Amanda Marcotte in Slate argues that hardcore punk (at least archetypically) is left-wing, therefore Wade Michael Page was not hardcore. To me, that’s a no-true-Scotsman. Punk is a musical genre, and while some subsets of it like straight-edge have a more normative component, merely being hardcore just indicates the musical qualities. And more ironic than neo-nazi hardcore punks building on the legacy of the Bad Brains (at least they can agree on the gays) is that the skinhead subculture itself began with white Britons imitating Jamaican dock-workers, flocking to reggae acts like Symarip at dancehalls.
Title courtesy of a song by Kill the Man Who Questions, a band I think would have been right up Marcotte’s alley.
UPDATE: Check out Scott Galupo’s elaboration, with some citation of Crispin Sartwell.
August 7, 2012 at 6:33 pm
It’s not hardcore, but I always like to mention that Johnny Ramone was a republican and part of the Ramones sound was a retro yearning for fifties and sixties rock (songs like Rock and Roll Radio pay homage to this).
Dee Dee was a drug addict who played bass. Joey was the liberal.
If you’ve listened to Joey’s solo work, it’s fair to attribute a good deal of punk’s sound to Johnny, who thought Reagan was the best president.
August 8, 2012 at 12:15 am
If you check out my link in the update, Johnny Ramone claimed that part of the Ramones 50s aesthetic was that the music would be “white”. I suppose the lack of minor chords and blues elements is partly why I don’t like them as much as other punk bands.
Mohammed Chang is an interesting but fake-sounding name. It reminds me of the factoid that Mohammed is the most common first name and Lee is the most common last name, but Lee isn’t nearly as non-western sounding as Mohammed. Chang is a much more archetypically oriental surname.
August 10, 2012 at 1:38 pm
Glad you got the gag. Not my real name, but I did find the head shot I use for my avatar by googling it. I remember reading, incorrectly it appears, that Mohammed and Chang were the most common male name and surname on the planet, the goof being that if a clueless alien were to try to use the two, he’d wind up with an exceedingly rare full name by mistake.
August 15, 2012 at 5:14 pm
Doing some googling, Zhang/Chang does indeed seem to be the most common surname. China apparently only has 438 of them.