Footage of a shirtless Bernie Sanders and his wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders, singing “This Land Is Your Land” while on their honeymoon in the Soviet Union was unearthed and disseminated widely on social media this week.
A then-46-year-old Sanders took an official 10-day trip to the communist nation shortly after he and his wife married, The Washington Post reported in May.
On Tuesday, Democratic activist M. Mendoza Ferrer posted archival footage of the Sanders’ sitting around a table “with their Russian comrades.”
https://twitter.com/m_mendozaferrer/status/1089879769477459975?s=20
The clip quickly went viral and has racked up more than 1 million views since being posted.
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Most of the men, Ferrer noted, are shirtless in the video as they sing Woody Guthrie’s 1940 folk song “This Land Is Your Land.”
The iconic American song has been embraced by many socialists as a communist anthem.
Left-wing cultural critic Alexander Billet, writing for the Society of Cinema and Arts in 2010, unapologetically claimed it as a “rallying cry for America’s down-and-out, a reminder that past all of the machinations of the rich and powerful–the ‘private property’ signs, the forced starvation of working people–the country was undeniably built by the toiling masses.”
Billet co-signed the views of conservative firebrand Glenn Beck, who questioned the esteemed status of “This Land Is Your Land” in a blistering 2010 rant.
“The song was originally written in 1940, by the way, by Woody Guthrie–communist! It’s a song about a progressive utopia land with no ownership of property. Because some have it and some don’t. And we all think of this as an American song,” Beck said on his since-cancelled Fox News show.
Billet said Beck’s analysis was “surprisingly accurate.”
“Damn right,” Billet wrote. “It’s a song that comes from the other America–the one made up of the laboring majority when they dare to fight back. And just like the ‘progressive utopia land’ that Beck fears with every fiber, ‘This Land Is Your Land’ is a song well beyond the confines of profit and ownership.”
Billet’s views appear to be endorsed by SocialistWorker.org, a news site published by the International Socialist Organization.
SocialistWorker.org republished Billet’s piece on “This Land Is Your Land” on its own website.
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