You Don't Need a Weatherman To Know This Blows

Jesse Walker | October 5, 2006

My friend Sarah Ferguson of The Village Voice looks at the links between today's World Can't Wait rallies and the Revolutionary Communist Party, "not to redbait, but to point to the fundamental contradiction of a movement that rightly lambastes the Bush administration for its use of indefinite detentions and torture abroad, yet relies on the leadership of a group that embraces a mass murderer like Mao, even critically defends Pol Pot, and which currently cheerleads Peru's Shining Path and Nepal's Maoist guerrillas -- groups that have been condemned for grave human rights violations of their own."

As long as we're talking about creepy Stalinists, I thought I'd pass along something I found while researching an article for another publication. It's a song parody that was circulated at the Weather Underground's "war council" in 1969. It's supposed to be sung to the tune of "Maria" from West Side Story:

The most beautiful sound I ever heard
Kim II Sung
Kim II Sung, Kim II Sung, Kim II Sung
The most beautiful sound in all the world
Kim II Sung
Kim II Sung, Kim II Sung, Kim II Sung
Kim II Sung, Kim II Sung, Kim II Sung
I've just met a Marxist-Leninist named Kim II Sung
And suddenly his line
Seems so correct and fine
To me
Kim II Sung
Say it soft and there's rice fields flowing
Say it loud and there's people's war growing
Kim II Sung
I'll never stop saying Kim II Sung
And surely now Korea
Will forever more be a
Socialist country
Korea
Say it sneaky and the Pueblo is taken
Say it bold and the imperialists are quakin'
Korea
I'll never stop saying Korea

No word on whether that ever made it into one of Kim Jong Il's operas.

Comments

|10.5.06 @ 1:22PM|#

It's lunchtime, I think I'll go redbait these losers in Lafayette Park.

|10.5.06 @ 2:05PM|#

Isn't it "Revolutionary Communist Party", not "Community", Jesse?

Jesse Walker|10.5.06 @ 2:28PM|#

Thanks, Lurker. What a curious typo. I'll fix it.

|10.5.06 @ 4:55PM|#

I'm so annoyed that nobody in Knoxville coughed up a meetup location in time. I was hoping to protest the protest. I was going to hire Stevo Darkly to compose the snarky message for my sign.

|10.5.06 @ 9:14PM|#

To the Pepsi tune, ca 69
"Id like to teach the world to sing
In perfect Mandarin: With Chairman Mao, Lin Piou, & HoHoHoChi Minh
(revolution now)....
I wuz dere......didnt buy it tho. Skeptic, you see.....

|10.5.06 @ 9:19PM|#

of course, to completely understand Juche, the giuding principle of Dear Leader, whosebrilliance even outshines that of President Cheneys flying monkey, Decider, one simply MUST visit
http://www.nk-news.net/about/mission_statement.php

|10.6.06 @ 2:50PM|#

This thread is going to die soon, but...

Well, it looks like the protests were pretty much a bust, at least here in Seattle. Despite the flood of pretty posters that went up overnight. There was a gathering at Red Square on the University of Washington campus that, according to the student newspaper, drew 'dozens'. According to the Seattle P-I, the city's overall protests drew 'hundreds'. (And I've learned as a general rule to take any crowd estimates like this and basically cut them in half to get somewhere close to reality.) And neither story mentioned anything about the "World Cant Wait" groups' communist ties.

Just curious, has anyone out there read any story from their local newspaper covering this event that made any mention of the Revolutionary Communist Party connection?