Counter-Currents
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Blacks make up nearly a third of United States postal workers, and I don’t care if someone tries to punch me for suspecting that this is one of the main reasons our postal service is going to hell.
I make part of my living by selling my books through the mail, and skyrocketing postal prices combined with plummeting postal service means that no matter how meticulously I package the books I send out — they’re lovingly cocooned in a bubble envelope that is cradled inside a rigid cardboard mailer — sometimes they wind up damaged, anyway.
Thanks to the glorious Negroes who run the postal service in my neck of the woods — and, judging from where he lives, probably his neck of the woods, too — a customer recently emailed me to announce that his hardcover book had arrived partially crushed, almost as if the Nazi-punching antifa member lampooned on the back cover had been kicked square in the balls and the boot had left a dent in his crotch.
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When I told him I’d send a replacement copy, he informed me that I rock:
You rock! I know you said you hate punk but I was a roadie for [semi well-known American punk band] for 3 years.
I told him that I’d known the singer of that band, who used to be irreverent and funny, and what a shame it was that he’d turned into a humorless “liberal fag.” He replied:
It was like 30 years ago. We are all liberals to the max. Fuck the right. As it says on your book. I punch nazis. Truthfully I used to kick them in the face. Nothing like a good old fashioned boot party to straighten out someone’s political affiliation.
I told him that if he’d actually assaulted people for their political beliefs, he’s an idiot. He asserted that not only do I rock, but that I’m punk as fuck:
You are hysterical and punk af! Idiot or not I’ll boot stomp the fuck outta right wingers. Let someone talk that religious or conservative control shit around me. . . . Violence was never my first answer. However with the skinhead scene in the eighties, those motherfuckers were violent as shit. Swift action is the only language they understood. Also my grandmother is Jewish and my mother is Irish. We are feed the homeless tolerant. But when it comes to people talking fascist bullshit, my tolerance ends. I hate hate
I said that if he’d “boot stomp” someone just for talking, he clearly wasn’t for free speech. I also informed him that having Jewish and Irish ancestors wasn’t an accomplishment:
People can have free speech but if they talk that hateful shit around me ima stuff my boot all up in their ass. I don’t feel accomplished in any way. I was just bringing it up so you know i won’t be on the side of fascists.
I let the conversation end there, realizing how fruitless it is to engage with someone so deeply brainwashed. But as someone who’s written about my own encounters with punk rockers who felt it was their holy mission to assault other white people for racial wrongthink, it got my steel-plated noggin a-thinkin’ about how punk rock — which in its early days was deeply iconoclastic, and many of whose early luminaries openly sported Nazi iconography, however ironically — became a rigidly humorless musical nostalgia act that formed the behavioral template for what is now known as antifa.
The best thing about punk rock was that anyone could play it. That was also the worst thing about punk rock. I enjoyed punk rock, especially its irreverence, for a year or maybe two, but as it rapidly ossified stylistically and got increasingly strident politically, I looked more toward American roots music from the 1950s and early ‘60s. Most of the music and movies I wound up loving throughout my life were made before I was born. I operate on the assumption that when a culture starts a slow decline, so do its cultural artifacts.
Since I was in my mid-teens when punk started getting alarmist coverage on shows such as 60 Minutes and in periodicals such as Parade magazine, I understood early punk as mostly a musical and stylistic rebellion — not a political one — against the sort of “youth culture” that directly preceded it. Musically, its short, loud, hi-energy blasts of anger were a rude counterpoint to the gross excesses of mid-1970s prog rock as typified by bands such as Yes and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. Stylistically, its short haircuts and open fetishization of rage, decay, death, and all things ugly were a reaction against how squishy, soft, and passive the hippie movement had become.
If you look at early interviews with punk rockers, they were especially hostile toward hippies. They hardly ever mentioned Nazis in a negative light; they were too busy appropriating Nazi imagery.
So how did a movement that seemed like a somewhat organic cultural reaction against hippies and Leftism become a decades-long, carefully managed jihad against Nazis and fascism?
A book called The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s details the uniquely Jewish flavor of early New York City punk. Hillel “Hilly” Kristal, owner of CBGB’s, was the son of an alleged “Russian pogrom survivor.” Richard “Blank Generation” Hell, first a member of Television and then leader of his own band The Voidoids, had a Jewish father. Both members of pioneering electroshock duo Suicide were Jewish. Two of The Ramones — the quintessential punk-rock band — were Jewish. Ironically, guitarist Johnny Ramone, inventor of that buzzsaw guitar sound that became the sonic template for punk rock that refuses to die even now, in its sixth decade — was an Irish/Polish mutt and lifelong Republican who was rumored to have a Hitler painting hanging over the fireplace in the Los Angeles house he bought after The Ramones made it big.
In England, the managers of The Clash (Bernie Rhodes) and The Sex Pistols (Malcolm McLaren) were both Jewish. An article titled “Never mind the swastikas: the secret history of the UK’s ‘punky Jews’” recalls that in 1976, Bernie Rhodes nearly shut down a gig by demanding that McLaren, the Sex Pistols, and Siouxsie and the Banshees rid themselves of their swastikas, or else they couldn’t use The Clash’s musical gear: “The gig went on. No swastikas.”
You can buy Jim Goad’s Shit Magnet here.
Also in 1976, an organization called “Rock Against Racism” was formed — but more as reaction to pro-fascist statements glam rocker David Bowie had made and anti-immigration statements classic rocker Eric Clapton had made than anything the punks had said or done. In 1977, along with other “anti-fascist” groups, Rock Against Racism violently clashed with 500 members of Britain’s National Front in what became known as “The Battle of Lewisham.”
In 1979, rock critic Lester Bangs, who’d moved to New York and stopped writing for Detroit’s anarchic and hilarious CREEM magazine, pecked out an essay for The Village Voice titled “The White Noise Supremacists.”
Bangs reminisces about how during his time in Detroit writing for CREEM, he’d use the word “nigger” to startle people at parties:
We believed nothing could be worse, more pretentious and hypocritical, than the hippies and the liberal masochism in whose sidecar they Coked along, so we embraced an indiscriminate, half-joking and half-hostile mindlessness which seemed to represent . . . a new kind of cool. “I don’t discriminate,” I used to laugh, “I’m prejudiced against everybody!”
Bangs confesses his guilt and agony about a recent situation in a NYC record store where he drunkenly said “nigger” again, not realizing there had been a black couple standing behind him. After being informed of his faux pas, he says he ran outside to make a fumbling apology for causing them pain.
But rather than privately wrestling with his own hypocrisies and deeply-layered guilt complexes, Bangs indulges his own white liberal masochism to scold a female member of the NYC punk scene for her unapologetic whiteness:
I opened up a copy of a Florida punk fanzine called New Order and read an article by Miriam Linna of the Cramps, Nervus Rex, and now Zantees: “I love the Ramones [because] this is the celebration of everything American — everything teenaged and wonderful and white and urban. . . .” [T]he same issue featured a full-page shot of Miriam and one of her little friends posing proudly with their leathers and shades and a pistol in front of the headquarters of the United White People’s Party, under a sign bearing three flags: “GOD” (cross), “COUNTRY” (stars and stripes), “RACE” (swastika). . . .
Sorry, Miriam, I can go just so far with affectations of kneejerk cretinism before I puke. . . . If that makes me a wimp now, good, that means you and anybody else who wants to get their random vicarious kicks off White Power can stay the fuck away from me.
Bangs then takes his “stay the fuck away from me” personal disgust up a notch to the point where he cheers the specter of white people, even CBGB’s regulars, getting beaten up for racial insensitivity:
More recently, I’ve heard occasional stories like the one about one of the members of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks yelling “Hey, you bunch of fucking niggers” at a crowd of black kids in front of Hurrah one night and I am not sorry to report getting the shit kicked out of him for it.
Lester Bangs, who glorified being a drunken, drugged-out fuckup, died at 33 because overdosing on drugs has always been cooler than racism in punk-rock circles.
The first punk-rock single I bought was “California Über Alles,” the Dead Kennedys’ 1979 debut. Not only did it ironically appropriate Nazi imagery, it parodied what would happen if California Governor Jerry Brown became president and turned the US into a hippie nightmare. Sample lyrics:
Zen fascists will control you
Hundred percent natural
You will jog for the master race
And always wear the happy face . . .
The hippies won’t come back, you say
Mellow out, or you will pay
Only two years later, the enemy had switched from hippies to Nazis. In 1981, the Dead Kennedys released a single called “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” that not only had a “No Swastikas” logo on the record label, it came with a “No Swastikas” armband. (I’ll never stop being amused at the fact that to create a “No Swastikas” symbol, you still need a swastika.) Sample lyrics:
Punk ain’t no religious cult
Punk means thinking for yourself
You still think swastikas look cool
The real Nazis run your schools . . .
In a real fourth Reich you’ll be the first to go
But forget about “thinking for yourself.” In the Punk Reich, Nazis were the first to go. The junkies, trannies, and terminally unhappy were encouraged to stay, but the “Nazis” — who were basically defined as anyone who didn’t fall blindly in line with far-Left rhetoric — had to go. Much of the ‘80s were involved with punk’s own internal “optics war,” where white-power punks who’d show up at gigs to harass others were ritually and violently purged. Punk politics had ossified on the hard Left. Even the ironic Nazi symbolism had to go, although it wasn’t nearly as bad as the non-ironic type. The leaders of the New Punk Reich were absolutely aghast at those who seemed to really mean it, as if it’s somehow much more immoral to be sincere than insincere.
And that is how a youth movement whose pioneers adorned themselves in ironic swastikas and iron crosses morphed from trying to piss off hippies to trying to exterminate Nazis. It’s how a fledgling anti-authoritarian musical culture was made to goose-step in lockstep with global authoritarianism.
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46 comments
I had an uncle who worked at the main post office in Cleveland. One of my favorite stories of his was “payday at the post office “. This was the early 70’s so I’ll let your imaginations run with what you think went occurred on payday. First hint would be “ it was a party atmosphere “.
All ‘youth movements’ attract people from across the spectrum of society because of the FOMO factor. I knew one punk who was absolutely certain that the Dead Kennedy’s ‘Kill The Poor’ mean that we should kill the poor. Yeah.
It’s funny how small this punk music scene actually was in NYC in the late 70s, early 80s. Growing up in Queens during that time, it was Allman Bros, Zeppelin and the Who and the start of the disco era. Punk rockers were a small clique of weirdos who didn’t really know music to most of us. We were so busy fighting off blacks back then, none of us cared about nazis or skinheads. I think my older brother saw the Ramones at Queens College at some point back then, but it didn’t impact 99% of us.
Thanks for this unvarnished survey of a history little spoken of these days.
The best early punk bands were on the continuum of rockabilly and garage, most obvious when they recorded covers of the prior generation. The Saints, early Ramones, Pagans, and many others of the ‘Class of 77’ were not the least bit political… a smart idea as 19 year olds are typically not smart on political issues. When punks started taking themselves seriously it quickly fizzled and the most interesting stuff came via the ill defined “post-punk” acts.
But plenty of other genres followed the same suit. The rough and primal Jimmie Rodgers, Carter Family, and countless rural string bands eventually begat the snoozefest of 60’s leftist folk acts like Pete Seeger. The bracing early RnR of Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, and Johnny Burnette was aped somewhat by the Kinks, Beatles and Rolling Stones. But they and their contemporaries all got arty and political in the mid 60. Black R&B and jazz acts took a similar turn, and later so did hip hop (‘conscious’… not really a flattering term when you think on it).
Roll over Beethoven… not because of the musical racket, but because everyone fancies themselves an artist with a righteous opinion.
In anticipation of future inadequacies of the post office, I encourage Mr. Goad to advertise his texts as personally signed AND stomped on.
British punk had a lot of support from “white power” skinheads.
One band they particularly liked was Sham 69. In 1979, I saw their last-ever live performance at the Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park, London, which was broken up by National Front-supporting skinheads (I wasn’t one of them!).
“If the Kids Are United” has to be the best of the punk anthems.
In fact, Oi was a rejection of the middle class, hippy-rebellion-gone-bad attitude that animated punk.
It was mainly working class kids who liked the sound of punk music, but couldn’t relate to its message.
With that said, not all punk was the same. The Australian punk outfit, Radio Birdman, didn’t really fit the stereotype.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnARGuU8Af0
The best interview with a rock star I know of is with Johnny Ramone, in the zine Black to Comm, around 1994. What I remember most is his concert-going prowess. Every rock act, you name it, that played in the NYC metro area in the late 60s/early 70s he saw, and many of them multiple times. It was funny that the interviewer stayed diplomatic while Johnny praised the likes of Hendrix, Clapton, and Zeppelin to the skies, with these acts being irrelevant or anathema to the punk aesthetic of the zine. Finally the interviewer laid it on the line and asked Johnny about the Velvet Underground, the interviewer’s by-far favorite band. Johnny laughed and said something like “I’m sure we saw them and heard their records, but it was like, Why? These guys can’t play.” That was really funny considering Johnny’s simple style and that no one would call him a virtuoso. Great sound, though, so he should be remembered like Angus Young or Lemmy of Motorhead.
Lemmy used to wear an iron cross on his clothing sometimes. He wasn’t a Nazi, he just liked it from an aesthetic standpoint. Anyway ,he would be criticized for it and have to explain that it was just an aesthetic preference.
I think the punk swastika thing came from Ron Asheton of The Stooges. He was doing it back in 1970, I believe, wearing Wehrmacht uniforms on stage. And there’s a cool AF picture of Brownsville Station in like 1973 where one of them is wearing a giant WWI German cross on a necklace. Not a swastika but menacing and antisocial looking. BS were almost punk, with Smokin in the Boys Room, and they had a black bassist.
Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones was doing it in 1966.
Never saw that photo, wow. I don’t know, when it comes to The Stones, I’m so used to them looking grim and ugly and decadent that it’s more subversive when they’re smiling and friendly and corny and gay, like on the cover of that lousy album in 1985 that had The Harlem Shuffle on it. They were all wearing dayglo yellow, pink, and skyblue clothes. Also, the cover of Get Your Ya Yas Out with Charlie Watts in the desert with a cute donkey.
I remember reading in (I believe) the fanzine WHO PUT THE BOMP! a letter from some photographer in the New York area who was asked by Jones how he could obtain a KKK outfit. The photog actually made some attempts to get him one but due to the usual tight lips and feigned ignorance was unable to make any headway.
“The bad guys always wore the best uniforms…”
-Lemmy Kilmister
On the “ironic use of swastikas”: It’s impossible to sell irony to the public, they just weren’t going to get it. Despite all the Jews involved in early punk ( aren’t they always involved in everything ), it was still largely a white cultural expression. There were a lot of racial sentiments and attitudes and even pro-white punk bands back in the days. What happened was the “movement” and the right wing in general back then dismissed them as freak kids and degenerates, which left a huge opening for the left to come in and usurp punk like they do with everything else. They wanted it’s energy and power and once they gained a foothold on the punk scene they entrenched themselves and unfortunately became the dominant voice. There is real underground shit out there still if you search it out, it never really went away. On a related note, coinciding with punk culture, there was a strong pro-white RAC ( Rock Against Communism) music scene over in England that kicked around for 20 years or more. When punk fragmented, a lot of people went there.
I get what you’re saying about the Dead Kennedys. The lyrics are moronic and ridiculous. I always thought they had a cool sound though.
I read once that when Jello Biafra was in Boston and played a show with the band Gang Green, he suggested they become more political. They took his advice and released the song Kill A Commie.
I liked Dead Kennedys as a teenager back in the mid 80s because I thought they made Iron Maiden sound tame. And I liked some of the early lyrics. I never got into Biafra’s spoken word stuff and his YouTube rants are insufferable.
The anarcho-punk band Crass had a line from their song “White Punks on Hope,”
Black man’s got his problems and his way to deal with it,
So don’t fool yourself you’re helping with your white liberal shit.
Oh, Punk, how I love the music and aesthete but utterly despise the entire subculture.
While we’re on the subject of skinheads, let’s actually discuss the course of that entire scene. Skinhead subculture started in Jamaica and the British West Indies with sugarcane harvesters and dock workers forming a youth movement around Reggae music known as rude boys. The music gained traction and slowly became identified with Trojan Records. The subculture was imported with immigrants from there to the UK in the ’60s, reaching a fever pitch in what many nostalgic skinheads call the Spirit of ’69. The rude boys, combined with the emerging working class Hard Mod culture, forged the classic skinhead. Although predominantly white, the original skinheads were racially integrated with more than a fair showing of blacks in the group, but while the subculture wasn’t National Socialist or White Nationalist, the “Spirit of ’69” was some sort of radical anti-racist statement ignores much of the fierce xenophobia that ran in the scene especially towards Pakistanis and Indians. Here’s a fascinating article about the Tilbury Trojan Skinheads, a group known for their affiliation with the band Angela Rippon’s Bum as well as the staunchly xenophobic Anti-Paki League (APL). Believe it or not, the APL had no formal ties to the National Front or Colin Jordan’s British Movement:
http://archive.li/rprzN
As to how skinheads adopted Oi! and Punk as their staple sound, Garry Bushell played roughly as influential a role with marketing Punk Rock to skinheads through his magazine The Sounds as Malcolm McLaren had with marketing The Sex Pistols. White skinheads started identifying with Punk subculture in greater numbers. Soul, Ska and Reggae would soon be blended with Punk Rock to form a style called 2 Tone Ska.
In today’s world, “Nazi Punk” may seem like an oxymoron, but historically, Punk and the far-right were strange bedfellows. Racist Punk can arguably be traced back to as early as 1977, with the birth of Punk subculture in England. To counter Rock Against Racism, Eddy Morrison, an activist for the National Front, started Punk Front in Leeds. Bands like The Dentists, White Boss, Homicide, The Ventz / Tragic Minds and The Raw Boys played the first Rock Against Communism shows the Young National Front organized. While none of these bands ever recorded any music and later died in obscurity, an important event was only a few years away.
As left-wingers gradually pushed right-wingers out of Punk subculture, the National Front canvassed skinhead subculture to carry the far-right’s counterculture. Although never affiliated with right-wing organizations, bands like Combat 84 laid the groundwork with lyrics advocating capital punishment and opposing nuclear disarmament.
The watershed moment was an incident at a concert for The 4-Skins, The Business and The Last Resort in Southall during July of 1981. Two years earlier, police killed Anti-Nazi League activist Blair Peach in a riot instigated by the demonstrators, setting racial tensions at a fever pitch. Accounts conflict as to who instigated the trouble between concertgoers and South Asian locals w ith the bands conceding the two crowds weren’t getting along but maintaining the the response being greatly out of proportion with the trouble the skinheads were causing them. On the other side, the South Asian locals claimed some of the skinheads assaulted women and elderly people, engaged in property destruction / vandalism and daubed National Front slogans on shop windows. The locals protested the gig on wrongful suspicion the bands were far-right and subsequently rioted, burning down the venue in the process. Following that incident, The 4-Skins recorded a song “One Law for Them” which decried the injustice in the British legal system.
The very first RAC band to ever release politically right-wing music was Ovaltinees from Crayford. Their very first EP British Justice features these lyrics which are an especially damning indictment of their legal system:
It’s all right for the monkeys to riot
’cause the fucking media, they keep it quiet
They can loot and smash up all they like
’cause British justice don’t apply to their type
British justice
There ain’t no fuckin’ British justice
They call it racial discrimination
If a young white man tries to protect his nation
They lock him up in a stinking cell
For fighting for what his forefathers fell
British justice
There ain’t no fuckin’ British justice
For the monkey, they’ve got open ears
But they do nothing to quell the white man’s fears
If your business gets wrecked, that’s it
’cause if you’re white, you get treated like shit
British justice
There ain’t no fuckin’ British justice
This Is England (2006) is a UK kitchen sink realism film about early 80s skinheads and the working class. I’m not sure of director Shane Meadows politics, but he’s not insufferable one way or the other. All of the films I’ve seen of his treat the working class with empathy. In the US you have to search far and wide to hit a mainstream film that doesn’t see hillbillies as comedy gold (Winter’s Bone, perhaps).
It’s hard enough to make good music. Sculpting music to fit a political agenda rarely gives good results for the left or the right. Both sides seemed in a race to play faster, shout louder and be ever more boring. Flipper came along, slowed it way down and delivered a distorted soundtrack for end times.
J. Wilcox, I think Made in Britain (1982), directed by Alan Clarke with Tim Roth playing Trevor, much more accurately reflects the nature of skinhead subculture. It’s raw and sociopathic, but compelling.
To R.M.
That Ovaltinies ‘ British Justice’ album is great. They never quite gained the infamy of Skrewdriver but i think its one of the best early RAC albums. That linked article was interesting, i was able to get a hold of the complete discography of Angela Rippons Bum years ago. With the exception of “Skinheads Run Berzerk” its pretty mediocre and forgettable.
I can relate to the idea of liking movies made before I was born. Turner Classic Movies or TCM is one of my favorite channels, not so much for the black and white movies, but for the movies made in the 60’s, 70’s, and early 80’s. A lot of them have an all white cast, with few, if any non-white actors. Also, many of these films tend to have plots that have a lot of depth. They do, however, tend to repeat movies with Sidney Poitier as the star.
That’s funny because I love TCM but it’s for the b/w era. I feel like movies started to suck in the 60’s.
This is a good article. And it’s my broad understanding.
Because this was before my time, up until a couple of years ago I mistakenly thought punk was like a white supremacist or at least white positive thing, although I knew McLaren was Jewish which was a red flag I guess. I’d see these articles here on CC about punk era music, just assumed the healthy white energy.
I was shocked to find out about this whole anti-nazi, anti-racist thing in punk. And then realized there’s a black female in that interview with the Sex Pistols.
And I’m not sure what I’m looking at anymore to be honest with this.
Something like Antifa meets rock n roll.
Unfortunately, despite having lived through the era, this was also my take. (And I had no idea Malcom McClaren was Jewish. He just looks so IRISH.)
This essay inspired me to take a look at what Wikipedia had to say about the Sex Pistols, and it was interesting to learn how openly dismissive McClaren was about them.
Did/does Jim like GG Allin?
No.
Mick Jones of The Clash is Jewish. Joe Strummer, despite his poor-boy posturing, was a diplomat’s son.
It’s debated whether ‘punk’ the music genre relates to prison ‘punk’, a weak man bullied or used as a sexual plaything. Dee Dee, the most damaged glue sniffing tragic case from the Ramones, wrote 53rd and 3rd, said to be based on his experiences turning tricks for drug money. Some might say it is a more efficient, enjoyable and true to life distillation of a famed film in which a prostitute also kills the client at the end. In this age of equity, Jeanne Dielman (1975) has now been championed as the greatest film of all time. Maybe Dee Dee gets the last word, “Doesn’t it make you feel sick?”
When I was a kid, the concept of “prison punk” was unknown to the general population. In common usage, a “punk” was just a snotty, skinny, pimply, underfed misfit kid.
This is a little off-topic but JG mentioning blacks and the Postal Service reminded me of another recent contribution (the likes of which seem interminable) of theirs to our society I recently read about in passing. According to the good folks at Merriam-Webster, in September 2023, a new word has been added to the lexicon, to wit: (bussin’), defined, thusly; adjective, African American English slang : extremely good : excellent; especially : delicious, tasty. Naturally eager to escalate my daily verbosity I read further for examples of usage, which I found to be unintentionally hilarious….”Those McDonald’s fries do be bussin’, though.” Indubitably, they do be. “This Medicare for All bill is…bussin’ bruh….” Bruh, I can’t tell you how many times, when discussing past legislation with these sort of chaps, their exuberance could not be contained, such as it were the need to spill the banks of the Queen’s English. At any rate, I tend to try and avoid fries of the French variety, not so much to minimize my future Medicare dealings but for my belief that such approbation for the humble potato be reserved for Ireland (Tiocfaidh ár lá!!) (Our day will come!!) Speaking of new words, the bruh’s at Merriam didn’t mention Germany’s latest contribution; (Impfneid): The feeling of jealousy or envy that some individuals might experience towards those who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 when they have not yet received their vaccine. Whoa, slow down there, Adolf. You already had a good term for a typical “unvax’s” view of the “vaxxed” and that term is Schaudenfreude. Continuing our new word adventure, “ngl” is also mentioned by the bruh’s at M-Dubs. Seeming to me not so much a word as a multisyllabic grunt, and, so, we are back to the “Bro’s”. The definition supplied is; abbreviation, informal not gonna lie; not going to lie. I presume the pronunciation is similar to “niggle” meaning to argue over petty things, or niggardly, meaning stingy, miserly, reluctant to spend et cetera. The latter which, of course, originates from 14th century Middle and Old English and likely Old Norse (hnoggr) and bears no relation to the current word which all speakers dareth not say. While on the topic of 13th-16th century words how about “windfucker” or “gayholer”? Care to venture meanings of those? Answers below. Fun experiment, ask next person you see today if they know what those mean? Assuming they don’t punch you, call the police, or otherwise cancel you on the platforms you can explain their innocent meanings. If you are of the Caucasian persuasion and you mention to an “oppressed”, results may vary, but you will likely get hate-crimed, which I don’t recommend. Assuming you make it through unscathed, don’t forget to ask them if they want fries with that. They be bussin’ today.
Windfucker: Kestrel, like the bird
Gayholer: Jailer or prison guard, as in Gaol(jail)
This article reminded me of a nauseating bit of radio I heard some time ago (I occasionally listen to NPR in doses as it’s like getting a dispatch from an alternate universe). I ask you, Jim, does it get anymore PUNK ROCK than a group of girls with industry parents in LA writing power anthems about how white people are nasty racists?
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1093240603
I still like some punk, although I’m extremely picky. Crisis is a good example of classic punk. They were leftists at the time, but they quickly became disillusioned and went on to form Death in June. No Trend is another band that sticks out because they had a generalized critique of conformism that avoided being overtly political. “Kiss ass to your peer group” is a good one of their’s. I also still love Crass. Songs like “white punks on hope” and “bloody revolutions” criticized the “socialist elite” and the “trendy lefties being hip” with their “condescension and back to roots pretension.”
If you’re curious, I randomly came across what is probably the absolute worst band of all time. It’s called “Shmekel” and it was an all-transgender, all Jewish folk-punk band from Brooklyn that was active between 2010-2014. I might listen to it at some point out of morbid curiosity, but I just thought you should know that that exists.
I won’t be spending any shekels, hard earned or otherwise come by, on Shmekel.
I always had a soft spot for “Last Rockers” by The Vice Squad, though. https://youtu.be/n_DhzIdgTGA?si=Ivbexu1WyVMksy9T
Remember, the gay pedophile meth-enthusiast-slash-journalistic-activist and banal blogging blowhard (no pun intended!) in Philly (Josh Kruger) was also in support of punching Nazis, that is, in support of YOU punching Nazis. He’d be in his tastefully appointed Point Breeze condo if you needed him for crystal meth or buggery.
Nazis bad. Violent underaged Negroidal street hoodlums fine.
He was probably into Barry Manilow.
If the New York Times deviously tries to spin reality leftwards, NPR doesn’t bother with the devious part (such as burying the facts in the last paragraph). NPR openly favors anything non-white. Quite frequently, when a white man gets to speak, it is usually to apologize for being inherently sexist and white.
Example, at 1:30 in this puff piece on dated 80s hits.
“… they are among my favorite songs of the 80s and the culture is nothing if not superserving the interests of 51 year old white men”
After which he and his female co-host cackle aloud. What are the ways the culture is ‘superserving’ white men (college admissions, qualifications for promotion, men’s charities, men’s identity groups, requirement for castration to work at NPR)? When was the last time the billboard charts were overrun with white men? It might have been more meaningful if he said, “I have never brought a woman to orgasm” after which the female co-host cackles.
The winners of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert are also a useful demonstration.
2015 – Fantastic Negrito (you really don’t need to google the pic)
2016 – White woman with a disability
2017 – Black R&B women
2018 – Black R&B guy with a disability (aha intersectionality!)
2019 – Folk music from a white female to male trans (the sole male winner to date, though it sounds like its tailor made for Indigo Girls fans)
2020 – Black-Latina R&B female (who nonetheless identifies as black)
2021 – Black woman folkie (blacks may be 14 percent of the US population, though only 10% of NPR audience)
2022 – Latina folk-funk (two genres that go great together, kind of like metal and rap!)
2023 – White womyn folk pop (respect that she has a great voice, though the music is the sort of thing to wear with your three wolf moon shirt… in case I’m selling it short, maybe you need a shirt with four wolves).
As with any genre, there are a lot of bad punk bands who would do well to follow Hank Hill’s advice, “It’s okay if you only know three chords, but God, put em in the right order”. The whole episode might be one to bring warring millennials and boomers together.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8h1ilx?start=158
I’ll add something about NPR. To the best of my knowledge, NPR has had little, if any, coverage of heavy metal. Last year I was on their website. They had an article about an all black, Kenyan, heavy metal band. They gave them a positive review and highlighted the fact that they were playing a German metal festival called Waken. I don’t remember the name of the band, but I remember the photo of the members wearing Iron Maiden T-shirts. NPR did this because they were black. All of sudden metal was relevant and artistic.
Way back in 1976, my girlfriend and me went to the Roxy, the basement venue off the West End of London, where Punk bands played. We weren’t Punks, but liked the anti-establishment, anti-hippie sentiments. I remember going to the male toilet, after a few pints of lager. The bog was in a right state. What you couldn’t fail to notice was the anti-Jewish graffiti, written in thick black marker pen, scrawled on the wall decrying Jewish control of the Punk scene.
Here’s a bit of old history: Crisis band member, Tony Wakeford, in 1977 was a SWP (Socialist Workers’ Party) supporter. When the National Front marched through Wood Green, north London, amid organised Left-opposition, counter-demo violence, Tony was caught up in a bit of a rumble. After the NF had their rally, some of the members left the area by Underground train. Also on the train were SWP. Within minutes in the tunnel a fight broke out. As the train entered Arnos Grove station, while the fight ensued, Tony was somehow bundled out of the carriage and onto the platform. Crisis metamorphosed into Death In June, and Tony Wakeford later joined the NF.
Fascinating article, Jim.
I wanted to expound on Joey Ramone, who actually had an affinity for the Third Reich. (I covered this in a recent video entitled Renegade Jews). They released a song at the beginning of their career entitled Today Your Love, Tomorrow The World, which clearly has Pro-Nazi lyrics. It’s worth checking out.
Merry Christmas! 🎅
Now, where would the Misfits fall? Are they punk? I liked them
As for punk… never heard much. I always thought the Ramones were awful and foisted on the public for some reason.
For my part, in teenage years I gravitated towards Slayer type music scene. Looking back it was the purest white group, and 30+ years ago all the devil imagery afforded you some berth from the blacks. Dey wuz afraid you worship tha devvuh!
14-18 year old me encountering someone wearing slayer merch felt at ease that I was in the company of a fellow “racist” and this never failed. Teenage lore held that Tom Araya took that name from the word “aryan” (bullplop: that’s his real name and he’s from Chile), and they were the last of the bands to include quasi-nazi imager. I loved the name of their “fan club,” featured on my favorite shirt: “Slaytanic Wehrmacht.”
BTW, today I listen to Percy faith, Bert Kaemfert, etc. I would still enjoy slayer if you could isolate the drums and bassline and completely erase all other sounds
As a band, the Misfits are clearly apolitical (generally speaking; although they did have that song and record cover which exploited the JFK assassination in an edgy kinda way), but Glenn Danzig, from what I understand, is at least somewhat right-wing. I remember he was on Fox News during the Obama administration, and joked that, “Maybe some day I’ll make a real horror record and write about the Obama administration.”
Danzig wrote a song in the 90s at some point called “White Devil Rise” (supposedly with Rick Rubin’s encouragement) in response to some comments that Louis Farrakhan made about White people.
https://youtu.be/ER2Ev_6_Vss?si=7TcBmEJYEyMFqogG
That song is on the “Lost Tracks of Danzig” double CD. It’s not a bad song. It could have been mixed better, though. Sometimes Glenn Danzig’s political opinions are revield in interviews. He seems to lean conservative, at least somewhat.
That was part of the appeal of Slayer and dozens of other metal bands with a similar image. It was an all white male club, for the most part. The original guitarist of Slayer, Jeff Hanneman, was a world war two buff. He was of German descent, but his father served in the army in Europe during world war two. His two older brothers served in the army in Vietnam. He also used to collect German military medals. Quite often, after a concert, he would get back on the tour bus and watch military documentaries. Unfortunately like a lot of musicians, he died an alcohol related death.
As a sign of capitulation (and the left-wing penchant for rewriting history) the 1986 biopic about Sid Vicious (Sid and Nancy, directed by Alex Cox, Gary Oldman in the lead) changed the notorious swastika t-shirt worn by Sid to a hammer and sickle one. He has got a German Iron Cross pinned to his jacket though. Also in 1986, I shared a house with a non-punk guy who said he had a skinhead punk pal that would ingratiate himself with groups of neo-Nazi skinhead punks and then turn on them and beat them to bits.
Whats the first thing we see in the above pix? An ugly jewess standing behind sid vicious. enuff said
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