http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sekmo2e7rfY

www.myspace.com/delacourmichaela

This is my first time to read the full history of the Dixie Chicks and their encounter with Bush backers. Thanks very much WSWS. BTW, how has Toby Keith fared? It saddened me to find that my former employer (Ford) used him on Ford commercials. I opposed the war by demonstrating and carrying a huge flag on a mast around downtown Indianapolis. I’m a drafted Korean War vet. (51/52).

MW

Indianapolis, Indiana, US

7 June 2006

* * *

Thank you, Tom, for this article. Although I am not a real Dixie Chicks fan, I applaud their stance against the war and their forthrightness against Bush.

The type of hysteria stirred by the right-wing radio jocks and government shills like Diane Sawyer is not uncommon in this country. The well-known destruction of Elvis Presley recordings in the 1950s (and the general demonization of rock and roll at that time) was not so unprecedented as popular culture would have us believe. I’m reading a book called Darkest Before Dawn about the Montana sedition law passed during World War I, when anti-German (and anti-IWW) madness overwhelmed the state, resulting in the sentencing to terms of up to 20 years of people who happened to make an offhand or unflattering remark about the war or President Wilson in a saloon or elsewhere. People who refused to buy War Bonds were accused of “disloyalty” and local counties created their own special councils to spy on the populace, even granting themselves the right to subpoena people and interrogate them. Spoken German was forbidden and German books were burned. Even preachers in German congregations were forbidden to preach in German.

Why this particular mania persists in the United States is an interesting question. Nearly a century later, we can look back on many instances of this kind of “groupthink.” The same slogans that we hear from the right wing today were used during the first World War: support the troops, dissent put troops in danger, dissent was the work of German spies trying to weaken the US’s resolve, dissent was the work of the IWW in its plot to take over the world, etc.

Wasn’t it Karl Marx who said, “History repeats itself; first as tragedy, then as farce”? But we aren’t laughing. Perhaps the third and fourth and fifth times have destroyed our sense of humor.

CZ

San Francisco, California

7 June 2006

from: http://wsws.org/articles/2006/jun2006/corr-j14.shtml