It’s not surprising that The Washington Post gushed all over leftist civil-rights legend Julian Bond in a front-page obituary in Monday’s paper. But it’s still shocking that on Friday, the Post continued to promote the perverse falsehood that the late Paul Robeson was a “champion of civil rights” when in fact he was an unrepentant defender of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
It happened in an essay by Post reporter Marcia Davis on the front of their Style section, headlined “Bond’s journey invites all to march: Quest for social justice calls the next generation.” Davis waxed about a photograph she found of young Bond next to Robeson, who was merely “blacklisted,” not a communist:
A young Julian is standing beside a seated Paul Robeson. The giant of a man — scholar, athlete, singer, actor and civil rights activist, who was blacklisted during the McCarthy era — has one arm wrapped around Julian as they both look into the camera. Robeson’s big brown hands hold on to the boy.
Bond’s parents — his mother a librarian, his father a civil rights leader and president of Pennsylvania’s Lincoln University — filled their home with activists, artists and intellectuals such as Robeson and W.E.B. Du Bois. Did they call to their son? “Julian, come take a picture with Mr. Robeson.”
...Here together were the faces of two warriors: Like Robeson in his time, Julian Bond stood up, and one of the greatest measures of his life are the victories he and other members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee won as they fought for voting rights in the 1960s. Their ties were forged in the flames of youth and war. The enemy wanted to kill them. Too many times the enemy succeeded.
The picture, published inside Style, carried the caption “Paul Robeson, left, and Julian Bond, both champions of civil rights, worked for progress at different times and in different outlets.”
(Weirdly, it can't be found in the online version.)
For some facts the Post didn’t include, let’s revisit Paul Kengor in The American Spectator:
In 1952, shortly before Stalin’s death, Paul Robeson was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize, which he unhesitatingly accepted. And when his beloved Stalin perished in March 1953, Robeson was moved to tears and to verse. He responded with a poetic eulogy titled, “To You Beloved Comrade.” He tearfully recalled the unforgettable moment when he elevated his son, Paul Jr., at the site of Stalin, as if lifting the boy in the air to present him with some sort of supernatural commission. Robeson waxed reverently of this “kindly,” “good” man of “wisdom,” “deep humanity,” and “understanding.” Stalin’s “noble example” and “daily guidance” had left Russians a “rich and monumental heritage.” The death of the “great Stalin,” reported a heartbroken Robeson, left “tens of millions all over the earth bowed in heart-aching grief.”
Of course, in reality, Stalin left tens of millions dead, and their families bowed in heart-aching grief.
PS: Near the very end of their front-page obituary, the Post made a brief reference to the routine nastiness of Bond’s conservative-trashing rhetoric:
From 1998 to 2010, Mr. Bond was board chairman of the NAACP. He spoke out against the policies of the administration of President George W. Bush and the tea party movement, which he repeatedly called “the Taliban wing of American politics.”
The Post's carousel of pictures on Bond's life carried this one with an anti-Bush caption:
July 20, 2006 President George W. Bush and Bond had a tense relationship, with Bond as an outspoken critic of the president's. Here, Bush is greeted by Bond after Bush delivered a speech at the NAACP convention in Washington. For five previous years, Bush declined to address the NAACP convention.
