Anarchy and Punk Rock

I am a fan of Punk Rock, and also an An-Cap. I started my journey towards being an An-Cap in the late 80's watching Libertarian presidential debates with my brother. The ideas resonated with me and got me to start thinking about other options than just the standard Right-Left paradigm. It would be a while before I considered myself an Anarchist, but that is where my journey really began. The journey's not over, because I feel one should never stop trying to learn.

I never really heard punk rock growing up because the areas I lived in there were no radio stations that played it, and there was no internet yet for me to find in on. The first time I heard a punk rock band was when I saw Bad Religion on the David Letterman show some time in the mid 90s. I really liked the music as well as the message. At this point there was an internet, but there was not nearly as much information on it back then. There was no Google, and there was not even a Yahoo search engine at this point in time. There was a search tool called gofer that I used and was able to find the name of one other punk rock band named NOFX. As the internet expanded I was able to find more and more bands that I liked.

Fast forwarding to the current point in time I always thought there was sort of a natural connection between my Anarchist taste in music and political leanings. You can find a lot of anarchy symbols in punk rock art. If you do a quick google search you can see just what I mean. I always thought that this was a natural byproduct of punk rock being anti-authoritarian. It turns out though this is not the case.

A few days ago I was listening to an interview with "Dr. Frank" Portman who was in a punk rock band called the Mr. T Experience. He was saying that he used to talk with Tim Yohannan who was the founder of Maximum Rock and Roll, and was responsible for the introduction of the anarchy symbolism into the punk rock movement. Turns out he did not really like punk rock. So, why was he involved with it? He was an An-Com that believed the youth would overthrow the U.S. government in violent revolution to replace it with a communist utopia.

I was really surprised to learn this because I never really heard any communist rhetoric in punk rock. Some of it was a little left leaning, but mostly it was just anti-authoritarian. It's funny how different the vision of anarchy can be among different people. Even more funny, Tim Yohannan became wealthy through Maximum Rock and Roll, so if the revolution ever had come he would have been one of the first people put up against the wall and shot. Ah... sweet irony.