For the second day in a row, the New York Times hailed a Communist and Fidel Castro supporter on the front of its Arts page. On Friday, it was former Communist Part vice presidential candidate and Castro-worshipping Angela Davis who got red-carpet treatment. On Saturday, the Times senior staff editor for culture Tamara Best conducted a fulsome interview with 89-year-old entertainer Harry Belafonte, “Old Warrior Takes Stock But Continues the Fight” that was teased on the front Arts page: “Harry Belafonte: ‘Movements Don’t Die.’” According to the tease, Belafonte is part of a festival near Atlanta this weekend “focusing on voting, mass incarceration and the relationship between community and law enforcement.”
An inside photo caption read: “Harry Belafonte, musician, actor and civil rights activist.” It left out: “Castro-lover.” Best completely ignored Belafante’s long, passionate support for the decidedly pro-incarceration Cuban Communist dictator Fidel Castro. Belafante has been quoted: “If you believe in freedom, if you believe in justice, if you believe in democracy, you have no choice but to support Fidel Castro!” Well, Cubans certainly don’t have any choice.
More of the entertainer’s euphonious paeans to Castro can be found in Belafonte’s autobiography, like this excerpt that captures Belafonte’s feelings for Castro, who has visited Havana several times as the dictator’s invited guest without seeming to notice the repressive state around him:
For a day or so we explored Havana and lolled by the pool. Then came word that we should be in the hotel lobby at a certain time. We were warned that we might wait awhile; Castro, as usual, was running late. We didn't care. We were going to meet Fidel!...Castro took pride in presenting Cuba to the world as a truly prejudice-free nation; it was part of his socialist outlook -- and also because he knew we admired what he was trying to do. Sidney's doubts about Castro at the time were certainly greater than mine. But we both wanted to believe in the dream, and in the dreamer.
(Back in February, Belafonte perhaps predictably endorsed Bernie Sanders for president.)
Best gushed:
During his seven-decade career, Harry Belafonte has been a singer, an actor, a friend to Martin Luther King Jr., a Unicef good-will ambassador, an anti-apartheid activist and more. “I’m at a time of life when I’m examining the entire journey,” he said one recent afternoon at his Manhattan home, lamenting how the dreams of the civil rights movement are far from realized. “When I was 20 and 30, my visions for what the world would be, all things were possible.”
Mr. Belafonte, for whom art and activism have been inextricably linked, said his life is a “call and response,” and, at 89, he isn’t ready to retire from being one of society’s most passionate and visible advocates just yet.
This weekend, “Many Rivers to Cross,” a two-day “music, art and justice” festival in the Atlanta area focuses on three issues: voting, mass incarceration, and the relationship between community and law enforcement.
....The event will raise money for Sankofa.org, a social justice organization founded by Mr. Belafonte that unites grass-roots organizations and artists in the fight against problems like income disparity and inequities in the justice system.
The group’s “Partner’s Page” includes hard-left sites, including The Rosenberg Fund for Children, which aims to “Exonerate Ethel” -- Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage and executed in 1953.
The only discouraging words Best could find involved Belafonte criticizing over black entertainers for being lacking in their left-wing activism:
In 2012, a brouhaha ensued after Mr. Belafonte asserted that today’s celebrities have “turned their back on social responsibility” and mentioned Jay Z and Beyoncé....But Mr. Belafonte fervently maintains that artists must do more to champion causes.
Mr. Belafonte provides counsel to celebrities and organizations, saying that he draws parallels between the roadblocks and successes of the ’50s and ’60s and those of the present political movements.
....
With his 90th birthday on his mind, Mr. Belafonte paused to take stock. “I wake up at the age of 90, and I look around and say, ‘What do we need now?’” he said.
“Well, the same things needed now are the same things needed before,” he went on. “Movements don’t die because struggle doesn’t die.”
