Music can straight up change your ideology better than any argument tbh
Paul Ryan’s favorite band is Rage Against The Machine
I take back what I just said
not
only is this not true but it’s extremely good that it isn’t true
because if it were, people could easily be converted to shitty
ideologies by sufficiently sick riffz
[[busts out a fucking killer guitar solo, converts entire auditorium to posadism]]
You’re
wrong on a several counts because posadism is the only correct
ideology, and also. in liberal crime squad, You can convert people to
liberalism by playing the guitar at them, if you’re very good at it
i wonder what kind of music converts people to liberalism
the hamilton soundtrack?
the hamilton soundtrack?
Folk Music could potentially convert one to anarcho-syndicalism. (ie Utah Phillips)
That was what I was saying basically, like it’s a valuable tool for disseminating things sometimes
I
do think punk music brought anarchism back from the dead at least in
America. For a lot of punk bands it was just an aesthetic, but some took
it seriously, and they spread it to a new generation after it had
basically disappeared.
In a lot of small towns, the local Food Not Bombs and antifa are congregated around the local punk scene.
In a lot of small towns, the local Food Not Bombs and antifa are congregated around the local punk scene.
I
do think there’s something to be said about how Paul Ryan isn’t an
exception when it comes to reactionary fuckwads listening to something
as overtly leftist as RATM and being uncritical fans lmao. Like, I think
your example is less punk itself being what moves people politically,
but rather, tight-knit music scenes (or other cultural loci) in general
facilitate action. They could’ve easily been making apolitical music,
been diehard musicians of another stripe, but push and spread their
politics via their rep and cause a similar effect.
Sorta like how there’s not a ton that’s explicitly conservative about football but the culture surrounding it and actions made by coaches, owners, sponsors, (white) players off the field have made it so
Sorta like how there’s not a ton that’s explicitly conservative about football but the culture surrounding it and actions made by coaches, owners, sponsors, (white) players off the field have made it so
I
do think football does have some kind of right-wing aesthetic about it.
It’s not inherent to the game, but the intense patriotism and cult of
masculinity it is has become suffused with is fuel for a right-wing
culture of football fandom.
And like I said, it’s not inherent to the game. Nothing about the music of punk is inherently anarchistic, but the lyrics and aesthetics that a lot of fans and artists have brought to it I do think creates a left-wing culture around it. There are some other music scenes that lack these explicit aesthetics and lyrics that still have a radical culture, but I don’t think any to the same extent as punk.
And like I said, it’s not inherent to the game. Nothing about the music of punk is inherently anarchistic, but the lyrics and aesthetics that a lot of fans and artists have brought to it I do think creates a left-wing culture around it. There are some other music scenes that lack these explicit aesthetics and lyrics that still have a radical culture, but I don’t think any to the same extent as punk.
So Lindsay Ellis has this really fantastic video essay about how the language of a medium sometimes matters more than the explicitly stated message a creator wants to communicate because the language of a medium is what the fans of a medium are going to be most fluent in. The framing of a character in a film can say more than the words written in the screenplay.
RATM have some pretty great radical ideologies going on in their songs but that doesn’t stop them from being a fairly crap metal band. I don’t like RATM because the sound reminds me of a lot of other bands that I don’t like but that sound is what attracts Paul Ryan types.
RATM doesn’t sound like punk. It sounds like RHCP and Korn. And a Tiny Bit of Jane’s Addiction. And some Limp Bizkit.
You know what’s shitty? Metalheads.
And they’re shitty for the same reason that football fans are shitty! High expectations for performance of gender roles and high conformity to the ideals of toxic masculinity! Metal is HARDCORE. It’s Loud and Fast and Hard and if you can’t handle it get back in the kitchen and make me a sandwich. Football is An Honorable Game For Men - You Suffer And Sweat And Bleed On The Gridiron, You Symbolically Sacrifice In a Blood Ritual that Protects the Little Lady making Cocktail Weenies and Bringing you Beer. You watch with your team and you suffer with your team - you holler and make faces and roar and throw things, you clench your hands and pump your fists. You go outside and toss around the pigskin and tackle your nephew and if he cries about it you tell the little pansy to rub some dirt in the wound and take it like a man.
It’s an extremely overt performance of a particular and traditional kind of masculinity; and where you’ve got a high reverence for traditional masculinity you end up with a traditionalist, conservative, old-fashioned, right-wing aesthetic.
Please note that women traditionally have two roles in both scenes. There are the Madonnas, who can be:
- long-suffering girlfriends who don’t come to the shows with you
- wives making a buffet lunch of cold-cuts and chips and cornbread for your buddies when they come over to watch a game but who stay sensibly in the kitchen and don’t bother you with questions about the rules (1)
- your ride-or-die girlfriend who shows up in a miniskirt and sucks face with you for the whole show
- your girlfriend who comes to the game in an adorably oversized jersey and only ever roots for your team
- cheerleaders
- groupies
- girls doing facepaint or cosplay for the other team
- girls in bands (because if she’s onstage she wants the attention)
They’re framed wrong. Punk bands can be political (2); nobody gets it when metal bands try to be political. That’s why you can still find an audience full of homophobes at a Judas Priest show happily singing along to Breaking the Law (a thing that good, defiant, masculine, independent metalheads love to imagine themselves doing) and find them flipping their goddamned minds if Rob Halford talks about marriage equality or pride or AIDS.
There’s also this ideal of the solitary bootstrapping genius in both, which seems kind of ridiculous considering that football teams and metal bands both require significant cooperation and compromise. But people don’t see that - they see the authoritarian Quarterback or Lead Singer (3) in charge of his army of subordinates, leading them to success. We fucking *love* the narrative of “kid with a poor background was a whizbang with a football and caught the attention of scouts who helped him get a scholarship and a million dollars a game and he’s in charge of my TV on sundays” just like we *love* the narrative of “bad boy who dropped out of school plays an instrument he self-taught so well that he gathered a bevy of followers and a band who obey him and holds record companies in his thrall and is up on this stage singing before getting an array of stunning pussy served up on a platter backstage.” In our movies about these things we skip over the hours of practice and dedication and ignore that the quarterback is following instructions from the coach; we skip the years of gigging and building an audience and internal struggles and the complicated rapport you have to build to work together effectively onstage.
Nope. Quarterback throw ball awesome, he’s the hero. Singer do the hip thrust nice and make the growls, he’s in charge.
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The last football game I went to was the last football game I will go to. My sister was in the marching band so I went because I had a seat. I ended up getting things thrown at me by adults! grown humans! around me when I started reading a book because it was obvious the home team was losing. The girl who started throwing things was a clarinet player. I learned that her nickname from the band members was sugartits. There weren’t a lot of girls who played the same instrument as my sister - baritone sax - because that was a “guy” section of the band. Baris are for guys, altos are for girls. The End. Everything about the culture of this college was wrapped up in FOOTBALL. The marching band (a group of geeky music majors ffucksake) ended up being pressured to drink heavily, use misogynist nicknames, and play the “correct” instrument for their gender. (Though everyone knew the woodwinds were sluts).
The last metal fest I went to had a booth selling shirts that said “Black dog lives matter” and “Black cat lives matter” alongside “Werewolf women of the SS” posters. The one I went to before that had a graffiti wall and I watched at least three concert attendees tag “blue lives matter” on the wall. (The absoloute coolest thing about that particular experience was the crew of basically pro artists who were circling and *immediately* covered those whenever they happened)
Trads! Trads everywhere!
Less Trad than a lot of Trad shit you see online but nonetheless there’s a quiet undercurrent of “how come I have to think about women/abortion/gay folks/black folks/immigrants when all I want to do is watch the big men play footie/sing the loud song?”
If there’s intent it’s usually as a result of frustration with being asked to consider something from a different viewpoint. Your average football fan isn’t going to go out of their way to consciously romanticize wheatfields and submissive women until they see black men kneeling to protest a problem with the system that the average football fan is perfectly comfortable with. Metalheads tend to not have overt problems with feminism until someone says that maybe the reason women don’t go to their shows is because of all the murder-rape on album covers.
It’s ethics in video games journalism all over again.
___________________________________________________
You have to keep in mind that Paul Ryan is pretty sure he’s an anarchist. Based on his poor understanding of political theories he hasn’t studied well he’s pretty sure that wanting to limit government makes him a punk. He doesn’t want cops except for enforcement of borders, because cops who fuck with citizens or limit the freedoms of businesses are bad but cops who keep those moochers away from citizens are good. He doesn’t want you to be forced to spend your hard-earned money on health care that you’re willing to bet you don’t need (if you get in a car accident and bet wrong that’s no problem to him, you made the wrong choice and he thinks you should pay for the consequences even if it does bankrupt you).
It’s the same attitude that a lot of conservatives have about birth control. If you want to fuck without consequences the consequence is that you have to pay for it. We can’t help that companies charge through the nose for birth control - oversight to lower the prices is fascist interference from the government.
So for him there’s no cognitive dissonance. When he hears RATM sing about how fucked up The Man is he’s not thinking of his party defunding after school programs and cutting meals on wheels. He’s thinking of those horrid socialists who demand money out of his hard-earned paycheck paying for abortions and steak for welfare moms too lazy to find work and to unskilled to be worth more than five dollars an hour if they did.
It’s those goddamned commie democrats who want him to stop using the n-word who are censoring him who he’s got to raise his voice against.
He’s listening to RATM and he’s agreeing with everything he hears but his understanding of basic vocabulary is so skewed that he interprets “social security withholding” as “fascist authoritarian communism.”
He is freeing you from the shackles of socialism, diverting us from the slippery slope that leads to breadlines by instead putting us on the narrow pinnacle of a mountain that leads to people dying because they can’t afford their insulin.
This is his ideal world. People who don’t work hard enough die. If you die you didn’t work hard enough and it’s your fault. Why are people making fun of him for believing the things he’s been taught (4) and celebrating them with music that affirms his own hard work to dismantle the temple of iniquity that would cow brave Americans beneath the yoke of helping other people? He doesn’t know why you’re all being so mean to him.
He’s the rockstar. He’s the quarterback. He’s the hero.
___________________________________________________
But for real he’s a man-sized stack of anal fistulas and I want him to learn how awful he is and suffer for it, so please call the speaker’s office and let them know exactly which thing he did that means you’ll be voting for an opposing party in the upcoming elections. I want him to have a report handed to him by his staff daily until his slimy, shoebox-looking ass cringes out of office and every day I want that report to be full of the rigetous fury of people who are voting to never let a human pustule like that occupy office ever again. I want you to call him and let him know that he was such a skeevy, awful, disingenuous cashew that he has destroyed all confidence in his party and that his mewling refusal to re-run has solidified your desire to vote against republicans (and if you’ve previously voted for republicans but now want to vote against them because of him please be sure that ends up in the message).
Be kind to whoever answers the phone; they’re just doing a job.
(202) 225-0600
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(1) There’s a walmart commercial that’s been running during football seasons that’s about this exact thing, it’s a middle-aged woman who gets back from the store to set up the party for her husband’s hobby with all the right treats to save the day, but who clearly doesn’t know much about this game and is hesitant to ask questions or impose on boys being boys
(2) Though for sure I am not making the claim that Punk is exempt from this sort of thought; in particular hardcore punk bands frequently have the same sort of aggressive, violent framing as metal and they seem to be less interested in coalition building than crew loyalty. But the framing of “punk” is largely interpreted as “liberal/leftist” because genre founders were anti-authoritarian lefties.
(3) Occasionally this is the lead guitarist.
(4) Prosperity gospel and the Just World fallacy are fundamental to American conservatism. He 100% believes with all of his heart that good people who work hard for the right reasons can’t fail in America. He’s not pretending to believe that, he BELIEVES that.
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