Violence at Peekskill! Paul Robeson, Anticommunism, and Populist Fascism Among Veterans

In December 1949, three months after two riots rocked Paul Robeson concerts in Peekskill, New York, the Civil Rights Congress (CRC) filed a lawsuit against local police and veteran’s organizations. The lawsuit alleged that the veterans and police violated the civil rights of Robeson and the concert attendees. Veteran’s groups have operated as political gatekeepers for as long as they have existed and have engaged in violence against their fellow Americans to police political boundaries according to their own ideas of patriotism, ideas that were more in line with European fascism and the long history of US racial fascism than a fictive US democracy. While Senator Joseph McCarthy is the face of US anticommunism, he represents a small part of a long-standing reactionary politics endemic in US political culture. Anticommunism and antiradicalism are simultaneously dispensed to delimit progressive politics, ensure the perpetuation of the militarized state, and secure capitalist ascendency. Significantly, anticommunism is deployed by local, state, and federal government in collaboration with corporate interests and citizen groups, and for the purposes of this study veteran’s organizations, to define appropriate citizenship and patriotism, and to punish radical Black leftists. Veteran’s groups participate in the state’s disciplinary mechanisms by surveilling radicals and penetrating radical organizations and they engage in violence, often with law enforcement blessing, to prevent radical organizing. While political semantics assign violence to left-wing radicals, reactionaries in veteran’s organizations have regularly attacked their fellow citizens. The American Legion, VFW, and the Catholic War Veterans specifically targeted Paul Robeson and his planned concerts at Peekskill. These were not spontaneous protests, but instead part of a larger conspiracy to restrain political radicalism and contain progressive gains.