The Dead Kennedys Versus BDS
In 2009, about one month after the end of the IDF’s military operation against Hamas, I wrote and produced a short film for online viewing, titled Vilified: Telling Lies About Israel. Within a day of being uploaded, the film had registered an audience of thousands. Over the following week, the viewer numbers continued to climb impressively.
And then the film got pulled by YouTube.
I’d dearly like to report this as a case of political censorship, but the sad truth is that copyright violation was the reason. At the beginning of the film, over a sequence that detailed the gruesome loss of life in those conflicts routinely ignored because Gaza hogs the media limelight, we used the opening bars of a song called “Holiday in Cambodia,” by the Dead Kennedys. With its sinister flashes of echoing guitar set against an ominous, cascading riff, the music was perfect, and certainly helped our film on its viral odyssey. Only we didn’t clear the rights — mea culpa — and that silly error meant that all those views were obliterated at the touch of a button.
At the time, I did wonder if an anti-Zionist sensibility had played a role in the complaint to YouTube from the Dead Kennedys’ publishers. Hence, I took a great deal of pleasure when I learned, this week, that none other than Jello Biafra, the lead singer of the Dead Kennedys, had become the latest member of the club of performing artists whose decision to play in Israel attracted the venom of the BDS lobby, whose initials stand for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel. But does that mean I was wrong about him entirely?
Biafra and his band, which rejoices in the name Guantanamo School of Medicine, had been due to play at Tel Aviv’s Barby club on July 2. The news of this engagement left the BDS movement aghast and angry. Biafra is not Justin Bieber, after all; given his status as a demi-god in the anarcholeftist universe of punk rock’s West Coast incarnation, the Tel Aviv concert represented a wounding betrayal. “We implore you to cancel your ‘Holiday in Tel Aviv!’” begged a petition sponsored by a group called Punks Against Apartheid, in an allusion to the Dead Kennedy’s Cambodian ditty.
After a bitter back and forth between Biafra and his detractors, the singer finally relented. There would be no concert in Tel Aviv, he told his followers, although he would still visit “Israel and Palestine to check things out myself.” At the same time, he did not hide his contempt for the BDS movement:
Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine are not going through with the July 2 date in Tel Aviv. This does not mean I or anyone else in the band are endorsing or joining lockstep with the boycott of all things Israel. … I know far more about this issue than some people think I do, and I am not a poodle for Hasbara, Peace Now, BDS or anyone else. … Calling anyone speaking up for Palestinian rights a “terrorist” is dumb. So are the blanket condemnations of everyone who happens to be Israeli that seem to be coming from the “drive all the Jews into the sea” crowd. … I can’t back anyone whose real goal or fantasy is a country ethnically cleansed of Jews or anyone else.
If you read Biafra’s statement in its entirety, you will notice that its utter confusion is what makes it fascinating. On the one hand, Biafra repeats the standard formulae of the extreme left. On the other, he grasps a critical reality that eludes most of the apparently informed commentators on the Middle East: Israel’s enemies include a sizeable chunk of folk who want the country and its people to meet a violent demise. Remember, this isn’t ZOA speaking, but a snarling punk whose song “Moral Majority” ended with the observation, “God must be dead/If you’re alive.”
Still, there are words and there are deeds, and Biafra’s decision to cancel the Tel Aviv concert is what matters. Already, his about-turn has been seized upon by BDS activists as a victory.
Interesting article.
One could point out the utter confusion Ben Cohen exhibits throughout this article, I’ll limit myself to pointing out that JB’s version of I Fought The Law is about the murderer of Harvey Milk, not himself. And that if John Lydon had taken the opposite view you’d be touting # I don’t want a holiday in the sun, I want to go to the new Belsen # as a sign of his irredeemable anti-semitism.
When Johnny Rotten sang:”I don’t want a holiday in the sun, I want to go to the new Belsen. I want to see some history, cuz now I got a reasonable economy”
I don’t think he was being anti-Semitic at all. I have always understood this lyric a put-down of poverty-tourism, liberals in affluent countries who boast of all the oppressed peoples they have visited on their vacation, which for them has come to take the place of the more traditional holiday on the beach.
Amen, Naif!
The Frenchies, Belgians who go to the dark continent’s former French-controlled colonies for holiday is despicable, yet sold as ‘diversity/hip chic’.
The same can be said of the same EU types who go to Cuba as well. Hey, never mind the thousands upon thousands of political prisoners, Euro-types. Just keep the self-absorbed blinders on and continue weaving to the samba..!
As for DK’s Biafra or ‘Count Ringworm’, the man hasn’t hid his political stripes nor beliefs. He plays 1 camp against the other, it’s been his forte for some time. He WAS and is the Mel Brooks of punk, the Andy Kaufman of comedy, making a point to insult everyone. Thus having no firm conviction, stance or belief in said causes he sings or ‘spoken words’ of. A flim-flam man of the highest regard.
One of many if not always the instance of, ‘Separating the man from the music’.
Though “California Über Alles” was a much needed ‘tonic’ when stationed in the military and attending nearby U C Davis!
Actions speak louder indeed. Better that he say nothing and perform like my hero Warren Haynes did a year ago.
Jello Biafra’s decision not to play Tel Aviv will come as a deep disappointment to any jello Biafra fans there may be in Israel.
The BDS and Biafra need to wonder why there are no punk bands coming out of the Arab middle east. I’m sure they could visit those countries and find plenty material to write and sing about.
The ultimate punk would not play in Tel Aviv but in Damascus and make his entire set a 90-minute version of Rock The Casbah
Do a documentary and don’t add any music. Let the pictures and the dialogue speak for themselves. More powerful that way rather than loading it up with a lot of background noise.
Don’t look for any cultural revolution to emerge from Islam any time soon. Such things as long hair and punk derive from a type of cultural self-loathing and repeated generational disdain for one’s parents.
They like their parents in cultural supremacist Islam, even when they can’t do a single frickin’ thing and that’s the key. Americans came to hate and feel guilty about their parent’s generation and its success. How can you rebel against success when you have no experience with it? Failure is the great motivator within Islam and not the easy and somewhat embarrassing success of an American culture that has dominated a world.
It’s a Western thing and the contrast between young Islam’s musical tastes and those in the West is as stark as between the empty pop of Michael Jackson and the subversion of Jefferson Airplane. There is still subversion with rock but it is an empty U2-like event entirely staged because even Lennon was subverted by his cash as he had no trouble “imagining” what it was like to hobnob with the rich and artistic elite. He had a bit of a problem there as he started to become the corporation he once railed against and made fun of. But then that’s the fate of all revolutions and why people want to get married in a castle instead of a grocery warehouse.
The interesting thing is that Islam has co-opted the success of an ant colony by simple breeding, immigration and insistence while the West is an example of cultural suicide, unable for some reason to live with the fact of their own innovation and success and determined to leaven their own racism with a “healthy” dose of minorities who will not always be minorities and will have no success to loath but only their own repeated failure to score 30 points a game and that is quite a different imperative.
Look at the basis of all punk and more political rock and the message is that success is immoral and failure noble. Black/white, Gaza/Israel, Latin America/America and on into the sunset and I DO mean sunset.
Watch “Game of Thrones” and see what happens to “nice” societies and people and realize that George R.R. Martin was just echoing a very real world where the blithe ease of trust within America was an exception and not the rule we came to believe it was. The Third World has far different ideas and experiences about such things. They are bringing it to the West and have not the capacity to create an easy society but only to tear one down by their mere presence.
Unless you think Brazil is like Brazil and Nigeria like Nigeria because of reasons other than the people who inhabit such places.
It’s difficult to judge this. Mr. Biafra has to make a living in the limited milieu of punk rock. He knows he’s being threatened with blacklisting and is not happy about it but it’s not like he has a choice of becoming all the rage in Vegas. I’d cut him some slack there. Are we asking him to martyr himself and his career over this? It would appear that he would justifiably oppose actual apartheid and genocide but, apparently, doesn’t see Israel doing any such thing. And it also appears he is willing to speak out on the subject. My jury is out on this issue.
It’s actually easy to judge because it’s punk. With any other genre the argument of fear of losing your income is relevant, but punk is supposed to be against all that. It’s an ideological genre, it’s based 100% on attitude and defiance. It’s musical form is based on ideology. Without that ideology its musical form has no leg to stand on. It supposed to be 100% authentic, it’s supposed to be from the guts, it’s supposed to be 100% thinking for yourself, doing what you deem right, being individualist, going against the establishment, not being part of the herd, not selling yourself to commerce and such. Therefore by caving in Biafra stopped being punk in any meaningful sense of the word.
What shocked me (in a positive way) about Johnny Lydon was his political position. It wasn’t like Biafra’s. He uniquely expressed 100% support for the Israeli people. Of course, he said he doesn’t support the Israeli government because he supports no government and no government supports him, which is mandatory for Lydon and punk, but he said he stands 100% behind the Israeli people. He mocked with contepmt the artists who cave in to the BDS pressure. When they held demonstrations in one of his concerts he said yes, he was going to go to Israel, he said: “I support no f—ing government anywhere. Never have, never will. But here’s a nice little fact for the fools in [couldn't hear] t-shirts: Jews are people too”. In Israel he said they’re a bunch of pathetic whites who know nothing about the Middle East.
I wasn’t surprised Lydon didn’t cave in, I was only surprised he had such an independent point of view, though he always had an independent point of view, but that was a really radical case of a non-herd mentality. Punks are a herd just as much, if not more, as anyone else. But Lydon was always the real deal in this regard. Of course, he’s sort of a sellout for doing commercials, but when the sh-t hit the fan he defied it and was willing to pay the price for making a principled stand. Now, that’s a real punk. That’s who Lydon always was. And a test like this shows you what each man is really made of.
Here’s the video of Lydon telling it to the demonstrators:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hXw8awOERQ
No one I know has ever heard of Jello Biafra.
If we knew who he was we’d definitely be devastated that he won’t be coming to play in Israel. But hey, Moby is coming, and we have heard of him (and quite a few others who will be appearing in Israel this summer.
Hey, maybe he cancelled because no one bought any tickets and he’s trying to save face.
Please. The only thing better than the Dead Kennedys criticizing the boycott by playing in Israel would be the Dead Kennedys criticizing the boycott and not playing in Israel. Why inflict them on Tel Aviv? Couldn’t we send quality musicians without political egos larger than Jinna Carter’s?
In determining what to do — as distinct from what to say — Biafra would have been well-advised to consult the emperor of punk, John Lydon, or Johnny Rotten, as he was known during hs days as the Sex Pistols’ front man.
Also Elton John, who told BDS to cram it.
and Deep Purple, who also told the BDS bullies to sod off.
He will succumb to the leftist overlords because he needs to make money, it is that simple. As leftists age, the contradictions become more apparent.
Johnny Ramone was a true blue conservative. Punk movement is loaded with closet conservatives.
Lydon Faces Second Race Claim.
Again my point is not to claim that he is a racist, but that if he had boycotted Israel that’s exactly what you’d all be saying now.
Look! It’s trying to talk, just like a real boy, how sweet! I wonder what it thinks it’s saying?
If, if, if … if you had a brain, your IQ still wouldn’t come close to three digits.
Or, he’s just another musician, one who happened to play in a genre that the air-headed and addle-minded projected their politics on.
I have never understood some punks’ fascination with totalitarian BS. Then again, the Dallas scene was largely apolitical (and not violent at all) when I was running around in it…
Punk did certainly have some nice counter-intuitive music in it, like Screeching Weasel’s I don’t give a f**k about Nicaragua, which totally ripped into coffee-house liberals.
As my friend said, Jello seems to have lived up to his name: wiggly, wavering, not solid.
I live in Tel Aviv, bought a ticket for the show and was disappointed that it was cancelled. However, the Barby club opened its doors for a free gig by three Israeli punk bands which was was packed. Everyone had a great time and Jello’s absence didn’t seem to make much of a difference. Israelis just get on with their lives. I think Jello missed out on more than we did by not coming. In his cancellation notice he said he’d travel here anyway to check out the place with his own eyes but no word yet of his arrival…