Randomly watching a youtube documentary on punk legends Dead Kennedys, and the host made a statement towards the end that just slapped me upside the head. Referencing "Holiday In Cambodia" which is about snotty college kids thinking they understand the sufferings of oppressed people around the world, "the sort of larger topic of smug activists shouting slogans from the safety and comfort of their is even more relevant now than ever in the age of Twitter" This was dated four months ago, before the recent college pro-Hamas unholy clusters, but man, it hits the nail on the head. Some things don't change, even 44 years after that song originally came out.
I know there's not a lot of punk fans in here, but DK and Jello Biafra (the original singer and main lyricist) while leaning heavily left on many issues were not above calling out business as usual politicians (California Uber Allies is about Jerry Brown when he was governor, Jello's spoken word stuff ripped Bill Clinton for just passing Republican plans, griped about NAFTA hurting US and Mexican workers as well the environment, Jello ran for mayor of SF against Dianne Feinstein back in the 80s) , and corporate hypocrites, and there's some agreement on some issues (no WTO/globalization was a big one for Jello in recent years). I listen to them and Jello's solo/spoken word stuff and much of it really makes me think there's a lot more common ground than many people think, and if people across the spectrums would stop letting the various divisive folks do their divisive things, we would all be a lot better off.
The video about the band in general is
here the comment and commentary I mentioned start about 17:44 if you just don't want to see the whole thing (I think you should see the whole thing)
A video DK did for Holiday In Cambodia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNMT4CCj7b0
