This Machine Still Kills Fascists
The Enduring Relevance of Woody Guthrie
I’ve learned a lot from folk songs.
The good ones are part history lesson, part social media update and part parable. They are filled with ideas that don’t belong to politicians or corporations. They belong to people. From Lead Belly to Kendrick Lamar, find a good folk singer and they’ll tell you another side of the story. Find a good folk song, and it’ll tell you what really happened, and what is happening again.
No folk singer taught me more than Woody Guthrie.
Reading “Bound for Glory,” “Seeds of Man” and “Born to Win” propelled me into a decade long pursuit of open road. Listening to the Asch Recordings and the Library of Congress Recordings made me certain that enlightenment and morality had an Oklahoman accent. I quoted Guthrie-isms as viable responses to current events as “I roamed and rambled and followed my footsteps,” doing my best to “Take it easy, but take it.”
Woody Guthrie told the kind of stories that lead to more stories. His songs are a gateway. The songs tell you what’s going on in the subterranean depths of things and who to ask for when you inevitably find yourself there. They also connect you to other systematically marginalized, disenfranchised, and silenced storytellers.
It is a folk singer’s job to “comfort disturbed people” and to “disturb comfortable people” Guthrie said. His words continue to comfort and disturb.
They say America First but they mean America next
In 1927, Charles Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St Louis to Paris, becoming the first man to successfully pilot the Atlantic. After living in Europe for a few years, Lindbergh returned to the states a very public celebrity with mass appeal and questionable foreign relationships. In 1941, Lindberg announced the formation of the America First Committee to oppose America’s involvement in WWII. Lindbergh blamed the British, the Jews and the Roosevelt administration for perpetuating the war interest. With nearly 1 million members, including E.E. Cummings, Frank Lloyd Wright and Walt Disney, America First’s opposition to WII continued to gain momentum until December 7th, 1941. The attack at Pearl Harbor ignited public approval and even America First had to declare their support for the war effort.
Woody Guthrie’s “Mister Charlie Lindbergh” names Lindbergh a Nazi sympathizer, a wide held idea fueled by Lindbergh’s public adoration of the Third Reich. Amongst anti-firsters, it was a growing concern that the isolationist movement was motivated by an allegiance to Nazi Germany rather than American interests.
“Mister Charlie Lindbergh, he flew to old Berlin, got him a big Iron Cross, and he flew right back again to Washington, Washington.”
“And I’m gonna tell you workers, ‘fore you cash in your checks, they say ‘America First,’ but they mean ‘America Next!’ In Washington, Washington.”
Trump’s tower aint my home
“Old Man Trump” is a searing imputation of real estate mogul and father of the Donald, Fred Christ Trump. In December 1950, Guthrie moved into the Beach Haven apartments, a place he referred to as “Trump’s tower.” According to Guthrie, Trump’s business practices were intended to ignite racial division and perpetuate the white nationalist agenda. Inspired by his new landlord, Guthrie began rewriting the lyrics to one of his dustbowl era songs, “I Aint Got No Home.”
“Beach Haven is Trump’s tower, where no black folks come to roam, no, no, old man Trump, old Beach Haven ain’t my home!”
“I suppose that Old Man Trump knows just how much racial hate, he stirred up in that bloodpot of human hearts, when he drawed that color line, here at his Beach Haven family project.”
Fred Trump’s career was controversial. Arrested for marching with the Klu Klux Klan in 1927, his racial views and business practices created a lifetime of legal hearings. Fred Trump was investigated by the U.S. Senate Committee for wartime profiteering in 1954 and by the Justice Department in the 1970’s for violating the Fair Housing Act, a lawsuit that involved both Fred Trump as Chair and Donald Trump as the company’s President. A settlement was reached without an admission of guilt and the Trumps filed a suit claiming that they were falsely accused of discrimination.
Is this land made for you and me?
Guthrie was walking down a highway in rural Pennsylvania, trying to hitchhike to New York City when he started thinking about a new song. Originally titled, “God Blessed America for Me” Woody Guthrie penned “This Land is Your Land” in response to Irvin Berlins, “God Bless America.” The America of Irvin Berlin’s popular anthem was irritating and alien to Guthrie. After years of working and singing his way across the country and back again, the reality of labor camps, migrant workers, the dustbowl, racial segregation, and class inequality demanded a different type of song, a song that questioned the core ethics of capitalism and the divide between the haves and the have-nots.
“There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me, sign was painted, it said private property, but on the back side it didn’t say nothing, this land was made for you and me.”
“In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people, by the relief office I seen my people, as they stood there hungry, I stood there asking, is this land made for you and me?”
This Machine Still Kills Fascists
Those four words, “This machine kills fascists” comfort and disturb with the same might in 2017 that they did in 1940. Thirteen presidents after Woody Guthrie walked the “ribbon of highway,” we are still asking who this country belongs to, and who belongs in this country.
“The people are building a peaceful world and when the job is done, that will be the biggest thing that man has ever done.” -Woody Guthrie
