I called Jack Reed a Stalinist in my recent post. Intrepid and fortunately friendly reader, Nathan Carter Wood, points out that this was an elementary error.
A quibble: Bolshevik sympathizer, romantic revolutionary and all around dupe for evil, sure, but Jack Reed died in 1920. Lenin was alive, Trotsky still a force in the civil war, and Stalin a decade or so away from consolidating his tyranny. Reed lionized Trotsky and barely mentions Stalin in 10 Days.
To my mind, Stalinist in the American sense refers to those who defended the regime in the 1930s and refused to break with him after the show trials of 1938 and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
Pete Seeger, now there was a Stalinist.
To which my first instinct was to reply: "I knew that!" But in fact it was a careless mistake. I suspect Reed would have made a fine Stalinist if only he had had the chance. Lets call him a mere communist instead.
Faithful reader Casey McEnelly would add this:
I would add the book/movie/musical “Ragtime” which does its best to beatify Emma Goldman. You may also add the 1999 film “Cradle Will Rock” which examines the controversy surrounding the Federal Theatre Program during the Great Depression. For such a little-known film, it is particularly star-studded. And how about Hollywood’s fascination with the “innocence” of the Rosenbergs? How many feature films and made for TV movies have been made of that?
Consider these items added to the list. They add further grist to my mill. But I note what grain I am grinding. I said in my now infamous post:
Do Hollywood leftists applaud mass murder? No. They just seem inordinately fond of people who did applaud mass murderers.
This is a qualified point. I do not apologize for making it.
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