Marching Orders

Marching Orders: A High School Band’s Communist Celebration

A Pennsylvania high school has put together a rather startling halftime show for the school’s football games. The New Oxford High School marching band has performed “St. Petersburg 1917,” commemorating the Bolshevik Revolution that brought the communists to power and led to the formation of the Soviet Union. The band, which performed the piece at the Friday night football game on September 14th, wore olive-colored military-style uniforms, and carried red flags–along with giant hammers and sickles. “There is no reason for Americans to celebrate the Russian revolution,” said an irate parent who alerted Fox News to the debacle. “I am sure the millions who died under Communism would not see the joy of celebrating the Russian revolution by a school 10 miles from Gettysburg.”

The parent….was stunned by the halftime performance. “It was Glee meets the Russian Revolution,” he told Fox. “I’m not kidding you. They had giant hammers and sickles and they were waving them around. Who thought this was a good idea?” he added.

Apparently the judges at the Cavalcade of Bands Association Inc. show at Manheim Township High School on Saturday, September 22nd did. They awarded the band first place in their category, according to District superintendent Rebecca Harbaugh, who spoke with Front Page regarding the controversy. She defended the band and the performance, emphasizing that it was not a “celebration” of communism, as some media outlets characterized it. Instead the performance was intended to “present the musical importance and the struggle during this turbulent time of world history,” she insisted.

Paul Kengor, executive director for the Center for Vision & Values at Pennsylvania’s Grove City College, and author of  “The Communist,” put that so-called history lesson in perspective. “The Bolshevik Revolution launched a global Communist revolution that, from 1917 through the 1990s, was responsible for the deaths of over a hundred million people…What the Russian revolution unleashed was a nightmare–a historical human catastrophe. This is something that should be condemned and not in any way commemorated or laughed at,” he said.

Critics of the program were quick to point out the obvious parallels that could be drawn, ones virtually assured of garnering unanimous condemnation. “It would be tantamount to celebrating the music of 1935 Berlin,” an offended parent said….Another local expressed his opinion on Facebook. “I think the question is whether it is appropriate for a high school band to commemorate an event that led to unimaginable brutality of millions of Russian citizens. Stalin was just not a very nice guy” Brian Albin wrote.

Gerson Moreno-Riano, dean of Regent University’s College of Arts & Sciences, addressed that brutality. “The Russian revolution was one of the most violent episodes of the 20th Century,” he said. “Lenin put into place a doctrine of mass terror to crush the opposition and thousands and thousands of people were murdered. It’s full of violence, terror, destruction and in some weeks thousands of people were executed–some thrown with rocks around their necks into the river to drown,” he added.

The group photograph of the band posing with the hammer and sickle rankled him equally as much. “To raise the emblems of the hammer and sickle–the emblems of so much violence, destruction and terror–is a lack of knowledge of history,” he said. Or is it? “The worst case scenario is someone who is trying to celebrate something they know about–and they’re trying to insert this into their educational agenda,” he speculated.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/marching-orders-a-high-school-bands-communist-celebration/

[TBC: One might also mention the tremendous persecution of Christians ushered in by communism.]