How to Spot a Communist Using Literary Criticism: A 1955 Manual from the U.S. Military

[MerryBlooms]

While a preference for long sentences is common to most Communist writing, a distinct vocabulary provides the more easily recognized feature of the “Communist Language.” Even a superficial reading of an article written by a Communist or a conversation with one will probably reveal the use of some of the following expressions: integrative thinking, vanguard, comrade, hootenanny, chauvinism, book-burning, syncretistic faith, bourgeois-nationalism, jingoism, colonialism, hooliganism, ruling class, progressive, demagogy, dialectical, witch-hunt, reactionary, exploitation, oppressive, materialist.

This list, selected at random, could be extended almost indefinitely. While all of the above expressions are part of the English language, their use by Communists is infinitely more frequent than by the general public…

http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/how_to_spot_a_communist.html

[FLPanhandle]

1. hootenanny!?!

How did Hootenanny make the list?

[underpants]

4. Color Me Impressed

[nashville_brook]

36. that's exactly where i went.

[MerryBlooms]

11. lol, I dunno. Hootenanny happens to be one of my favorite words, along with...

Shenanigans! lol

[ChairmanAgnostic]

26. When I was in law school at night,

I asked a fellow student, a really sharp black woman, what a certain word meant. I had never heard it before.
She asked, how did they use it, referring to the two black men who I heard it from.
"Well, and least you ain't no peckerwood."

She started laughing so hard, tears ran down her face. "Looks like you got a new black friend. Peckerwood is black for woodpecker. An insult to whites. It talks about your noses being so sharp and long. The fact that you aren't one means you are one of the good ones. "

I thought long and hard about it. Eventually, I guessed my parents raised me right.

[hack89]

40. It is associated with folk music.

and folk music was associated with leftists.

[Generic Other]

42. We lefties can't forget the history of this term

Hootenanny was a term you used if you couldn’t think of the right word, like thingamabob, gizmo or whatchamacallit. Its use to describe a folk music jam originated in Seattle.
Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie came to Seattle in 1941. In The Incompleat Folksinger (Seeger, Pete; The Incompleat Folksinger; Edited by Jo Metcalf Schwartz; University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1992; p. 327) Pete tells how he encountered his first hootenanny:
“In the summer of 1941 Woody Guthrie and myself, calling ourselves the Almanac Singers, toured Seattle, Washington and met some of the good people of the Washington Commonwealth Federation, the New Deal political club headed by Hugh DeLacy. They arranged for us to sing for trade unions in the Puget Sound area, and then proudly invited us to their next hootenanny. It was the first time we had heard the term. It seems they had a vote to decide what they would call their monthly fund-raising parties. Hootenanny won out by a nose over ‘wingding’.”
“The Seattle hootenannies were real community affairs. One family would bring a whole pot of some dish like crab gumbo. Others would bring cakes, salads. A drama group performed topical skits, a good 16-mm film might be shown, and there would be dancing, swing and folk, for those of sound limb. And, of course, there would be singing.”

http://pnwfolklore.org/Hootenannies.html

A play by J C McMullen of 1920, Turning the Trick, includes the lines “‘Have you any visitors at present?’ ‘No one. Wait a minute though. I forgot that bolshevik hootenanny Kathleen’s brought in’”; the young woman so described is rebellious (one sense of Bolshevik at the time, abbreviated to the British bolshie) as well as wild and unconventional and is seen as a bad influence.

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-hoo6.htm

Paul Robeson sings at the International Peace Arch on the border-crossing between the United States and Canada at Blaine on May 18, 1952.

On May 18, 1952, singer, actor, athlete, scholar, and political activist Paul Robeson (1898-1976) performs an outdoor concert for more than 25,000 people (estimates range as high as 45,000) gathered on both sides of the United States/Canadian border at Peace Arch Park in Blaine. An outspoken supporter of civil rights worldwide and an admirer of the Soviet Union, where he perceives there to be no racism, Robeson has been increasingly persecuted for his political views since the late 1940s. His passport has been confiscated by the State Department, denying his right to travel and perform outside of the United States, and he has recently even been prevented from crossing the border to Canada, which at the time does not require United States citizens to show a passport.

<snip>

As Robeson's domestic arrest continued, he gave three more concerts at the Peace Arch, in 1953, 1954, and 1955. In 1956 he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). In June of 1958, after the Supreme Court ruled in another case that the Secretary of State could not withhold the passport of a United States Citizen because of their political beliefs, Robeson's passport was restored.

http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=8163

[Octafish]

50. Hootenanny!

Great term and history!

Thank you, Generic Other!

[underpants]

2. Wow thanks Military, they were trying to be all sneaky using "bourgeois"

That NEVER sends up a *ahem* red flag

[MerryBlooms]

12. lol

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Oohs boy

I'm in trouble.

[MerryBlooms]

13. You better dial it back! lol

[LiberalArkie]

5. So people should not worry about the witch-hunting of the reactionary book-burning

exploitive oppressive materialistic colonialitic ruling class? But should worry about the progressive vanguard people.

[MerryBlooms]

14. I don't know about your colon, but I don't want my colon anywhere near the ruling class.

j/k

[lpbk2713]

6. LMAO. Who was it a few years ago warning about Obama because he is "articulate" ?

Seems like Limbaugh but I could be wrong.

(Too lazy to Google)

[MerryBlooms]

15. There were a few...

[JanMichael]

7. you would only have to ask me and i would tell you. yes comrade i am.

it is not secret for me.

oh they should add vegetarians and vegans to the literary list!

[MerryBlooms]

16. ;-)

[Maedhros]

8. "Hootenanny?" [n/t]

[MerryBlooms]

18. Great word... who knew it was cloaked in the darkness of communisim!?!

[Bigmack]

9. Easy to spot a 'bagger, too.

Fuckers can't spell!

[MerryBlooms]

19. I try not to nag on bad spelling, I've done a few duzies, and will now doubt pull more.

[JimDandy]

28. LOL. I see what you did there. n/t

[DisgustipatedinCA]

10. Moose and squirrel are on to our plans, Natasha! (nt)

[MerryBlooms]

20. !!! Laff !!!

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[merrily]

17. Hootenanny? Seriously?

This list, selected at random, could be extended almost indefinitely.

Well, if "hootenanny" is on the list, yes, I'm sure the list could be extended almost indefinitely. Everyone who can use speech or symbols in any form is likely to be a communist. I see that now.

Just imagine, folks, if all the time, money and energy that went into creating and fighting the red scare, from crap like this to fighting the Korean
"Police Action" and the Vietnam "Era" had gone instead into medical research or education.

Ok, I won't do the obvious. I will not insert here a video of Lennon singing Imagine. I'll only infect you with the earworm.

[MerryBlooms]

21. lol, subliminal messaging... nice.

[hifiguy]

24. Probably code for folk music.

You know, Pete Seeger, the Weavers, Woody, all those commies.

[KatyMan]

37. "Don't be thinking this land is YOUR land...

It's MINE"

[bluedigger]

46. You didn't think communication and communist were similar for a reason?

If free speech isn't communist, I don't know what is!

[liberaltrucker]

22. Video sounded like a Jeff Foxworthy routine

[hifiguy]

23. Do I write like that?

NYET, Comrade!!!

[MerryBlooms]

29. lol

[Elwood P Dowd]

25. I used to attend hootenannys back in the early 1960s when I was a teenager.

They were usually free concerts on college campuses. I guess all of us down here in the deep south were the same as those commies on the west coast back then.

[MerryBlooms]

31. 'Licking pencil tip'... adding Elwood P Dowd to 'The List'.

[JEB]

27. Have syncetistic faith comrade

the hootenanny of jingoism that leads to oppressive materialism and hooliganism of the ruling class witch-hunt demagogy of dialectical chauvinism will exploit colonialism through vanguards of reactionary book-burning. Try a superficial reading of that. Ha!

[MerryBlooms]

32. Uh huh...

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[MisterP]

30. jingoistic hootenanny! also it's interesting to see Corliss Lamont bumping around

his grandnephew ran in 2006 (and the DNC ran third-party Lieberman against him--always remember that when some party tattletale lays an egg over "spoiler voting&quot : he also encouraged CSICOP's foundation, and that's why CSICOP cracked down on quantum theory and benzene rings for a few years at the start--total burzhvaznaya lzhe'nauka

in the 50s supporting race-mixing, dancing, and investigating UFOs was also called dangerously pink

[MerryBlooms]

33. You said a mouthful!

[MisterP]

35. *paws at booze*

but, yes, a while back I found this pamphlet by some 50s fundie that said UFOs had to be demonic because contactees reported that the Greys had a classless society that saw race as irrelevant (and I can't find it anymore!)

[jwirr]

34. Wasn't Joseph McCarthy hunting communists back then?

[struggle4progress]

38. The Senate censured McCarthy in December '54

[jwirr]

47. That is what I thought.

[hobbit709]

39. Somebody here must have read that since "progressive" sets them off.

And "hootenanny"?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

41. I subscribed to "Soviet Life" while I was in just to piss off the officers off.

I would place it prominently in my locker during inspections.

Meh. All i got was a few raised eyebrows. I guess they were more interested in how I folded my undies and socks.

[LongTomH]

43. "What's he building in there?" Tom Waits

[alcibiades_mystery]

44. Who wrote that, Sidney Hook?

[Lizzie Poppet]

45. Good ol' Lit Crit!

"Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom." -John Kenneth Galbraith

[jmowreader]

48. In case you were wondering...

Syncretism: combining of different, often contradictory beliefs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism

[BuelahWitch]

49. Well, I'm a Happy Hooligan

I guess that's a kind of hooliganism...