I listened to a lot of punk and hardcore growing up and have attributed a lot of my leftism to it. Admittedly, my parents have heavy socialist tendencies but I feel like bands put a good label on my principles and shit. Kind of helped me see past the scene through their lyrics and message.
Like, I wouldn’t have been out there saying “fuck cops” had not not been listening to 25 Ta Life or thinking “death to Amekkka” had I not blasted anti-flag on my Sony Walkman
I dunno. I’m high as hell
Being punk has pretty much determined everything that has happened in my life since I was about 13, so yes.
Boots Riley's excellent lyricism on the Street Sweeper Social Club project with the RATM guys in 09 convinced me to look into socialism seriously.
I know this is so cliché but I think Rage Against the Machine did a lot to radicalise me as a teenager and make me aware of politics to the left of the mainstream. Punk music also played a role in reinforcing my beliefs.
I also loved when my parents had parties with their friends and when people got drunk and would sing traditional socialist songs like Bella Ciao (and no, my parents were not alcoholics, this would happen like twice a year and I never felt unsafe, it was just fun).
I think music had a lot to do with my radicalization cause I had no other leftist influence anywhere in my life besides Rise Against, Anti-Flag, and RATM and I’ve been listening to them since I was 7 or 8.
“The guillotine” by the the Coup is so good :cat-vibing:
What radicalized me firmly where my material conditions, being shuffled through the remnants of our welfare state when i was unemployed, working minimum wage, having actual first-hand contact to the bourgeoisie and seeing how they live and think. That did more for radicalizing me than reading Marx and Lenin and Luxemburg, let alone listening to the Dead Kennedys and Propagandhi and Wizo as a kid.
But all the punk bands back in the day, or RATM, they definitely planted some seeds there, they laid the finger on that nagging suspicion that something was fundamentally wrong with our society that i always had harbored. Paved the way, made my later experiences fit into a bigger picture that then gained clarity from reading theory. Back in the 90s, it was the only counter-ideology to capitalist realism that was readily available to me, and i wouldn't write off the value of that. Plus, it's just fun to sing along to Kein Gerede, even when you're not an anarchist (the vid was obviously made by an ML, so i'm not alone with this). That shit slaps. No surprise that song is censored in Germany, such a catchy way to call for the bombing of the ruling class obviously scares the shit out of the piggies.
I also think that electronic music, psytrance and techno, did a lot to radicalize me. Not the music itself, but the scene around it. Where i'm at, these are just the most welcoming, open and friendly crowds you can party with. Being on MDMA in these spaces, seeing how mindful and generous and caring complete strangers could be, was always like a glimpse into Utopia for me. A place where i was among free people, where alienation wasn't a thing, where the competitive rat race didn't matter and everything ran on love and mutual aid. A positive counterpoint to punk's yelling into the void, a guiding ray of light in all the gloom and drudgery. When we're talking music, punk showed me what to fight against, techno showed me what to fight for. Miss the floor so much, i just want to be out in some warehouse club or on a forest clearing and feel the bass hit. You can call that escapist, or naive, and it probably is, but in a good way. I think experiences like that are the best cure for doomerism. We can't form a revolutionary class on rage and fervor alone, we need the love and the euphoria just as well.
So when punk is the thesis and techno is the antithesis, what is the synthesis? Well, obviously it's antifa electropunk that says ACAB.
I’m only a leftist because I discovered wingnut dishwashers union at the right time
Punk rock song won't ever change the world...
But I can tell you about a couple that changed me
