Thursday, March 24, 2011

In a NOFX kinda mood


Now... there have been plenty of leftist, socialist, and anarchist (or pseudo socialist and pseudo anarchist anyway) punk bands... where's the great libertarian punk?

It seems to be a natural fit... much more so than the populist pseudosocialist/anarcho-syndicalist/anti-capitalist ideology of so many punk bands (who are mostly trying to ape the Clash and the British class struggle bands of the 70s and 80s, and not really understanding what it is they purport to believe in... but that's another story entirely).

And no, I don't count the Misfits and the Ramones just because they each had one conservative member, or DYS.

I'm talking about the politics and social and economic philosophies of Hayek and Friedman and Rand and von Mises and Rothbard and Spooner etc... etc... Libertarians, not conservatives.

I grew up with Boston hardcore, alternative, and alt-punk (literally... it was growing up as I was), and it was my home music scene basically 'til I left Boston (liberally mixed with classic rock, hard rock, and heavy metal... Places like Axis, Avalon, the Middle East, The Channel, the Rat... which was basically the Boston music scene as a whole through the 80s and 90s).

The politics of it were basically working class Boston politics; which means blue-collar irish catholic i.e. relatively conservative social values, with economic populism. Yes, it was mostly a rejection of the strong pseudosocialism of the NYC and LA bands (to the point where if an LA band showed up in Boston they would generally get their asses beat) but it's not the same thing.