Elon, sufficient! Prior to now two weeks, the world’s richest man has teased financial Armageddon within the US, spruiked for a violent far-right extremist and meddled within the home political affairs of at least two sovereign nations.
There’s extra. A lover’s quarrel with Nigel Farage? One thing “gamechanging” to do with crypto? It takes a advantageous expertise to make omnidirectional megalomania boring, however our boy has finished it. His buy of Twitter has reworked the positioning from a hubbub of views to a rightwing bathroom of no matter his mind is farting that day.
Whether or not uninformed, merciless or direly unfunny, he hits the headlines like relentless flatulence. Sixty-seven tweets a day from somebody who thinks “pedo man” quantities to wit makes you wish to grind your face in damp sand.
David Bowie – who knew a factor or two about leisure – as soon as mentioned overexposure in an interview with Esquire. “Fame can take attention-grabbing males and thrust mediocrity upon them.” In Musk’s case, rendering Twitter right into a direct mailing record for himself has thrust mediocrity on the whole world.
I resent that I’m obliged to speak about him in order that I can counsel a way to flee him. I’ve been provoked by feedback made by a GOP consultant who claimed Musk’s self-recruitment to Trump World made it “punk rock to be Republican”.
There’s some validity to her declare: seminal punk band The Saints – just like the median registered Republican – was born 52 years in the past.
However you shouldn’t imagine that Senator Chuck Grassley is immediately arguing whether or not or not Mo-Dettes bassist “Mad” Jane Crockford actually bit the ear off Shane MacGowan at a Conflict gig. Downloading the whole again catalogue of Stooges albums from iTunes, shopping for a Ramones T-shirt from Kmart or having Elon Musk slamdancing himself at your rally doesn’t punk make.
The “punk rock” declare is long-established on the far proper. Billionaire-backed irritation agent Milo Yiannopoulos was insisting on his personal punk rockness again in 2016. It’s an try and retrofit a rebellious, “maverick”, “renegade” model to an ideology that finally calls for your submission to concentrated energy and falling into line. “Your physique belongs to your nation”, with these individuals, Sheena, not in New York Metropolis.
Little doubt, they get away with it in short-attention-span electorates. Alas, on consideration, the declare reeks with “my girlfriend lives in Canada” vitality. The median age of GOP reps within the US Congress is 57 and within the senate 65 (Musk is 53). These people might have been the outdated punk rock however selected to shit on the totally different and focus wealth as an alternative.
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Punk emerged within the western 70s amid chilly struggle fears of imminent annihilation, financial stagflation and mass youth unemployment. The Intercourse Pistols elegantly distilled the vibe of generational nihilism within the God Save the Queen lyric “there’s no future”. Punk life was visibly unconstrained: you don’t sweat the results of placing superglue in your hair, shoving a security pin by means of your nostril or creating a heroin behavior if you happen to assume the one factor awaiting you is an H-bomb.
Not likely the mindset of dudes planning missions to Mars and humanoid robots, is it? That’s the Jetsons, fellas, not Johnny Rotten.
Rejecting the proper’s retrospective declare to punk isn’t to idealise it as a left-wing cultural assail. Positive, the Lifeless Kennedys have been specific of their progressive politics however songs like Nazi Punks Fuck Off solely exist when there are Nazi punks within the first place. “As somebody who was there with spiky pink hair …” wrote a good friend on Threads, “punk was a motion beset by hopeless political confusion and one which steadily flirted with fascism”.
This element could clarify the punkophilia of the western web fashosphere. But when there was one common worth to punk it was anarchy within the face of the institution. For all of the Musk/Trump/QAnon/white-supremacist insistence of a “deep state” – probably made up of lizard individuals, Jews or Huge Feminism, relying on the conspiracy concept – there isn’t one. There’s only a bunch of the richest pricks on earth, dominating the world financial system, now about to take management of the Congress, Senate and presidency within the US, out to exert affect on governments elsewhere.
They’re the very definition of the institution, the purest essence of what punk isn’t. L’état, bros, c’est vous.
And that’s the chance outdated punk affords to younger individuals. Again when Musk and Trump have been inheriting aristocratic fantasies of inherent superiority, punk’s “right here’s three chords, now type a band” ethos impressed communities of youngsters who lived in powerlessness, exclusion and poverty to a low-cost self-expression so wildly liberating that the richest males on this planet yearn to align themselves to it 50 years later. Vivienne Westwood, John Lydon, Iggy Pop, John Cooper Clarke, Patti Smith, Debbie Harry, Siouxsie Sioux, Poly Styrene and Joey Ramone got here from no wealth and no benefit and but got here to exert thrilling cultural energy.
If there’s an escape from the agglomerating omnipresence of Elon, it’s this. Throw your cellphone within the sea. Type bands. Costume up. Have events, dance, sing, keep out all night time. These certain to authoritarians covet your freedom; indulge it. There’s an influence better than Musk’s cash that the cool have at all times recognized: you may make enjoyable out of nothing within the crowds of time.
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