The NY Times article gets right to work stating the disappointment African Americans had, and still will get, looking to Lenin socialism as the answer to inequality inherent in Hollywood USA. It suggests Langston Hughes was misled by Russia's unbiased treatment of non-Protestants in "China Express." He said “the American Negro stands very little chance of achieving true representation.” Hughes understood when a Soviet movie about American racism fell through, as movies often do, but the Times points to it as a failure of socialism.
The "got-you" moment in the NY Times article comes when the writer says how "by the time Robeson was beginning his great romance with the Soviet project, McKay and many African-Americans (including the novelist Richard Wright) were moving away from it." The gist of the Times is: 'Anyone non-WASP is mad to think any place is better for minorities than America,' but the writers and poets of the 20's who left for Paris and Josephine Baker would disagree with you and even into the 60's, Eartha Kitt was hounded for pointing out constant inequality. Charlie Chaplin put himself is exile to escape the black list of McCarthyism in the 50's. Even Woody Guthrie, Peter Seeger, and Phil Ochs were ostracized; only Bob Dylan, who became a turncoat of socialism, survived the scrutiny.
The NY Times article is mean-spirited and ignorant in the face of constant oppression of minorities in the USA perhaps trying to make a point that even Trump's America is better than socialism! Are they getting ready to defend Clinton's neo-liberalism again if Bernie Sanders or a real socialist runs for president in 2020? Is it still "My country right or wrong" to the NY Times though it is apparent the U.S. is only a country good for the ruling classes of both main political parties?
As the inspiration for breaking the chains of capitalist oppression, Leninist thought is at the heart of many an oppressed victim of capitalist colonialism and oppression, from Vietnam to Cuba to Bolivia and Venezuela.
Sorry New York, your Times is expired. You're Putin on the Ritz accusing a revisionist Russian mafia state of influencing American politics. It is your only outside blame leftist.
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