Paul Robeson, 1937

America today stands at a crossroads. Where an entrenched oligarchy strives desperately to keep hold of those military, intelligence, financial and federal institutions which it spent decades infesting, while attempting to overthrow a nationalist president who has worked to end the “forever wars” while cooperating with both Russia and China.

This fight within the heart of America has been confusing for many people who accustomed themselves to interpret world history from the distorted lens of the age in which they live.

Such confused people cannot fathom HOW America could possibly be anything but an imperialistic nation infested with self-contradiction: A nation founded on Liberty but relying on exploitation, usury and institutional racism.

This confusion can easily be resolved by taking off the distorted glasses of “the present” and look at history as a process defined by the clash between two opposing views of mankind: a creature born free or enslaved.

Where the oligarchical system defines humanity as simply a mass of enslaved apes controlled by higher ‘alpha’ apes, the humanist system defines humanity as a species made in the image of a creator with inalienable rights. Abstract notions of “law, value, goodness, purpose, beauty, creativity or even potential” flow equally as words from each system, but with definitions that stand in stark opposition to each other.

Paul Robeson lived his remarkable life according to this knowledge and gave everything to awaken what he understood as the real America as a force of opposition to the racist, imperialistic machine that had made its move to take control of the republic on the eve of President Roosevelt’s early death in 1945.

Who was Paul Robeson?

Paul Robeson is a man who defies categorization. Although famous as a great African American baritone and actor born of an escaped slave, Robeson was so much more. While his life’s work should be basic knowledge and pride of every American today, the deep state which ran America for over 70 years has done all but erase him from existence labelling him a “communist crackpot” and Soviet spy. Why is the oligarchy so afraid of his memory?

Robeson is a cultural warrior of the highest caliber who knew over 20 languages including Russian, Chinese, Arabic and several African dialects, he early on became a cultural ambassador expressing the universality of mankind as he sung folk songs around the world and created institutions to enhance the best of each cultures development. He combined the anti-imperialist fight to liberate all former colonies with the combat for racial equality in America. He was the most vocal opponent to the Wall Street takeover of America and was recognized internationally as the leading figure and founder of America’s Civil Rights movement.

Music as a Weapon

Robeson famously called “music his weapon”, and used it masterfully to build spiritual bridges with all cultures by absorbing their languages, stories and folk songs. He wrote: “folk songs are, in fact, an expression of a peoples’ innermost nature, of the distinctive and multifaceted conditions of its life and culture, of the sublime wisdom that reflects that peoples’ great historical journey and experience.

In Russia, Robeson sang numerous patriotic pieces like Song of the Plains in perfect Russian:

In China, he sang popular folk songs and was the first western singer to sing Chi Lai (Arise) in 1940 which later became China’s national anthem:

He even learned Yiddish and sang the anti-fascist Warsaw Ghetto Uprising ballad:

Nothing more powerfully conveys the insight Robeson had into the universality of mankind when one hears his incredible description of the universal harmonies, and patterns underlying world languages and folk music conveyed during his 1958 Carnegie Hall concert featuring international folk music:

Political Freedom as the Highest Art

Counted among his close friends and allies were Albert Einstein, Vice President Henry Wallace (who Robeson campaigned vigorously for in his 1948 bid for the presidency), Jawaharlal Nehru, Jomo Kenyatta, and Kwame Nkrumah. Kenyatta and Nkrumah became leaders of the powerful Pan African movement and were members of an organization called the Council on African Affairs founded and chaired by Robeson in 1937.

Presiding over the 1944 Council on African Affairs conference alongside emerging Pan African leaders and American workers of all colors, Robeson oversaw the resolutions defining the conferences’ objectives:

• To Give concrete help to the struggle of the African masses
• To disseminate accurate information concerning Africa and its people; in that, to wake up Americans to what is happening in Africa; the one continent where undisguised colonial slavery is still practiced.
• To influence the adoption of governmental policies designed to promote their advancement and freedom and preserve international peace.
• To smash the iron curtain of secrecy and double talk surrounding the schemes for imperialist exploitation of Africa and its people.
• To prevent American loans and guns from being used to crush the freedom struggle of Africans and other subject peoples.
• To strengthen the allegiance of progressive Americas, black and white, with the peoples of Africa and other lands in the struggle for world peace and freedom.

Albert Einstein who also suffered under McCarthyism, co-chaired the American Crusade Against Lynching founded and chaired by Robeson in response to Truman’s failure to enforce anti-lynching legislation in 1946. Between 1945 and 1946, well over 100 black war veterans were lynched and many more “disappeared” as the south re-asserted their hegemony through terror.

It is not always appreciated today, but the fascist takeover of America in the wake of FDR’s death saw the resurgence of the southern establishment which Lincoln sought to destroy 80 years earlier. African American servicemen returning from WWII expecting to find equal rights, encountered a newly empowered Ku Klux Clan and racist Jim Crow laws- now protected by Hoover’s FBI and a racist little President who was working hard to undo all of FDR’s accomplishments.

Einstein, Wallace and Robeson in 1948

Reviving the Anti-Colonial America

As the founder of the Civil Rights Congress (CRC), Robeson not only fought for racial equality at home but united this new movement with the international anti-colonial struggle saying at a CRC meeting:

“The guarantee that our day of liberation is not far off is that this is a time of colonial liberation. It is a time when dark men and women in Asia and Africa are pulling off their shackles of exploitation which have kept them bound for centuries… As they succeed in Asia and soon, you may be sure, in Africa- as more than half the world escapes the clutches of the Dulles, Rockefellers and Firestones, they lend a powerful stimulus to our freedom struggle here at home.”

In describing the American corporations moving into controlling positions in Africa, Robeson made sure to differentiate the deep state from the real America when he asked:

“Are these financial big boys America? No! They are the former enemies of Roosevelt. They were the ones who were glad when Roosevelt died. They are the same ones who Roosevelt said were the core of American fascism. They are the allies of the remains of the Hitler entourage- they are the friends of Franco, the living representatives of the Spanish conquistadores who enslaved us and still enslave us in Latin America. They are the ones who hate American democracy as did the enemies of Jefferson and Lincoln before them. They are no part of America. They are the ‘would-be’ preservers of world fascism and the enemies of progressive America!”

It is no wonder then that Robeson became enemy #1 for Hoover’s FBI, Dulles’ State Department and Red hunters like Joe McCarthy who did everything in their power to destroy his life by labelling him a “Black Mussolini” and “Soviet agent”. In truth, they were afraid that he was more of a “Black Solon” who would destroy their usurious power hold over the republic and free the bond slaves at the first opportunity.

Resisting American Fascism

Speaking at a rally at Madison Square Garden, Robeson identified the real evil agenda lurking behind the Anglo-American Cold War:

“The ‘Stop Russia’ cry really means- stop the advance of the colonial peoples of Asia and Africa toward independence; stop the forces of the new democracy developing in Europe; stop the organized workers of America from trying to hold their ground against their profit-greedy employers; stop the Negro people from voting and joining trade unions in the South- ‘Stop Russia’ means- stop progress- maintain the status quo. It means- let the privileged few continue to rule and thrive at the expense of the masses. We must indeed win the peace- but we can do it only by using methods exactly the opposite of those pursued at present by the British Foreign Office and our own State Department. To win total peace there must be total freedom”.

The highest leading official in America who stood up to this agenda was “the man who should have been president” Henry Wallace (Vice President 1940-1944), who was fired from his position as Commerce Secretary by Truman in 1946 for the crime of demanding Russia-US friendship. Speaking to thousands on September 21, 1946 Robeson stated: “We are shocked by the forced resignation of Wallace. We join with the overwhelming majority of Americans who want peace and democracy for this country and the world, in fully supporting Wallace’s criticism.  We cannot avoid the painful conclusion that Truman’s action represents a complete capitulation to the reactionary minority in our country who seek world domination”.

When Wallace announced his presidential bid in 1948, Robeson was asked to run as his Vice-presidential running mate, but declined feeling that he could do more good on an international level but dedicated his every waking hour campaigning for Wallace and the Progressive Party in 1948.

In a March 1948 campaign speech for Wallace, Robeson said:  “Either we get along with the Communists, jump in the ocean or blow up the whole world. Saying you can’t get along with Communists is like saying you can’t get along with the birds”. In that speech Robeson described himself as “an advanced New Dealer” and said he supported Wallace because “if anybody continues the new deal traditions of Franklin Roosevelt, it is Wallace.” Robeson’s concept of an “advanced New Dealer” and Wallace’s fight against the deep state was elaborated on in Wallace’s Vision for the Post-War World Order. (1)

Wallace and Robeson at the Progressive Party Convention in 1948

Robeson vs the Deep State

Sadly the entire force of the deep state came down on Wallace resulting in his defeat in 1948 bringing Truman in for another 4 years.

Robeson was punished by John F. Dulles who revoked his passport in 1949, preventing him from travelling while the FBI ensured that he was un-hirable, his records unplayable and his words unprintable. The singer’s revenues collapsed and he relied heavily on the kindness of friends during this time. In 1956, Robeson said “there is a deliberate policy of attempting to prevent me from making a living by practicing my profession as an artist.” In a famous 1956 testimony to the House of Un-American Activities, Robeson courageously called out the fascist nature of the proceedings.

International pressure resulted in an end to his “imprisonment” and he began a new world tour where he sang, performed Othello in Shakespeare’s play in Stratford England, wrote his autobiography Here I Stand and campaigned against neo-colonialism. In a 1960 Australian ABC interview Robeson eloquently laid out his thoughts on the freedom struggle:

In 1961, Robeson began another world tour and let it be known that he would go to the Soviet Union, then to Africa and finally to Cuba where he was scheduled to meet with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara putting into jeopardy Dulles’ plans for a Cuban invasion. After this, Robeson intended to return to America to lead the Civil Rights movement that he had, in large measure began. Sadly, Robeson made it no further than Moscow. Dulles’ invasion of Cuba occurred three weeks later.

MK Ultra and the Deconstruction of Robeson

Much has been written on the topic of Robeson’s victimization under MK Ultra. The most pioneering work having been done by his son Paul Robeson Jr. who spent over 30 years investigating the matter. In short, Robeson had found himself at a surprise party in a Moscow hotel hosted by CIA-funded Soviet dissidents. According to reports, Robeson fell into a paranoid hysteria, hallucinating and locking himself in a room where he tried to commit suicide.

He was quickly sent to London’s Priori hospital where he was put through 54 electro shock therapy sessions and huge doses of psycho-active drugs. Robeson’s son proved that three doctors performing these “treatments” were CIA contractors while MI5 operatives oversaw the entire process. Robeson Jr. wrote that his father was “subjected to mind de-patterning under MK Ultra”.

It took two years for Robeson’s family and friends to get him out of Priori and into a German clinic before returning him home in August 1963 where doctors were shocked to discover the scale of drugs and electro shock he suffered in London.

Although he recorded a handful of messages in support of the Civil Rights movement after 1963, which had thankfully found competent leadership under Martin Luther King Jr., Robeson never recovered, living as a recluse and passing away at 77 years of age in 1976.

Today, as America is again forced to decide whether it wishes to go down the road of fascism and self-annihilation or renew its proper heritage as a defender of liberty, it is worth listening to the wise words of Robeson who gave his last recorded speech in January 1961:

“Despite common suffering, an even greater responsibility lies upon us to guarantee our children and all children everywhere that we shall do everything in our collective power to refrain our ‘would-be’ world dominators, our ‘would-be’ new masters of the century. They must understand that while we are uttering these very words, a new day has dawned in Africa, in Latin America, in Asia and this light awaits just beyond the horizon.”

The author can be reached at matt.ehret@tutamail.com

[1] For anyone doubtful of Robeson’s characterization of FDR, believing the singer to be naïve, I invite them to read my previous article documenting Roosevelt’s war with Wall Street and London.

While not directly discussed at the event, the melt-down of the Trans-Atlantic banking system now bursting at the seams with over $700 trillion of derivatives, and corporate debt bubble which the Bank of International Settlements is warning will be the new sub-prime junk bond meltdown was on everyone’s mind. Whether the USA would be willing to re-organize itself in harmony with the new system driven by the Belt and Road Initiative was a question which only the braindead could avoid thinking about.

While some commentators are trying to spin this emerging re-orientation in global affairs as a mere “trick to get re-elected”, the reality goes much deeper than many realize, as Trump is merely tapping into an American strategy which was firmly established during the 1941-1944 presidential term of America’s President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his loyal collaborator Henry A. Wallace who had planned a grand design for a US-Russia-China New world order founded upon principles enshrined in the Atlantic Charter and enunciated in his 1942 “Century of the Common Man” speech.

Wallace’s Fight for a Just World Order

While serving as FDR’s Vice President, Wallace wrote in his 1944 book Our Job in the Pacific: “It is vital to the United States, it is vital to China and it is vital to Russia that there be peaceful and friendly relations between China and Russia, China and America and Russia and America. China and Russia Complement and supplement each other on the continent of Asia and the two together complement and supplement America’s position in the Pacific.”

In another 1944 piece Two Peoples-One Friendship (Survey Graphic Magazine), Wallace described the destiny of the US-Russia for mutual arctic development with transportation connections across the Bering Strait: “Of all nations, Russia has the most powerful combination of a rapidly increasing population, great natural resources and immediate expansion in technological skills. Siberia and China will furnish the greatest frontier of tomorrow… When Molotov [Russia’s Foreign Minister] was in Washington in the spring of 1942 I spoke to him about the combined highway and airway which I hope someday will link Chicago and Moscow via Canada, Alaska and Siberia. Molotov, after observing that no one nation could do this job by itself, said that he and I would live to see the day of its accomplishment. It would mean much to the peace of the future if there could be some tangible link of this sort between the pioneer spirit of our own West and the frontier spirit of the Russian East.”

Expressing a mode of long term thinking and sensitivity to the Asian psyche rarely seen by westerners, Wallace wrote that “Asia is on the move. Asia distrusts Europe because of its “superiority complex”. We must give Asia reason to trust us. We must demonstrate to Russia and China, in particular that we have faith in the future of the Common Man in those two countries. We can be helpful to both China and Russia and in being helpful can be helpful to ourselves and to our children. In planning our relationships today with Russia and China, we must think of the world situation as it will be forty years hence.”

So What Went Wrong?

With the early death of Franklin Roosevelt in April 1945, the nest of Wall Street lackeys (many of them Fabians and Rhodes Scholars) embedded in the American bureaucracy quickly took over under the Presidency of Harry Truman. Wallace was quickly demoted to Commerce Secretary, and the Bretton Woods institutions such as the IMF and World Bank were cleansed of all New Deal economists loyal to the Wallace-FDR vision of the post war world. This was done through the creation of a fascist police state run under the control of Hoover’s FBI and McCarthy’s House Committee on Un-American Activities which ran the witch hunt that destroyed the lives of countless patriots, labelling them as “Soviet agents”. The 1947 Security Act evoked the Executive Order 9835 that made “reasonable grounds for belief that a person is disloyal” grounds for firing someone from any government position.

One early victim of the witch hunt was the IMF’s first director Harry Dexter White who had been accused of being a soviet spy and died in 1948 after a McCarthy hearing. Wall Street agents such as John J. McCloy, Averell Harriman, and George Keenan quickly took control of these banks and re-organized them as instruments for a neo-colonial enslavement of the world rather than as the issuers of long term productive credit which they were meant to be.

Truman’s immediate belligerence to Russia caused the Russia cancellation of its $1.2 billion subscription to join the World Bank agreed to in 1944, and Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech enshrined the bi-polar dynamic of Mutually Assured Destruction as the bedrock of the post war age of nuclear terror. As Truman unleashed the “Truman Doctrine” of US foreign entanglements in the new Cold War against Russian expansion starting with America’s enmeshment into the Greece-Turkey conflict orchestrated by London in the Spring of 1947, Churchill said in Fulton Missouri: “Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organization will be gained without what I have called the fraternal association of the English speaking peoples. This means a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States.” The Truman doctrine and Special Relationship represented the total reversal of the “community of principle” policy to avoid “foreign entanglements” advocated by George Washington, John Quincy Adams and adopted by FDR and Wallace.

Wallace Fights Back

Before being fired from his post as Commerce Secretary in 1946 for giving a speech calling for US-Russia friendship, Wallace warned of the emergence of a new “American fascism” which has come to be known in recent years as the Deep State. “Fascism in the postwar inevitably will push steadily for Anglo-Saxon imperialism and eventually for war with Russia. Already American fascists are talking and writing about this conflict and using it as an excuse for their internal hatreds and intolerances toward certain races, creeds and classes.”

In his 1946 Soviet Asia Mission, Wallace said “Before the blood of our boys is scarcely dry on the field of battle, these enemies of peace try to lay the foundation for World War III. These people must not succeed in their foul enterprise. We must offset their poison by following the policies of Roosevelt in cultivating the friendship of Russia in peace as well as in war.”

Henry Wallace did not disappear as his enemies would have liked, but became a third party candidate for the 1948 presidency acquiring the support of leading patriots and artists, not the least of whom being the great African American activist/singer Paul Robeson who set into a motion a process that blossomed under Martin Luther King’s Civil Rights movement. Wallace’s presidential speeches are a stirring call to action which can educate and inspire today’s generation. It is a tragic reminder that the American people, having just heroically given so much to stop a global fascist movement during WWII, failed to stop the emergence of a new fascism in America itself and did not vote for Wallace when they had the chance.

A Last Chance?

Although John F. Kennedy did attempt to revive the spirit of FDR during his three years in office, his early assassination, (followed by those of his brother, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X), sabotaged the re-awakening of the true constitutional America.

Decades after the assassinations of the 1960s, many cannot be blamed for having believed that all hope for America was lost. Yet in spite of this disbelief, we have found a US President at war with the same Deep State structures that took control of America over FDR’s dead body, not only meeting with the leadership of Russia, China and India but calling for good relations and an end to the age of war.

Today, the great infrastructure programs driven by credit which epitomized the New Deal under Wallace and FDR is alive in the surprising Belt and Road Initiative. Russia and China have thus found themselves in the ironic role of having become more American than the America which has ran roughshod over the world for the past half century. Whether Wallace’s dream finally be revived by a US-Russia-China alliance for a new just economic order will occur or not has not yet been answered.

When Paul Robeson belted out the lyric “I’m tired of living, and scared of dying,” he stumbled on to a paradox of emotional dissonance that could easily define the geo-strategic cognitive dissonance that the US exhibits when dealing with its fellow superpowers Russia and China.

Time and again the United States has shown that it does not want war with either of those countries, and these feelings are of course mutual. However, the US has a strange penchant for conducting provocative measures that inexorably harm relations with both Russia and China in mind-blowingly close proximity in time to moves suggesting rapprochement or, at minimum, de-escalation of tensions.

In a rational environment, this would be seen as a US climb-down over actions China finds unacceptable in Korea and in its maritime waters. But in the current environment, while the US has signed an agreement that would ideally reduce tensions between the Chinese and US armed forces, the US president has also authorized his government to open an investigation into Chinese trade practices. While the proximate issue is US intellectual-property rights in China, the phrase “anti-Chinese sanctions” is on the tip of everyone’s lips.

Far from being out of character, the dichotomy of cooperating with China and engaging in a would-be pre-emptive trade war that the Chinese Ministry of Commerce has warned could be deeply dangerous is actually par for the course under the Trump administration.

On July 7, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met for the first time. The most meaningful outcome of the meeting was the agreement jointly to police a ceasefire and accompanying de-escalation zone in southwestern Syria, along with Jordan.

Less than a month later, Trump signed a sanctions bill against Russia that Moscow remains furious about. Détente 2.0 officially lasted from July 7 to August 3, 2017.

In respect of Iran, the Trump administration has quietly but officially stated that Tehran has not violated a single clause of the 2015 nuclear deal, but US officials continue to sanction Iran and continue to speak of Iran as though it has violated every agreement ever signed in history.

This has the aggregate effect of making the United States appear tired of warring but scared of cooperating.

In reality, neither Russia, China nor Iran wants war with the United States. One could also add North Korea, Mexico, Syria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe or just about every other country on the planet to that list.

Therefore, while moves to de-escalate military tensions are positive developments no matter where they happen, the mixed signals the US is sending will only serve as a demonstration that the US is not serious about proper de-escalation and cooperation and therefore it is only natural for the wider world to assume the worst about the United States, which far too often translates into “the tense status quo hasn’t changed”.

What’s more is that while pundits argue over whether this is part of a larger American geo-strategic plan to sow confusion or is simply an inexperienced Trump administration that cannot decide if it is coming or going, the wider world is more concerned with the effect than the cause.  

In this sense, the US is less like the longing voice of “Old Man River” than it is like the author of a future worst-seller, “How to Lose Friends and Influence Nothing”.

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