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Home Front: Politix
Red Alert - Kerry’s New Campaign Slogan Written by Communist
2004-05-24
Excerpt, commentary via Best of the Web - scroll down
Langston Hughes, the poet who inspired John Kerry’s new campaign slogan, "Let America be America again," turns out to be a favorite of communists. "Outstanding is the working-class content of this life and writings of Langston Hughes," the People’s Weekly World, official organ of the Communist Party USA, enthused in March 2002:

From an early age Langston Hughes identified with working-class internationalism and to the role of workers in basic social change.

In 1917 when the Russian working class came to power and withdrew their country from World War I, Langston Hughes and his fellow students at Central High School in Cleveland held a celebration for the Revolution and its leader V.I. Lenin. . . .

He made clear his admiration for Communists. For instance, he wrote about Mother Ella Reeve Bloor, a leader of the Communist Party USA and a women’s rights leader. "She battled the capitalists tooth and nail for seventy years."

Here’s an excerpt from one of Hughes’s poems, "Lenin":

Lenin walks around the world.
The sun sets like a scar.
Between the darkness and the dawn
There rises a red star.

This is from "Goodbye Christ":

Goodbye,
Christ Jesus Lord God Jehova,
Beat it on away from here now.
Make way for a new guy with no religion at all--
A real guy named
Marx Communist Lenin Peasant Stalin Worker ME--
I said, ME!

Another Hughes poem, "Revolution," celebrated violence:

Great mob that knows no fear--
Come here!
And raise your hand
Against this man
Of iron and steel and gold . . .
And tear him limb from limb,
Split his golden throat
Ear to ear

And we thought Howard Dean was angry.

Heh heh - doesn’t anyone vet this stuff? How revealing
Posted by:Frank G

#4  Not a twich on the suprise meter here.....
Posted by: CrazyFool   2004-05-25 9:40:13 AM  

#3  Please explain. Where do the words "Let America be America" appear in this dead commie's poetry and what in the poems quoted above shows Hughes's influence on Kerry's choice of slogan?
Posted by: Turk   2004-05-24 9:24:40 PM  

#2  you're right....it fits in exactly
Posted by: Frank G   2004-05-24 7:36:58 PM  

#1  Frank, what makes you think no one vetted this?
Posted by: Matt   2004-05-24 7:31:50 PM  

00:00