Home » Paul Robeson (Part II): a mind can be an impossible thing to change

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Paul Robeson (Part II): a mind can be an impossible thing to change — 10 Comments

  1. Thanks for the responses, everyone.

    Brad, sir:

    “We fail to re-examine our worldview with the same scrutiny and regularity that we apply to criticisms of those with whom we disagree. And particularly in our youth, we look at such grand schemes as the machinations of total society in an uncomplex, abstract way (the idealized future that Larry mentions, which was particularly potent in the post-60’s West).”

    Yeah, I guess you’re right. I’d like to think I examine my own beliefs with a high level of scrutiny, but that is admittely a hard thing to do. Everybody has a personal level of vanity, whether we’d like to admit it or not, and that often prevents us from really putting ourselves under the microscope. The closest I come to putting beliefs to the test are when I debate with liberal friends, and for a variety of reasons we not only try to keep the conversations as clinical as possible, we also normally don’t take those debates too far. None of us really dig talking politics for entertainment. But at any rate, back on topic. It *is* really hard to examine yourself. There’s no question about that. But on the other hand, seeing something for what it is… well, before this thread, I used to think it couldn’t be that hard, but I’m starting to change my mind. I guess in the case of sympathizers seeing communism for what it really was could involve a level of self-examination that is uncomfortable. It’s hard for me to imagine, but you and others are telling me outright that’s what happened, so I can’t deny it (plus, I’ve also read Horowitz’s Radical Son, and he’s saying the same thing). I guess I’m lucky (I can’t attribute this belief of mine to any intelligence 🙂 ), but even from childhood, even when I didn’t have anywhere near a full grasp on the philosophies behind Socialism, Leninism, Marxism, and Communism, I’ve never seen communist governments as anything but wrongs done to humanity, and that’s even in the grips of the general societal malaise and the continuing rise of the “America is bad” attitude back in the late 70’s. Maybe it’s the conditioning from those close to me that led me to this, but I’ve always been in a personal environment (not talking general societal environment here, but personal i.e. friends and family) where we believed that, as bad as things were, things were far, far worse in other places. For example: My mother early in my life talked about the Payatas garbage dump in Manila, and said she always cried when she saw the people living there; it was the factor motivating her to agree with my late father in coming to the U.S.. People really did live in a garbage dump, and not in small numbers either (Google “Payatas” with “Manila” (otherwise you’ll get irrelevant links); Goverment believes something like **80,000** people live there). At any rate, looking back, I realize the message she was trying to give me was “Hey! At least in this country, you don’t have whole families living in garbage dumps.”

    So I guess my “conditioning” while growing up could have led to no other attitude than the one I have now.

    Larry, sir:
    “But once in that grip (of a utopian illusion), you simply don’t see the regimentation, and deny, downplay, or excuse the murderous violence that sustains the pretence behind the scenes.”

    I guess that plays into Brad’s point above, as well as mine. I confess, it’s just been so hard for me to grasp that others can honestly fool themselves to such a degree, and I guess it’s due to the notion I had growing up that the depredations of communist goverments were not all that hard to see, and were the natural result of their existence to boot. When I was younger (preteen and teenaged), I had this opinion that those apologizing, or outright endorsing communism were not self-deluded about the negatives of those societies, but actually knew full well how bad they were, and were that much worse for endorsing the system anyway. I thought it was so apparent as to be natural law! But, as I said before, due to both you and Brad above, plus others like David Horowitz, I’m beginning to see otherwise, and it’s a startling revelation. It shockingly adds depth to the depravity of Stalin’s (I think) statement about “Useful fools” and makes it twice as bad. It tells me that there were those who full well understood the problems and the contradictions and continued with communism anyway, thus destroying so many lives, and damaging so many more. But it also tells me that there were many like you and Brad who, for reasons that may have been superficial and a result of sheltered adolescence but were nonetheless honest, truly believed there was a better way for society to evolve in. And ended up being simple victims of the knowledgeables, the ones who couldn’t fail to know the negatives (oh, what an understated term!) of communist society.

    Okay, applying the brakes. Once again, stream of consciousness… someone feed me ritalin, I can’t stop… Sorry for the long post again. I had to get this off my chest. I’m afraid I’m gonna blow poor Neo-Neocon’s blog quota through the roof!

  2. e.m.h. What Larry said! We fail to re-examine our worldview with the same scrutiny and regularity that we apply to criticisms of those with whom we disagree. And particularly in our youth, we look at such grand schemes as the machinations of total society in an uncomplex, abstract way (the idealized future that Larry mentions, which was particularly potent in the post-60’s West). The logic becomes circular to the max (very self validating), and we self-segregate from those who could effectively pick it apart. To get to the point of re-examination requires some input, a sort of energy of activation (if you remember basic chem). For me, this came in the Peace Corps in the eighties: Living in the middle of a mountainous nowhere with extended campesino (peasant) families spread out along the rivers and streams in the valleys, I noticed that without outside influence (no roads), they absolutely fell into a Lockean socio-economic system (if someone needed their field plowed, they hired the oxen guy; everything had a price and everybody had their individual function; and those who worked the hardest lived the best). I noticed this because I had expected the opposite. They also rejected the attempted imposition of “identity politics” by some of the more radical volunteers (including me for a very brief time) on purely commonsensical grounds. This was the real eye-opener for me, as my undergrad days were drenched in pc stuff. Many years later I came across the Orwell statement —Some ideas are so completely absurd that only an intellectual could believe them- and thought “ah ha.” In short, we believed it because of our habitus. (sorry for the long post)

  3. It’s easy to understand how is personal reaction to racism drove him and ultimately blinded him to the vacuous promises of communism. I’m always intrigues by apologists, who never seem able to criticize the evils of their allies. Mainline Islam is experiencing its version of this right now.

  4. To a certain extent, the machinations of communism were kept secret by necessity and by the lack of technology and communication needed to expose such doings. There was no real-time communication in Stalin’s time, no bloggers and satellites and instant messaging, etc. The full extent of the evil of that system was not realized by many people.

  5. Was it simple vanity or was it Robeson’s hardwired belief in the pure ideals of social equality that was the promise of communism?Ultimately, a failed promise.
    From what I have read, Robeson was a brilliant and humane individual and therefore I would like to think it was the latter.

  6. E.M.H.: …how is it some come to see a severely regimented and regulated, impersonal, totalitarian society to be better? Even given the injustices of the society they currently inhabit?

    Because they’re in the grip of a utopian illusion. And that’s a very powerful grip, as I can attest since it once held me too, and I didn’t have rascism to drive me toward it — I had just the usual adolescent rejection of my parents’ society and a wannabe intellectual’s ennui with “bourgeois” values. But once in that grip, you simply don’t see the regimentation, and deny, downplay, or excuse the murderous violence that sustains the pretence behind the scenes. And at the same time, you indulge in massive and diversionary exaggerations of every fault and problem in capitalist societies, real or imaginary. What keeps you going is a quasi-religious hope and faith that someday, somehow, reality will approach the illusory vision.

    Luckily, I myself escaped ever having to make the sort of soul-destroying personal choice that Robeson faced in this story of his relation with Feffer. My own change of mind began with the collapse of the Soviet Union. It wasn’t that I’d supported it as Robeson had, but for years I’d answered the obvious criticisms of that “model” society with a kind of “yes, but…” response that you continue to see among leftist supporters of Cuba. Finally, as the historical failure of socialism became impossible to ignore, and the mirage faded, I learned to answer with a simple “yes”, full stop.

  7. Whoops. Sorry, everyone, for such a long comment. I was just typing stream-of-consciousness and didn’t realize just how long it was until I hit “Publish”. My apologies to all.

  8. That is indeed the sad thing about this man’s life. Communism is a terrible creation; I’d go so far as to call it a blight on humanity. Yet, it held it’s appeal for those that have truly suffered (as well as way too many who only imagined that they suffered, but that’s a topic for a different day). Many found solace in the image (illusion, perhaps is a better word?) of an ideal society, and also the camaraderie and togetherness that belief in communism provided, as well as the confidence that their ideological indignation against their societies was justified and valid (Whether they were correct or not about that is another question; for the record, I strongly say “no”, but that, too, is a discussion for another day).

    The questions that arises, of course, are 1) To what degree was society responsible for Robeson’s feelings of alienation, 2) To what degree is he responsible for his own alienation? That last I know will set me up for charges of blaming the victim, but I can’t help it. The question still stands in my mind. I mean, everyone has a degree of personal and active choice in every life decision, and even for those who start life in poverty or subject to extreme racial hatred, it’s still an active choice to select communism as their ideal in life over, say, civil rights or anti-poverty work, let alone admiring the Soviet Union over, say, Switzerland or Sweden. And I realize that not every American’s experience in this society is positive, not even remotely so, but even then how is it some come to see a severely regimented and regulated, impersonal, totalitarian society to be better? Even given the injustices of the society they currently inhabit? I mean, I understand the debilitating, humiliating, dignity-denying, soul-killing effect that racism has on a person, yet I’m amazed that the debilitating, humiliating, etc. effect of a totalitarian government on it’s citizens could be ignored to such a degree. Someone help me with this, because growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, I really have trouble understanding: How were some people so blind to the crimes and contradictions, let along the debilitating, humiliating etc. effects of such a totalitarian government as the Soviet one? Did it really have such a positive appeal to folks from the 30’s through the 50’s? Was the image of it really that wonderful? By the time I was cognizant of the differences between societies, it was fairly obvious how bad communism was. Did it truly appear to be a better way back then? Even taking into account the race and poverty issues of the United States? It just sort of strikes me as significant that, during the Civil War (late 1880’s), and through the peaks of socialism’s and communism’s popularity (I would put that around the 1920’s through the ’40’s), many Irish and Italians were clamoring to emigrate to the United States. And that during the peak of racial conflicts in the 50’s, the numbers of Asians immigrants rose dramatically, as well as starting to see the numbers of Latin American immigrants in the 60’s. It’s sort of a pithy cliche, but people really did vote with their feet. How is it, then, that so many found communism to be such a positive ideal?

  9. PS: nice to see that you got to visit with Roger L. Simon in L.A. I had a nice phone chat with him several months ago….nice guy!

  10. Interesting and in most ways very sad. Interesting to me on a personal level also….I used to live in Westfield N.J.

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