Rock music and other aspects of Western pop culture helped to bring down the Berlin Wall, former Hungarian Ambassador to the U.S. András Simonyi told Newsmax TV in an interview Tuesday.
Simonyi was promoting his new book, "Rocking Toward a Free World: When the Stratocaster Beat the Kalashnikov," which is "about how Western, and first and foremost American and British rock and roll, broke the monotony . . . of the communist ideologues in Eastern Europe."
The former ambassador said he often remarks "McDonald's in Moscow and Levi's jeans has as much to do with bringing down the Berlin Wall as did mutually assured destruction."
He added "Western pop culture influence, when it started to weave among the young people in these cold war satellite nations, really had a tremendous influence."
Simonyi noted his favorite band is Traffic, and Steve Winwood, who he described as his "inspiration who later became a very good personal friend," is his favorite musician.
He went on to say modern music can "have the same effect on nations like North Korea, as their curtain cracks open a little bit and a little bit of western culture seeps in . . . nothing is as powerful as this music."
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