Tag Archives: communism

The “Red Scare,” often called McCarthyism, went much deeper than what was directed by Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950s and had, even as early as the late 1940s, a broad reach into the states. Local “scares” were often instigated by individuals, mini-McCarthys, who would red-bait state and city politics. But this “fear of communism” in the backyard, like …

We open with music composed by Sol Kaplan for the film Salt of the Earth. Kaplan was blacklisted in the 1950s for being “uncooperative” to HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Committee. The rest of our music will feature the work of other blacklisted artists and performers; Hazel Scott, Yip Harburg, Marc Blitzstein, and Lena Horne. Salt of the Earth is …

Our show today is another in our series on the Russian Revolution of 1917. This time our focus is on Leon Trotsky. Our music throughout is by the 80s English, socialist, skinhead, soul, punk group, The Redskins. We open with “Lev Bronstein.” The dream of socialism as an organizing principle has been deemed an inevitable failure — and logically undemocratic …

Tricky Dick started out that way… Today’s show is about knowing and believing. And our key players are Alger Hiss, Richard Nixon, and Whittaker Chambers. Behind the scenes lurks the military industrial complex as fronted by the Dulles brothers, in particular John Foster, and corporate collaboration with Hitler’s Third Reich. But there is also in this story the justified fear …

Today on Independence Day, your independent, community radio station in Bloomington, Indiana presents “Pete Seeger: Plain and Complicated.” It’s hard to know where to begin but let’s start with one of the most popular songs of the mid-20th century, The Weavers rendition of “Goodnight Irene” by Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly. This is a song which seems a kind …

Our show is Cuba in Africa, or what my guest today has called “Castro’s Worldview: Foreign Policy in a Hostile World.” Our music throughout also reflects the influence of Cuba in Africa and the struggle for independence by African nations. Our opening song, “Valodia” by Santocas, released shortly after Angolan independence is in praise of a guerilla fighter. Some of …

As a photographer for Life and Fortune magazines, Margaret Bourke-White traveled to Russia in the 1930s, photographed the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1938, recorded the liberation of Buchenwald a the end of World War II, and documented “Calcutta streets strewn with putrefying corpses decaying in the heat and being consumed by bloated vultures” in the aftermath of the 1946 …