Road Sassy

Kaleokualoha September 4th, 2008 at 8:39 pm

What evidence is there that Frank Marshall Davis “hated,” rather than just criticized, the United States?

Kaleokualoha September 4th, 2008 at 9:47 pm

He was not an avowed communist. He was a closet member of the CPUSA, and joined in order to gain access to publishing support.

Besides, there are many emotions between love and hate. You may not love or hate your job, your sister, your car, your TV, your President, your nose, and a million other examples.

“Love” or “hate” is the false dilemma fallacy (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma).

Kaleokualoha September 5th, 2008 at 1:57 am

It is unfortunate that you seem to have bought into the “Accuracy In Media” disinformation campaign regarding Frank Marshall Davis. In their campaign against Barack Obama, they have made numerous specific misrepresentations that have been easily disproven through access to public source documents. I shall address your points separately.

“What exactly is your point? I hardly give a damn about emotional nuances. Are you trying to asset he cared about America? ”

RESPONSE: Yes, he cared about America.

“Marshall needed to take his sorry ass to a country that practiced his political creed, not attempt to infect America with it.”

RESPONSE: His political creed was democracy. His economic creed was capitalism. His social creed was justice. Edgar Tidwell, whom AIM’s Cliff Kincaid cites as “an expert on the life and writings of Davis,” demolishes right-wing misrepresentation of Davis’s radical influence in one simple paragraph:

“Although my research indicates that Davis joined the CPUSA as a “closet member” during World War II, there is no evidence that he was a Stalinist, or even a Party member before WWII. Further, to those attempting to make the specious stand for the concrete, there is no evidence that he instructed Barack Obama in communist ideology. Frank Marshall Davis did NOT believe in overthrowing the USA. He was committed to what the nation professed to be. For him, communism was primarily an intellectual vehicle to achieve a political end-a possible tool for gaining the constitutional freedoms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for ALL Americans.”

“Well, if his work sucked so bad that he had to join the communist party to get published, perhaps he ought to have stuck to his day job.”

RESPONSE: Frank Marshall Davis considered membership in the CPUSA as a vehicle and tool because, according to “The New Red Negro” (which AIM’s Cliff Kincaid cites as a source):

ONLY the Communist left had any significant institutional impact on African-American writing during the 1930s and 1940s. This support was crucial as the institutions that had maintained the New Negro Renaissance faded. And for better or for worse, the leading CPUSA functionaries involved in “Negro work” took a direct interest in African-American cultural production in a manner that was unusual, if not unique. Vilifying a writer for continuing to publish in CPUSA-supported publications, when they provided his only available institutional support, is completely unfair. Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and Frank Marshall Davis all took advantage of this institutional support.

Further, as The New Red Negro makes clear, there was no monolithic Stalinist doctrine within the CPUSA: “This is not to say that the impact of the Communist Left on African-American writers in the 1930’s and 1940’s flowed from absolute unity of ideology and practical application of that ideology. As mentioned before, the CPUSA itself, despite the claims of both the party leadership and its most ardent detractors, contained various, often conflicting tendencies. This conflicts appeared within top leadership, where Earl Browder and William Z. Foster and their supporters were frequently at odds. They also surfaced in the regional leadership of important districts that were occasionally, and in the case of southern California frequently, in opposition to the national leadership. Finally, at the rank-and-file level, when leadership debates broke out into the open (as they did in 1929, 1956-1946, and 1956), the were replayed in almost every CPUSA unit, often serving as the vehicle for the expression of a wide range of “unorthodox” political beliefs (ranging from social democratic to anarcho-syndicalist.”

A huge proportion of African-American poets (and writers and intellectuals generally) remained engaged with the Communist Left and cultural institutions from at least the early 1930’s until at least the early 1950’s. With the partial exception of the period from the German invasion of the Soviet Union to the end of the Second World War, the CPUSA placed the issue of race and the fight against Jim Crow near the center of all its work.

The bottom line is that communist ties were the NORM for African American poets and civil right activists during that period. Such ties did not mean that they internalized Marxist values, much less Stalinist values, even if they were aware of the distinction. To them, the CPUSA provided safe harbor from the ravages of Jim Crow America.

zee September 6th, 2008 at 1:56 am

RESPONSE: Yes, he cared about America.

Your personal opinion proves exactly what?

You disparage Kincaid as a credible source, yet he uses references that you cite to support your argument. Be that as it may, it doesn’t seem that anyone that I have read (yet) can incontrovertibly confirm Davis’s exact relationship with the Communist party. This thumbnail of a PDF seems to confirm that he was actually wary of communism.

That doesn’t make him, or Obama, any more palatable. I have no use for “human rights” - civil rights - yes, but this never ending drum beat for “social justice” has become no more than a euphemism for redistribution of wealth and a means to bring about the diminution of American power. I quite frankly prefer a powerful America.

The bottom line is that communist ties were the NORM for African American poets and civil right activists during that period. Such ties did not mean that they internalized Marxist values, much less Stalinist values, even if they were aware of the distinction. To them, the CPUSA provided safe harbor from the ravages of Jim Crow America.

That seems rather like jumping on a burning boat to escape a sinking one. But having no idea what the hell blacks experienced in the Jim Crow era , I can imagine it may well be that communism seemed to afford them safety and acceptance. But I would maintain whatever communism may have promised them, it is an ideology that finds it expedient and profitable to use a minority to advance their agenda, not better the black man’s plight.

This statement I find rather intriguing, though I don’t know if he further developed that line of thinking. It would be interesting to know where it led him.

His work challenged the usefulness of race as a social construct, and he eventually disavowed the idea of race altogether.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Marshall_Davis

In addressing his sexual proclivities, I would contend, in my world, the man was perverted, and his own words condemn him.

It has also been established that Mr Davis, who divorced in 1970, was the author of a hard-core pornographic autobiography published in San Diego in 1968 by Greenleaf Classics under the pseudonym Bob Greene.

In a surviving portion of an autobiographical manuscript, Mr Davis confirms that he was the author of Sex Rebel: Black after a reader had noticed the “similarities in style and phraseology” between the pornographic work and his poetry.

“I could not then truthfully deny that this book, which came out in 1968 as a Greenleaf Classic, was mine.” In the introduction to Sex Rebel, Mr Davis (writing as Greene) explains that although he has “changed names and identities…all incidents I have described have been taken from actual experiences”.

He stated that “under certain circumstances I am bisexual” and that he was “ a voyeur and an exhibitionist” who was “occasionally mildly interested in sado-masochism”, adding: “I have often wished I had two penises to enjoy simultaneously the double – but different – sensations of oral and genital copulation.”

The book, which closely tracks Mr Davis’s life in Chicago and Hawaii and the fact that his first wife was black and his second white, describes in lurid detail a series of shockingly sordid sexual encounters, often involving group sex.

One chapter concerns the seduction by Mr Davis and his first wife of a 13-year-old girl called Anne. Mr Davis wrote that it was the girl who had suggested he had sex with her. “I’m not one to go in for Lolitas. Usually I’d rather not bed a babe under 20.

“But there are exceptions. I didn’t want to disappoint the trusting child. At her still-impressionistic age, a rejection might be traumatic, could even cripple her sexually for life.”

He then described how he and his wife would have sex with the girl. “Anne came up many times the next several weeks, her aunt thinking she was in good hands. Actually she was.

“She obtained a course in practical sex from experienced and considerate practitioners rather than from ignorant insensitive neophytes….I think we did her a favour, although the pleasure was mutual.”

On other occasions, Mr Davis would cruise in Hawaii parks looking for couples or female tourists to have sex with. He derived sexual gratification from bondage, simulated rape and being flogged and urinated on.

He boasted that “the number of white babes interested in at least one meeting with a Negro male has been far more than I can handle” and wished “America were as civilised as, say, Scandinavia”. He concluded: “I regret none of my experiences or unusual appetites; for me they are normal.” (source)

I will say that it appears Davis was a man who addressed the actual inequities of his era and was not necessarily a raving communist nor necessarily a racist.

But, the social justice Davis sought, applied to the age he lived in, not today. Bottom line, Obama is endorsed by and resonates with an entire cast of America hating socialists and radicals. His politics will destroy this country, but then McCain’s are not much better.

For those who believe as I do, these are not good times. I believe in American exceptionalism. I am damnably sick of the “all whites are racist” mantra. I strongly uphold the rights of the individual and abhor the tribal collectivist mentality of the left. Obama is anathema to all that America stands for. It would seem that even Davis might look askance at his zombie like followers who chant hope and change, caring little about what that actually means.

Kaleokualoha September 6th, 2008 at 7:19 pm

Oops! In a display of journalistic ethics, the MSM has retracted its report that Palin joined the Alaska Independence Party. She has been a registered Republican since 1982. Her husband, however, was an AIP member until 2002.

Unlike Accuracy In Media, responsible journalists are obliged to retract factual errors, and admist their errors.