A Reno John Bircher, Dr. John DeTar, has asked Young Republicans to seek a congressional investigation of folk singing, indicating the Communists are using it as a tool "to ensnare and capture youthful minds in the United States." Dr. DeTar's resolution, published in the YR Inform-ant declares: "There is increasing and cumulative evidence indicating a deep interest in, and much activity by, the Communist party, U.S.A. in the field of folk music. Dr. DeTar, a chapter leader for the John Birch Society in Reno, says the resolution prob-ably will go before the Young Republicans at a meeting Tues-day.
He asks that the House Com-mittee on Un-American Activi-ties "investigate Communist subversive involvement in the folk music field; that the con-tinued, effective misuse of this media may not be further used as an unidentified tool of Com-munist psychological or cyber-netic warfare to ensnare and capture youthful minds in the United States, as it has so suc-cessfully and effectively capti-vated them elsewhere. "Folk music has been suc-cessfully used in the past by great political movements in history, particularly in the USSR," Dr. DeTar's resolution declares.
"The Communist movement has been successfully using and is now using all modes and media of communication with young people, including subtle-ties and the verbal subterfuges of applied dialectics in both poems and songs," the resolu-tion says. "It is becoming more and more evident that certain of the `hootenanies' and other similar youth gatherings and festivals, both in this country and in Eu-rope have been used to brain-wash and subvert, in a seem-ingly innocuous, but actually convert and deceptive manner, vast segments of young people's groups," it says. "The youth of our nation is acknowledged to be a major target of the Communist con-spiracy," it says.
Resolutions, the editor of the YR Informant says, must be printed in the Informant before they are read and proposed at: a club meeting.