How Milo and the Free Speech Libertarian Movement Resemble the Sex Pistols – Heat Street
Forty years ago, four Brits in a band called the Sex Pistols outraged and angered the British political establishment. Now in 2017 another Brit has done the same thing to the U.S. establishment.
1977 was the year that punk exploded onto the cultural landscape and shook up the status quo of hippy music biz complacency and smug liberal assumptions. Were not into music, were into chaos, sneered the Sex Pistols as they shocked and awed the British public and challenged the old order.
The Pistols, The Clash, The Ramones and all those three-chord wonders with ripped jeans and spiked hair galvanized a generation. Not only rebelling against the stadium rock perpetuated by the likes of Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles and Pink Floyd, but also by criticizing their self-satisfied, Lear Jet lifestyles and their conventional viewpoints.
Led by their manager Malcolm McLaren, the Pistols used outrage and a Situationist agenda to confront the establishment, attack sacred idols and provoke all the right people. As McLaren once said, If it doesnt threaten the status quo, its not worth doing. The punk class of 77 angrily sang about the stupefying dullness of life in mid-70s Britain, the absurdity of pop stars and the conceits of the eras prevailing culture.
For many kids who felt disconnected from the mainstream, punk was a welcome reaction against the post-hippie and cultural malaise that had seeped into all aspects of 1970s society. But the punks also faced a backlash that was both widespread and violent, consisting of demonization from the media, gigs canceled or banned, assaults on punks by reactionary Teddy Boys, and low-key police harassment.
As a former punk myself, I remember being yelled at, spat on and punched in the face just for wearing a Sex Pistols God Save the Queen T-shirt.
Now, nearly four decades later, another establishment is being shaken up, but this time around its the cultural gatekeepers of liberal America who are finding their cosmopolitan we-know-best pieties challenged.
Another crucial difference from 77, of course, is that todays rebellion is more an overtly political one than a musical revolution. But the anti-authoritarian instincts of the original punks also fuel this current generation of free-thinkers.
Somewhat lazily dubbed by critics and some friends alike as the alt-right, this broad movement against liberal orthodoxy has as its unlikely figurehead the flamboyant British export Milo Yiannopoulos, a controversial punk provocateur par excellence.
Yiannopoulos, with his calculated outrageousness and refusal to back down, seems well aware of the similarities between todays culture wars and the spirit of 77. During the 2016 presidential election he proclaimed, to cheers from his supporters, that we should vote for Donald Trump because he was the new punk.
In hindsight, it looks like he may have beenright in that comparison. After all, in a mainstream media world where it was assumed that no right-thinking person in America could ever vote for Trump, the actions of Yiannopoulos and his growing band of followers in backing such a controversial Republican candidate could only be seen as a Sid Vicious-style F**k You to political correctness and the established order.
Using social media instead of three-minute songs, Yiannopoulos has revolutionized the fight against political orthodoxy by using the same shock tactics that the punks used to take on the entertainment industry.
It should be noted that the American genesis of this new breed of conservative provocateurs that Milo seems to have galvanized actually has its roots in the South Park Conservatives generation, which moved from left to right after 9/11 as the left became increasingly politically correct and authoritarian.
Like the punks of 77, Milo and his merry band are also demonized by the media and also face assault from reactionary elementsas the recent riot that led to a cancelation of a Yiannopoulos event at the University of California-Berkeley goes to show.
In much the same way as the punk-bashing British Teddy Boys of 40years ago sided with the status quo, so the antifa have allied themselves with the American status quo against the new rebels on the block.
In fact, by being on the same side of the anti-Milo debate as the establishment liberal bastions of the New York Times, California hi-tech billionairesand pampered Hollywood one percenters, the antifa have only confirmed Yiannopoulos and the new anti-authoritarians as underdogs and the real inheritors of the rebellious punk mantle.
And just as the British media lambasted Johnny Rotten for his supposed attacks against the Queen and all common decency, so the American media has run endless critical stories on how Milo is slaughtering the sacred cows of open borders, feminism and the Black Lives Matter movement.
What happens next is anybodys guess. Will Milo and this new movement implode as the Sex Pistols did? Will the opposition to them prove too strong to overcome? Will they be absorbed into a new political mainstream?
Anything is possible but right now, just as in the halcyon days of punk, and whether one agrees with him or not, theres no denying that Milo, like the Sex Pistols before him, is riding the wave of the new zeitgeist.
God Save the Queen!
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How Milo and the Free Speech Libertarian Movement Resemble the Sex Pistols - Heat Street