I wanted to write something like this for a while. I suspect I'm not alone in feeling abandoned by the great musicians who during my youth were raging against the machine. From Dead Kennedys, Marilyn Manson, NiN, Project Pitchfork, Front Line Assembly, Skinny Puppy, Ministry, and let’s not forget KMFDM, the dissent was palpable. If you were anything like me in this period, you know exactly what I mean.
Starting with Dead Kennedys, I remember listening to a spoken word album where Jello had actually run for mayor when he was 18 in a deliberate attempt to show the political structure as a farce. He was a proper dissenter against the norm, calling out true bs where it was needed. Great songs like 'Nazi Punks Fuck Off', 'Holiday in Cambodia' & 'Pull My Strings' all displayed their political views in no uncertain terms.
But Now he's supporting Antifa. An authoritarian leftist hate group, intent on destroying the fabric of society just for the sake of doing so. While this doesn't go against his anarchistic views, and he has tried to appeal to Antifa to cool their shit (deescalate violence) { 1 }, he is still completely supporting a state backed authoritarian regime. Is he not aware that Antifa is completely supported by these far left democrats that are intent on enslaving everyone? Does he not have the foresight to see what is going to happen if Antifa have their way?
Jello even developed a remake of 'Nazi Punks Fuck Off', with the ever so subtle altered title 'Nazi Trump Fuck Off'. This really pisses me off, because it is such a bold faced lie. Trump has on many occasions denounced the Alt Right, and dispelled any notion that there is any place for racism or bigotry in his America. His own daughter is even married to a jew ffs. What else can he do? Maybe his critics expect him to form a special military unit to go hunt down all the potential fascists in America, round them up, and put them in labor camps? Yeah, that has already been done in the past on many occasions. Want to know what the results were? Go look up the soviet Gulag, or the Nazi SS.
As far as I can tell, Jello has completely lost his mind, spewing ridiculous CNN style talking points like some brainwashed millenial (no offense intended for any millenials, but unfortunately your generation has had a severe dosage of brain washing lets face it). But hey, at least he is trying to deescalate the violence, sort of. That counts for something right?
Next I feel I need to call out Ministry, at least a little. They too have been a strong source of dissention, with great hits such as 'The Fall', 'Filth Pig', 'Thieves', and more recently 'No W'. They were definitely anti corporation, anti state, and anti religion. So what do I see from Alien Jourgensen now? Virtually the same anti Trump talking points on facebook as Jello. It's like they drank the same tainted tap water. Here is a sample from one of his interviews:
[ Speaking about controversial Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Jourgensen said: "Trump is not frightening; Trump is an idiot. What's scary is that three to four people out of ten people in America think that this would be a good idea to have him run our country and quite possibly the NATO alliance. This is not good. But I see the same pattern in Germany and France and Italy. The right wing makes this comeback because they play on people's fears and we saw this in the 1930s here, and this is history repeating, because people don't learn lessons, and Trump is a lesson that needs to be learned." ] { 2 }.
I can at least understand his position, though I certainly don't agree with him that Trump is an idiot. Not that I've ever met the man to get a proper evaluation of him for myself. But if I look at his track record, he clearly knows what he's doing. He may not be the most articulate with speech (ok admittedly, that's an understatement), but flat out calling him an idiot is an identitarian dismissal so typical of a leftist nut job (Yes, that was a deliberate piece of hypocrisy). That being said, it is a subjective opinion, and if he wants to call him an idiot, I certainly don't object. I see nothing wrong with that part of his comment, because it isn't spreading lies.
The part I have a problem with is the false 'facts' that I can only assume are coming from MSM. Trump won the election, where is he getting this 30% of the people vote rubbish from? After a quick look, even the nytimes (a heavily left leaning media organization) shows him having 45% results { 3 }. Maybe Alien is consuming CNN talking points? Did he not hear about the election rigging scandals echoing all over the subculture of the internet? { 4 }. Has he even heard of the DNC controversy surrounding Deborah Wasserman? { 5 }. If anybody has any idea where he is getting this 30% from, please enlighten me. Maybe I'm missing some important information here?
I find the worst part of his post concerns the return of right wing political parties. There is no doubt that playing on people's fears is a typical way to push through state agendas. On this point we certainly agree. This has been done time and time again (WMDs anyone?). At least he has that part right. But he completely fails to recognize that the fears the populace have may very well be justified. The leftist immigration policies have caused mainly horrible things, and at the top of my list is the Rotherham scandal { 6 }. The UK has over 3,500 people on their terror watch list { 7 } thanks to this illegal immigration, and if you consider how bold the EDL & Tommy Robinson have been in opposition to the EU { 8 }, is it any wonder their populace was brave enough to vote for a brexit? Can you really see fault in that decision?
Each country in the EU has suffered tremendously due to this illegal immigration and muslim PC pandering. The worst of these countries has got to be Sweden. They are now the rape capital of Europe, and number two on the global list of rape countries. Of worthy note is the increase from 421 reported rapes in the year 1975, to 6,620 in the year 2014 { 9 }. As Bill Hicks so eloquently put it on an unrelated topic ‘Coincidence? I don’t know...’.
The pandering towards muslims and the hate towards white men has become completely absurd in the west. This can’t be better emphasized than by Swedish feminists (the worst of the feminist lot, only canadian women can compete) who actually claim to prefer muslim rapists over whites in order to virtue signal { 10 }, { 11 }. Yes you read that correctly. Racist rape victims; the world is going bat shit crazy. It has become so bad, they decided to issue anti rape bracelets... { 12 }. I wonder what the rate of effectiveness is...
I assert that the push back against the left is RESPONSIVE and absolutely necessary, lest we be completely enslaved by the state. This is no small point, and thinking that a vote for a more conservative party is somehow immediately bad and a vote for the left is always better is just ideological nonsense. Vote for ideas, not identities. Stop drinking the Kool aid Alien.
I want to spend a minute on KMFDM, because they were probably the most political band I knew of growing up (with a quick bow in the direction of Killing Joke as a close second). They had popularized terminology such as 'Rip The System' reaching a state of memetics rarely seen in music. Having songs like ‘Dogma’, ‘A Drug Against War’, ‘Revolution’, ‘Disobedience’, ‘Free Your Hate’, ‘WW III’ and so on; they were anti war, anti state, anti racism, and the list goes on. Truly a band that cared and fought for liberty with every breath. Sadly, I haven’t seen a thing on their part in terms of speaking out against the authoritarian left. Maybe they have and I just haven’t been paying close enough attention (certainly possible). But if I’m right, the best excuse I can offer on their behalf is that Konietzko is now getting quite old, and he’s simply tired of the battle. I try to keep this in context, but damn we could really use a strong stance against this shit now. At least Konietzko had a reasonable quote in a 2016 interview:
[ Describing Donald Trump as something of an “idiot in a porcelain shop”, he indicates that the current American president “seems to want to mean well and he’s just intellectually not capable to fill the shoes that he’s been given.” He adds “These things happen. They happen in all formats and all sorts of sizes and in all sorts of countries.” ] { 13 }.
I hold no fault with this position, and to some degree share his opinion. I just wish he’d say much more against Clinton, and against the left in general. This is all we get, from one of the greatest political groups of all time. It just isn’t good enough.
The last band I’ll focus on is Marilyn Manson. I highly doubt he needs any sort of introduction, at least in terms of his fame. However, I will point out to the fools who think he was nothing more than a shock artist, that this band and particular this man read many books of value and had much to say on many topics. He had no fear of being politically incorrect, and usually had a strong sense of reason leading to an often unique perspective for his audience to ingest. Songs such as ‘Irresponsible Hate Anthem’, ‘1996’, ‘The Dope Show’, ‘Dogma’, ‘The New Shit’, ‘The Death Song’’, and how could I forget ‘The Beautiful People’ { 14 }. Marilyn Manson was deliberately spitting in the face of PC culture. He wasn’t just rejecting it, he was highlighting and rejecting it in the most obscene ways. It really was beautiful, I loved every second of it. I owe so much of my enlightenment and my survival of my youth to this band, and especially this man. During the height of his fame (and if I’m correct the recent release of his album Holywood), the famous mass shooting at columbine happened, and he was the main source of blame by the MSM. It was causing quite the outcry, until Manson shut them up so beautifully in an interview within the bowling for columbine documentary{ 15 }.
Fast forward to now, and where did that powerful anti PC voice lead? To an image of a headless corpse whom the audience is likely to interpret as Trump. In his own words, the video is meant to be provocative and open to interpretation:
[ "It's about the desperate acts of people who believe something that is preached by an unbeliever," he said, adding: "Right now we're in such a state of confusion when it comes to religion, politics, sexuality, and how they all tie together, and it's being turned into a circus and a sideshow – and that's something that I've been described as a ringleader of. It seems like a time for me as an artist, and as an American artist, to make something that causes a new set of questions to arise that aren’t simply statements." ] { 16 }.
Now I don’t mind that he doesn’t like Trump or Clinton, there are plenty of good reasons to dislike either candidate (he has gone on record as refusing to vote for either in the recent US election), but I don’t think this was smart or even remotely provocative. The MSM has already been calling for violence against Trump and anyone outside of the collective. Yet instead of recognizing how the PC culture has reshaped itself into a left wing Orwellian nightmare, he basically regurgitates the kill Trump message they are already propagating to the masses. Even if this is not what he intended (I think a case can be made in that video that he is in fact showing what the raving lunatic left is all about), I still don’t think it was anywhere near clear enough of a message. I think Marilyn Manson needs to stand tall once again and really spit in the face of MSM and the current PC culture just like he used to instead of beating around the bush with this kind of subtle garbage. There has never been a bigger anti PC figure than Marilyn Manson, and as far as my crystal ball is concerned, we need him now more than ever to give it the big middle finger salute.
I want to finally say that this is all just my criticisms of great bands and people that I used to follow and learned much from. I owe much of what I am today on these people, so while criticism is usually very easy for myself to do, I find it difficult so I’m trying to be very careful. On top of that, these people have been beating their drums against the mainstream for so long, I don’t blame them if they are just worn out. Context would certainly help me understand why they haven’t got the same fire in them that they once did.
Anybody have similar thoughts, critiques? I welcome open discussion as always.
[ Refs ]
(1) Jello calling for Antifa to de-escalate:
(2) Alien Jourgensen in an interview on Trump: http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/ministry-al-jourgensen-trump-is-not-frightening-trump-is-an-idiot.html#JV8JDZH534FgsDsk.99
(3) nytimes US election vote results:
https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/president
(4) Project Veritas exposing voter fraud in america:
(5) Stefan Molyneux laying down the facts on the DNC controversy:
(6) New report on Rotherham scandal from smh: http://www.smh.com.au/world/rotherham-child-abuse-scandal-a-nation-in-disgrace-20140829-109u9m.html
(7) UK terror watch list: http://americanmilitarynews.com/2017/05/england-terror-watch-list-at-3500-and-climbing-impossible-to-keep-up-with/
(8) Tommy Robinson Interview by David Rubin:
(9) Swedish news report & statistics on crime & rape: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5195/sweden-rape
(10) Swedish politician claiming rape is worse when white men do it: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/214479
(11) Swedish women protest against white men who want to protect them from migrant rape: http://tundratabloids.com/2016/02/sweden-radical-feminists-say-they-would-rather-be-raped-by-muslim-migrants-than-helped-by-local-street-groups/
(12) Swedish anti rape bracelets:
http://www.snopes.com/swedish-police-bracelets/
(13) KMFDM’s Konietzko interview: http://www.popmatters.com/feature/kmfdm-sascha-konietzko-interview-the-way-is-the-goal/
(14) Marilyn Manson, The Beautiful People:
(15) Bowling for columbine interview:
(16) Rolling Stone interview on Marilyn Manson’s Say10 video: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/watch-marilyn-mansons-brutal-trump-inspired-say10-video-w449091
