FPM: Death of a Communist

By Paul Kengor

Paul Robeson Jr. gets a pass from the press.

Reprinted from Spectator.org.
Paul Robeson Jr. has died at age 86. He was the son of the famous African-American performer and activist Paul Robeson, who died in 1976 at age 77. Regardless of what the adoring left says, both men were hardcore communists, with the senior Robeson being a dedicated Stalinist.
The headline for Paul Jr.’s obituary in the New York Times was predictable, stating simply, “Paul Robeson Jr., Activist and Author, Dies at 86.” The Times is always reliable for a flatteringly misleading headline at the death of any old communist, hailing the deceased as a celebrated “progressive” or “civil rights activist” or whatever—really, anything but an American Bolshevik.
To its credit, the Times could not avoid conceding that Paul Jr. had been a communist. It cited Paul Jr. himself acknowledging that he had been a member of the Communist Party. But to its discredit, the Times quoted Paul Jr. insisting that his father was not a communist—a predictable falsehood from Paul Jr. and predictable bad information from the Times. “While they had much in common,” the Times said of father and son, “he [Paul Jr.] said one difference was that he was a member of the Communist Party from 1948 to 1962 while his father never joined the party.” The Times was sure to add: “During the McCarthy era, his father faced F.B.I. surveillance after he criticized the government.”