submissions
| Xiu Xiu – Pox Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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if you havent seen the video for this, look it up on youtube. a story of domestic violence and revenge told via barbie dolls. crucial. |
submissions
| Xiu Xiu – Muppet Face Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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theres an advertisement on this page for "Cat Condos at Wholesale"... are they marketing cat homes for dead cats??? |
submissions
| Gogol Bordello – Not a Crime Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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Deathsdoor99: contrary to what certain politicians and religious figures would have you believe, same-sex relations and a wider spectrum of (trans)gender identities were actually normal in many societies, unlike what we have today.
homophobia hasnt always been around, and in many places, it first appeared fairly recently with the importation of western christian values. |
submissions
| Gogol Bordello – Not a Crime Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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it could be about drugs, it could also be about homosexuality? or about the modern conception of certain human beings as "illegal"? |
submissions
| Xiu Xiu – Support Our Troops OH! (Black Angels OH!) Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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its interesting that in most of xiu xiu's songs, he's singing in a highly emotional style where he sounds like he's on the verge of crying. yet, on the song about war, he's talking in an unemotive, casual tone. it makes a statement about how normalized violence and racism is in this society.
the jocks in my high school were all well-off homophobic racist sexist white guys. they represented power in the school, with the support of the administration that was just as racist, homophobic, and sexist. it's interesting that the military is the same thing, only the principal is the US government. now there are a lot of lower class people and people of color in the military too, but they get tricked into going with promises of power over poor iraqis in the form of heavy artillery and a license to kill and torture. they also get promised money and privilege (even tho in the end a lot of veterans are screwed over) so thats where jaime's coming from when hes calling them greedy, since theyre getting ahead at the expense of tens of thousands of murdered iraqis. |
submissions
| Queen – White Man Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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the crimes committed by white men that QUEEN is singing about is still going on today.
currently, american indians are the poorest people in the united states, with poverty levels matching some of the poorest third world countries. the tribal leaders selected by the federal bureau of indian affairs are just out to make profit (often theyre not even from their supposed tribe), by selling native lands to mining companies who extract wealth while the natives see no profit, and allowing the govt to test nuclear weapons on reservations giving the residents there a variety of health problems such as cancer and infant mortality.
the indiginous people in latin america meanwhile are being pushed off their land by corrupt white-dominated governments backed by the united states, in certain cases right wing regimes are propped up with the help of the CIA (one example being pinochet and his death squads in chile). their land is being sold to cattle ranchers so americans can eat all the burgers they want, and so people that formerly lived off the land can go to work in american owned sweatshops. forced abortions, child labor, 18 hour days, slave wages, union organizers being murdered, just so americans can own more shoes than they need.
and as freddy sings, they do it through a "battle of lies" to make themselves seem righteous and blameless. |
submissions
| Matisyahu – Chop 'Em Down Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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anti-enviromental? clearly, chop em down is a metaphor he is using, and not a call to chop down the rain forests. this is the story of the slaves in egypt liberating themselves, and then "walk through the desert". in the desert, there arent forests to be chopping down, only the oppressor.
as for him being a religious fanatic, well, that would describe many reggae musicians. rastafari and hasidism are pretty similiar, and the themes in matisyahu's music are the same as most rasta roots music only he says hashem instead of jah. |
submissions
| Against Me! – Baby, I'm an Anarchist! Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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kalleigh, i suggest you try to examine what you describe as human nature. contrary to what you may think, race, gender, class, nationalism, and other forms of power hierarchies have not been in existance forever. they have been created by human societies, and plenty examples exist of human societies where these power inequalities were not present. the concept of human nature is just something thats been made up to justify the continuation of oppression and assure that the people wont try to resist. |
submissions
| Bikini Kill – White Boy Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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i dont think bikini kill (or any women for that matter) have the power to be sexist. if we lived in a society where women systematically raped and abused men, then they would be sexist, but until that happens, theyre just speaking the truth about male violence. and also, that is not an issue of a few men, but of a whole rape culture ("your whole fucking culture alienates me"). there are plenty of men out there who might not rape themselves, but will be perfectly complicit with their male friends who do rape, or complicit with the rapes that are committed by the US army (you may have read recently about the hundreds of women raped by soldiers in the phillipines, or the all the other allegations that have come out in the past few years about rape in iraq and afghanistan). of course, there are men who do resist against this violent culture. i'm a white boy myself. those of us who really are committed to stopping rape though really need to start proving it, and intervene when men we know are responsible for violence against women, whether these men are our friends, family, or the US army. |
submissions
| The Smiths – Shoplifters of the World Unite Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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reading everything morrissey writes as a metaphor for his sexuality is homophobic. its like saying that just because hes bisexual, he cant write about any other part of his identity or experience since ALL he is is a bisexual first, a human being second. im bisexual as well, but that doesnt mean that i dont have a complicated identity. i also grew up poor and thus had to shoplift a lot. there are of course connections that can be made: both shoplifting and sodomy are listed crimes, and therefore poor people and non-heterosexuals are turned into society's criminals. the old slogan used to inspire poor people to "unite and take over" was 'workers of the world unite'. since many poor people today are unemployed, they cant really be considered workers, so morrissey is uniting poor people who are shoplifters. but who are the real thieves? the only way the rich got all their wealth was by stealing it from other people, stealing their land, their labor, even their cultures and self-esteem. they have even created an economy that depends on constant war in order to maintain affluence ("last night the plans for a future war / were all i saw on channel four"). the rich's lack of caring for the rest of us is expressed by morrissey in his experience getting apprehended by a store security guard: "a heartless hand on my shoulder / a push and it's over". even though these security guards might not be rich themselves, they're used by the rich to inflict violence. ive seen kids CHOKED by security guards, and you may have seen on the news how wal-mart security guards in texas KILLED a man stealing diapers for his baby. |
submissions
| Green Day – Minority Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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the so-called minorities are never really the minorities. whites like to think of themselves as the majority but in fact the vast majority of people in this world are not white. yet, they're still classified as "different" by white people and the media. there are hardly anyone out there, let alone a majority of people, who fit the idealized, racist, homophobic standards that are passed off as "normal". |
submissions
| Propagandhi – Bent Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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i dont think this this song is attacking straight-edge, i think its attacking narrow-minded straight (as in heterosexual) people who believe that everyone needs to conform to their sexuality. by the way, "bent" is a word that used to be used as a derogatory slur against queer folk, but propagandhi is reclaiming it in a resistant way much like other non-heterosexual people have started using the word "queer" in a positive way.
sexuality is what i immedietly thought of when i heard the lyrics about urges being suppressed for so long. for some people, only having sex with someone of the opposite gender might be "right for them", but turning their preferance into "the rule" iis "wrong" for everyone else. |
submissions
| Propagandhi – Bent Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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i dont think this this song is attacking straight-edge, i think its attacking narrow-minded straight (as in heterosexual) people who believe that everyone needs to conform to their sexuality. by the way, "bent" is a word that used to be used as a derogatory slur against queer folk, but propagandhi is reclaiming it in a resistant way much like other non-heterosexual people have started using the word "queer" in a positive way.
sexuality is what i immedietly thought of when i heard the lyrics about urges being suppressed for so long. for some people, only having sex with someone of the opposite gender might be "right for them", but turning their preferance into "the rule" iis "wrong" for everyone else. |
submissions
| Propagandhi – Haillie Sellasse, Up Your Ass Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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i think that this song is more directly aimed at the israeli jews who have become influenced by rastafari. many of them are hyper-nationalists and go off to the illegally occupied west bank and gaza strip to become settlers on stolen palestinian land. these territories are THEIR "promised land", NOT the promised land of the rastas. the zion that the rastas refer to is not israel/palestine, but ethiopia (and more generally, africa). unlike the jewish zionists, the rastas in jamaica, grenada, canada, etc dont believe in a physical migration to their promised land until freedom is achieved where they're living now. this is what hallie sellasse told the global rasta community upon his trip to jamaica in the 60s.
another line that makes it clear that this song is about zionists is "you simply fill the gap between the upper and lower class", referring to the middle class status that most of the rasta-influenced zionist settlers have. the upper class are the powerful white americans who need israel as a strategic US ally as well as the israeli power elite made up of mostly jews of european descent. conversely, the settlers are mostly poorer jews of middle eastern and african descent. the upper class puts them in extremely dangeous settlements in the middle of war zones so they can expand israel's territorial assets and serve as de facto military bases for the israeli army, in order to protect the rest of israel from the palestinians, who are the lower class. this situation is certainly not beneficial to the settlers, but their faith in religion and nationalism "keeps them in line". |
submissions
| Against Me! – Baby, I'm an Anarchist! Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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i tend to believe that this song is a liberal-bashing anthem (in the tradition of phil och's "love me, i'm a liberal"...check out the lyrics) rather than a critique of anarchists, as some people have written. in order to justify their liberal complacency, they have wrongly interperted the song as some sort of satire. against me! has a clear message to these people at the end of the song:
"you thought i was only joking when i was screaming, 'kill whitey' at the top of my lungs at the cops in their cars and the men in their suits."
these anarcho punks are not joking around!
we live in a global system of racist white supremacy. all people of color are oppressed under this system, especially the poor and especially folks in the so-called third world, while white folks are rewarded with immense privilege and material benefits. in order to achieve the abolishment of all heirarchy (the ultimate goal of anarchism) all forms of power must be destroyed (hense, "kill whitey"...as long as the white race exists as a social classification, there will be oppression of people classified as non-white).
even though the anarcho punk scene that against me! comes from is mostly white, many support the struggles of people of color, or in other words, work in solidarity with them to fight racism. liberals, on the other hand, are not in solidarity with this struggle and only work for their own selfish needs, to protect their property and privilege. as against me! says, they "call the cops on the looters"....just think about the violent police repression against the poor black folks trying to feed their families after katrina and the complicity of the white liberals and their politicians. |
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