Tim Yohannan. ¡Presente!: “What’s Left?” May 2019, MRR #432

[E]verything that was in opposition was good…
Michael Baumann, How It All Began, 1975

No one who likes swing can become a Nazi.
Arvid (Frank Whaley), Swing Kids, 1993

It was Movie Night at Maximum Rocknroll at the old Clipper Street headquarters circa 1994. The featured movie was Thomas Carter’s 1993 film Swing Kids. It was Tim and me and maybe one other person. I think Tim actually made Jiffy Pop popcorn and I had my ubiquitous six pack. The plot was simple; as the Nazi Party rises to power in pre-WWII Germany a tight countercultural scene of young kids grow their hair long, wear British fashion and use Harlem slang as they listen to banned American swing music, hold underground dances and street fight the Hitler Youth. Two rebellious young men take different paths—one into the Hitler Youth, the other into the Swing Kids and eventually jail.

The parallels to the mid-1990s were clear, with the rise of the Right politically and the explosion of punk’s second hardcore wave in the streets. After the closing credits rolled and Tim popped out the VHS tape he made the connections explicit. “Punk is like swing was in Nazi Germany. It’s the core of a revolutionary youth culture with rebellious kids resisting fascism in the streets.”

Tim loved punk, no doubt about it, but he was also on a mission. He not only wanted to cover the scene and its music, he wanted to push the politics of punk to the fore. And that link between punk music, the scene, its politics, and the fight against the Right is crucial to understanding both Tim Yo and his project, MRR. Tim considered MRR a lynchpin between punk music and the punk scene on the one hand and the Left’s fight against reactionary politics on the other hand.

Trigger warning: “What’s Left?” July 2014, MRR #374

Observant readers will know something is up once they’ve checked out the staff box. I’m only on the periphery of the latest changes, and in any case I’m not at liberty to discuss them in this column. Suffice it to say that what has recently been occurring at this magazine is forcing me once again to contemplate the 16 or so years I’ve been working for MRR, out of the 32 plus years that this magazine has been publishing. Place this in context of my some 36 years of involvement in punk, initially printing my own zine and putting on shows, and my need for reflection about the over three and a half decades of participation in the punk scene should come as now surprise. That’s just a decade shy of the time I’ve spent in lefty politics, 46 years and counting. Little wonder I’ve been doing some hard thinking lately regarding these aspects of my life and my part in them.

In turn, my concurrent political ruminations were triggered upon seeing the disconcerting YouTube of a feminist “intervention” at the May 9-11, 2014 Portland, Oregon Law & Disorder Conference. That and the increasingly acrimonious debate between Kristian Williams and the organizers of the event Patriarchy and the Movement over the tactics of individuals and groups professing identity politics within larger leftist political circles are themselves worthy of extensive analysis and discussion. For now, I was struck by the, to my mind, discordant use of the term “The Movement” by those seen in the video and the people debating these subjects on line.

I have on my bookshelves a 9×11 752-paged tome entitled “The Movement Toward a New America” edited by Mitchell Goodman. This massive cardboard-bound volume reprints news reports, articles, essays and commentary from the underground press from 1968 to 1970, along with photos and graphics, everything from the Berkeley Tribe and the Old Mole to the early Rolling Stone and the long defunct Ramparts Magazine. This book would have remained a quaint bit of nostalgia in my library but for the jarring employment of this term of inclusion by folks most of whom weren’t even alive at the heyday of the word’s currency, but who now are vociferously arguing over who or what is or isn’t a part of The Movement.

My friends and I considered ourselves part of The Movement during the 1960s and 70s. We used The Movement synonymously with the terms Socialism and The Left, one of many problems with the concept and application of the phrase The Movement. I became aware of the absurdity of The Movement label as I eased away from anarchism toward ultraleftism. And having never really felt comfortable with the whole hippie thing, I got interested in punk right around the same time, from 1979 on. Now, punk is a term both vaguer and more concrete then that of The Movement. Certainly one of the highlights of punk rock in the Bay Area in the 1990s was the creation of a substantial scene infrastructure; magazines like MRR, record labels like Alternative Tentacles, distributors like Mordam Records, all-ages venues like 924 Gilman Street, social spaces like Epicenter Zone, etc. Now that punk rock has receded from this high water mark, I’ve returned to contemplating how a magazine like MRR might insure its capable operation and financial health fr the future.

It least I’m not chasing my tail in some endless dispute over who or what is or isn’t punk. That we all feel the need for self-identification and self-definition should be obvious from the commitment and loyalty, not to mention rancor and vitriol generated by these respective idioms, The Movement and punk rock. But detailing the context and what exactly is wrong with the current use and implied definition of expressions like The Movement and punk is going to take several issues to unpack. For the moment, I’m glad that the magazine I work for doesn’t come with a “Trigger Warning.”