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earthmatesmagazine · 2 years

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My Youth Memories

By Folu Agoi

Ages 15-24

Pre-Youth (Pre-15)

I was born at Ipe-Akoko, a town in Ondo State, Nigeria’s South West geopolitical zone, on Tuesday, June 8, 1965, 5 years after Nigeria’s Independence (on October 1, 1960). It was during the country’s First Republic (1963 – 1966), when Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe was the country’s ceremonial president.

My parents, Joseph Taiwo Agoi and Marian Ibukun Agoi, were Christians from the Yoruba ethnic group. Nigeria was in a post-Independence socio-political turmoil around the time of my birth, a situation that resulted in a 30-month fratricidal war, the Biafran War, which broke out in July, 1967. I was two years old then. The war (July 6, 1967 – January 15, 1970), was between Nigeria and the Biafra Republic, a secessionist state that pronounced its independence from Nigeria in 1967. Wartime in the country was like wartime everywhere else. The memories are better forgotten. Thank God some of us survived the civil war.

Schooling for me was fun in post-war Western Nigeria. I attended about six (6) primary schools in various parts of Western Nigeria for my 6-year elementary education – from age 5 to age 10, between 1970 and 1975, because of my father’s frequent transfer. He was a teacher, one of the first graduates in my hometown. I was raised literally in the midst of books. My father was a bibliophile, besides being an educator and stern disciplinarian. Books constituted a considerable percentage of his earthly possessions; several rooms in our house were filled with books, all kinds of books arranged on shelves, some in boxes. He used to tell us stories, to our secret amusement, about how, as a little boy in elementary school, he used to wash his books with soap and water whenever any of the books got soiled. I’m the eldest child of our parents, the first of six (6) children. We, my siblings and I, naturally fell in love with books. My literary production – indeed, my activities as a creative writer and literary activist – could be credited to those formative years.

I’m a bibliophile like my father, and like many of my old schoolmates. I was in high school, around 14 years of age, when I read virtually all works of James Hadley Chase. I also read the works of Mario Puzo, Ian Fleming, Jeffrey Archer, Sidney Sheldon, Agatha Christie, Irving Wallace, Marie Corelli, Lewis Carroll and other great writers. I read The Famous Five series, M and B (Mills and Boon) novels and so many exciting books, besides international magazines, such as Right On, Ebony Magazine, and, of course, local publications.

The seed of my literary production began to germinate in my third year in high school, in 1979, when I was a 14-year-old boy filled with sweet dreams of a bright future in a utopian society. However, looking back, I wish I could go back to those sweet days of my childhood.

Youth (15-24) years (1980 – 1989)

I had my 5-year secondary education in 3 schools: Independence Grammar School, Ondo (1976 – 1977); St Charles’Grammar School, Osogbo (1977 – 1978); and Lagos African Church Grammar School, Ifako-Agege, Lagos (1978 – 1982). I was hyperactive in my youth, which, for instance, earned me some popularity, and ranked me among rascals, in school. It might have been triggered by my father’s attempt to impose a career on me. My artistic talent manifested when I was around 14 years old, in high school, but my father wanted me to concentrate on science subjects (particularly physics, chemistry and biology), so I could pursue a career in a prestigious profession. Like most Nigerian parents at the time, he wanted me to become a medical doctor or an engineer, or even a lawyer – anything but a virtual artist. So, he always scolded me anytime he found me “wasting” my time drawing things instead of reading my books. That experience had a psychological effect on me throughout my adolescent period, until my late twenties when I reconnected with art and started writing poetry, though my poetic talent started manifesting in the last 3 years of my high school life – from 1979 to 1982, when I was between 14 and 17 years.

After high school, I proceeded to Lagos State College of Education (later renamed Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education) for my Nigeria Certificate in education (NCE). My father was a senior lecturer at the institution at the time. I studied English and Christian Religious Studies from 1983 to 1986.

Post-youth (Post-24)

A year after I completed my NCE programme, I was employed by the Lagos State Teaching Commission to teach English in public secondary schools. Three years later, I enrolled at Ondo State University (now Ekiti State University) Ado-Ekiti, where I studied English from 1990 to 1994 and obtained a Bachelor’s degree in education (Bachelor of Education, B.Ed). I obtained an M.Ed (Master of Education) in Educational Management from the same institution in 1997.

I got married at 28, on June 5, 1993, took up an appointment as a teacher of English at Corona Secondary School, an international school headquartered in Lagos, where I worked for 3 years. That was where I wrote my first serious poem, “The Master Potter” in 1998. The editor of the school magazine had asked me to contribute an article to an edition of the magazine, giving me two weeks to turn in my article. On the eve of the deadline, I was unable to write an article on any topic, so I asked if I could send a poem, and he said, “Yes, anything from you will be fine.” I thus forced myself to write the poem later that night. The poem dramatises the plight of teachers in Nigeria; it depicts the situation of an old poverty-stricken teacher who, despite his wretched state, keeps boasting of the great men and women he has produced, looking forward to when he will reap the fruit of his earthly labour in heaven. Every one of my colleagues that saw the poem fell in love with it, some asking for copies of the poem. The poem really spoke to them. That was how I started writing poetry, writing poem after poem almost every day, hoping to, one day, be in a position to reform my society, using art. Then, in February, 2001, two of my poems, ‘He Died’ and ‘I Seek a Woman’ won the BBC Poetry Competition (Network Africa). Several awards were to follow; including Prof Wole Soyinka Award for Literature (2007), Mother Drum Golden Award for Excellence (2012), The Tutuola Palm for Poetry award (2019), and SWANA 2020 Poetry Competition (2020; SWANA: Southwest Association of Nigerian Authors).

My first book, Towards Effective Use of English – A Grammar of Modern English, was published in 1999, followed by Candid Lyrics – An Anthology of Lyrical Poetry (2000), More Candid Lyrics – Another Anthology of Lyrical Poetry (2001), An Offering of Olive – An Anthology of Peace Literature (2004), Service to Fatherland (poetry, 2013), I Know the Smell of My Lover's Skin - A Spring of Lyrics Powered by Love (poetry, 2017), and Dear Child, Look Closely – A Life Manual (poetry; school edition, 2022), and a couple of other books which I co-edited.

I attended University of Lagos, Akoka, Lagos, from where I obtained another Master’s degree – an M.A. (Master of Arts) in English Language – in 2000. I moved to another private school in Lagos, Greensprings Schools, in 2001, where I taught for one year, after which I was offered a lecturing job at a public (Lagos State-owned) college of education, which later transmuted into a university.

My mother died – around 56 – on March 28, 2004, and about 10 months later, on January 25, 2005, my father – 72 – followed. Several times a father, I enrolled at Babcock University, Ilisan-Remo, Ogun State, in 2020, for an M.Phil. (Master of Philosophy) degree course in English (Stylistics). Between 1999 and now, I’ve authored about 10 books, mostly poetry collections, and won several awards.

Looking back

Nigeria has, since Independence, had a chequered socio-political history. The country gained its Independence from Britain in 1960 and became a republic in 1963. It was ruled by military dictators from 1966 to 1999, with a brief return to civilian democracy from 1979 to 1983 – the Second Republic. The resultant political upheavals had adverse effects on the socio-economic life of the country, as reflected in the situation of the citizens. Many of our country’s political leaders – such as commissioners, ministers, governors and even heads of state – who referred to us some forty (40) years ago as “future leaders” are still – even now in their late 70s and 80s – clinging to power. For instance, General Muhammadu Buhari was Nigeria’s head of state between 1983 and 1985, having shot his way to power through a coup détat. I was 18 years old in 1983. Today, thirty-nine (39) years later, the same man is the country’s president, coming back to power seven years ago (in 2015) – after his retirement from the army – as a born-again democrat (serving as the country’s 7th and 15th head of state), following the example of General Olusegun Obasanjo who was the country’s 5th and 12th head of state.

In my youth, I had been filled with dreams and visions of myself as a future leader who would make a difference in the life of my society, offering services needed to alleviate people’s pain. However, looking back, I wish our society could move back to the days of my youth, those days when living standards were high and the cost of living very low, when we lived in peace with our neighbours, enjoying tranquility in every part of our dear country; when, for instance, we used to travel by road and rail across the country without any fear of being killed or kidnapped; when we used to enjoy uninterrupted power supply, a function of solid social and economic infrastructure established – or revamped after Independence – by some of our First-Republic leaders, particularly Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Premier of Western Nigeria, for which many of us now look back with a deep sense of nostalgia.

Suggestions for and about youngsters

I’d advise the youth to read extensively and travel wide and far, as much as they can, to acquire more knowledge and enrich their minds. They should emancipate their minds from primordial stereotypes and sentiments, and work hard along the path of peace, appreciating the beauty of nature dramatised by the rainbow whose charm is a function of diversity. They should deploy their creative energy towards the reformation of the universe. They should avoid the temptation of harbouring a monochromatic approach to life, seeing every instance of otherness as an evil tendency, which is a common cause of conflict. Rather, they should espouse the spirit of Ubuntu, which, translated literally, means, “I am, because we are!”

Adversity has a way of moving people to a realm of higher consciousness. I’d advise those in war and crisis zones to hang on to faith and hope; to, as much as possible, participate actively in cerebral and creative activities, striving to function as a leading light in the search for conflict resolution and peace. I’d advise them to eschew bitterness – for their own peace of mind, and preach forgiveness and reconciliation.

Bio

Folu Agoi, President of the Nigerian Centre of PEN International (aka PEN Nigeria), erstwhile Chairman of Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA, Lagos Branch (March 13, 2004 – October 13, 2007), winner of BBC Poetry Competition (2001) and SWANA 2020 Poetry Competition (Nov 7, 2020; SWANA: Southwest Association of Nigerian Authors), recipient of several awards – including Prof Wole Soyinka Award for Literature (2007), Mother Drum Golden Award for Excellence (2012), The Tutuola Palm for Poetry award (by The Delta Book Club; July 23, 2019), is a creative (and academic) writer, poet, scholar, literary activist, book editor and publisher. A lecturer in the Department of English, Lagos State University of Education (LASUED), Lagos, Nigeria, he has attended conferences and performed his poetry in several towns and cities in Africa, Europe, America and Asia.

Email: [email protected]

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drdonaldjason · 3 years

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This is what Nigerian Government has been doing to innocent people because of Biafra. The world should intervene.

#news #world leaders #activist #biafra #military #us president joe biden #world powers #police #human rights #famous #celebs #celebrities #usa #uk government #us government #politics #civil rights

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girlactionfigure · 2 years

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Modern-Day Moses

A prisoner of conscience

Nnami Kanu is the Jewish leader of a Nigerian separatist movement that aims to create an independent state of Biafra where Jews and other religious minorities in Africa can live freely. For his relentless activism on behalf of his tribe, he has been locked in a dungeon in horrific conditions for almost a year.

Nnami Kanu’s activist group, Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), calls for independence for the Igbo tribe in Nigeria. Biafra is a territory in SE Nigeria that seceded in 1967 and for three years was a sovereign nation. Biafra was recognized by some countries in Africa and Europe, and received aid from multiple organizations. In response to Biafra’s declaration of independence, the Nigerian government instituted a complete blockade, which caused mass starvation and the death of almost 2 million Biafran civilians (3/4 of them small children.) Biafra sits on a huge oil reserve, which is why Nigeria is so determined to prevent the area from seceding.

Most Igbo are Christian, but there is a sizable minority, incluing Nnami’s family, who practice Judaism and consider themselves descendants of one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Nnami was born to royal lineage in Umuahia, Nigeria in 1967, and attended the University of Nigeria, where he studied political economics. Before graduating he moved to the UK where he focused on activism and advocacy for the Biafrans. He started Radio Biafra in 2009 and, broadcasting from London, raised awareness for the cause. Nnamdi’s goal is an independent republic for the Igbo people where Jews and other religious minorities can worship freely.

Nnamdi founded Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) in 2014. The next year he was a featured speaker at the World Igbo Congress held in Los Angeles. He delivered a fiery speech urging the Igbo to take up arms against the oppressive Nigerian government. When he returned to Nigeria, he was arrested by the secret police and arraigned on charges of “criminal conspiracy, intimidation and membership in an illegal organization.” His detention sparked protests throughout Igbo areas of Nigeria, and he was granted bail for unspecified health reasons. Many believe he was released to end the disruptive public protests, but persecution of IPOB activists intensified. Nigerian security forces conducted a horrific campaign against Igbo who had attended the protests in support of Nnamdi. Extrajudicial executions took the lives of over 150 peaceful protestors between August 2015 and August 2016, including 60 people killed within two days.

Igbo Jews call Nnamdi a “modern-day Moses.” He is determined to keep fighting until Biafra becomes an independent Jewish state. The current flag features a blue Magen David (Jewish star.) Inspired by the civil disobedience of Martin Luther King Jr and Mahatma Gandhi, Nnamdi said “I hope that what we are looking for can be achieved peacefully. I am an advocate of passive resistance” to achieve the “restoration of Biafra.”

Nnamdi’s home was raided by the military in 2017 and 28 Igbo were murdered that day. Their leader was not seen publicly for a year, with rumors flying that he was abducted by the government. He resurfaced in Israel and over the next few years continued his advocacy on behalf of Igbo freedom and a Jewish state in Biafra. He organized a paramilitary organization to defend the Igbo against bandits, and the Nigerian government used this as an excuse to label the IPOB a “terrorist organization.” Nnamdi was arrested in Kenya in June 2021 and extradited to Nigeria, where he stood trial for “terrorism, treason, involvement with a banned separatist movement, inciting public violence through radio broadcasts, and defamation of Nigerian authorities through broadcasts.” He pleaded not guilty.

Despite widespread protests, Nnamdi was convicted by a kangaroo court and thrown into a Nigerian dungeon, where he remains to this day. In almost a year he has not been given a change of clothes, medical treatment or sufficient food. Equally painful to him is the spiritual persecution; he has not been allowed to pray with a yarmulke, tallis (prayer shawl) or siddur (prayer book.) He has no release date, and it’s been difficult for him to communicate with the outside world. We pray that Nnamdi Kanu will be released very soon, and may he find success in his mission of making Biafra a free Jewish state.

You can help stop this ongoing atrocity by writing to your legislator, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, or any human rights organization. Most people know nothing about this tragic situation so let’s help get the word out!

For his brave activism on behalf of his tribe, we honor Nnamdi Kanu as this week’s Thursday Hero.

Accidental Talmudist

#Thursday's Hero

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newscrystal · 3 years

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How Fani-Kayode sold Nnamdi Kanu, Sunday Igboho for '30 pieces of silver' – Omokri

How Fani-Kayode sold Nnamdi Kanu, Sunday Igboho for ’30 pieces of silver’ – Omokri

Socio-political activist, Reno Omokri has accused former Aviation Minister, Femi Fani-Kayode of “selling” Nnamdi Kanu, pro-Biafra activist, and Sunday Igboho, Yoruba nation agitator, following his defection to the All Progressives Congress, APC. Omokri claimed that Fani-Kayode sold Kanu and Igbo for ’30 pieces of silver’. He wondered why Fani-Kayode joined the APC following the prosecution of…

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#APC #Buhari #PDP #politics

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dustedmagazine · 3 years

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Punk’d History, Vol. VIII: This Machine [blank] Fascists

Photo by Richard Young

It has the appearance of a worrisome pattern: any number of punk rock’s founding figures embraced the symbolics of Nazi Germany. Ron Asheton, an original and indispensable member of the Stooges, played a number of gigs wearing a red swastika armband, and liked to sport Iron Cross medals and a Luftwaffe-style leather jacket. Sid Vicious loved his bright scarlet, swastika-emblazoned tee shirt, and Siouxsie Sioux, during her tenure as the It-Girl of the Bromley Contingent, mixed her breast-baring, black leather bondage gear with a bunch of “Nazi chic.” And how many early Ramones songs (inevitably penned by Dee Dee) referenced Nazi gear, concepts and geography? “Blitzkrieg Bop,” “Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World,” “Commando,” “It’s a Long Way Back to Germany,” “All’s Quiet on the Eastern Front,” and so on—for sure, more than a few.

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“Appearance” is the key term. Poor Sid lacked the sobriety and smarts to have much of a grasp of fascism as an ideology. Siouxsie was just taking the piss, and gleefully pissing off the mid-1970s British general public, for much of whom World War II was still a living memory. Asheton and Dee Dee? Both were sons of hyper-masculine military men. Asheton’s father was a collector of WWII artefacts, and the guitarist shared his father’s fascination. When the Stooges adopted an ethos and aesthetic hostile to the late-1960s prevailing Flower Power rock’n’roll subculture, the Nazi accoutrement seemed to him fitting signs of the band’s anger and alienation. Dee Dee hated his father, an abusive Army officer who married a German woman. Dee Dee spent some of his youth in post-war West Germany, in which Nazi symbols were highly charged with anxiety and vituperation. Casual veneration of Nazis was a convenient way to reject the triumphal ennobling of the Good War, and of the military men associated with its traditions. And (as Sid, Siouxsie and Asheton also noticed) it really bothered the squares.

None of that makes the superficial use of the swastika or phrases like “Nazi schatzi” any less offensive — it simply underscores that in the cases noted above, the offense was the thing. The politics weren’t even an afterthought, because the political itself had been dismissed as corrupt, boring or simply the native territory of the very people the punks were striking out against. If that’s where the relation between punk and fascism ceased, there wouldn’t be much more to write about.

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The post-punk moment in England provided opportunities to rethink and restrategize the nascent détournement of Siouxsie’s fashionable provocations. Genesis P-Orridge and the rest of Throbbing Gristle were a brainy bunch, and their play with fascist signifiers was a good deal more complex. The band’s logo and their occasional appearance in gun-metal grey uniforms clearly alluded to Nazism, with its attendant, keen interests in occult symbols and High Modernist representational languages. TG’s visual gestures were also of a piece with an early band slogan: “Industrial music for industrial people.” Clearly “industrial people” can be read as a highly ironized coupling: the oppressed workers marching through the bowels of Metropolis were a sort of industrial people, reduced to the functionality of pure human capital. TG seemed to impose the same analysis on the middle-managers of Britain’s post-industrial economy, and their uncritical complicity in capital’s cruelties. But it’s also possible to argue that industrial people are industrious people; like TG, industrial people (middle managers, MPs) can get a lot of stuff done. They can produce things. They can make the trains run on time. And what sorts of cargo might those trains be carrying? What variety of conveyance delivered the naked “little Jewish girl” of “Zyklon B Zombies” to her fate?

To be clear: I don’t mean at all to suggest that TG was a fascist band. Like their punky contemporaries, TG traded in fascist iconography in a spirit of transgressive outrage, expressing their hot indignation with equally heated symbols. And other British post-punk acts flirted with fascist themes and images, ranging from ambiguous dalliance (Joy Division’s overt references to Yehiel De-Nur’s House of Dolls and to Rudolph Hess; and just what was the inspiration for Death in June’s band name?) to more assertive satire (see Current 93’s appealingly bonkers Swastikas for Noddy [LAYLAH Antirecords, 1988]). But a more problematic populist undercurrent in British punk persisted through the late 1970s. The dissolution of Sham 69—due in large part to the National Front’s attempts to appropriate the band’s working-class anger as a form of white pride—opened the way for a clutch of clueless, cynical or outright racist Oi! bands to attempt to impose themselves as the face of blue-collar English punk. And literally so: the Strength through Oi! compilation LP (Decca Records, 1981) featured notorious British Movement activist Nicky Crane on its cover. It didn’t help that the record’s title seemed to allude to the Nazis’ “Strength through Joy [Kraft durch Freude]” propaganda initiative.

Of course, it’s unfair to tar all Oi! bands with an indiscriminate brush. A few bands whose songs were opportunistically stuck onto Strength through Oi! by the dullards at Decca Records — Cock Sparrer and the excellent Infa Riot — tended leftward in their politics, and were anything but racists. But for a lot of the disaffected kids sucking down pints of Bass and singing in the Shed at Stamford Bridge, it wasn’t much of a leap from the punk pathetique of the Toy Dolls to Skrewdriver’s poisonous palaver.

In the States, a similarly complicated story can be recovered:

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In numerous ways, hardcore intensified punk’s confrontational qualities, musically and aesthetically. The New York hardcore scene made a fetish of its inherent violence, which complemented the music’s sharpened impact. So it’s hard to know precisely what to make of the photo on the cover of Victim in Pain (Rat Cage Records, 1984). If inflicting violence was an essential element of belonging in the NYHC scene, with whom to identify: the Nazi with the pistol, or the abject Ukrainian Jewish man, on his knees and about to tumble into the mass grave?

Agnostic Front seemed to provide a measure of clarity on the record, which included the song “Fascist Attitudes.” The lyric uses “fascist” as a condemnatory term. But the behaviors the song engages as evidence of fascism are intra-scene acts of violence: “Why should you go around bashing one another? […] / Learning how to respect each other is a must / So why start a war of anger, danger among us?” That’s a rhetoric familiar to anyone who participated in early-1980s hardcore; calls for scene unity were ubiquitous, and the theme is obsessively addressed on Victim in Pain. But the signs of inclusivity most visibly celebrated on the NYHC records and show flyers of the period were a skinhead’s white, shaven pate; black leather, steel-toe boots; and heavily muscled biceps. Those signifiers clearly link to the awful cover image of Strength through Oi! The forms of identity recognized and concretized in the songs’ first-person inclusive pronouns have a clear referent.

Agnostic Front wasn’t the only NYHC band to refer to and engage World War Two-period fascism. Queens natives Dave Rubenstein and Paul Bakija met at Forest Hills High School—the same school at which John Cummings (Johnny) befriended Thomas Erdelyi (Tommy), laying the groundwork for the formation of the Ramones. Rubenstein and Bakija also took stage names (Dave Insurgent and Paul Cripple) and formed Reagan Youth. But unlike the Ramones, there was nothing tentative or ambivalent about Reagan Youth’s politics. Rubenstein’s parents, after all, were Holocaust survivors. The band’s name riffed on “Hitler Youth,” but specifically did so to draw associations between Reagan and Hitler, between American conservatism’s 1980s resurgence and the Nazi’s hateful, genocidal agenda. Songs like “New Aryans” and “I Hate Hate” accommodated no uncertainties.

Still, it’s interesting that Victim in Pain and Reagan Youth’s Youth Anthems for the New Order (R Radical Records, 1984) were released only months apart, by bands in the same scene, sometimes sharing bills at CBGBs’ famous matinees of the period. And while Reagan Youth toured with Dead Kennedys, it’s Agnostic Front’s “Fascist Attitudes” that’s closer in content to the most famous punk rock putdown of Nazis.

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It’s odd what comes back around: Martin Hannett, whom Biafra playfully chides at the track’s very beginning, produced much of Joy Division’s music, moving the band away from its brittle early sound to the fulsome atmospheres of the Factory records, and to a wider listenership. “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” similarly addresses a formerly obscure, tight scene opening to a greater array of participants, some of whom were attracted solely to hardcore’s reputation for violence. Like “Fascist Attitudes,” the Dead Kennedys’ song itemizes fighting at shows as its chief complaint, and as a principal marker for “Nazi” behavior. Biafra’s lyric eventually gets around to somewhat more focused ideological critique: “You still think swastikas look cool / The real Nazis run your schools / They’re coaches, businessmen, and cops / In a real fourth Reich, you’ll be the first to go.” The kiss-off to punk’s vapid romance of the swastika (it “looks cool”) complements the speculative treatment of a “real fourth Reich.” Both operate at the level of abstraction. The casual, superficial relation to the symbol’s aesthetic assumes a sort of safety from the real, material consequences of its application. And the emergence of a fascist political regime is dangled as a possible future event. That speculative futurity undoes the “real” in “real Nazis.” The threat is ultimately a metaphorical construct. The Nazis are metaphorical “Nazis.”

Still, it’s the song’s chorus that resonates most powerfully. So much so that the song has found its way into other artworks.

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Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room (2015) is frequently identified as a horror film on streaming services. We could split hairs over that genre marker. The film gets quite graphically bloody, but there’s no psychotic slasher killer, no supernatural force at work. And cinematically, the film is a lot more interested in anxiety and dramatic tension than it is in inspiring revulsion or disgust. It terrifies, more than it horrifies. What’s especially compelling about the film (aside from Imogen Poots’ excellent performance, and Patrick Stewart’s menacing turn as charismatic fascist Darcy Banks) is its interest in embedding the viewer in a social context in which the Nazis are a lot less metaphorical, a lot more real. In Green Room, the kids in the punk band the Ain’t Rights are warned about the club they have agreed to play: “It’s mostly boots and braces down there.” And they understand the terms. What they can’t quite imagine is a room — a scene, a political Real — in which fascism is dominant. Their recognition of the stakes of the Real comes too late. The violence is already in motion. In that world, the Dead Kennedys song provides a nice slogan, but symbolic action alone is entirely inadequate.

OK, sure, Green Room is a fiction. Its violence is necessarily aestheticized, distorted and hyperbolized. But perhaps the film’s most urgent source of horror can be located in its plausible connections to the social realities of our material, contemporary conjuncture. You don’t have to dig very deep into the Web to find thousands of records made by white nationalist and neo-fascist-allied bands, many, many of which deploy stylistic chops identified with punk rock and hardcore. You can listen. You can buy. (And yeah, I’m not going to link to any of that miserable shit, because fuck them. If you do your own digging to see what’s what, be careful. It’s scary and upsetting in there.) It feels endless. And the virulent sentiments expressed on those records are echoed in institutional politics in the US and elsewhere: Steve King (and now Marjorie Taylor Greene, effectively angling for her seat in Congress), Nigel Farage, Alternative für Deutschland, elected leadership in Poland and Hungary. Explicit white supremacist music also has somewhat more carefully coded counterparts in much more visible media (the nightly monologuing on Fox News) and in very well-positioned, prominent policy makers (Stephen Miller, who’s on the record touting “great replacement” theory and is a big fan of The Camp of the Saints). It’s a complex, ideologically coherent network, working industriously to impose and install its hateful vision as the dominant political Real.

Sometimes it feels as if no progress at all has been made. Maybe we’re moving toward the reactionaries. Contrast Skokie in the late 1970s with Charlottesville in 2017. And now if the Neo-Nazis have licenses for their long guns, they can strut through American streets wearing them in the name of “law and order.” It’s even more disturbing that a subculture that wants to clothe itself in “revolution” and “radicalism” is so tightly in league with institutional politics. Say what you will about Siouxsie’s Nazi-fashion antics, no one suspected that her prancing echoed political activity, policy-making or messaging in Westminster.

So what’s a punk to do? It’s certain that a vigorously free society needs to preserve spaces in which unpopular speech can be uttered and exchanged. Punk should pride itself on defending those spaces. But speech that operates in conjunction with an ascendant political power and ideological agenda doesn’t need defense or energetic attempts to preserve its right to existence. In October of 2020, that speech (in this case, speeches being written by Miller, texts by folks who have spent time in Tucker Carlson’s writer’s room and songs by white supremacist hardcore bands) has become synonymous with political right itself.

So now more than ever, it’s important to be active in the public square, to stand up to the fascists and to say it, often and out loud:

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Jonathan Shaw

#dusted magazine #punk'd history #jonathan shaw #punk rock #siouxsie and the banshees #throbbing gristle #agnostic front #dead kennedys #green room #mdc

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