5 Feet of Fury

Gavin McInnes on punk philosophy, from the new book ‘The Truth of Revolution, Brother’

Gavin McInnes says:

What I think is interesting about punk, as far as the mentality and ethos of it goes, is that people assume it was a unified thing. I saw it more as two disparate groups, and they were based on class. (…)

I was with Gee Vaucher at Occupy Wall Street and there was a guy with a Crass T-shirt on manning a table with the Communist Manifesto on it. Gee said, “What’s that? What are you on about?” The guy did that thing that I did when I was his age and said, “Well actually it’s more metaphorical, it’s more about the concept of equality and blah, blah, blah.” So, she goes, “No! This is all about oppression.” Then he goes, “Well Communism, you know, it was really good for a lot of people, you are just taking some bad examples…” Then, out of nowhere some dude, some 70 year-old guy from Czechoslovakia says something like, “Excuse me, I grew up under communism. I know of Stalin. Don’t tell me about this fascism. I lived it.” So it was Gee now, and this old Czechoslovakian, two white-haired people hammering on this stupid kid and he had no idea he was in an argument with someone from Crass.

This is an incredibly roundabout way of saying that what I appreciated about punk and about anarcho-punk was the “fuck the government” perspective. Fuck these ruthless morons telling us what to do with our lives and our money. That’s all politicians are. They’re not Machiavellian geniuses planning out the fate of the world, they are immoral people with low IQs, who would be in sales or acting if they weren’t so ugly. Let’s stop bequeathing them all this authority.