ROCK THROB - Punk Politics Pop Quiz

by Andrew on Jan 14 2009, 06:00AM

Rock Throb - Punk Politics Pop Quiz

In two days I will be tested on my punk rock politics.

Back in 1998 I performed my first serious music interview with a Canadian band called Propagandhi. Well, as serious as it could be: a 21-year old debating ultra-left wing politics for an hour and a half with singer Chris Hannah on ratty couches in a promoter’s backyard in Richmond. I was a lunatic one-eyed fan at the time. Eleven years later, I get my second chance to interview the same man.

At 21, it’s easy to be black and white with your politics. Chants of “Fuck Zionism, fuck militarism, fuck Americanism, fuck nationalism, fuck religion” (from ‘Haillie Sellasse, Up You Arse’ on 1993’s How To Clean Everything) were perfectly acceptable to my ears. Yet a decade later that juvenile coda hasn’t really changed anything in the Middle East now, has it?

While this is pretty standard provocation for political punk rock, as always Propagandhi went one step further than everyone (in this case with the sacred cow of Zionism). They’re still virulently animal-friendly, gay-positive, pro-feminist and anti-fascist - the slogans that surrounded an anarchy symbol on their t-shirts and on the disc for album number two Less Talk More Rock (in itself a misnomer, check out the song title ‘Nailing Descartes to the Wall/(Liquid) Meat Is Still Murder’).

Now Propagandhi were no underground band. In the mid-‘90s they were a flagship act on Fat Wreck Chords, the record label NOFX’s Fat Mike set up. Teenagers would be spouting lines like “Why don’t we all strap bombs to our chests and ride our bikes to the next G-7 picnic” at the shows.

They cheered seeing cops die, added the Dworkin-approved “dead men don’t rape” to their feminist anthem ‘Refusing To Be A Man’ and defiantly proclaimed “I recall Arab kids slaughtered, reduced to sand-niggers and rag-heads. And now I’m expected to mourn dead Americans?” in their anti-war tirade ‘Name And Address Withheld’. They were angry. Hell, they’re still angry. The 2009 tour poster features a pig slaughterhouse conveyor belt, and it’s not merely to be hardcore.

They were also funny and self-aware. They mocked critics at the start of a cover of Concrete Blonde’s ‘True’, quipping “I used to like them until I heard they were gay” “Preach, preach, preach”, and “They used to eat meat when they were kids. Hypocrites.” Eerily, the jokes had disappeared by 2005’s Potemkin City Limits.

All this has left me looking back at my reactionary self and ruminating about how much of this I can still get behind (I never bought the veganism. “Dairy is still rape”? C’mon). And whether these extremist views were even worth supporting in the first place. Will Chris stoke the fires of contempt once again, or will I dismiss him like I dismiss slogan-strewn streetpunx puking in the gutter?

I still believe organised religion, government, and the patriarchy are primarily tools of oppression. They’re all human inventions. Maybe I just don’t want to believe humanity is that fucked. Or maybe I don’t need someone yelling at me about it anymore.