Heiligendamning the G8

Most of the Free Association crew have just returned from Heiligendamm and the counter-mobilisation against the G8 summit and it’s worth jotting down a few thoughts whilst the memories are still fresh. (When I say most of us have returned, I don’t mean some are still on German soil, languishing in some prison cell; just not all of us went in the first place.)

First, the overall assessment. One of us has a 4-year old son who ranks good things as follows: cool, wicked, awesome, bring it on, kerchow. On this scale we agreed the Heiligendamm summit protest was awesome. The front-page headline in the left-of-centre Die Tageszeitung -- reporting on the summit’s opening day -- was ‘G8 successfully blockaded’. According to the Financial Times our ‘protests tipped the G8 summit into logistical chaos’. The FT reported ‘overwhelmed police forces’ and ‘lines of exhausted riot police streaming out of the area in the early evening, some of them with stitches and black eyes, as formations of helicopters roared overhead. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” said one officer.’ (‘Marauding clowns and squabbles embarrass organisers’)

In a great piece, which hopefully Red Pepper will publish, our friend and comrade Ben, of the FelS (the Sha La La Communists), describes every road into the Red Zone being blockaded for the better part of 48 hours, from 11am on Wednesday 6 June, the summit’s opening day, until 11am on Friday, when blockaders voluntarily began to disperse (en masse) in order to reassemble for a massive demonstration in Rostock. Summit organisers were forced to resort to plan B, which involved using helicopters to airlift many delegates, whilst journalists and others had no choice but to travel by sea, facing huge delays. We heard reports that even this plan was disrupted by blockades of ports/ferry terminals in Rostock; apparently on the first day of the summit many delegates were advised to remain in their hotels. And according to some reports, only four journalists made it to the opening ceremony. Oh yes, and the Japanese PM was delayed at the airport as he arrived. (By yet another blockade-cum-demonstration; not because he was hanging about by the carousel waiting for his baggage.)

This was certainly a victory and the most successful protest against a major summit ever. In fact, I wonder whether the Heiligendamm summit protest is to the G8 what Seattle was to the WTO. Seven years after that crazy November day in 1999, the latest round of trade negotiations -- the Doha round -- faltered and collapsed. The WTO now seems to be defunct. The Seattle protest and the social movements which formed around it and of which it was a part played a vital role in that. My guess is that the G8 leaders and political strategists are desperately looking for a way out of their annual shenanigans. Probably, there’s been a gnawing anxiety about their summit for a few years now, but our almost victory this month will have made them even more desperate. Because, the G8 summit is about legitimising neoliberal globalisation. An overriding message from Heiligendamm was that the G8 and neoliberalism is illegitimate. No doubt they’ll meet as planned next year in Japan. Probably they’ll meet in Italy in 2009 too, though that one will be tricky, being both the 10th anniversary of Seattle and the first Italy-hosted summit since Genoa. (That venue has already been decided: a small island in the Mediterranean Sea; not Elba, where the French emperor Napoleon I was exiled in 1814, but maybe the effect will not be so different.) But then... who knows, but I doubt very much that the G8 will exist in its current form.

Of course, they’ll spin it. They’ll talk of making their meetings more effective, perhaps they’ll have biannual meetings but on a much smaller scale with little publicity. They’ll use the comments of Helmut Schmidt, cofounder of the G6 (as it then was) in 1975, who’s criticised the current summits as a ‘media circus’ or something similar. But whatever they say, we should remember: it was us that done it. Or, as we wrote in ‘Worlds in Motion’: ‘sometimes it’s hard to see the social history buried within the latest government announcement.’

So, no doubt about it, Heiligendamm was a victory for us. It really is important to stress this. Many reports, particularly in the UK, adopt a top-down approach. The mainstream media tends to focus on what happened or did not happen inside the Red Zone -- that piece in the FT was something of an exception. Indymedia seemed to more interested in reporting on repression and decentralised actions than the mass blockades. The following response to my comment that Heiligendamm was a victory to us is interesting.

i find this a bit offensive. how was it a victory?
maybe you enjoyed yourself, but i don't think the kids of bangladesh were cheering. nothing changed; ergo, no victory.

Let’s leave aside the implicit racism of the comment -- it homogenises the ‘kids of Bangladesh’ and assumes that ‘they’ are less politically sophisticated than ‘us’ (if I can cheer the victories of others, recognising them as part of my struggle, then why can’t they cheer my victories? -- and the author’s quickness to take offence. It nevertheless raises at least two important questions.
First, did anything change? If so, what and how? Second, how does the mobilisation against the G8 in Heiligendamm relate to struggles elsewhere, e.g. in Bangladesh. I.e. how do antagonisms articulated locally become global? Or, perhaps these local antagonisms are immediately global. If so, then how do we understand them as such? Third, in exactly what sense was Heiligendamm a victory? (That hoary chestnut again: what does it mean to win?)

There are probably several reasons why it was a victory and why something changed.

1. Our mobilisation was a massive demonstration that the G8 and neoliberal globalisation is illegitimate. With neoliberalism already struggling for legitimacy, this is important. Though, as Rodrigo points out, it’s probably true that global capital can continue to reproduce itself without legitimacy for some time.

2. We produced the affect of victory. Of course I enjoyed myself! How could I experience those feelings of collective power and not enjoy myself? And I'm sure thousands of others did too. This is great. These feelings will remain with us and give us the confidence and optimism to continue acting. Whcih increases our power. So the ‘affect of victory’ isn’t just about ‘feelings’; it’s about material forces.
(And conversely (tho’ arguably) our enemies probably returned home without any affect of victory. Yes, they were reasonably successful in producing a spectacle of victory -- more successful in some countries than others -- but journalists were pissed off at having to spend so long on boats and queuing for boats, delegates’ helicopters had no proper landing places (and it’s undignified for a dignitary to have to wade through long grass) and the food and wine ran short! To top it off, delegates fought a lot amongst themselves. I’m not sure how important this all is. I think it’s probably less important whether Bush or Merkel experienced an affect of victory or not. But perhaps it matters when we’re talking about journalists and others essential for producing the summit as its organisers would wish. In Heiligendamm, it was very clear that the real energy was located with us. And energy is attractive! I’m sure journalists reporting on our blockades enjoyed a far richer experience and I think that’s important.)

3. We demonstrated very clearly -- both to ourselves and people observing around the world -- that mass actions can be effective. Again, this confidence in our own power is enormously important.The question of the relationship between local and global antagonism is harder. Tadzio (in his letter) makes a great point about this:

we failed to construct a clear antagonism because we were playing on different laying fields. concretely: while our protests were a mere police matter (a clear antagonism certainly existed between cops and demonstrators, as all of us who were beaten, arrested, tear-gassed, water-cannonned can surely attest to), the legitimation of the summit occurred on the discursive field of talking about climate change. now, the german radical left almost completely lacks a good political story about climate change, one that goes beyond individual appeals to fly less, raises the question of property and capital, while at the same time giving suggestions for how to act (the latter being a crucial component of every good political story).

7-8 years ago, when summits' headline issues were still very much trade, privatisation, 'the neoliberal agenda', we had an excellent counter-story. our militant actions were embedded in this counter-story, so that our actions could rise beyond being mere policing matters, to being explicitly political, because they directly interfered in the construction of the discursive field that was being built to legitimate global authority. today, we have no story to counter theirs, so this production can go on undisturbed, no matter how effective our blockades are. it may be responded at this point that issue-engagement with the summit's headline issues would add to the legitimation of an institution we try to delegitimate, but i think it's fairly obvious that this year's refusal to really construct a counterstory didn't lead to a greater delegitimation of the G8.

thus the action point of this particular political story: we in the german radical, autonomous, anticapitalist left (whatever you want to call it) need to work to come up with a good story about climate change, to break through the relegitimation strategies so effectively deployed by merkel. more generally, at summits, we need to work in advance to develop a punchy story that relates to the summit's headline issues, within which we can embed our actions. otherwise the latter remain mere public order problems, and cannot interfere with the production of global authority as legitimate.

The Heiligendamm mobilisation was also notable for two other important questions.

First, violence. (Not really a novel question, I know.) In some ways, I wonder whether the movement has gone backwards here. One of the exciting aspects of Heiligendamm (and what made it different from and more successful than Gleneagles in 2005) was the hard-won coalition of 120-odd groups that was the Block G8 campaign. But this coalition threatened to implode after the mini-riot in Rostock on Saturday 2 June. Simon makes some good points about this, talking of media (both corporate and IMC) hyperbole and of people reverting ‘to type’. Dorothea also said something really good. She said she’d learned long ago that denouncing certain protesters as ‘violent’ is never helpful. This links to Simon’s point, of course. Denunciation is about definition, it’s about closure, it’s about limiting our movement. Reverting to type is about stasis. But changing the world requires movement.

But, as Simon goes on to say, between Saturday and Wednesday, ‘the turnaround was amazing -- because of the success of the blockades -- and their fluidity and diversity. If you wanted a ruck, find the blockade where it was happening and contribute. If you wanted to keep a more tranquil blockade going overnight, you could find out where to go. Diversity and working together was again OK.’

Second, the tension between different modes of decision-making. The success of the Block G8 blockades depended on a closed group with a secret plan. This group did a brilliant job in getting thousands of people from the Rostock camp to the North gate and thousands more from the Reddelich camp to the East gate (by Bad Doberan). Our departure time, our route, our exact destination all had to be kept secret. How else could our objective of getting onto the key roads into Heilgendamm have been achieved otherwise?

Some people were very dismissive of Block G8 for this: ‘I’m an anarchist, I’ll not follow anyone, I’ll do my own thing. Fuck Block G8’. One person wrote on Indymedia: ‘Block G8 was a very hierarchical organisation. In the meetings I went to, all the details of the action were being organised by “action councils” and seemed very unaccountable and inaccessible unless you were prepared to go along and be cannon fodder for a central organising committee.’ As somebody responds on Indymedia, this is ‘quite disrespectful of those who had put huge effort and time into organising things (which are usually illegal, and enormously stressful, and done at great potential personal cost). I was really happy that some people had thought beforehand extremely carefully about to get us from camp to blockade in a coordinated way.’

But, getting thousands of people from camp to road is one thing. Maintaining a successful blockade once there is something else. The Block G8 secret ‘action committees’ did a great job getting us all onto the road and I was happy to follow them there. But sustaining the blockades required participation by all the blockaders and consensus decision-making, and Block G8 were reluctant to give up their power. So at the East gate we suffered a number of highly frustrating meetings on Wednesday evening, as the Block G8 action committee dominated discussions -- taking full advantage of their ‘ownership’ of megaphones and the sound system and of the authority they’d won through their successful leadership in getting us onto the road. In short, they behaved like arseholes, accusing anyone who disagreed with them of attempting to destroy the ‘action consensus’ and of being intent only on ‘escalation’. At one point, they suggested that if they didn’t get their way, the blockade would no longer be under the auspices of Block G8 -- this was a despicable attempt on their part to delegitimatise our action, which would have made it easier for the state to repress and criminalise. In fact, the blockade was in danger of falling apart altogether as Block G8 claimed that we’d achieved our objective and ordered a retreat. This retreat was halted only when two people sat down in the road in front of the sound system to prevent it leaving: blockading the blockaders!

Tensions within the blockade. Frustration with Block G8 and their tactics. The unsettling experiences of giving up a location we’d become familiar with to retreat 200m down the road and of watching many groups of people drift away altogether. Nervousness as darkness fell: the fear we’d be rudely awakened at 3am by water cannon and, possibly, tooled-up riot cops (combined with the more prosaic worry that tarmac doesn’t make for the best of beds). Wednesday night was somewhat tense! (It was important to bear in mind that although darkness presented uncertainties for us, it did so for the police too. They were exhausted too. They had no idea what we or some of us would do in the night -- we were, after all, literally metres from the fence encircling the Red Zone. If they attacked, how would be react -- and not only were we near the fence, we were right next to a railway line, with its plentiful supply of fist-size ammunition. Much safer for them to hold off. But this is exactly why we needed to maintain our collective identity and this is why the behaviour of Block G8 was so dangerous.) In the event, the night passed uneventfully, though some of our fears were realised: our numbers seemed to have dwindled from several thousand to fewer than one thousand. Thursday morning brought some great coffee -- artisan-brewed latte from a wonderful man in a van operating two tiny expresso pots and a saucepan on a tiny stove -- and more frustration courtesy of Block G8, who again suggested we’d done enough and that it was time to leave. But this time, we’d really had enough: a couple of organised and collective-minded affinity groups with experience of consensus decision-making challenged their leadership and we enjoyed a couple of fantastic blockade-wide spokes-meetings. As a result, our collectivity was reestablished and the blockades at that gate lasted for another 24 hours.

So, two points here.

First, how can we learn to shift between these two modes of decision-making -- on the one hand, having a secret plan put into action by a closed group, and on the other, open, horizontal consensus decision-making -- more smoothly, without rupture and discord?

Second, our experience on that blockade shows again the importance of affinity groups. Not only for dealing with the state, but, as there, for having the ability to override Block G8’s action committee which had outlived its usefulness.

That’s enough criticism of Block G8 and I want to end on a more positive note. Their advice as we headed for the road on Wednesday morning was spot-on and expresses our politics perfectly:

Don’t run straight at the cops; aim for the gaps!

To affinity and beyond...

As hinted at by Brian I've been wanting to post on the tension between identity politics and politics based on affinity.

In " No Logo ” Naomi Klein (not someone regularly cited here) critiques the identity politics of her college days. She tells a familiar story of fracturing micro-struggles around representation of identities within both institutions and language. And how these were fundamentally outflanked by capital. As she puts it: “The need for greater diversity - the rallying cry of my university years - is now not only accepted by the culture industries, it is the mantra of global capital. And identity politics, as they were practiced in the nineties, weren't a threat, they were a gold mine.“ If it’s an identity you’re after then capital is always selling.

Although identity politics had valid, minoritarian moments they also fitted too neatly with the rise of neo-liberalism in the 1980’s and its tendency to separate politics from economics. Another angle on this can be seen in New Social Movement theory. It was also tied to the identity politics of the 1980’s and early 90’s with its "post-material" concerns. I had to read some recently and it seemed so hilariously out of date I kept imagining it on one of these list programs alongside leg warmers and Spangles. For Klein, escape from the inward looking paralysis of those politics was one of the achievements of the anti-globalisation cycle of struggles.

Not that I’m saying identity politics are no more, I'm not even sure that it's something that can be totally escaped but I present a couple of stories to illustrate potential problems. A couple of years ago I went to a talk by Jane Flax, a Freudian, Foucauldian, feminist psychoanalyst (don't ask how she squares that circle). A big point she made was that you shouldn’t say either race or gender. The two oppressions overlapped so much that you had to say race/gender. I asked her why you didn’t have to say race/gender/class or (to stop the list growing and making page long sentences the norm) just power relations. She replied that she hadn’t come across a good analysis of class. Yeh, well whatever but she then went on to psychoanalyse the film “Monster’s Ball” and the failings of the race/gender category became uncomfortably apparent. Her analysis gave the impression that the problems of the world were caused by redneck men whose relationships with their fathers made them all psychologically abnormal. Now I’m not a shit-kicking country music type myself but it was so easy to see how this all worked out. By keeping class out of the analysis everyone in the room could declare themselves normal/healthy/pure but definitely not part of the problem. It fitted right into that wider liberal idea, we’re already saved and all we need to do is turn the rest of the world into us. Change the world without changing ourselves.

I should say though that simply (re)introducing class, as a category, doesn’t necessarily solve the problem. It can be easily subsumed into the identity game. Class has always had a very culturally based definition in the UK and class as identity was one of the central strands of the 1980’s – 90’s class struggle anarchist scene that we were part of. At it’s worst this tendency fell into deeply reactionary and fucked up positions, denying that there was a ruling class or even such an abstract thing as capital. Instead it declared that “the enemy is the middle class” because they denied a voice to the working class. One of the names the tendency gave itself was “openly classist” putting class alongside a list of isms, racism, sexism, speciesism. It was pure liberal identity politics. It’s funny to think back on that now and recognise it as an offshoot of the politics of woolly jumper wearing, middle class feminists (sic) but of course that was one of the political environments it emerged from and in reaction to.

Another strand that fed into the “enemy is the middle class” tendency was the quite necessary critique of the power held by experts. Unfortunately neo-liberals (or public choice as it was known in this context) were also attacking professionals seeking to replace their power with, the more easily manipulable, judgement of the market.

In fact the parallels get even worse. I was reading Thomas Franks book "What's the matter with Kansas?" which charts the rise of the US conservative movement. In a way that story is more of a straight out ideological trick where the re-assertion of class power and a huge increase in inequality is achieved through the misdirection of attention on to cultural issues. It’s based on class as cultural identity although, of course, class can never be mentioned in the US of stateside. Still “the enemy is the liberal elite” is the US version of a disturbingly familiar world-view. It should act as a marker of just how fucked up identity politics crossed with ‘class as identity’ can get.

That doesn’t mean that there is an easy outside to identity politics. The whole counter-globalisation cycle of struggles can be partly seen as an attempt to escape liberal politics, trace out the links between the economic and the political and escape the paralysis of identity politics. There was a shift towards identifying a common enemy in neo-liberalism or even capitalism and an emphasis on working through problems by acting together. It’s a politics based on affinity, with movements grouping together through shared affect rather than shared ideology. What was important is what you do, not what you say. The priority became moving, taking risks, acknowledging the messiness of politics. Not worrying about shoring up behind you meant you could move faster and take more audacious leaps. I think that’s what the Zapatista slogan “walking we ask questions” means, we sort things out on the road, work out the destination as we go.

Identity politics can be seen as a compensatory power move that ends conversation in a certain direction. The aim is to deny a voice to certain people in order to allow the usually silent to speak, to let the sub-altern speak. That's how it’s in tension with affinity politics. Identity politics is anti-affinity, its logic is to isolate and cut off conversation along ever deepening gradations of power imbalances. Until you have battles over who is the most oppressed. Which oppression counts most becomes important to work out because it determines who has the right to speak at all.

But it’s been pointed out in an article in Turbulence there are no shortcuts, that a politics based on affinity can’t sidestep the problems identity politics tries to address. Unless we address the material and structural basis of the old hierarchies they will just reassert themselves.

Of course striation is necessary and at certain points you need rupture to get things moving again. We can’t just all get along, as Rodney King put it. But rupture is a dangerous thing involving destruction. There is a smell of corruption that hangs over identity politics; it is an assertion of power that stops potentially productive encounters. Perhaps the way to avoid that corruption solidifying into paralysis is to recognize that there is no pure outside. We have to all change ourselves as we change the world.

Worlds in motion

Just a quick note to let y’all know that Worlds in Motion, our article for Turbulence, has finally been approved. All i’s dotted and t’s crossed and it’s here. That’s me with the Engels beard by the way...
The whole Turbulence experience has been a bit, well, turbulent. We wrote the bulk of the article at the back end of last year so it seems a bit stale now, altho it will improve with age, like a fine whine. But one of the tensions that’s become apparent right at the end has been the one between identity and affinity. I’ve just had a look round the back and seen that Keir’s brewing up a blog post on this very subject (“Two sugars, mate! You got any biscuits?”), so I don’t want to steal his thunder. But on the day that this happens, it does raise a lot of questions about the whole identity/affinity thing. Strange things can happen very quickly, and sometimes we find ourselves without the tools to deal with new situations. Which can itself be brilliant.
One of the oddest moments at the recent global meeting in Venice was the session on the Middle East. When Musthapha Barghouti finished speaking, the hall erupted into a massive standing ovation. We were sat at the front and it was weird to turn round and see 700 people on their feet applauding & cheering a government minister. It’s the same with Sinn Fein: one minute we all seem to be moving in the same circles, the next their preferred channels of communication are with Labour ministers. Some of this relates to sovereignty and governance. But part is also to do with how identity politics exploded in the mid-1980s. At its worst, there was an unofficial scorecard operating, a hierarchy of oppressions. Where did this come from? From below, from that drive towards autonomy and self-determination. But also from above, as parties struggled to construct a new constituency: the Labour Party with the GLC, the left with Marxism Today. Of course the miners’ strike fucked a lot of this up, as old-fashioned class war returned to the streets. And it also helped draw a line, behind which another constituency could develop: ‘You want identity politics? What about class, the biggest identity of all?’ But it’s daft to see one as good, and one as bad. Some of the most productive moments come when identity rubs up against affinity. And that was what was interesting about the Barghouti ovation. Right, I can see you’re getting bored, so we can return to this when Keir’s done his post. Class dismissed.

Right said Fred

A lot of us running around talking about politics don't even know what politics is. Did you ever see something and pull it and you take it as far as you can and it almost outstretches itself and it goes into something else? If you take it so far that it is two things? As a matter of fact, some things if you stretch it so far, it’ll be another thing. Did you ever cook something so long that it turns into something else? Ain’t that right? That’s what we’re talking about with politics.

From a 1969 speech by Black Panther Fred Hampton, lifted from here. It seemed right to move it to a post in its own right, not just because it’s ineffably cool, but also because it’s right about so many things.

What side of the beard you've been lying on

Back in 1974 Malcolm McLaren, Vivienne Westwood and Bernie Rhodes collaborated on their famous T-shirt: “You’re going to wake up one morning and know what side of the bed you’ve been lying on!” It carried a list of hates on the left side and loves on the right. It's a ranting manifesto dispatching the likes of David Essex/Bryan Ferry/Salvador Dali/Sir Keith Joseph and his sensational speeches and embracing the likes of Valerie Solanis/Jamaican Rude Boys/Coffee bars that sell whisky under the counter/Kutie Jones and his SEX PISTOLS/

1974 was a moment that cried out for rupture and polarisation. The possibilities of the movements of 1960’s had already began to close up, solidifying into a new orthodoxy just as stifling as the dreary post-war world 1960’s veterans thought they were leaving behind. Social movements aren’t distinct entities but selections from a continuous dynamic. They are like waves in a continually changing substance. Human subjectivities, that were fluid in times of great motion can suddenly solidify into clag unable to struggle free of itself. It’s at times like this that new ruptures can take hold, a moment of hard stratification to break free of the clag and light out into new territory.

One of the mechanisms used in these moments is a dip into the past to pull out some new antecedents but is all this still possible within the ever re-devoured remains of pop culture? In fact we need to rework that for it to even begin to make sense. Seeing as pop will eat itself as a means of things staying the same, as a means of homestatic reproduction, can it eat itself unhealthy? Are there any antecedents that when eaten will make pop feel a little queasy? That might break pop out of its self-referential reproduction and reconnect with wider social movement.

Fucked if I know, but perhaps we can detect signs in the latest incarnation of the “side of the bed” T-shirt –Thou shalt always kill The song by Dan Le Sac Vs. Scroobius Pip currently getting airplay and column inches and scraping into the top 40.


Here’s the lyrics, print your own shirt:

Thou shalt not steal if there is direct victim.
Thou shalt not worship pop idols or follow lost prophets.
Thou shalt not take the names of Johnny Cash, Joe Strummer, Johnny Hartman, Desmond Decker, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix or Syd Barret in vain.
Thou shalt not think that any male over the age of 30 that plays with a child that is not their own is a peadophile… Some people are just nice.

Thou shalt not read NME.
Thall shalt not stop liking a band just because they’ve become popular.
Thou shalt not question Stephen Fry.
Thou shalt not judge a book by it’s cover.
Thou shalt not judge Lethal Weapon by Danny Glover.
Thall shalt not buy Coca-Cola products.
Thou shalt not buy Nestle products.
Thou shalt not go into the woods with your boyfriend’s best friend, take drugs and cheat on him.
Thou shalt not fall in love so easily.
Thou shalt not use poetry, art or music to get into girls’ pants. Use it to get into their heads.
Thou shalt not watch Hollyoakes.
Thou shalt not attend an open mic and leave as soon as you're done just because you’ve finished your shitty little poem or song you self-righteous prick.
Thou shalt not return to the same club or bar week in, week out just ’cause you once saw a girl there that you fancied but you’re never gonna fucking talk to.
Thou shalt not put musicians and recording artists on ridiculous pedestals no matter how great they are or were.

The Beatles - Were just a band.
Led Zepplin - Just a band.
The Beach Boys - Just a band.
The Sex Pistols - Just a band.
The Clash - Just a band.
Crass - Just a band.
Minor Threat - Just a band.
The Cure - Just a band.
The Smiths - Just a band.
Nirvana - Just a band.
The Pixies - Just a band.
Oasis - Just a band.
Radiohead - Just a band.
Bloc Party - Just a band.
The Arctic Monkeys - Just a band.
The next big thing - JUST A BAND.

Thou shalt give equal worth to tragedies that occur in non-English speaking countries as to those that occur in English speaking countries.
Thou shalt remember that guns, bitches and bling were never part of the four elements and never will be.

Thou shalt not make repetitive generic music

Thou shalt not make repetitive generic music

Thou shalt not make repetitive generic music

Thou shalt not make repetitive generic music

Thou shalt not pimp my ride.
Thou shalt not scream if you wanna go faster.
Thou shalt not move to the sound of the wickedness.
Thou shalt not make some noise for Detroit.
When I say “Hey” thou shalt not say “Ho”.
When I say “Hip” thou shalt not say “Hop”.
When I say "he say, she say, we say, make some noise" - kill me.
Thou shalt not quote me happy.
Thou shalt not shake it like a polaroid picture.
Thou shalt not wish your girlfriend was a freak like me.
Thou shalt spell the word “Pheonix” P-H-E-O-N-I-X not P-H-O-E-N-I-X, regardless of what the Oxford English Dictionary tells you.
Thou shalt not express your shock at the fact that Sharon got off with Bradley at the club last night by saying “Is it”.
Thou shalt think for yourselves.
And
Thou shalt always kill.

Of course some of these are not objectively, revolutionary more in the nature of directional demands but it was the mention of Crass as ‘just a band’ that peeked my interest. Clips of the songs video on youtube have kids asking “who are Crass?” “who are Minor Threat?” on the coments.

I suppose the Crass brand is ripe for re-discovery as an authentic outside to commodification (pay no more than £3.50) but it’s only when you check out the facial hair on the video that you discover what’s really radical about Scroobius Pip.

If there is hope it lies with the beards.