Posted on 03/20/2004 6:10:32 PM PST by Indy Pendance
With his mohawk, ratty fatigues, assorted chains and his menagerie of tattoos — swallows on each shoulder, a nautical star on his back and the logo of the Bouncing Souls, a New York City punk band, on his right leg — 22-year-old Nick Rizzuto is the very picture of counterculture alienation. But it's when he talks politics that Mr. Rizzuto sounds like a real radical, for a punk anyway. Mr. Rizzuto is adamantly in favor of lowering taxes and for school vouchers, and against campaign finance laws; his favorite Supreme Court justice is Clarence Thomas; he plans to vote for President Bush in November; and he's hard-core into capitalism.
"Punks will tell me, `Punk and capitalism don't go together,' " Mr. Rizzuto said. "I don't understand where they're coming from. The biggest punk scenes are in capitalist countries like the U.S., Canada and Japan. I haven't heard of any new North Korean punk bands coming out. There's no scene in Iran."
Mr. Rizzuto is the founder of Conservative Punk, one of a handful of Web sites and blogs that have sprung up recently as evidence of a heretofore latent political entity: Republican punks. With names like GOPunk, Anti-Anti-Flag and Punkvoter Lies, the sites are a curious blend of Karl Rove and Johnny Rotten, preaching personal responsibility and reflexive patriotism with the in-your-face zeal of a mosh pit. When he's not banging his head to the Misfits, the Vandals or the Bouncing Souls, for example, Mr. Rizzuto spends his time writing essays denouncing Michael Moore and "left-wing propaganda," and urging other conservative punks to join his cause.
"Punk has been hijacked by an extreme left-wing element," Mr. Rizzuto said. "It's blame America first. Everything is America's fault, and everything is Bush's fault." Mr. Rizzuto said his goal "is rallying conservative punks and getting people to vote."
By their own admission, conservative punks constitute a small percentage of their particular subculture. Around 200 liberal and left-oriented punk bands have come together under the banner of Punkvoter, a coalition founded by Mike Burkett — a k a Fat Mike — of the band NOFX, with the stated goal of organizing punk fans to vote against President Bush in November. Mr. Burkett started Punkvoter with $100,000 of his own money and has recruited crossover bands like Green Day and the Foo Fighters to his cause.
"Our goal is to anger the youth of America, and to show them how the Bush administration is bad for them," Mr. Burkett said.
While Conservative Punk does not have a roster of bands exactly, it has inspired the interest and involvement of a consortium of conservatives with proper punk credentials, like Michale Graves, a former singer for the Misfits, who writes a column for Mr. Rizzuto's site. Mr. Graves regularly performs wearing a skull mask and is known for belting out lyrics like: "A fever rots/The brain goes numb inside/I feel a blackout coming/The boiled blister pops inside." He allows that he doesn't fit the profile of your average red-state Republican.
"I look like someone who should be hanging out with Marilyn Manson — in fact I have hung out with Marilyn Manson," Mr. Graves said. "It doesn't affect what my morals are."
"I think George Bush is a wonderful, competent leader," he added. "And I believe that he is bringing this country on a right and just course and he understands the true nature of evil."
Andrew Wilkow, a conservative talk show host for WABC radio who has written for Conservative Punk, said that when he discussed the site on his show he was inundated with calls from people saying, "We thought we were alone."
"It turns out there are a lot of people who like a certain music and like to dress a certain way, but who want to think for themselves politically," he said. "They were being told by their favorite bands they couldn't think this way, but they did, and they still liked the music."
Traditionally a subculture of anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian leanings, the punk world has never been monolithic in its politics. The Sex Pistols preached nihilism and anarchy, while bands like the Clash, which headlined Rock Against Racism events in London and New York in the late 1970's, espoused leftist views.
At the same time, punk came out of a frustration with what many urban youths saw as the ineffectualness of hippie-style liberalism, and embraced an inflammatory iconography — like swastikas and military leathers — as a statement against the peace movement, and everything else mainstream for that matter. Joe Levy, a deputy managing editor of Rolling Stone magazine, said punk politics have always been a bit confused. "The whole idea of punk rock and politics was a mess from the beginning," he said.
Even so, conventional conservatives, he said, have been few and far between among punks. "By and large the people who are attracted to this music, both listeners and artists, share a loose set of anti-authoritarian, pro-individualist and usually very left-leaning values," he said.
There have been notable exceptions. Johnny Ramone, the guitarist for the Ramones, has been an outspoken Republican for years, and some skinhead bands have blended the punk aesthetic with their extreme right-wing views.
But conservative punks say their beliefs and, as important, their attitude, square neatly with the punk tradition, especially, they say, when — pardon the oxymoron — mainstream punk, as represented by Punkvoter, has coalesced into a single, liberal-oriented movement.
Andrew Heidgerken, the founder of GOPunk and the proud owner of metal-spiked leather jacket with "G.O.P.," "N.R.A." and "U.S.A." on the sleeves and a portrait of Ronald Reagan on the back, said he took special pleasure in the unpopularity of his views among other punks. "I can tell you the part of punk we like," he said. "The willingness to speak out even if it annoys people, shouting at anyone who'll listen." Mr. Heidgerken is not beyond using traditional means to annoy people; he's currently running for committeeman from his Chicago neighborhood.
In some ways, the punk world has become consumed by the same sort of angry right-vs.-left feuding that has divided the rest of America for years, complete with venomous name-calling, charges of betrayal and treason, and the occasional death threat. On the message boards of GOPunk, 2,000 or so angry postings from both liberal and conservative punks testify to the punk affinity for annoying others. Mr. Graves said he receives "an incredible amount of hate mail."
Some left-leaning punk fans have been dismayed to learn their punk heroes are conservatives. Thorsten Wilms, 32, a punk who lives outside Cologne, Germany, and who runs the punk Web site www.FiendClub.de, said he was a fan of Mr. Graves until he learned through Punkvoter that Mr. Graves was writing pro-Bush columns for Conservative Punk. In response, Mr. Wilms added a page to his site depicting Mr. Graves beneath an appropriately punk screed of profanity. One of the few printable lines on the page is "Conservative Punk! How sick is that?"
"We wanted to polarize as well," Mr. Wilms said of his site. "You can't be a punk rocker and be right wing." He said conservative punks "could be the death of punk rock."
Ian MacKaye, a founding member of the influential punk bands Minor Threat and Fugazi, suggested that such fears might be overstated. As an outspoken "straight edge" punk — one who does not drink or do drugs — Mr. MacKaye was sometimes mistaken for a conservative (he's not) and saw his message of sobriety seized on in the early 1990's by conservative Christian punk bands. Mr. MacKaye likened the punk aesthetic to furniture. "Once it's built you can put it into any house," he said. "You can be a lefty and go to Ikea or you can be a right-winger and go to Ikea." Punk, he said, "is a free space where anything can go — a series of actions and reactions, and people rebelling and then rebelling against rebelling."
Mr. Levy of Rolling Stone agreed. "Broadly speaking," he said, "the idea of disruption was a punk aesthetic strategy. Tear apart your shirt, wear it that way. If you want to have an ugly guitar sound in the middle of your song, go ahead. And certainly spitting wasn't frowned upon."
Mr. Levy suggested that posting conservative views online while much of the punk movement is engaged in earnest liberal political organizing might be the cyberequivalent of an audience member spitting on a band's lead singer during a show, "although it's a lot more hygienic," he said.
So is there some hidden political information to be divined about the electorate by studying conservative punks? Frank Luntz, a Republican consultant said he did not think so. "I think these people are anti-establishment, and as funny as it sounds supporting George Bush is anti-establishment because a lot of people their age are supporting Kerry," he said. "I don't plan to do any focus groups with Republican punks between now and Election Day."
Mr. Luntz, though, may be missing an opportunity to help his candidate. Jason Pye, 23, a conservative punk from Atlanta who plays drums for the band Style Over Substance and who describes himself as "a pro-life, pro-death-penalty, fiscal conservative who supports the war," said that when he's not playing rock or handling premature-death and dismemberment claims at the insurance company where he works, he's often proselytizing for President Bush.
He's already converted his bass player, a former Kerry supporter, he said, and he's working on the singer. Mr. Pye said there are only a few small things he'd change about his candidate, Mr. Bush.
"If he got some piercings and wore them with a studded suit, that would be pretty cool," he said.
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Please, God! Please oh please oh please oh pleeeeeeeease!
! :)
In 1978 Johnny Rotten's band The Sex Pistols released Anarchy in The UK here are the lyrics for "Bodies" from that album
Bodies
She was a girl from Birmingham
She just had an abortion
She was a case of insanity
Her name was Pauline
She lived in a tree
She was a no one who killed her baby
She sent her letters from the country
She was a animal
She was a bloody disgrace
Body I'm not an animal
Body I'm not an animal
Dragged on a table in a factory
Illegitimate place to be
In a package in a lavatory
Die little baby screaming f**king bloody mess
It's not an animal
It's an abortion
Body I'm not an animal
Mummy I'm not an abortion
Throbbing squirm gurgling bloody mess
I'm not a discharge
I'm not a loss in protein
I'm not a throbbing squirm
'bout freakin' time too
The NY Slimes might as well have written this sentence:
Johnny Ramone, the guitarist for the Ramones, has been an outspoken Republican for years, and some apple pickers think this season will be the best in years.It's a total nonsequiter. What the hell do neo-Nazis have to do with the GOP? That's libelous.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
I cannot stop laughing.
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