Folk singer Woody Guthrie was most definitely antifa. His guitar had the inscription, “This machine kills fascists.” Guthrie sang songs against the Nazis such as “Sinking of the Reuben James” in 1942, dedicated to the crew members lost on the destroyer U.S.S. Reuben James, which was torpedoed and sunk by German U-boats on Oct. 31, 1941, while escorting a convoy to Britain. That was before the U.S. entered the war following the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Guthrie and Pete Seeger wrote the song “Round and Around Hitler’s Grave,” also in 1942, for The Almanac Singers.
But Guthrie did more than just sing songs against the Nazis. In the spring of 1943, he joined the Merchant Marines, shipping out three times and getting torpedoed twice. So it didn’t exactly sit well with Guthrie’s family when Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley sponsored a bill to prevent people associated with the Chinese Communist Party from owning U.S. farmland and called it the “This Land Is Our Land Act,” using the lyrics to one of Guthrie’s iconic songs.
RELATED STORY: Josh Hawley demonstrates again that the GOP has nothing to offer working people but hate
The Kansas City Star wrote Monday about the reaction of Guthrie’s daughter to Hawley’s expropriation of her father’s lyrics.
Nora Guthrie, Woody’s daughter, said it’s not uncommon for politicians to make use of “This Land is Your Land” because the song advocates for democratic representation. She said she didn’t mind the song being used politically, as long as it aligns with the song’s values.
“In this particular case, the co-opting or parodying of the lyric by those not aligned with Woody’s lyrics - i.e. misrepresentation by autocrats, racists, white nationalists, anti-labor, insurrectionists, etc. - is not condoned,” Guthrie wrote in an email. “We do not consider Josh Hawley in any way a representative of Woody’s values therefore we would never endorse or approve of his reference to Woody’s lyrics.”
There are no legal protections for titles of songs being used or parodied and Guthrie noted that the same title was used for a 2019 bill to prevent the construction of a border wall. She said she believes Guthrie’s song is nonpartisan and that it’s an anthem for the people, rather than for the government.
“It is more of a vision of democracy,” Guthrie said. “The song simply reiterates the concept, ‘By the people, for the people.’”
Hawley’s spokeswoman, Abigail Marone, was unapologetic, attacking the newspaper for even raising the question. “The Kansas City Star is where journalism goes to die,” Marone told The Star. “Josh’s bill protects America’s food chain, farmers, and national security—that’s the real story The Star should cover.”
It’s not unusual for musicians to ask politicians not to use their songs. And there’s a long list of musicians who have objected to Donald Trump using their songs at campaign events.
In 2020, the Associated Press listed some of those musicians in a story. They included Bruce Springstein (“Born in the U.S.A.”), John Fogerty (“Fortunate Son), Neil Young (“Rockin’ in the Free World”), The Rolling Stones (“You Can’t Always Get What You Want”), and Adele (“Rolling in the Deep” and “Skyfall”).
The AP also mentioned that “the heirs of dead artists have been as quick as living musicians in objecting to Trump’s use of songs” such as Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down,” Prince’s “Purple Rain,” and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”
There’s absolutely no doubt that Nora Guthrie is reflecting her father’s sentiments when she objected to Hawley’s use of his lyrics. After all, Guthrie wrote a song “Mister Charlie Lindbergh” castigating the famed aviator and his isolationist America First movement (a name incidentally adopted by Trump), which in 1940-41 campaigned to keep the U.S. out of World War II.
Lindbergh visited Nazi Germany several times during the 1930s and was presented a special decoration on behalf of Adolf Hitler by Luftwaffe Commander Field Marshall Hermann Goering for his contributions to aviation.
The song’s lyrics repeatedly mentioned Lindbergh’s ties to Hitler (“Hitler wrote to Lindy, said ‘Do your very worst’/Lindy started an outfit that he called ‘America First’). And the song concluded with the lyrics:
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
Just substitute “Putin” for “Hitler,” update the lyrics, and you could retitle the song “Donnie Trump” or “Josh Hawley.”
Guthrie was certain that the fascists were bound to lose, as expressed in this song (with Sonny Terry on harmonica, and probably Pete Seeger on banjo and Cisco Houston on guitar and vocals).
Just a few days before leaving office in January 2021, Trump proposed adding several hundred names to his idea for a National Garden of American Heroes, an outdoor statue gallery featuring historically significant Americans. Like other Trump proposals, he never moved to implement it or secure funding from Congress.
Surprisingly, Trump included Woody Guthrie on his list of American heroes deserving of a statue in his imaginary outdoor statue garden. At the time, Nora Guthrie issued a statement noting that her father had a very negative opinion of his former landlord Fred Trump, Donald’s father.
“I’ll let Woody speak for himself. He left Trump’s Beach Haven apartment then, in 1951, and would not want to live in any Trump property–or GARDEN–now.”
In 1950, Guthrie signed a two-year lease to rent an apartment in the Beach Haven apartment complex in Brooklyn, New York, built with federal funds, that was owned by Fred Trump. He soon discovered that his landlord only rented to white families.
Nora Guthrie noted that her father described his experience living there in a song titled “Old Man Trump,” written in the early ‘50s. However, Guthrie never recorded the song.
Here are some of the lyrics:
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
Beach Haven ain't my home!
No, I just can't pay this rent!
My money's down the drain,
And my soul is badly bent!
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!
Folk singer Ryan Harvey with Ani DiFranco and guitarist Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine decided to turn Guthrie’s lyrics into a modern protest song and released a video during the 2016 presidential campaign. At the time, Harvey told The Guardian:
“You’ve got Donald Trump talking about making America great again ... and so here’s Woody Guthrie, one of the definers of American history, coming out after his death and saying ‘No, it wasn’t a great era and in fact your father was part of the problem.’”