• TheBeatles [any]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    for fuck's sake

    Pussy Riot are NFT crypto cultists now, also one of their members dated a straight-up nazi

    • wild_dog [they/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      there's long been weird connections between Pussy Riot and the US State Department too.

        • wild_dog [they/them]
          ·
          1 year ago

          I just looked and I can't find the video I watched anymore because it got taken down and everything else I find is too right wing for me to feel comfortable posting here

        • TreadOnMe [none/use name]
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          edit-2
          1 year ago

          I believe they literally got invited to a state dinner with Obama with the Russian ambassador present. The town that banned Bad Brains for being abit too rowdy at shows invited an electronic shock music act with public sex to the White House. Just levels upon levels of hypocrisy.

          Either that or I am remembering a particularly stupid episode of television.

    • Fuckass
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      edit-2
      1 year ago

      deleted by creator

  • Circle_circle [any]
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    1 year ago

    Crazy how every time I hear about Woody Guthrie, I put him more and more on the left in the imaginary politics scale in my head.

    Typical patriotic American "hero" with his colonization song -----> progressive folk hero who is misunderstood in mainstream -----> Traveller sympathetic to communism ----> Would be considered one of the most tankie of tankies.

    Like he apparently wrote this song:

    I see where Hitler is a talking peace
    Since Russia has met him face to face
    He had just got his war machine a rollin’
    Coasting along and taking Poland
    Stalin stepped in, took a big strip of Poland
    And gave the lands back to the farmers.

    A lot of little countries to Russia ran
    To get away from the Hitler man
    If I’d been living in Poland then-
    I’d been glad Stalin stepped in
    Swap my rifle for a farm…trade my helmet for a sweetheart.

    Without the power of hindsight, I don't know if how I'd have reacted. But Woody was correct if he wrote this.

    • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]
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      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Woody Guthrie was absolutely a comrade, and he's about the only person I would point to and be like, "He was hiding his power level," because he didn't really even hide it, he just had hillbilly aesthetics and people made/make assumptions. And I don't think those aesthetics were fake or anything, but he definitely saw them as useful and played them up, allowing him to influence people towards leftist ideas and causes without coming across as radical or extreme.

      He got fired from a radio station for praising the Soviet invasion of Poland. He wrote "This Land is Your Land," with an often-omitted line, "I saw a sign there, said 'private property,' but on the back side, it didn't say nothing, this land was made for you and me." Not only that, but he explicitly wrote it as a response to "God Bless America," which he said was "overplayed." He once said, "The best thing that I did in 1936 was to sign up with the Communist Party," and, "If you call me a communist, I am very proud because it takes a wise and hard-working person to be a communist." He praised Stalin and never expressed any regret for doing so, and he suddenly switched from anti-war songs to pro-war songs right after Germany invaded the USSR. During the Korean War, he openly expressed his hope for a communist victory. (That's all just from his Wikipedia page tbh)

      There's also ofc the famous "This machine kills fascists" and a lot of his WWII songs are supportive of it while very much connecting the war effort to antifascism, like "All Of You Fascists Bound To Lose," and "Tear The Fascists Down."

      Then there's the song he wrote about the Ludlow Massacre, with lyrics about the National Guard murdering children while shooting striking coal miners... and then the miners get armed and, well:

      The state soldiers jumped us in a wire fence corners,

      They did not know we had them guns,

      And the Red-neck miners mowed down them troopers,

      You should have seen those poor boys run.

      "Would be considered the tankiest of tankies," is totally correct. He got away with (edit: I shouldn't say "got away with" considering he was targeted by HUAC and blacklisted, but I just mean in the popular imagination) so much shit just by being like, "Oh you know I'm just a dumb country bumpkin I ain't never got too much schoolin' in, I just calls 'em like I sees 'em, and anyways I just reckon as a redneck hillbilly that things'd be a lot better for us common folk if ol' Uncle Joe hadn't stopped at Berlin." But there's not really any smugness or irony-poisoning or snark to his works. Like he figured out what side he was on and didn't feel the need to justify it to himself or to anyone else, and just committed himself to the role that allowed him to reach people and further the communist agenda. We need a :guthrie-shining:.

      At least that's my reading of him. Nobody breathes a word of this to the libs btw.

    • Are_Euclidding_Me [e/em/eir]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Oh yeah, Woodie Guthrie was absolutely on the commie side of things! My partner frequently gets drunk and makes me listen to Woodie Guthrie songs. (I'm into it.) Hopefully he'll show up in this thread and drop some recs

      • Are_Euclidding_Me [e/em/eir]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Update: My partner has passed out after we watched a Star Trek episode. No recommendations incoming, read Zuzak's comment instead, and then go listen to "All of You Fascists Bound to Lose", because that's a really good one

    • Vncredleader [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      That is more based than like 60% of members of literal communist parties at the time

  • copandballtorture [ey/em]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Woody Guthrie Prize given to punk rock group that supports...overthrow of Russian government...

    :geordi-yes:

    ...And escalation of Ukraine war

    :geordi-no:

  • Naal [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    If Oklahoma is giving you an award you're doing something wrong, and I say this as someone who likes Oklahoma more than most people

  • TreadOnMe [none/use name]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I just want to say, and this is not a defense of Russia, tbh, but if Pussy Riot had pulled what they pulled in Russia (public sex in churches, nude demonstrations, etc.) in the U.S. they not only would be in jail for a longer period of time, they would literally be on the sex offenders registry with their travel and living arrangements limited by the state.

    Russia has it's issues, particularly when it comes to dealing with and prosecuting LGBTQ individuals, but I don't want it being said that their laws are 'more' draconian and arbitrary than the U.S.

  • MolotovHalfEmpty [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    (I wrote a longish thing with anologies and pop political music references but instead...)

    Oh fuck off.

  • a_party_german [comrade/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    LOL somehow I only just now looked it up and realized Woody Guthrie was born in 1912 and is long dead.

    Somehow I always thought he was like a contemporary of Willie Nelson, that he'd still be alive and like in his late 70s today and the whole "this machine kills fascists" stuff was from like the 1970s.

    Well thanks for clearing that up I guss.