Strange Fruit

Annie Lennox, of Eurythmics fame, has recently been castigated for not conveying the narrative that the Social Justice Warriors want conveyed. What is this narrative? Well, it is “CSWMs Are Evil”, of course. CSWMs is an acronym for Cisgender Straight White Males. If you don’t know that this is the narrative then it is quite possible that you are a cisgender straight white male, or maybe you are an earlier generation of American who watches football and the nightly news and is quite happily oblivious to the fact that the young, college-aged, 20-somethings of America (you know, the guys who will be running this country in 20 years, if it still exists) are batshit insane.

A very strange fruit.

What was Annie’s crime?

I’ve already given you her crime in a nutshell, but here’s the background. On her latest album, Annie covered Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit, a protest song about lynching. It’s very poetic actually, as the lynched Negroes are metaphorized as strange fruit swinging from Poplar trees. Pretty high concept for a woman that dropped out of school at age 11 (more on that in a bit). I’m sure that because Annie is now in her 60’s, and probably had no clue about the strange new fruits in this world that she inhabits, that she thought this song would be a classy track to strut her liberal street cred, covering a 1930’s pre-pre-pre-Civil-Rights protest song about lynching. No, that wasn’t her crime, that’s just how she got involved with the batshit insane Left, by daring to whip out her shock-topped, genderblending, worn-out-like-a-cassette-tape, 1980’s-style Leftism and wave it in the face of the New Left. You see, when you pledge allegiance to the Left, you are now pledging allegiance to the New Left, and they will make damn sure that you know it. You had better be on message with the narrative: CSWMs Are Evil! You will not be allowed to whitewash it (by leaving out the white). Annie’s crime: Whitewashing.

We refer to Strange Fruit as Billie Holiday’s because she popularized it in the 1930’s. It actually came into existence as a poem penned by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher from the Bronx. Meeropol first published the poem in 1937, in the Marxist magazine The New Masses, which as far as I can tell was edited entirely by Jews. The magazine launched in 1926 as part of a number of publications run by the Communist Party USA in New York. I’ve included an image of a 1933 cover which portrays a giant King Kong-like non-White factory worker breaking his chains to attack a King, a Pope and a tycoon. I’m sure that this is a reference to King Kong which was also released in 1933. One can only assume that the commies envisioned a happier ending for the factory worker than for the great beast.

The New Masses published ‘Strange Fruit’ in 1937

Meeropol, when he wasn’t busy writing poems for Marxist magazines, or molding young minds in New York City schools, helped the ‘community’ in other ways. You may recall Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, both Jews from NYC, who became involved with the Communist party. They were eventually executed for spying and passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. Julius and Ethel had two sons, Michael and Robert, who needed to be cared for while Mommy and Daddy did time in the big house before buying the farm. Guess who cared for and adopted Mikey and Bobbie? Right, Abel and Annie Meeropol. Isn’t that swell? It sure is great to know you can count on your friends when you get caught for treason. The two boys took Meeropol’s name to avoid embarrassment at being the children of traitors. As you shall see, the embarrassment did not last long.

Little Mikey has done pretty well for himself. He became an economist (a teacher like his adoptive father) advocating leftist economic policy, teaching at Western New England College. Since 2006 he has been a monthly commentator on an NPR affiliate. It’s good to know he’s helping to educate the youth, you know, like the ones berating Annie Lennox. Yes, we are still talking about her.

Mikey wrote a book in 1998 called Surrender: How the Clinton administration completed the Reagan revolution. It was given this glowing review:

“A wonderfully accessible discussion of contemporary American economic policy. Meeropol demonstrates that the Reagan-era policies of tax cuts and shredded safety nets, coupled with strident talk of balanced budgets, have been continued and even brought to fruition by the neo-liberal Clinton regime.” — Frances Fox Piven, Graduate School, City University of New York

That review was of course given by the illustrious Frances Fox Piven, a Jewish professor of political science and sociology at CUNY, where she has been molding minds since 1982. She is most famous for the Cloward-Piven Strategy detailed in her 1966 article The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty, in which she advocates that in order to force reforms to the social welfare system, that it should first be collapsed by the weight of the poor, which could be accomplished by increasing enrollment in these systems. Her strategy seems to be moving forward briskly. It’s good to know she’s helping to educate the youth, you know, like the ones berating Annie Lennox. Yes, we are still talking about her.

Baby Bobbie (Rosenberg) Meeropol has also done very well for himself. He briefly taught anthropology at Western New England College and is now a practicing attorney. For a couple of years in the 1980’s he was the managing editor of The Socialist Review, a socialist magazine in the San Francisco Bay area. In 1990, Bobbie started the innocuous-sounding Rosenberg Fund for Children, which is a charity to support the children of <scare-quote>Progressive</scare-quote> activists who are targeted by the Fascist-Nazi-White-dictators-who-run-the-USA-despite-the-fact-that-these-freaking-commies-are-everywhere.

The New Masses has another connection to Negro music like that of Billie Holiday’s other than publishing Abel Meeropol’s poem. The magazine also provided funding for a couple of concerts called From Spirituals to Swing and held at Carnegie Hall right at Christmas time in 1938 and 1939. I’m sure it is pretty coincidental that the Jewish-run Marxist magazine decided to hold these concerts at Christmas, it’s not like they were busy celebrating it, amiright?! No, they wanted to help spread a little Cultural Marxist cheer into NYC with all black acts such as Count Basie and the Jewish Bennie Goodman as the token ‘White’ act. Do you think this concert says anything about Goodman’s politics? I’m sure it is just a coincidence. The audiences attending the concerts were integrated. Why do you think it was important for The New Masses to stage this integrated concert, which at the time was quite radical? Do you think it is possible that fomenting cultural changes could have something to do with Marxism? If integrated concerts were important to Marxists, then does it follow that an integrated country could also be a Marxist goal? But wouldn’t that mean that the entire Civil Rights platform and era could be seen as a Marxist triumph in America? Who cares, we’re talking about Annie Lennox here, right? Yes, we are still talking about her.

Why bring up Meeropol, the Rosenbergs, the offspring of the Rosenbergs, The New Masses and Annie Lennox? Well, Strange Fruit, of course, and these are some pretty strange fruit. What we are seeing is intellectual fruit. This little trek through earlyish 20th century New York City Marxism is a walk through a garden. In this garden, men work to plant and tend seeds. They nurture ideas which are important to them, they grow them and spread them.

I know of a guy named Matthew who had some words about strange fruits:

15Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. 16Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? 17Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. 18A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 19Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 20Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

We are almost to the part where we talk about what it was that Annie Lennox actually did, but first, let’s look back at an Israeli election in 2009. Tzipi Livini is running for office and she wants to use a Eurythmics song on her campaign trail. Earlier that year Annie had made it clear to fans that just because she performed at what the Jerusalem Post calls an ‘anti-Israeli rally’ in London, that she is not anti-Israeli. Annie objects because of the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. She just wants to give peace a chance, you know? She’s an older model Leftist and so is still deluded into believing that the Left wants peace. From Annie Lennox: I was wrong about Israel:

Singer Annie Lennox has stepped back from comments she made about the Gaza conflict, to conclude that “both sides are right and both sides are wrong”. […]

Last year she attended an anti-war rally and held a press conference with comedian Alexei Sayle and other prominent opponents of the Gaza operation. […] She objected to the use of the Eurythmics song I Saved the World Today as part of Tzipi Livni’s 2009 election campaign.

The fact that she shared a platform with Ken Livingstone and George Galloway led to condemnation within the Jewish community. Her stance was considered all the more surprising because her daughters, Lola and Tali, are half-Israeli, from her marriage to film producer Uri Fruchtman.

So, now that we are clear that Annie Lennox is not anti-Israeli (just because she supported the Palestinians which seems awfully anti-Semitic), because she has two half-Israeli children. We would not want you to even get the faintest notion that Annie Lennox could be accused of violating one of the world’s greatest taboos. I’m sure that Richard Juzwiak, who’s Twitter handle is @RichJuz (get it? Rich Joos — still not sure if he’s Jewish), is probably not even aware of Annie’s misstep. I’m sure if he has a problem with Annie, that there could be no ulterior motive, other than forgetting the narrative: CSWM’s Are Evil. Richard is part of the New Left, so he will show this old dog some new tricks for sure.

This is how she flubbed the narrative. While on the media tour for her new album Nostalgia, Annie was asked about Strange Fruit and she didn’t mention lynching! <gasp> OMG!! Can you believe it? Instead Annie whitewashes the issue, dancing around how Evil Are CSWMs by talking about “violence and bigotry, hatred, violent acts of mankind against ourselves”. No mention of White people. None. Just a vague condemnation of unracialized bigotry and violence. You can see the problem here, right?

Well, luckily, Juzwiak is there to tell us how Annie should have done it, because he got it from another famous molder of young minds, Maya Angelou:

[Billie’s] face became cruel, and when she spoke her voice was scornful. “It means when the crackers are killing the niggers. It means when they take a little nigger like you and snatch off his nuts and shove them down his goddamn throat. That’s what it means.”

You see, Annie, you have got to be clear here: It’s the crackers. You cannot forget to mention that the Evil is the crackers. Otherwise you are whitewashing, or spinning the story to the advantage of Whites. You cannot talk about violence as a human problem. That doesn’t do the New Left any good.

Isn’t it a little ironic, though? When you think about all those Jews tending their Marxist intellectual garden at the beginning of the 20th century… do you think they could have imagined that in 100 years that the Marxist seeds that they had planted would be yielding such strange fruit? That Jews like Jonathan Chait would be attacked as CSWMs or Sad Progressive White Dudes? That Israel would come under attack from the Marxists around the world fighting for the rights of the oppressed Palestinian minority? That a Scottish White woman who married a Jew and bore his children and stood for every Marxist cause she could think of would be attacked from the Left for not condemning her own children’s race vociferously enough? That the New Left that grew out of the Marxist Old Left would not be able tell the difference between a Jew and a Cracker?

Dear Open-Minded Progressive Jews: “Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.” You might want to think about getting on the side that’s ready to tear this tree down, now that you’re White too.

Strange Fruit indeed.