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Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

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Have I been told off by Julian on the Drudion for....
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Citizensmurf
Citizensmurf
1703 posts

Re: Have I been told off by Julian on the Drudion for....
May 01, 2009, 22:08
dave clarkson wrote:
On the subject of the Drudion, looks like the banner says 'Destroy Amerikkkan capitalism' - what's that all about then? Shouldn't that have been better just as 'Destroy Capitalism'? Or is there a much more smarter reason I'm missing here? Or are they just having a laugh? Maybe the idea of linking the collectors shop with a big US market site (ebay) is OK?


8)




Spelling stuff with a KKK was cool in an early nineties kind of way, now it just makes me roll my eyes, but that might just be my age. I can nod my head in agreement over many of the things Cope speaks of, but the notion of destroying capitalism (and American Capitalism at that, as though it merited a seperate entry in Webster's) is completely ridiculous. If he really means just taking down these large corporations and oil companies, carrying a sign and beating a drum isn't going to do a thing, no matter how good it makes him feel.

I know very well that most HHers think just the opposite of this, and the last time I brought up the subject (which is perhaps better suited for U-Know, but I'm already typing) it cause one Grufty Jim (sp?) to launch a very long-winded 'discussion'. Nevertheless....

I'm not saying protest is useless, but you have to recognize the difference between dissent and deviance when you are making an active political statement. I'm going to quote a section from a favourite book of mine, "The Rebel Sell" by Andrew Potter and Joseph Heath, a critique of the "counter-culture". I would urge any interested people to seek it out.

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One way of articulating the central idea of the counter-culture is simply to say that it collapsed the distinction between deviance and dissent (or, more accurately, that it began treating all deviance as dissent). How else can one explain the parallel that so many people saw between, on the one hand, Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement and freedom riders, and on the other hand, Harley-Davidson choppers, cocaine smuggling and easy riders? The freedom to resist tyranny, to fight against unjust domination, is not equivilant to the freedom to do whatever you want, to have your own interests prevail. Yet the counterculture assiduously eroded this distinction.

It is interesting to compare the political programs of Martin Luther King Jr. and Abbie Hoffman. In his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail", written in 1968 while he was imprisoned for participating in a civil rights march in Alabama, King explicitly draws attention to the deviance/dissent distinction:

"In no sense did I advocate evading or defying the law as the rabid segregationist would do. This would lead to anarcy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly . . . and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that his conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for the law"

Contrast this with the politics of the Yippies. Officially, the term was a derivation of "Young Internationalist Party," although Hoffman claimed that is was coined when he and some friends were rolling around on a floor, stoned, yelling "yippee!" The Yippies invaded the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, and they got a lot of publicity for their proposals to nominate a pig for president, to spike the Chicago water supply with LSD and to have squads of Yippie men and women seduce delegates and their families while giving them doses of acid.

Is this deviance of dissent? There is one very simple test that we can apply in order to tell the two apart. It may sound old-fashioned, but it is
still helpful to ask the simple question, "What if everyone did that?--would it make the world a better place to live?" If the answer is no, then we have grounds to be suspicious. A lot of counter-cultural rebellion, as we shall see, fails to pass this simple test.

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In reply to:
Re: Have I been told off by Julian on the Drudion for.... (dave clarkson)		 Replies:
Re: Have I been told off by Julian on the Drudion for.... (dave clarkson)
Re: Have I been told off by Julian on the Drudion for.... (Hunter T Wolfe)
capitalism and the law (Merrick)
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