Musical Omens

As published at Unz Review, 1/29/17:





A bar featuring $2 cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon should never be empty. Granted, it’s a crap beer, but I’d guzzle dish water for two bucks, as long as it had some alcohol in it. So I was in The Dive for more than three hours, and during that entire time, only two other losers stumbled in. One, 30-ish, exiled himself to the furthest corner to stroke his laptop. I ended up chatting with Chris, the bar manager, and listening to his extensive playlist.

Ideally, a pub should be free from all electronic molestations, so no TV, jukebox, video games or even cellphones, say I, your next dictator. In 2012, I blundered into the Evening Star in Brighton, England, and it was paradise, I tell you, for all I heard were human voices. Lubricated by heavenly hops, intellects and dumbshits alike were spilling tales, and it was absolutely lovely. What more do you want? Our civilizational unraveling can be pinned on our increasing inability to hear each other. In 2015, I returned to the Evening Star only to discover they had installed a sound system spewing tunes nonstop.

Chris’ music did trigger a few sparks in my pickled brain. Quiz time: What do Cock Sparrer, Die Antwoord and Hank Williams III have in common? Here are some clues. From the Oi! pioneers’ “Take ‘Em All”:

We worked our way up from East End pubs
To gigs and backstage passes,
Ex boxing champs, West End clubs.
Americans in dark glasses,
Driving ten grand cars, they drink in hotel bars.
They’re even making money in bed.
They wouldn’t be no loss. They ain’t worth a toss.
It’s about time they all dropped dead.

Take ‘em all, take ‘em all,
Put ‘em up against a wall and shoot ‘em.
Short and tall, watch ‘em fall.
Come on boys, take ‘em all.

Die Antwoord’s “Rich Bitch”:

I was a victim of a kak situation,
Stuck in the system,
With no fokken assistance.
I know it sounds strange
But I used to count change
On the counter at Pick ‘n Pay
Or Shoprite Checkers.
No butter on my broodjie.
[…]
But then I got my game on.
[…]
Now I’m a rich bitch.

Hank Williams III:

Well, I was raised in a holler.
I grew up eatin’ mud,
And in my baby bottle,
It was filled with beer and blood.

Well, I got relatives here.
Some of them just don’t look quite right.
A couple of ‘em only got one eye,
That I heard that they lost in a fight.

You know why?
You got any idea, boy?
Do you know why?

Whiiiiiite trash!
Whiiiiiite trash!
Whiiiiiite trash!
Whiiiiiite trash!

Though from three different countries, England, South Africa and the U.S., and employing diverse musical styles, these acts are all expressions of the white underclass. It's debatable, however, how truly white trash are Hank Williams III and Die Antwoord.

With their Walmart fashion, oversized full-bodied hoodies, print boxers, discount bras, mullets, bad tattoos, coexistence with rats and toilet paper shortage, Die Antwoord’s celebration of white trash stereotypes constantly verges on parody, but since they’re so defiant and cool with their white trash looks, I don’t think you can equate them with, say, Flavor Flav and his in-your-face nigger ostentation.

Likewise, Hank Williams III makes white trash hip, and I envision a day when black, brown and yellow kids will become white trash wannabes instead of posing as ghetto gangstas. It won’t happen soon, though, not with the way our mainstream media operate.

The term “white trash” started as a black vernacular in the American South. British actress Fanny Kemble explains in an 1833 journal entry, “The slaves themselves entertain the very highest contempt for white servants, whom they designate as ‘poor white trash.’” In early America, poor whites had a shorter lifespan than black slaves, and they were often hired to perform tasks deemed too dangerous for slaves, a valuable commodity.

Is there any group so mocked and caricatured as the white underclass? Though disenfranchised for generations, they’re routinely depicted as the very worst of white power. Working three jobs and on food stamps, they’re somehow oppressing the affirmative action college graduated people of colors. Downing Bud after a 12-hour day, they turn on TV to see themselves portrayed as Mama June and Honey Boo Boo. If unemployed, they can watch their similars humiliate each other nonstop on Jerry Springer, with an unctuous lecture at the end on how to live.

Entire states, such as West Virginia and Tennessee, for example, are said to be inhabited by nothing but repulsive white trash, though I’ve been to both and encountered only gracious and warm individuals. To many Americans, the entire South is white trash, with some even viewing all flyover states as festering with white trash. For my Postcards book, I crisscrossed this country several times, and I always gravitated towards the cheapest drinking joints, for they suited my budget and taste. Over and over, I was welcomed.

Of course, if you keep carousing with drunks in strange towns, shit may happen, but the only time I nearly had my skull cracked was in Norristown, right outside Philly. My three harassers were two blacks and one white. Not so much trash as paranoid assholes, they thought I was a cop. Perhaps that bar was overrun with guys skipping bail or dodging a warrant, meth and coke were being dealt and the faded lady by the payphone was tricking, but, in the name of hops and barley, man, would any police department be dumb enough to send in a 5-6 Vietnamese undercover with a huge camera bag?!

Anyway, to Manhattan snobs, white trash nation begins with New Jersey, no doubt, if not Staten Island. To our coastal elites, all but themselves are trash. Further, contempt for white trash is often only thinly disguised hatred of white culture, period. These days, no white man can even whisper “white heritage” without someone nearby screaming that he’s a Nazi! Of course, only a Neo-Nazi would take pride in Erasmus, Rabelais, Rembrandt, Earl Scruggs and Milan Cathedral, etc.

Who needs Luther when you can have Martin Luther King and Luther Vandross? Who cares about Bill when you can groove to Robbie Shakespeare?

Deplored, incorrect whites seethe, but mostly discreetly or anonymously, online. Few can risk venting like the Angry Aryans:

Your Cadillac doesn’t mean a thing to me.
A bloodthirsty savage belongs overseas.

Civilization you cannot comprehend.
You cannot exist in a world of white men.

A white woman by your side,
You’re still a nigger!

A devoted life of crime,
You’re nothing but a nigger!

Uniformed in blue,
You’re still a nigger!

A lackey for the Jew,
You’re nothing but a nigger!

Of course, there are also black musicians with anti-white lyrics, but what’s different is that their race hatred is not just confined to the fringe. Take Rihanna’s “Bitch Better Have My Money.” In the video, a rich white blonde is kidnapped, stripped, hung upside down, forced to drink vodka and inhaled pot, knocked out cold, submerged under water and generally humiliated nonstop by Rihanna and two sidekicks, a Hindu and another white woman, the last inserted to blunt, not too convincingly, the song’s anti-white thrust. An idiotic, leering white cop also appears, and at the video’s end, the kidnapped blonde’s blonde husband is tied up and stabbed to death.

As knife enters flesh, you can clearly hear, twice, sick wet sounds. This murder is apparently so erotic, Rihanna executes it in a see-through top, and when it's all over, the “sexiest woman alive” is completely naked and covered only in much blood and a few dollar bills.

Some will argue that it’s only about class, but this extremely violent video is primarily an allegory about racial reparations or revenge, I insist.

So, who want this most deplorable of situations? Who benefit?