Death in June

Supporting them in the same way that Gwar are monsters from another planet, I guess.

If we’re going to start handing out red cards for acting stupid, where does the line get drawn? Why are some groups “beyond the pale” and others not? Morrissey has a history of making racially provocative statements, referring to the Chinese as a “subspecies” because of their culture of animal cruelty. He’s flirted with fascist trappings in song and on the stage. Yet there are no pickets when he comes to town to moan about lost love, cholo gangs, and boxing.

Manic Street Preachers have been highly supportive of the communist regime in Cuba. Malcolm McLaren famously forced the New York Dolls to pretend to be Stalinists under his management. Where were the screeching mobs and the acts of vandalism then? The message is, apparently, that it’s OK to adopt the trappings of totalitarianism and state-sponsored murder just so long as it’s done in the name of egalitarian utopia.

More to the point, however, is the behavior of those who oppose Death in June’s message, which has more to do with Douglas P.‘s statement that he prefers “to suck white, uncircumcised cocks” than anything out of Mein Kampf or Oswald Mosley’s playbook.

Compare with how leftists “protested” Death in June gigs, straight out of Brownshirting 101.

In Los Angeles, the locks of the venue were glued shut and the building was spray-painted. In the Bay Area, a dozen or so “antifa” activists attacked people waiting in line to see the band. In something that sounds like an Onion headline, the group leading the assault claimed victory because they had demolished the venue’s bathrooms. Terrorist threats were made against the Old Town Hall in Salem, MA, one of the oldest buildings in the United States. The gig was eventually moved an hour inland to Worcester to prevent any attack against this iconic piece of American architectural history.

None of the gigs was entirely canceled, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying.

Which returns us to our original question: What is fascism, in the vulgar, broad sense? Is it a collection of symbols, tropes, and references to antiquated, interbellum European ideology? Or is it an impulse, a set of actions, the desire to smash and shut up anything when you don’t like the cut of its jib?

Like our first question, this pretty much answers itself.