I happened today upon the documentary, below, about the great Paul Robeson, whom we have noted previously. He was one of the great Americans of the 20th-century, notable not just for artistic talent, but moral and political courage beyond what almost anyone could muster. He was, of course, vilified during the fascist resurgence in America of the 1950s for his unwillingness to attack the Soviet Union, but surely everyone now knows that Stalinist Russia would have been preferable to the life available to most Blacks in apartheid America of the 1940s and after. (Random lynching is apparently less offensive to effete "libertarian" American sensibilities than the Gulag.) As his son is quoted in the film as saying, it was Robeson's view that the main enemy of humanity was the right-wing of the United States. If anyone today doubts that assessment, I'm not sure what to say. Anyway, watch the film, which of course includes many clips of his singing and acting, as well as his genuine status as a "working class hero" (unlike the radical chic John Lennon). We need aPaul Robeson today.
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