit about what the Trotskyist thought and the contention before we move on? Because I thought that was interesting. Yeah, it's a trip because, you know, I think it's 1939 or 1940.

The government passed the Smith Act that says, you know, you can't. I believe it's like we can't have any immigrants who are subversives. But along with that, there's this stipulation that you can't. you know, teach the desirability of overthrowing a U.S. government. It's, you know, the law is not that you cannot try to overthrow the government. The law is you can't teach the desirability, which is a whole other level. You know, it's, it's very Orwellian, right? It's a thought crime, essentially.

So they passed this law. You know, the communist, once the Soviet Union is invaded, you know, they're all like, okay, let's go to war. We're all in. The Trotskyists, I mean, they're sticking to this model of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 where, you know, it's an imperialist war and we should fight our own bourgeoisie. I mean, I'm paraphrasing. And the United States indicts them a bunch of their leaders for violating the Smith Act, you know, for this advocacy.

You know, the Communist Party to their shame basically, you know, ridicules the Trotskyists. I mean, they say, well, you know, this could be bad for other people down the line, but these Trotskyists are misleading the workers, blah, blah, blah. If they'd been principled, they would have defended the Trotskyist against this, you know, specious charge. But instead they, you know, almost like, you know, applauded it. And, of course, it came back and bit them and they asked, you know, just a few years later when they were themselves indicted under the Smith Act. So, you know, there's an argument for being principled.

no matter what. Absolutely. Yeah, I found that little segment of history fascinating and educational for sure. Now, before we move on to reaction from the government and non-state sort of fascist forces, I want to touch on one person actually really quickly, and that's Paul Robeson. You mention him. You say he was not, you know, squarely in the folk world, but, you know, in a Venn diagram, he definitely overlapped with them and became a figure in your book. Can you talk about Paul Robeson a bit, his role in all this, and anything interesting you discovered about him in your research? Well, Robeson is, you know, first off, he's a huge star, and he's extremely talented.

He's a singer. He's an actor. He's also got a law degree. He's on Broadway. He's an opera singer. He helps, I think he's something of a conduit for artists, especially African-American artists, to, you know, bring them more, you know, in touch with the Communist Party. You know, for example, Josh White, who is this blues singer.

It's Robeson who actually gets him in the Communist Party's orbit. He's a huge towering figure, you know, physically and metaphorically. And he's African-American at a point in when there are not, you know, an abundant amount of role models, African-American role models in U.S. society. So he is like somebody who, you know, it's only a matter of time before he becomes a chief target. You know, you just can't have somebody, you know, this big and influential associated with these politics, you know, in the United States and in the 40s and 50s. You know, I just recently, people, you know, people want to do themselves a favor.

Go on YouTube and a Google Old Man River, you know, from the thing showboat. And listen to Robeson singing it. I mean, he has this beautiful baritone. But the song is, you know, it's wild you know it's it's it's kind of a radical like how long we got to live this way kind of song i mean there's there's a lot of beauty to it and it does have a kind of a folk element even though it's a a show tune i mean and that's one of the wonders of this project is uh you can actually go back and listen to the music some of the music is shit i mean it's like it's adjut prop etc uh Woody gusry does this song um about the uh Soviet sniper is like 300 people she's killed and it's like killed by your gun killed by your gun I mean it's

it's fun and stuff I mean killing Nazis I guess you know in that time was something to be celebrated but but it's also very agitational propaganda but but then you listen to you know ropes and old man river or no more auction block or or guthrie doing I ain't got no home or pastures of plenty and These songs, you know, they're transcendent. I mean, they're not stuck in time. And I think they speak to people who, you know, really want to envision something better. Paul Robeson, no more auction block for me. No more auction block for me.

No more, no more. No more auction block for me, many thousand gone. No more pint of salt for me. No more pint of salt for me. No more, no more, no more pint of salt for me, many thousand gone. No more driver's lash for me. No more, no more. No more driver's lash for me. thousand

gone I make a point in the book and I'm doing, but, you know, music is a funny thing. It can go places where you know, we can't go right now, much in the way science fiction can, but the music just resonates with us emotionally in it. And you can actually, for a moment, just feel like, you know, there's a whole different

future and a whole different world out there. And to a degree, these artists, you know, did that well, and that's a real challenge. It's, you know, it's a gift. It's a gift we still have. Yeah, absolutely. But now let's shift into talking about reaction, because wherever there's revolutionary forces, there will inevitably be reactionary ones. So now that we've established the artists in question and we've established the party and its relationship toward the artists, let's talk about the reaction from the U.S. government. How did the FBI get involved in monitoring folk artists? And why was the U.S. government so interested in these artists in particular? Well, the FBI is there from the start. I mean, you know, I didn't quite understand this

fully. You know, the FBI really gets going as a major force around the time of, the World War II period. You know, before 1939, the FBI is just, you know, a few hundred people. By the end of the war, they have well over 10,000, you know, agents and personnel. They're empowered by Franklin Roosevelt, who historically gets a pass, you know, is a great liberal, but Roosevelt, you know, empowered Hoover to establish detention lists and gave the FBI authority for counterintelligence and, and, you know, and subversion. And, you know, of course, Roosevelt detained the Japanese. So, you know, Roosevelt and his administration are instrumental in, and given the FBI

this power, you know, he goes to the FBI and he says, I need you to have a custodial detention index so that Nazis and communists, you know, that are a threat to what we want to do if we enter the war can be detained. And that's actually the beginning of a list that it later does. gets called the Security Index, later gets called the 8X, the administrative index that goes into the 70s. It's the bread and butter of the FBI. If you're associated with the Communist Party, if you're in the Communist Party on the FBI learns of it, they're going to open a file on you because they need to be ready to apprehend you if the U.S. executive gives the order.

So, you know, Alan Lomax, who is not so much a folk singer as a song collector. He's one of the first people investigated for this custodial index. Woody Guthrie is put on the index. Pete Seeger, Best Lomax. I think Burlives, I'm not sure if he's on there exactly. Millard Lampel definitely is. Cisco Houston. All these people are basically, they have this sword of Damocles over their head.

and they don't even know it, which is that if there's a certain turn in U.S. policy, you know, from probably like 1942 on, you know, they're going to be putting, you know, essentially concentration camps. So there's that. You know, the repression is very interesting. It's, as I was writing this, what really got me my interest was, you know, there's all this talk about fascism, you know, in the era of Donald Trump. Everybody is talking about fascism. And people, And people are just fast and loose with these analogies to Hitler's Germany. You know, that seems to be the go-to model. Oh, my God, it's fascism.

It's Nazi Germany. And if you look at the Communist Party USA in this period, they're doing the same thing. Like, oh, my God, it's like Hitler-like fascism is coming to the United States. War and fascism is just around the corner. And the reality is there's this. massive repression coming down on them right there. And it's not Hitlerite, you know, Germany. I mean, Hitler put, what, tens of thousands of communists in prison in 1933. He raided the offices of the trade unions. He raided the office of the social Democrats. He put these people,

and I believe it was Doc out, was the initial camp where Ernst Thalman, you know, the head of the German party was put in all the other leaders. He passes this Enabling act. that gives him extraordinary power to clam down on repression. None of that happened in the United States. What did happen was in 1949, 11 of the leaders were convicted under the Smith Act, and most of them went to prison for five critical years. And then successive waves of Smith Act trials happened,

and dozens of the group's top leadership are sent to prison. The group is effectively decapitated. It responds by creating a whole undergris. ground operation, which essentially takes its power away, removes it from the public sphere. I mean, it's a very complicated thing, and I really hope your listeners, you know, take a dive into the book to get into the ins and outs. But all of this is happening under bourgeois democracy. There's still freedom of speech, you know, the Bill of Rights, you know, all that stuff

is going on. But, you know, God help you, you know, if you actually try to exercise it. I mean, there's this Woody Guthrie in in 1951, 52, he's starting to get sick. People think it's alcoholism. So he checks into the Greystone Psychiatric Center in New Jersey. Two of his friends, Lee Hayes and Fred Hellerman from this group of Weavers, they go to visit him and they say, you know, how are you doing, Woody? And Woody's like, well, you know, hey, I'm doing great.

The food's good. I'm getting a lot of rest. And plus here, you know, it's a psychiatric institution. I can stand on the table a shout. I'm a communist until I'm blue in the face. Nobody cares. They're like, he's crazy. You know, you try to do that outside.

And he's right. If you did that outside, they would probably, you know, you would risk a very severe beating. Yeah. You know, just spontaneous. But this is the freest country in the world where all this is happening. And there are no enabling acts. You know, there's just, you know, this law and that law and this law and that law just eliminates the ability of this group to function in any meaningful way or any really effective way for a very long time. Absolutely.

And even after this period of time, obviously, that sort of repression under the facade of democracy and the bourgeois order is extended. We have co-intel pro. We have the assassination of Fred Hampton, the repression of various intellectuals on the black liberation front. an indigenous liberation front, et cetera, and I'm sure it's some version of it obviously still continues to this day. I do have to ask before we move on, this is just speculation and just your opinion. Knowing what you know about the FBI through all your studies of their, you know, counter-revolutionary approaches, do you think some version of the security index still exist to this day? You know, I don't have any evidence that it does, but just on your point, you know,

one of the things I discovered is the Communist Party is really, if you want to, understand the FBI and repression, you really need to take a deep dive into what they did to the Communist Party because it was, I mean, look, a lot is made about the Hoover statement that the Black Panther Party is the biggest threat to the United States. He may or may not have said that. I think the actual documenting that quote is somewhat elusive. You know, the Panthers came and went in a couple year period. The methodologies that were used against the Panthers in everybody else in the 60s were forged in the 40s and 50s. And it's, you know, the Communist Party was actually still existed, you know, in the 60s,

and it still had a couple thousand people, and it was much more coherent and cohesive, I think, than a lot of the other groups that went out. You know, I was talking to my friend Connor just the other day, and we were like, you know, it's kind of an untold story. I mean, we're not fans of the Communist Party, especially in that period. They played a very, you know, to put it, diplomatic, conservative role in that time. But they were there, and they were a major player, and they were a major target of the FBI. Cointel Pro itself came from, you know, the FBI's efforts against the Communist Party.

So they forged those methodologies there, including they used an array of informants they had in that group to affect an impact. Even the Black Panthers, you know, the Communist Party exerted, especially in the later period, a certain influence among the Panthers and such. So it's like you can't just parse this stuff out. It's like a whole bigger picture. And our research has kind of led us, you know, backwards in time to kind of get a better sense of, you know, the period we were more focused on. It's another discussion. But as you said that, it did make me realize, like, you know, we've been a. missing something that it's been sitting right in front of us, which is the FBI's efforts

against the CP. It impacts everything. Absolutely. Yeah. It's really important to understand that repression as a historical process and not something that happened in the past. So outside of the government itself, there was plenty, as there is today, you know, anti-communist sentiment and forces at play. In your book, you discuss these non-state forces and you highlight them with the incident known to history as the peak skill riots of 1949. I don't think a lot of people might even know about this, even on the left. So can you talk about this aspect of the history and what those sort of non-state anti-communist forces looked like? Yeah, no, that's important.

I mean, Paul Robeson gave a speech in Europe at a peace conference. He was misquoted. The essence of what he said is, look, you know, black people and workers don't have any interest in a new world war. You know, that was construed as black people will not fight for the United States. You know, they, it was turned into a totally Fox News moment to skewer Paul Robeson. He was slotted to sing at a late summer fundraiser for the Civil Rights Committee, which was affiliated with the CP in Peaks Guild, and the American Legion and a bunch of other reactionaries organized to disrupt the event. when it first was supposed to happen at the end of August in, is it, what, 1940, they laid siege

to the concert site. They burned the equipment. They literally helped men and women and children hostage overnight. They sent the writer Howard Fast to the hospital beating him. Robson had to turn around and go home. You know, the concert was canceled. They rescheduled it for two weeks later, the concert went off, you know, it came off well, but as they were leaving, there was a literal gauntless setup, which was protected by the police effectively, in which everybody leaving, you know, the tens of thousands, or at least many, many thousands of people were under siege by rocks getting thrown at them, windows broken, people sent into the hospital, and this ugly, racist, anti-Semitic, anti-communist, you know, bile is going to.

getting spewed on people. I mean, it's not a program exactly, but, you know, it could be mistaken for such. And it's, yeah, I had actually come across this incident when Trump was running in 2016, and I immediately drew a parallel to his rallies, you know, where certain people were targeted and set on and stuff. Yeah. I give a talk on this, and there's a clip on YouTube where you have a, you know, some, some good video of the event. It's narrated by Sidney Portier, the actor, and Pete Seeger chimes in, and it's a fairly objective account. Well, that's a peak skill, and, you know, you can go watch it.

It's interesting. But then there's an AP version, you know, a newsreel version of peak skill, and it's just stunning how it's portrayed, like, you know, the commies came, you know, they were met by, you know, righteous Americans, you know, and blah, blah, blah. blah. And this is what people were seeing as this went on. I mean, they were essentially being told proud boys, stand by and, you know, stand back and stand by. That's essentially the message. You know, you can beat these communists and black peoples, black people, which they, you know, freely would use the N-word, you know, off camera. And that, that's okay because these people are,

you know, they're not people. So, you know, peak skill is pretty ugly. And if it resonates, now, it's because, you know, there are ugly forces who have been called into daylight. Yeah, and it's, you know, a deep trend in American history where the reactionary right will constantly tie their anti-Semitism, their racism, and their anti-communism into one sort of force. And we see that today with reactionaries trying to, you know, pin BLM as a holy Marxist group and therefore they could disregard them and just attack them as communists. And so that tradition goes way, way, way back. And we still see playing out.

We see these same non-state fascist forces attacking people in the streets. As you mentioned, the proud boys, there's many other groups like it. So this is nothing new in a lot of ways. And so understanding the history allows you to better understand the present. Put it there, boy, and we'll show these fascists what a couple of hillbillies can do. Woody Guthrie, all you fascist bounder loose, followed by tear the fascist down. Well, I'm going to tell you, fascists, you may be surprised people in this world are getting organized, you bound to lose, you fascist found to lose.

Woo! Oh, you fascist bound to lose! I said, hold on you, fascist bound to lose. Yes. All of your fascist's bound to lose You're bound to lose You fascist bound to lose There's people of every nation

Marching side the side Marching across the fields Where a million fascists died You're bound to lose You fascist bound to lose All of your fascists Found to lose Yes

All of your fascists Found to lose Yes I said, all of your patients found loose, you're found a loose, you're found to lose, you're found to lose, you're passionate bound to lose, you're passionate bound to lose. There's a great and a bloody fight around this whole world tonight In the battle, the bombs and shrapnel rain, Hitler told the world around he would tear our union down, but our union's going to break them slavery chains, and our union's going to break their slavery chains.

I walked up on a mountain in the middle of the sky, could see every farm in every town, I could see all the people in this whole wide world That's a union It'll tear the fascist down, down, down That's a union and it'll tear the precious down When I think of the men and the ship's going down While the Russians fight on across the dawn There's London in ruins and Paris in change

Good people, what are we waiting on? Good people, what are we waiting on? So I thank the Soviets and the mighty Chinese vets The allies the whole wide world around To the battling British thanks You can have ten million yanks If it takes them to tear the fascists down, down If it takes them to tear the fascists down

But when I think of the ships and the men going down And the Russians fight on across the dawn There's London in ruins and Paris and change. Good people, what are we waiting on? Good people, what are we waiting on? So I thank the Soviets and the mighty Chinese vets, the allies, the whole wide world around. To the battling British thanks, you can have 10 million yanks if it takes in to tear the fascists down, down, down, if it takes them to tear the fascists down. But moving on, can you talk a little bit about the rise of McCarthyism at this time,

the House on American Activities Committee, and the folk artists who were really involved in or implicated by these hearings and how they played out? Yeah, it's a very complicated thing. I mean, the first thing I discovered is that McCarthyism is a misnomer. Joe McCarthy comes on the scene in 1950, and he exits by 1953 his – his microphone is getting turned off. The second Red Scare actually starts in 1947.

It's when the U.S. decides that, you know, they're not going to go forward with the Soviet Union as allies. They're going to go forward as enemies. And immediately, things are implemented. The Taft-Hartley Act is implemented, which says you can't be a communist and head of union, which is a huge blow for the communists. I mean, they have leadership of union. through the Congress of industrial organizations and those people are put in a position of

they either quit the party and sign this affidavit saying they're not a communist or they lie and say they're not a communist and threaten go to prison. So quickly their influence in the unions is eliminated. The first thing they do is they look for any immigrant who has ties to the party and they deport them. That's like state suppression 101. Are they a citizen? because it's just the easiest thing for them to do,

and they don't have to explain anything. Truman passes loyalty oaths, demanding government workers, say that they have no interest in overthrowing the government. So this is in 47, and then in 49, the leaders of the party are convicted under the Smith Act. And it's not until 50 that Joe McCarthy shows up. And his focus is mainly on communists in the government, which, you know, there's probably some,

including, you know, there might be some in more influential positions, but McCarthy, you know, raises this specter that the communists have secretly, you know, taken over the State Department, which is nonsense. I mean, U.S. foreign policy is being set for, you know, the overall needs of the U.S. You know, one thing about McCarthy is, I didn't realize this, Bobby Kennedy was just out of law school and he was on McCarthy's team, which says to me, you know, McCarthy had support from a section of the ruling structure much deeper than just, you know, some particularly rabid Republicans. Jack Kennedy is the only Democratic senator who didn't vote for censoring McCarthy when he was finally called to task. Jack Kennedy said, oh, my back hurts, I can't vote today. But, you know, it's actually pretty telling, which, you know, explains why Bobby Kennedy in 1962 would sign off on the wiretap order for Martin Luther King. I mean, I think that Kennedys have gotten a pass historically as far as, you know,

who they were. I mean, they were, you know, interested in protecting, you know, the U.S. power establishment, you know, the consensus of that at, at that particular moment. So McCarthy, you know, he does damage. And I think he did real damage. I mean, some people, I believe, killed themselves as a result of him turning on him. But I think he becomes the story.

And it's very convenient, much in the way Hoover becomes, you know, the villain in the FBI. McCarthy is the villain, you know, in the second Red Scare, you know, as if there wasn't a whole bigger thing that starts in 47 and burns very hot until like 56, 57. And I think as you read the book, you'll get a much deeper picture of that. And it's important because it's not just a matter of, you know, one or two individuals who are particularly egregious. There's an overall mechanism in play. The United States could not tolerate internal communism. And it wasn't going to tolerate it.

And it took measures to, you know, suppress it, if not entirely eliminate it. Yeah. The story of Josh White, I think, is instructive here. Do you want to touch on that before we move on? Well, Josh White is, you know, Josh White is, he's called in front of the House on American Activities Committee. You know, he's got a big career. You know, he's making, you know, quite a lot of money working at some of the best clubs in the United States. but this publication Red Channels says he's affiliated with the Communists.

So Josh White goes to Red Channels and says, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not, which I don't think is actually true. But he tries to negotiate to get out of their headlines. In turn, he agrees to testify in front of the House on American Activities Committee. He calls Paul Ropeson the night before and says, Paul, you know, I got to tell you, I'm going to make a heel of myself tomorrow. You know, I got to go talk to this committee, and Paul's like, well, why do you have to do that? But he goes.

He testifies. He makes, you know, a big speech about how he is, advocates for the rights and civil liberties of African-American people. And that's good. It's important. But that's not why they wanted him there. The reason they wanted him there was for him to say he had been a dupe by the communist. And, you know, he gives this, you know, really. disappointing presentation about, you know, us musicians are not smart politically and we're

manipulated and blah, blah, blah. They don't ask him to name names, but they do ask him to prostrate himself, which he does. His career is damaged, but it goes on. You know, he's not totally, you know, banned from the public square. I mean, what I learned later is, you know, There's always been rumors that he was blackmailed into doing it. And if you read his file, there's evidence that he, you know, he was somebody who was probably vulnerable to blackmail. But the other thing that comes through is just his attempt to kind of talk his way out of it. He goes back to the FBI two or three times, like, no, no, no, no, no, I didn't do this.

I didn't do that. And, you know, it didn't work. Yeah. I mean, the only way to do it is to get up there and do, like, what bro. what I've said and say, you know, communism sucks, you know, and I don't want to have anything to do with it, you know, Oscar Brand did that, the radio personality, he did that to a degree. I mean, if you do that, you know, they might let you go on, but if you try to do, you know, half step, forget about it.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So let's go ahead and move in towards the conclusion of this wonderful talk on this amazing book that, again, I really urge people to look into and get themselves and read. There's so much that we just can't come. cover here and I loved reading this book and I learned so much. But how did these, how did this chapter in American history come to an end and what ultimately happened to some of the artists that you focus on in this book? Yeah, it's a trip because, so you've got Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Cisco, Houston, you know, through the most important points of their career, they're confronting

being put into preventative detention. You know, if the rule comes down, if the U.S. you know, goodness forbid, goes to war with the Soviet Union. They're going to be put, you know, the FBI is going to raid their house and put them in camps. That's essentially my sense of what they're under. They're blacklisted. You know, Seeger can't appear on TV. It's not until 69 he gets to go on TV. They're hounded.

Their landlords are being, you know, talked to in secret. They're under surveillance every six months to make sure they know where they live. You know, all these machinations. are in play against them. And then they're, you know, they're ridiculed in the press. Seeger is this commie sympathizer, et cetera, et cetera. So through the most important parts of their lives, you know, they're pariahs. But then they die and they become these icons, you know, the beloved Pete Seeger.

I mean, Pete Seeger dies and it's like Bill Clinton tweets, oh, our hearts, you know, go out to Pete Seeger. Kristen Gillibrand and the other senator, tell me, the senator from New York, right, they both tweet out, oh, Pete in his banjo sang, sang out freedom across the whole United States. Well, they sang out freedom, that song, I Had a Hammer, is a Pete Seeger Lee Haye song. It was written for the Smith Act defendants who were sent to prison for, you know, violating the Smith Act. But suddenly they're icons. national medals of freedom by Obama and Clinton. And, you know, so it's, I mean, I quote Lenin from state and revolution

where, you know, when they're alive, they're, you know, they're reviled, but when they're dead, they're turned into harmless icons. In this way, I think the U.S. power structure, if you will, wants to have its cake and eat its two. You know, I mean, these are, you know, extraordinary musicians who are essential to, you know, the culture of this particular country. country, you know, but, you know, their association with these left-wing politics is not something they're going to abide. But once they're dead and they can no longer make a comment, they put

them on posted stamps, which is what they did with Woody Guthrie and Josh White. I mean, it's it's rather outrageous. Absolutely. Yeah, the more recent example is like, you know, Martin Luther King Jr. and Trump, you know, on Martin Luther King Day, tweeting out something positive about MLK as if he wouldn't have been right in those white mobs beating MLK and sticking the police on him when he was alive. So America loves its troublemakers, nice and dead. Yeah, well, there you go. Before we end, I always ask this question when we talk about history because I'm always thinking about how we can apply its lessons to the present. So what, if any, lessons do you personally think we on the left today can pull from this specific history? Well, I think people should not have

illusions about, you know, artistic freedom. It's relative. I mean, as long as I, you know, you're singing innocuous love songs and such, you probably are going to have the ability to, you know, do whatever you like. You know, you can even get a little risque with being vulgar or whatever. But if you start speaking to something that challenges something fundamental about the way things are, you're probably going to run into trouble. I give the example of, you know, it wasn't that long ago that the Dixie Chicks, you know, took issue with the second Iraq war and they were, you know, chased out of a section of the public square. I mean, they were the biggest country act in the country, and they never recovered from that, or even Beyonce, who, you know, did this,

conjured up the images of the Black Panther Party at the Super Bowl, you know, was reviled by Fox News and the right-wing media for daring to do that. I mean, there's certain things that are not going to be allowed. You know, maybe the FBI isn't the one. on the vanguard of that these days. I mean, there's a whole array, particularly the media, is extremely influential in setting terms on this. So there's one not taking for granted

the perceived versus the actual freedoms. But the other thing is, it's like, you know, the story of the repression of the Communist Party is really something people ought to learn from. I mean, there's a point I make in the book about, you know, we're constantly hearing about norms, being violated. Democratic norms are being set aside. And what I kind of realized in writing this is, you know, the norms are generally illusions. You know, they're set aside and then they're restored

when things are safe. I mean, you know, the Japanese were put in internment camps. And then there's actually this scene from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to Intergalactic Cops are talking and one cop is talking to the other say I'm not a bad cop I don't just beat people and celebrate it later I beat people and feel bad about it later you know and I think that's that's some of the things they break the rules and then they feel bad about it later but you know guaranteed if those rules become perceived as threatening they will certainly do what they have to do you know in their estimate you know to continue things as they are yeah let's hope whatever future we have. It's not one populated by intergalactic cops.

Well, Aaron, thank you so much. This is an amazing book. The book, again, is called The Folk Singers and the Bureau. I will link to it in the show notes. But before I let you go, can you actually just let listeners know where they can find this book and your other books online? The best place to go is Aaronleyn.net. That's a-A-A-A-R-O-N-A-N-A-R-N-A-R-N-N-A-R-N-N-E-R-N-N. Perfect. I will link to that in the show notes. Aaron, it's always a pleasure. I look forward to having you back on to talk about your other book. Oh, sounds good, Brett. You take care of it.

Solidarity forever. Solidarity forever. Solidarity forever. For the union makes us strong. When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run there can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun

yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one but the union makes us strong solidarity forever solidarity forever solidarity forever

solidarity forever solidarity forever For the Union makes us strong It is we who ploughed the prairies Built to cities where they trade Dug the mines and built the workshops Endless miles of railroad laid Now we stand outcast and starving

Mid the wonders we have made But the Union makes us strong Solidarity forever Solidarity forever solidarity forever for the union makes us strong they have taken on told millions that they never toil to earn but without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn we can break their haughty power gain our freedom when we learn that the union makes us strong Solidarity forever.

Solidarity forever. Solidarity forever. For the union makes us strong. In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold, greater than the might of atoms magnified a thousandfold. We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old. For the Union makes us strong. Solidarity forever.

Solidarity forever. Solidarity forever. For the Union makes us strong.