‘PUNK’S NOT DEAD!’ I will sometimes write as a sign-off on emails to mates when I’ve said something particularly ‘bad’. It’s something of a joke with me; although I was around the scene early on (1976) and started my career off as a 17-year-old writing about punk, I didn’t much like it. I liked black music – disco, Motown, soul; I thought that most white music was just a nasty old racket.

The establishment has moved from right to left but remains sexist, snobbish and racist

But I do like the phrase, implying as it does a refusal to bow down to the establishment. Although we had a Labour government from 1974, it’s fair to say that the establishment of the 1970s was a fusty right-wing thing, sexist and racist and snobbish. But funnily enough, it’s still sexist and snobbish, in that women and the working-class are expected to obey (transvestite) men and the liberal elite respectively; it’s not racist in the old vulgar way but in a modish, middle-class way, dealing in the poverty of low expectations, seen best in that hilarious Labour election promise that only Jeremy Corbyn ‘can be trusted to unlock the talent of black, Asian and minority ethnic people’ when the Tory cabinet already featured more black, Asian and minority ethnic people than a Labour one ever had. Oh, and racism is also judging people on the colour of their skin as opposed to the content of their character – as Martin Luther King preferred – which is inherent in every diversity and inclusion drive, every taking of the knee, every ‘black-out’ theatre performance. When people of colour refuse to lose their agency by identifying as underdogs and waiting for whitey to save them (some to the point of becoming Conservative politicians), they may be called ‘coconuts’ and all sorts of nasty names – but in a caring, anti-racist way.

QOSHE - Transgressive / Terfs are the new punks - Julie Burchill
menu_open
Columnists Actual . Favourites . Archive
We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close
Aa Aa Aa
- A +

Transgressive / Terfs are the new punks

17 27
15.03.2024

‘PUNK’S NOT DEAD!’ I will sometimes write as a sign-off on emails to mates when I’ve said something particularly ‘bad’. It’s something of a joke with me; although I was around the scene early on (1976) and started my career off as a 17-year-old writing about punk, I didn’t much like it. I liked black music – disco, Motown, soul; I thought that most white music was just a nasty old racket.

The establishment has moved from right to left but........

© The Spectator


Get it on Google Play