Being conservative is not the new punk rock

Every so often, an online argument pops up regarding punk rock’s status as a catalyst for social change. No matter how the debate starts, someone will inevitably say something along the lines of “being conservative is punk nowadays”, which usually triggers more wonderful and original discourse.

The crux of that statement relies on punk’s subversive and countercultural history. How can today’s leftists push the envelope when they share many political sentiments with Hollywood and BlackRock? It’s a reductive argument, but let’s try and take it in good faith. I can see how someone who thinks trans identity is “a dangerous ideology” would believe a punk band and a CEO trying to make DEI hires are on the same team.

The troglodytes are right about one thing. The face of punk is changing. Old leftists like Fat Mike and the dude from Propagandhi might as well be Hillary Clinton to the new wave of kids. In the same breath, Minor Threat and Black Flag might as well be The Beatles. There are new sounds and sacred cows. Ideas and norms are certainly being challenged, but you have to be on the ground to see it happening.

Two artists from the Greater Toronto Area embodying this for me are Dear-God and DoFlame. They play what I would describe as nu-metal, but they wear normal clothes and book DIY shows with hardcore bands. I don’t really listen to their music. It’s good, but they’re doing something I’m not really into even at the highest levels of the genre. Those kids are very talented, and it’s probably gonna hold up better than some of the stuff inhabiting the same space that I’m personally more interested in. It’s just not my thing.

Seeing it live, though, is undeniable. The energy, the way they move on stage, the bands they play with, the way the crowd participates — it’s punk rock. Certainly moreso than a group of 50 year old Epitaph Records veterans playing behind a barrier at your local Live Nation venue. It’s DIY in ethos. It’s entwined with skate culture. It feels and acts inclusive to everyone in the room.

DOFLAME - PHOTO BY SCUM COLLECTIVE

Those kids are doing something new, and they’re challenging my perceptions as a 32 year old man. It’s exciting. Quite frankly — in terms of subversive energy — it blows the kids playing hardcore out of the water. Nothing about it is remotely conservative, yet the “fuck you” attitude is palpable every time they get on stage.

I’ve never equated punk rebellion with political symbolism and ideology. Punk to me has always meant rebelling with the space you take up. Playing a DIY show on the floor in a basement is way more punk than spray-painting an anarchy symbol on your denim jacket. In that sense, DoFlame and Dear-God are punk as it comes.

So let’s assume punk rock has to die and be reborn. Let’s say 45 years of genre role play resuscitation has turned this music to classic rock worship. Let’s say the scene’s politics align too much with mainstream corporate monoculture (a dubious claim, but whatever). Let’s assume punk is dead as an idea. What’s going to take its place is not Gen X conservative meme culture. It’s weird little pockets of kids playing nu-metal on the floor of a bar.

The middle aged men who claim conservatism is the new punk rock, by and large, seem to have a shallow notion of counter-culture. They were never invested long enough to gain an understanding of the landscape. They were high school punks in the late 90s and early 2000s, when punk meant “fuck authority”. They still hate what they deem as authority, so they still think they’re punk.

In reality, most of them were just part of a market segment for lifestyle brands. Was there anything counter-cultural about liking Rancid and Green Day in 1997 or were their fans just buying hair products and shoes at the mall? There’s certainly more nuance to what I’m laying out. Conservative lifers like John Joseph and Dave Smalley exist — but they’re just Fat Mike for a different brand of dumbass. By and large, conservative “punk” internet warriors are lapsed dads, and if those people made counterculture ideals part of their values system instead of their teenage personal branding, they’d realize two things.

First, they would know there have always been right wing schools of thought in punk music. They persist to this day, although much moreso in isolation than they did in the 70’s and 80’s. Even more pertinent, punk has always had apolitical fringe nutjobs who don’t care about the cultural issues de jour, and just show up here because they’re maladjusted. They could be a quaalude junkie from 1979 with a swastika carved in their forehead, or a felonious, gang-affiliated beatdown singer who calls people faggots onstage in 2023.

For those weirdos, it’s not the ideas they espouse but the space they take up. Punk rock is one of the few places that will allow them to live unfiltered as annoying contrarians with every fabric of their being, or it’s the only place they can physically assault people with almost total impunity. So they come here because there’s nowhere else. They may not identify with progressive ideas, but they live as outsiders. They come to the shows. They take up space. They put their life on hold to lose money playing moron music. That’s what “makes them punk rock”, for lack of a better term.

Which brings me to the second thing squares don’t understand. Conservatives don’t need to claim punk. There have always been right-wing oriented countercultures. From the Hell’s Angels bashing hippies at Berkeley to the Proud Boys wreaking havoc during BLM protests, there are always people with a more Machiavellian bent than polite society is willing to accept. Those groups need buy-in too, though. You need to be okay with getting put on a no-fly list and having your phone tapped by the FBI. The “punk is conservative” Facebook dads aren’t ready to lose their yearly trip to Florida over what they “stand for”

.YOU’VE SEEN THIS MEME A MILLION TIMES ON TWITTER

To quote a really kvlt Jack Black movie, “you’re not hardcore unless you live hardcore”, and working eight hours a day just to come home and argue on the internet isn’t hardcore, no matter what position you take. Posting white power memes on Reddit and Facebook doesn’t make someone more counterculture than supporting trans rights or Black Lives Matter on the same platform.

The buy-in is surface level and requires no effort. Just like most strands of conservatism. The ideology is not countercultural. It’s baked into the Western hegemonic DNA. All it asks of the average participant is to vote and buy shit. That’s why it will never be the same as punk rock, which needs active participation to exist.

These rubes likely never participated and they certainly never will again . They might buy Modello when they used to buy PBR. They might shop at Hobby Lobby instead of Hot Topic. It doesn’t matter. They’re still at the same damn mall where they bought a Casualties shirt in 2001.

What “conservatism is the new punk” boils down to — in the most charitable sense — is a fundamental disconnect between someone’s idea of punk and the boots-on-the-ground reality. There are certainly conservative punks in 2023, but the space, across almost all sub-sects, leans progressive. You could argue punk has been de-fanged, but you can’t say it’s conservative. You could say trad culture is more subversive than punk in 2023, but that’s a different argument. Based Chad memes have nothing to do with punk rock. Get out of here with that bullshit.