Woody Guthrie’s Anti-Fascist Guitar

At the intersection of Reconciliation Way and Boston Avenue in the Tulsa Arts District stands a brick building with a multistory, painted mural at its corner. “This Land Is Your Land” is written at the top, and amid painted rays of sunshine and birds is the silhouette of the man who wrote that anthem, Woody Guthrie. He sits profile, his hands positioned to pluck the strings of an acoustic guitar. Across the instrument’s body is a small sign, “This Machine Kills Fascists.”

The decision by the Woody Guthrie Center to include Guthrie’s famous guitar in their mural speaks to how indelible an image it is. The catchphrase, “This Machine Kills Fascists” was so potent an advertisement for Guthrie’s beliefs and messaging that it remains in use decades later by bands, brands, and activists. But as with “This Land Is Your Land,” its original intention has been both debated and co-opted since its inception. What were Guthrie’s political beliefs regarding the fight against fascism? How do we understand his most iconic phrase within the biography of a complicated, often contradictory man?

In an interview with the podcast “The Road to Now,” Woody Guthrie Center’s executive director and chief curator Deana McCloud noted that the famous slogan wasn’t Guthrie’s to begin with. “He borrowed it, as was his style. It was a slogan that was being stamped on war machinery. And he saw it, and his thinking was, ‘Well, my instruments are my machine. My instruments are the way that I fight against fascism.’”

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