Romance Or Radical?
A new song by the band Stabbing Westward is hitting it big on the airwaves. In August the band opened for the Sex Pistols along with Gravity Kills.
At a Massachusetts concert the band's lead singer said, "I don't understand not playing with the Sex Pistols. Who wouldn't open for the Sex Pistols?" in reference to the fact that another band turned down the chance. So Stabbing Westward looks up to the Sex Pistols which indeed did not get shown up by Stabbing Westward or Gravity Kills being some poor rehash of its old self.
The Sex Pistols of 1977 and 1978 were the epitome of punk rock. Now, without their old bass player, they still sound like their records of the old days and they didn't play any love songs at their Massachusetts appearance this August. What the Sex Pistols do say about love in their songs is scathingly sarcastic.
However, Stabbing Westward's song brings us back to the decadent romance culture with a vengeance. "What I was died with your belief in me. . . I don't know what's true emotion. HOW CAN I HAVE SEX WITHOUT YOU!". This last sentence is yelled staccato and screams for our militant submission to the romance culture. According to Stabbing Westward's lead singer, he doesn't know emotion or sex without his lover.
In any kind of popular music in the imperialist countries, a central criterion is can the music entertain without relying on and reinforcing the romance culture? For MIM, Stabbing Westward's energies are misplaced and sold-out to the romance culture. There is much that needs to be said and done with a vengeance, writing more love songs is not one of them.
It is typical in the decadence of imperialism that the strongest feelings of the youth concern the romance culture. The system reinforces the idea that there seems to be nothing of importance to engage the youth with otherwise. The imperialists have no forward-looking agenda to tap the energies of youth, except offering bought off complacence into the oppressive culture. Because the imperialist education and media system does not allow youth to learn of or gain contact with the life-and-death struggle of the international proletariat, romance culture seems like the only alternative. MIM sees, as a principal contradiction within the white nation, an antagonism between youth and imperialism. The limited offerings from imperialism are a short lived existence of environmental degradation and world-wide oppression. To the pent up anger and vengeance of Amerikan youth, MIM says to organize with the internationally oppressed, and build a real movement against imperialist limitation and oppression.