Punk rock cultures have long been diverse in tactic, aesthetic, and ideology. Yet, the persistent question posed to both scholars and participants in punk is how we may justify continued adherence to a culture already declared “dead” by media (and Crass) by 1977. Scholars and participants often respond by disputing this death, or more interestingly, in looking at the many divergences and outcomes punk cultures have produced in their many afterlives. However, obviously not all of these outcomes have been positive politically.
Increasingly in the last decade, aspects of punk aesthetics and tactics (most especially the utilization of shock, transgression, and subversion) have been coopted and utilized to massive success by the new/alt right. The deliberate use of offensiveness (otherwise known in these circles as ‘triggering’, ‘baiting’, or ‘trolling’ the left) perhaps points to some surprising punk roots in these far right gestures. Indeed, Gavin McInnes (founder of Vice, founder of the Proud Boys, and sometimes described as the ‘grandfather of hipsterism’) very much views his far right/libertarian activity as similarly situated to the rebellion in the punk band he played in during his youth. Even the uniform of the Proud Boys borrows the iconic Fred Perry polo shirts previously adored by punks and skinheads alike, and many argue that this is not at all coincidental. What does this mean for punks (and scholars of punk)? Must we rethink our uncritical and romantic application of transgression and subversion as goods in themselves? How might punk cultures on the left respond to this most recent cooptation (in the long history of punk cooptations), most especially the insistence on the new/alt right that the ‘status quo’ they are resisting and transgressing is precisely the multiculturalism or inclusion (i.e. ‘wokeness’) so celebrated in so many punk scenes? We invite papers that address this complex ambivalence, as well as the urgency of the current moment.
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Andrew Wood
