This thread is appropriate to the music side of Mudcat.
1. Whenever music and politics are discussed, it seems stylish to separate the two as if there is a neutral position musicians are supposed to take. In fact, most artists have a political statement to make one way or at least a point of view in their music. There are never generally two sides taken at once. It can be argued that all artistic expression is political since it reflects the views of the artist. Pete always presented songs that did not necessarily reflect his views on humanity or politics. The Smothers Brothers were musical satirists not unlike those on SNL.
2.Pete has never staged a political rally in his concerts. He has played at rallies for unions, and some political organizations but his concerts were not rallies. It is not censorship to exclude songs that don't reflect your political or personal point of view. With this logic, any religious songs could be construed as censorship also. If one is looking for a "fair and balanced" approach to a point of view from any artist, this is in vain. Was Pete a leftist? Of course. Did he have to give the stage over to some right-wing country singer like Toby Keith to balance his program? Of course not.
3. A folksinger/writer can do both concerts and political rallies. They are not the same. Pete has appealed to a broad spectrum of audiences because he has not conducted political rallies as concerts. Many artists are political organizers but they do so without necessarily turning their concerts into rallies.
4. The documentary showed Pete's ability to think through ideas and carefully assess them. All "politicos" can't be painted with the same brush. The idea that the folk revival was manipulated by political activism sounds like the criticism given by the John Birch Society, The Anti-Communist Christian Crusade and Joseph McCarthy. Folk music is absent from television now because it had been co-opted by the commercial music industry and they squeezed the last drop of profit from it. In the days of the folk revival, not every other college kid carried a guitar. There were many who didn't know much about folk music or cared little.
Folk music is not any bigger than it was because it is not a product of popular music.
The political ideologies require a specific definition. Not all Lefties thought alike. The Kremlin did not hand down edicts to American folkies. This is simply not true although it has been used as a pretext to intimidate those who were deemed subversive in music. The Beatles were attacked as anti-American by these vicious Bircher groups. (Check "Rhythm, Riots and Revolution" put out by them).
There was never a real monolithic set of political ideas by early Leftists. Woody Guthrie himself was thrown out of the Communist Party for being too radical. Pete had left the Party a long time ago. Burl Ives was a leftist for a while until he was attacked for his views. Josh White was threatened by the FBI. There were a lot of lefties that had different ideas. Some were anarchists, socialists, communists, and there were differences in the ideas that encompassed these categories.
Nothing has gone wrong. The popular music industry dropped the stereotypical image of folk music in its marketing campaign because it relies on trends that change from decade to decade. In essence, it has nothing to do with real folk music.
It is true that the Left was responsible in many ways for the folk revival but not in any doctrinaire or systemic way. It was an outgrowth of the time that culminated in the 60's. The Popular Front of the 30's and early 40's was pretty much universally accepted in the US until the cold war manipulations by demagogues of McCarthy's ilk.
So WWW what went wrong? More than politics though.