A White Nationalist Take on Rock n’ Roll

1,973 words

[1]

Little Richard and some of his biggest fans

After reading this Spectator article [2] about how many current pop stars are “quietly right wing,” I started to think about how what we call rock n’ roll relates to White Nationalism. And I have concluded that it really doesn’t. That doesn’t mean that White Nationalists should never enjoy rock n’ roll. It does mean, however, that it will be harder to achieve and maintain the goals of White Nationalism with rock n’ roll in the world than without it. 

So what exactly is rock n’ roll? First and foremost, it is a subset of pop music. All rock n’ roll is pop; not all pop is rock n’ roll. Pop music is music designed and marketed for mass audiences that is not purely classical, jazz, religious, or traditional. Of course, reality often stretches and blurs these lines, but, for our purposes, this general rule holds up. Rock n’ roll (along with its cousin R&B) started off in the 1950s more or less as up-tempo, beat-heavy, boogie music. It drew upon elements of several forms of traditional music (such as country and western) or religious music (Negro spirituals, for example) but what held it all together more than anything else was a strong affinity for the blues, which we all know as a distinctive form of black traditional music.

When it started out, rock n’ roll was effectively white people mass-marketing black music for white audiences. As Mick Jagger says, “It’s only rock n’ roll. But I like it.” Lots of people liked it, mostly because it released their inner Negro. This is one reason why rock n’ roll never really took hold among blacks themselves. In most cases, their inner Negro was no different than their outer Negro which had been released the moment they emerged from the womb. But for whites, especially young whites not steeped in classical or traditional forms of white music, it was intoxicating. It represented freedom, rebellion, and offered tantalizing glimpses of sexuality, which, at that point in history, was still fairly taboo among whites. It should come as no surprise that the original definition of “rock n’ roll,” as a verb, was, quite plainly, “to fuck.” For a music as licentious as rock n’ roll, what better word to describe it is there?

Of course, things evolved. By the 1970s, we had “rock music,” which included heavy metal, punk, prog, and AOR top-40 music which bore less and less resemblance to the blues. White people are not black people, and like the beatnik obsession with jazz, the large-scale white infatuation with blues-based music proved faddish at best. Rock n’ roll may have shown white baby boomers that anything was possible in pop music, but after a decade or two, whites were itching to do their own thing. As a result, the quality of the music in many instances soared. By 1980 or so, rock n’ roll became just one of many sub-genres of rock which fell under the broadening umbrella of pop music.

From a White Nationalist standpoint, these distinctions should be made because not all forms of pop music are antithetical to White Nationalism. Of course, rap and hip hop mostly are due to the crass rhythms and offensive or truculent lyrical content. Because White Nationalists abhor black-white miscegenation and frown upon racial integration in general, any sexed-up music that entices young whites to behave like stereotypical blacks also falls into this category. This includes most forms of rock n’ roll, R&B, funk, and disco. This, of course, does not apply to non-white music in general. For my money, White Nationalists should be politically indifferent to Chinese opera or Bollywood film scores. This doesn’t necessarily rule out all forms of black music either, just the sexy kinds, the kinds that can tempt white people into relaxing their sexual discipline.

So how is rock n’ roll sexy? Allan Bloom had a lot to say about it in his famous The Closing of the American Mind from 1987. He called rock n’ roll “barbaric” and wrote that “has the beat of sexual intercourse.” Basically, rock n’ roll stirs up a sexual desires which threaten to control us and turn us into heathens, more or less. One cannot live a noble life, controlling one’s passions and appreciating intellectual pleasures, while listening exclusively to the Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, and their ilk, according to Bloom. Modern equivalents could include Bruno Mars, Robin Thicke, and Maroon 5.

Theodore Gracyk, in an attempt to debunk Bloom in his 1996 ode to rock music Rhythm and Noise,writes:

When Bloom warns against the beat of sexual intercourse, he probably means this democratized syncopation of meter, and neither the pulse nor the meter nor any particular rhythm. In other words, our perception of syncopation is the result of grafting African democratization onto Western expectations about the correct placement of strong and weak accents. . . . Seen from a musicological perspective, the rock beat preserves an African attitude toward basic accents, rejecting the standard Western assumption that the first beat of the measure is the strongest.

He’s talking about the 4/4 time backbeat with emphases on the second and fourth beat. This is the syncopated <boom THUMP boom-boom THUMP> rhythm that’s so common in rock, not just rock n’ roll. Gracyk explains that classical composers tended to “subordinate rhythm by incorporating it into harmony and melody” whereas rock musicians, if you’ll forgive the expression, let it all hang out.

Here’s where any discussion of rock n’ roll gets dicey, and it is where mainstream scholars such as Bloom and Gracyk fear to tread. If rock n’ roll is simultaneously sexual and black, what does that say about black people? Does this mean that blacks as a group have a genetic preoccupation with sex that other races tend to lack? A White Nationalist will say yes, and not due to any animus against blacks but because an affirmative answer is most consistent with scientific, anecdotal, forensic, and historical data. We can close our eyes, certainly, but we cannot close our ears. Rock n’ roll music, especially in its more primitive forms, apart from its lyrics, arrangement, and ornamentation, tends to be sexual. Occam’s Razor tells us that that’s because it was invented by a highly sexual people. Sure, whites have adopted it and given it a rougher, more adrenaline-tinged edge in many cases. As a result, rock n’ roll has lost a good deal of its prurience. But whenever you hear that backbeat (a particularly hypnotizing example can be found in “All Spring All Summer [3]” by the Silos) you will know that the music is not very many steps removed from the jungle. And in the jungle anything goes.

That’s basically what it is all about: sex; that and losing the discipline required to rein in sexual passions. Anything that causes people to lose this discipline should be discouraged because sexual discipline is one of the main things that hold families and indeed nations together. Without sexual discipline, marriages fall apart, children are born out of wedlock, sexually transmitted diseases are proliferated, and the ties that bind us together as a people weaken. So, in hindsight, we can see there were reasons why they wouldn’t broadcast Elvis Presley’s gyrating hips on the Ed Sullivan Show. And, with human nature being what it is, these were good reasons.

White Nationalists, by definition, wish to build and maintain white nations. Like other nationalists, they believe that a nation is strongest when composed in large part of a single race or ethnicity. Rock n’ roll, as it currently exists as a sub-genre of rock, threatens this on three accounts. First, there is the sexual temptation discussed earlier, which can endanger any nation, racial or not. Second, it engenders negrophilia. Blacks, as we all know, are the least intelligent and most violent and criminal-minded people in the world. In large numbers, they are poison to any well-ordered, civilized society, despite the tiny minority of them which is truly capable outside of music, sports, or show biz. Black people for the most part should be shunned, not loved. Further, music that entices whites to act black will also encourage them to interact with blacks. With every generation of whites like this, the dreams of White Nationalists become harder and harder to realize.

Finally, it’s never good for nationalists of any sort to promote too strongly the arts of other nations or peoples. Part of the appeal of nationalism can be found in the accomplishments, past and present, of people from that nation. This is why over 100,000 Italians attended the funeral of Guiseppi Verdi in 1901. He was a national treasure. Italians were proud of him. Of course, we should all respect and admire fine arts and accomplishments from across the world. But for nationalism to thrive, these should never supplant homegrown arts and accomplishments. So in a white ethnostate, prominence should be awarded to art forms developed and perfected by white people, past and present. This, of course, would include all forms of “white” pop music that are not still steeped in the blues. Rock n’ roll, however, will always be steeped in the blues. Therefore, in a white ethnostate it should always be viewed with suspicion.

But should it be banned in a white ethnostate? Perhaps not. Freedom, you see, is a tricky thing. Not enough it, and people are not going to want to live in your nation. On the other hand, too much of it, and humanity goes feral. Wise leadership amounts to gauging where to draw this line. My hunch is that rock n’ roll and other forms of sexed up black music should be discouraged in the same way smoking is discouraged. It should be heavily taxed and limited to private residences or to venues willing to pay additional fees in order to allow such music to be performed. Further, there should be fairly strict noise pollution ordinances. Rock n’ roll loses much of its power at low volume, which is probably why the instructions on the back cover of the classic Rolling Stones album Let it Bleed tell the listener to play the album “LOUD.” This, of course, should apply to all music. So if Claudio Abbado wishes to rip the roof off an arena with a super loud rendition of the finale from Rossini’s William Tell Overture, he’d get in trouble too.

In many ways, however, the genie is out of the bottle. We can’t put it back nor can we transport ourselves back in time to the pre-rock era. Rock n’ roll is here to stay in one form or another. White Nationalists would not be well served to stand athwart musical history shouting “Blasphemy!” like the John Lithgow preacher character in the movie Footloose. That would only make us look ridiculous. Instead, we should have a realistic understanding of the value and dangers of rock n’ roll and similar music, and proceed from there, preserving as much individual freedom as possible while protecting the integrity of the nation state.

To the question of blacks having a greater genetic preoccupation with sex than other races, earlier we said that White Nationalists should answer yes to remain consistent with the data. Well, there’s another reason. Given the damage that miscegenation and unchecked sexual liberty can do to a race that is barely sustaining itself as it is—not to mentioned besieged in all directions by foreigners who wish ultimately to replace it—White Nationalists cannot afford not to answer yes. Of course, blacks are more sexual than other races. Of course, rock n’ roll and similar forms of black music loosen our sexual discipline and restraint. Of course rock n’ roll is bad for us over the long term. And, despite what Mick Jagger says, it doesn’t matter if you like it.