politicking is, more often than not, Emily Post dressed up in some jargon à la tour d’ivoire.
Political engagement or activism is therefore rare but, when awoken, the West-person will spring to heroic action in defense of a few sacred values. There are certain “freedoms” which they cherish and see as indispensable to a fully realized civilization. One of these is a vociferous and wholehearted opposition to censorship.
For the Americans and their “First Amendment”—which guarantees freedom of speech absolutely—art must be free to say or do anything. This because the market teaches us that (apart from the possibility of fame and money) there is no meaning or consequence to art, music, or expression, except that it leads to more art and expression. Under their capitalist ideology, after all, everything is equivocal. All culture, art, style, and thought are just data to be absorbed and regurgitated on the radio, on television, or on a tote at a mall boutique. Che Guevara’s beret, Himmler’s haircut, J. Edgar Hoover’s nightie are all postideological, reduced to design elements in a “melting pot” of projected profits and consumer caprice.
Meanwhile, “freedom of speech” (what they call it) is regarded as sacrosanct and no barriers can be put around “art,” “expression,” and the “free flow of information.”
In fact, there is no issue which ties the Westerner’s panties in a knot quite so much as the idea that “freedom of expression” is being compromised. Where did he or she get this idea that people should be allowed to say whatever they want? Would they agree to a stranger with a PA at their dinner table spreading filth and bile uninterrupted? Would they permit them to insult friends and family with a bullhorn for their “freedom of expression”? If society is a kind of dinner table, then the radio, TV, media, news, politicians, art establishment, tech sector, condominium developers, neoliberal think tanks, armed forces, and professional sports leagues are the dark stranger: taunting, lying, harassing, and inciting violence over the basket of rolls.
They respond that it’s a two-way street, that we too can join in the conversation, and that “anyone can do it.” This is another lie. Art and expression must make its case on “the market” to be created on anything other than a microscale. If the “art” or music, book, newspaper, etc., can’t hit the charts, then it wasn’t really very good, or so the accepted wisdom goes. The market has spoken. End of story. But in fact, capital determines success; number one hits are purchased, blockbuster movies are purchased, and electoral offices are as well. TV stations, magazines, and newspapers are meanwhile the party organs of the superelite.
The fake “market” is a de facto censorship to be sure, but a censorship which we don’t control. It ensures a racist, militarized, idiotic, imperialist, paternalistic message permeates art and society. We need a people’s censorship, a grassroots censorship, an insurgent censorship—one which doesn’t rely on the hypocrite goons of the militarized steroid state or the esoteric Owl Club who run it.
We need a guerrilla censorship. One that starts from the people. A seemingly impossible or out-of-scale ambition? Not so. An avant-garde always guides the masses. The people’s degenerate taste—sick and twisted to be sure—is a product of their disaffection from art, top-down programming, and the power of commercial psyop mind control. They can be guided out of the toilet just as they were guided in. We start the censorship one thing at a time, with a little organization, and a little bit of guile. We can do it. Censorship until reeducation. Censorship now!
The people want censorship. Their sadistic trolling on the Internet, the hate speech which litters the mouths of the lowest morons, and the massive popularity of pornography of the vilest sorts are misplaced attempts at being censured, whipped into shape, made to skulk into the corner. In the existential void created by the money god, any sort of punishment seems preferable to the asinine free/not-free purgatory to which we are assigned.
Likewise art—most recently rock ’n’ roll—is always searching for censorship, nipping at the ankles of what is allowed. Such ploys are characterized as marketing stunts or infantile gamesmanship, but in fact they represent a desperate attempt at substance. Rock ’n’ roll resents its official role as paragon of nothingness, meaningless rebellion to rehabilitate capitalism’s predations and fascistic total control. It’s always dreamed it could be something more, that its rebel gestures could be real. But the market denies it any meaning by refusing to censor its perversions, its provocations, its politics, or its puerility. His rights defended by the state, the rocker is reduced to nothing.
In lieu of the censor, the musical groups have created proscriptions for themselves by hiding outlaw esoterica on their products. Hence the satanic symbols in the designs of record jackets, the backward concealed messages engraved in the grooves of vinyl, and the tantrums thrown by the stars of the stage, who expose themselves publicly, break FCC codes, and otherwise pester the authorities to forbid their “expression.” All to no avail, because the market’s only meaning is itself and its own singular supremacy, which it pretends is “natural law” as opposed to an ideological or legislated construct. Its yawn is deafening.
These artists are looking in the wrong place; we need a guerrilla censorship which uses all the cruel tools of a revolution. Pain, terror, absolute mercilessness; not to placate some hypocrite Christian morality or idiotic social code but to stomp out the grotesque subliminal mind control and hate speech of modern culture, media, news, politics, and art.
The state can’t be the censor. The state must be censored, along with its vile servants and its freakish masters. Censorship, termination, eradication, and liquidation.
Censorship until reeducation! Censor the state!
Censorship NOW!!
2
The Twist
The Sexual-Repression Revolution and the Craze to Be Shaved
SAM COOKE’S SONG “Twistin’ the Night Away” (1962) describes a scene where all ages, creeds, colors, ideologies, and class types are united in a utopian scene of unbridled excitement. An “older queen,” a “chick in slacks,” and “a man in evening clothes” all gyrate together in erotic abandon. They “lean back,” “fly,” and “Watusi” . . . but they never touch. Despite the optimism and joy of the tune, “Twistin’ . . .” actually promulgated a new world of utter individualism and isolation.
Sam Cooke’s song was one of many capitalizing on the dance megatrend initially announced on record by Cincinnati singer Hank Ballard and his group the Midnighters. Ballard’s “The Twist” (1959) was indeed the first completely alienated dance form. Instead of being part of a pair, line, couple, or group, twisters were dancers who were liberated from stifling community; they were individuals. The twist was a revolutionary force in breaking apart social units and enforcing individualist ideology. Though rock ’n’ roll music had existed long before this dance, the introduction of the twist was a shift which punctuated a profound new beginning for rock ’n’ roll: rock as a culturally enforced paradigm, which cut across race and class lines.
Before the twist was introduced, a night of dancing, even if it were a wild folk, blues, or jazz affair, featured people dancing with partners, sometimes many different partners. Oftentimes, they danced very closely to one another. A dance partner was someone who was felt, smelled, held, and who moved in tandem with their partner’s body. Sometimes there were dance cards issued so that dancers could reserve spots for various intended consorts. Emotional songs from the beginning of the rock ’n’ roll era implored lovers to “Save the Last Dance for Me.” The final cavorting of the night in the pretwist era, typically a slow and romantic
