Anti-Fascist Punk Music: A History
Jes Skolnick writes: ‘In its four decades, punk has meant many different things to many different people. Its relationship to fascism, the specter of which has stopped rattling its chains from history books and re-appeared in the West, is one of the most complicated examples of how aesthetics and philosophy can appeal
to both anti-authoritarian and deeply repressive positions. You can find it in punk’s beginnings, as a reaction to the cultural forces of generations prior, the long shadow of World War II among them. Ron Asheton of the Stooges collected and wore Nazi memorabilia to signify his bond with his father, a former Marine Corps pilot. Sid Vicious’ swastika was a fuck-you to his parents’ generation, and largely orchestrated by the (Jewish) Malcolm McLaren. And the electric eels just wanted to piss everyone off equally.’
