Millions of Red Bops

Part II Part III Part IV

Lenin recognized that the class struggle takes on many different forms. In our postmodern world, it can take on multiple forms at once. Class analysis in any sphere can help us determine which classes are associated with what in any given sphere, and then to see how the class struggle is playing out in even innocuous-appearing aspects of daily life. The results of this analysis may be utterly surprising, may even fly in the face of one's preconceived notions.

A different aspect of the class struggle that pertains to this, first named as such by Mao Zedong, is self-criticism. Given Mao's middle class interests, self-criticism devolved into a toxic tool of power during the Cultural Revolution, as it was abused to perpetuate the interests of the Gang of Four and their young accomplices by accusing other people first of what they themselves tended to be guilty of. This poisoned the well, and made more honest accusations in reverse look like dishonest mudslinging. An entire nation was held hostage thereby at the hands of their own Red Guards for several years. It remains equally abrasive and manipulative a tool on Leftbook today, where our own middle class socialists use it to lawyer other socialists into doing their will. If you've ever heard the phrase "self-crit or quit" in some Leftbook group run by toxic spoiled Western kiddos, this is where it comes from.

Nonetheless, when the process of self-criticism is initiated by one's self, it is a powerful method for ascertaining the truth. Admitting when one is wrong is the beginning of wisdom, and if knowledge is power, then self-criticism leads to power. But it is a humbling experience and therefore not easy, and so is often not done if there is any other route to obtaining power over one's circumstances. This is why the most inveterate narcissists are to be found in the bourgeoisie and middle classes, because they have the least need to self-criticize as a road to obtaining personal power.

I may have been born to the middle class, but as a class traitor I have no such qualms. I hate butt rock, just like the more advanced elements of the rest of my class, and that is bad praxis of me, of us all. And with a sweet ideological hook like that, you've got no choice but to read the rest of this and find out where I'm going with this.

"Butt rock" derives its name from the various rock stations across America that bill themselves as playing "nothing but rock." For the terminally online, butt rock is what "Kyles" listen to. Disturbed, Korn, Nickelback, Puddle of Mudd, Trapt - I could go on, but I believe most of my audience gets the point. Butt rock might have some crossover with classic rock; I've seen some people classify AC/DC (which I'm listening to right now, as a matter of fact) as butt rock. Sometimes hair metal from the 80s makes the cut; Warrant, Poison, etc. The exact borders of butt rock are nebulous at best, but what's meant by butt rock is fairly obvious.

I used to work as a bartender in college, pouring drinks at a popular bar for a mostly college-age clientele. I don't follow sports, but I was on a first-name basis with the entire football team, who would show up on Thursday nights for our free pitchers and tip me well with every pitcher. It was a great job, I hustled hard but got paid well for it. The only thing I really didn't like about the job was those nights when there wasn't live music, because I would inevitably listen to the same fifty or so butt rock jams. But there was nothing to be done about it. I even asked the manager about it once, an affable guy we all loved working for, and he shrugged about it. He didn't much like the music either, but those songs were a money printing machine. People came in because we were playing that music at high volume. People not me, granted, but they came in, bought drinks, and tipped well.

Who were these people? At the time, I was a precocious libertarian still not really class analyzing the world around me, but buying into fake news nostrums that purported to explain society. I figured they were just a bunch of low-information people who hadn't been exposed to good music, who liked Nickelback because they didn't know any better. Looking back, I would like to confess my anti-Soviet behavior against the proletariat, and beg the mercy of the movement for my arrogance and my ignorance, because those Nickelback fans were and are the working class.

In a way, calling them "low-information people," which was just a polite way to avoid calling them "ignorant," is accurate. Those parts of the working class that aren't aware of their class interests, which is to say most of them, and even moreso back then, are taken in by false consciousness. But then again, who was I to be thinking this? My libertarian ass was taken in by false consciousness too, but because I got good grades and listened to the Cure and Pink Floyd, I whispered to myself that I was special. Better than the mouth breathers. It's remarkable the kinds of dumbshit narratives we can tell ourselves based on aesthetics; just how insidious the false consciousness can be, that it can get inside our own minds and trick us into repeating it to ourselves and others.

Continue on to Part II