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New York City has a Seegerfest, Celebrating Pete Seeger and his Reprehensible Politics

On Sunday, Lincoln Center Outdoors hosted the third of five days of New York City Honors Pete Seeger, or the Seegerfest, as the events are called. It was the festival’s main event. The audience attending watched a concert featuring different artists singing songs Seeger was associated with, from “The Hammer Song” to “Turn, Turn, Turn” and of course, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” The artists playing included old time folkies like Judy Collins, who opened the program, Fred Hellerman of The Weavers, the popular children’s singer Dan Zanes,  banjo master Tony Trischka, Tom Chapin and the Chapin sisters and Jay Ungar and Molly Mason. The artists were a who’s who of the 60’s folk revival and their current descendants.

Pete Seeger certainly deserves to be remembered. He was the father of the folk revival, the man who almost singlehandedly introduced the 5-string banjo to popularity, and who furthered the careers of many people, including a young Bob Dylan. He mastered old time ballads from Appalachia and the Smokey Mountains, African-American songs from the South and from the days of slavery, sea shanties, and just about everything else folk musicians perform.

But Seeger’s blind spot was his persistent Stalinism, his decades-long love affair with the American Communist Party and his tendency to endorse and support almost every far left campaign that asked him to sign on. Significantly, his very last political act was to join the swarms of Israel’s opponents who created the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions movement, dedicated to Israel’s demise and who blamed the Jewish state for the entire Mideast’s woes.

The radical far left politics of the day was symbolized by Seeger’s daughter, Tinya, who gave a pep talk to free Leonard Peltier, an American Indian activist found guilty of the murder of FBI agents. She noted her father came to his defense also. As usual, all those guilty who are on the Left are declared “political prisoners,” a term quickly extended to all American blacks who are serving prison sentences.

In an intermission interview with Lincoln Center’s TV host, singer Tom Chapin was perhaps the only artist who said that he didn’t come for the politics, and urged the TV audience concentrate on the music. Alas, Seeger’s politics were intrinsic to his music, and more and more, his concerts became rallying ground for the ultra-sectarian left-wing on the campuses and elsewhere, whose main cause these days is hatred of Israel...

Read entire article at PJ Media