Make Rock Music Great Again
Jacobin sings for white men.
Last week Jacobin, a supposedly left magazine, ran a confused rant by critic Jarek Paul Ervin about how the rebirth of white male rock music and the defeat of Kamala Harris are the twin signs of the leftist millennium.
If that sounds like it’s completely incoherent nonsense utterly divorced from our current politics or for that matter our current musical landscape—well, yes. The fact that the Strokes are still performing and making new music does not in fact, contra Ervin, tell us anything in particular about left politics; nor does the fact that Katy Perry is awful tell us much about the Democratic party. Art is political, but jumping up and down and screaming that the genres you like are good politics and the genres you don’t are bad politics just makes you look like an ignorant fannish dolt—not least when you keep pretty directly implying that one big thing you like about the genre you’re touting is that it’s by and for white men.
Robin James has a good analysis of Ervin’s tiresome misogyny and of his (not coincidental!) failure to understand current trends in rock, many of which (surprise!) are not actually being led by white men. (As a complimentary piece, you could check out my essay from sometime back about how critics often define rock by whiteness—a piece that Ervin mentions, but doesn’t appear to have read.)
Since James has already torn apart Ervin’s logic, I thought I’d instead talk briefly about his affect. Bigotry, after all, is often not just in what you say but in how you say it. Here, for example, is Ervin on Trump’s win in 2024.
When Taylor Swift endorsed the vice president, people were ready to call the election then and there. After all, they secured her army, as Team Kamala rushed out to sell Swiftie-style friendship bracelets. Look how that turned out.
This paragraph isn’t really making an argument; it does not provide a cause-and-effect link between Swift endorsing Harris and Harris’ loss. Instead, it simply adopts a sneering tone and connects that tone to markers of femininity—like Swift, like Harris, and like (especially) those cringey friendship bracelets, associated with the thoroughgoing unhipness of girls and young women. Of course Swift couldn’t win; of course Harris couldn’t win. Winning is for white guys.
The white guy who won in this case, of course, was not Ervin’s beloved Bernie Sanders (who endorsed Harris.) The white guy who won was Donald Trump.
You wouldn’t think that Jacobin would really want to celebrate that, given Trump’s brutal assault on labor power, just as one for instance. And yet, I think it’s clear from that paragraph that Ervin is celebrating Harris’ loss and Trump’s win. He is gleeful that Trump put Harris and Swift in their places—those places being, apparently, subordinate to white men. Ervin didn’t quote Trump bawling, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”, but he might as well have.
The point here is not that you need to love Kamala Harris. Nor is it that you need to love Taylor Swift. I am not much of a fan of either, personally. But there’s a big difference between criticizing Harris’ politics or Swift’s music and saying that they have cooties because they are women and think friendship bracelets are kind of fun. Also, there is a big difference between criticizing them and celebrating their loss at the hands of a misogynist fascist because you, like that misogynist fascist, believe that white men need to rise once more to make America great again.
No doubt Ervin would insist he is not calling for white men to rise once more. But what else does it mean when he cheers on the fall of Harris and Swift while not-even-very-implicitly crowing about Trump’s victory? What does it mean when he bemoans the absence of “white male rock artists associated with indie or alternative rock”—not rock artists in general, but specifically white male rock artists—from the New York Times list of best living songwriters? Ervin follows that up by expressing his disgust for Charli XCX—a performer who, as Robin James points out, is very much the heir of the indie rock tradition Ervin claims to care about. But he’s not able to see her as such because she’s not a white guy—and because she endorsed a Black woman.
It’s also telling that Ervin does not mention the most high profile white male rock star political act of the last year—Bruce Springsteen’s song and video “Streets of Minneapolis,” protesting the extrajudicial executions of Renée Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of Trump’s gestapo ICE militia.
Springsteen’s call for multiracial solidarity against tyranny seems like it should be exactly the sort of thing you’d celebrate in a left article about the ongoing relevance of rock music. Ervin ignores it though, because, while it should fit his thesis, it is out of sync with his affect. Springsteen is rallying people against Trump, a white man who represents white supremacy and misogyny.
Ervin’s article only expresses contempt, disgust, and loathing for women—Taylor Swift, Kamala Harris, Hilary Clinton, Megan Thee Stallion, Charli XCX—and occasionally for white men who admit to supporting women and their music, like critic Carl Wilson. Even when he praises The Strokes for taking an (admirable) stand against the Iran war, he somehow doesn’t mention who started that war. If you didn’t know better, you’d think it was Taylor Swift who murdered Iranian schoolchildren, and not the guy whose victory Ervin seems to find so satisfying.
Again, you’d think a left publication would have a lot more smoke for the Nazi piece of shit who is gutting the social safety net, is feverishly erecting concentration camps, and is on course to murder 14 million people across Africa and Asia than for musicians who endorsed said Nazi piece of shits opponents in the hopes of preventing him from murdering people. But who you have smoke for is often less about facts on the ground and more about vibes.
And vibes often help fascists, because vibes and bigotry are often the exact same thing. Women are cringe and boring; men are cool and exciting, maybe especially when they are kind of awful. White guys should lead, even unto the revolution; everyone else should take a back seat, even unto NYT songwriting lists. This isn’t a logical argument; it’s just something you feel in your soul when you hit that power chord. Right?
It doesn’t have to be right, obviously. From Sly Stone to Sinead O’Connor, there’s plenty of rock music that refuses the vibes of bigotry and (loudly) demands liberation and dignity for everyone. But fascism has deep roots in our culture, including in our music, and if you aren’t careful, it will get in your head—and before you know it you’re humming Trump’s tune. That’s why, whether it’s music, music criticism, or political journalism, there’s a truth that’s even deeper than rock: leftism without antifascism is worthless garbage. Pray you avoid it.