[Benjamin Noyles]

I don't think liberals are any less authoritarian or prudish. Some forms of musical culture have become acceptable yes, but others are disprivileged and opressed.

[telluro]

First and foremost we should require all music to have harmony and resolution. Music should also be required to have tonality, though this is less of a problem since no one can stand listening to atonal "music". I would also like to see research on the relative effects of consonance and dissonance, as I suspect that overly strong dissonance has negative effects.

You'd have effectively eliminated swathes of electronica, some fringe metal genres, industrial music, and their confluences in one fell swoop. What you said applies more for these genres than for rap.

[Dave]

Those genres are garbage. Good riddance.

[telluro]

The next question then would be: How did you decide that this music is garbage? Some of it is created by artists and scholars of the highest calibre, not street thugs. How do you know that your judgement is not a result of lack of musical knowledge and training? How do you know you're not simply reacting conservatively in a knee-jerk manner, just like Baroque contemporaries decried Classical music as frivolous?

[Rei Murasame]

I tend to take the Neoconfucian view on these sorts of issues of expression, which is rooted not necessarily in any "inherent" right to freedom of expression (although this may indeed exist if we all decide to say it does), but in the idea that it's socially beneficial to allow these forms of expression, for two central reasons:

• Prevents pathological behaviour. Identity only can function in the case where others in the society recognise that the identity exists. Stifling a subculture outright is in most cases less efficient than simply co-opting and recognising it. By recognising and co-opting it into the larger national tapestry, we are then capable of having an influence on its development, thus taking the sting out of it in the case that it ever had a potential to even develop one.
  
  
• Music is a barometer for the people's mood and emotions. I'd prefer to actually know what they are feeling like, even if it's a genre of music that I can't identify with, than to suppress it and have that expression all burst out in a less manageable way via another outlet.

The State and its supporters can abridge this in extreme circumstances, obviously, but the ability to make people stay silent is a power that is "best reserved as part of the Imperial character" (see Edmund Burke or Hayashi Razan to get what I mean by this) - in that it's more useful as a card in your hand, but less useful as a card when actually played to the table. If we have to actually play that card, it means that we already lost an unacceptable amount of ground that will not be recovered after the card has been played anyway.

The best strategy I think for steering the music culture in the direction that you want it to go, if you must, is to use positive reinforcement of desirable things in the media, without excluding the things that are undesired. Example, say you wanted to lift Shakira and Christina Aguilera (not saying you'd want to do this, but just an example), you'd only need to call upon the media organs that you control (see, this is how things like BBC or TV Asahi are used) to start talking about them a lot more than they do anyone else. You can also use Third Sector entities to deliberately funnel money into them, play their songs on the radio stations more, and invite them to political events.

The State also has the unique power of being able to confer higher status onto artists it likes, which is why you'll notice that the United Kingdom hands out titles of nobility or awards to musicians and singers that the government happens to like.

This way we would not be excluding the unfavoured things and creating harmful backlash, but rather, we would be deliberately mainstreaming the favoured things. Not so difficult, is it?

On the issue of the sound itself, I don't think any specific genre is 'inherently bad for society'. How can we judge what is or is not 'real music'?

[Plaro]

I support whatever Dave says, for me, his got this topic covered perfectly.

The next question then would be: How did you decide that this music is garbage? Some of it is created by artists and scholars of the highest caliber, not street thugs. How do you know that your judgment is not a result of lack of musical knowledge and training? How do you know you're not simply reacting conservatively in a knee-jerk manner, just like Baroque contemporaries decried Classical music as frivolous?

You looking at this as black and white, the point is that degenerate music exist because degenerates will always do, the point is not to promote it to the rest of the public as something noble and good, like rap/hip-hop music for example and encourage degeneracy in the rests of the public, especially children. We now have kids as young as eight years old, growing up listening to how a rapper slaps hoes and does them in the club. There is a definitely a fine line between music that produces positive vibe and one that is simply bizarre and negative.

The music that you speak about, example industrial or metal, I do not think the styles will become extinct but be performed underground. It simply will never be promoted to the masses, especially children, nor do I think the masses will indulge in it if they are collectively mentally healthy. It will be few juveniles experimenting in their basement, or community. I also see there is a need to developed a new mental conception, of underground.

I think the mental conception should run something like this;

1) Underground is for exploration and vice
2) Keep children/teens away
3) Underground is private/secret and away from public
4) Underground is not cool/good and makes you less sexually desirable

Instead of what we have now

1) Underground is for exploration and vice
2) It is children/teen’s choice to listen to it or not
3) If you play or listen to underground music tell everyone and get the word out, public has to know
4) Underground music is so cool and makes me sexy and I gets me more partners

^ The irony of modernity is that all this underground music is not underground, but mass produced corporate bullshit. Even the people who do play underground, they create nothing new, but mass produced bullshit. So there is no underground.

Now do not get me wrong, I do not consider playing at taverns or street corners as underground. What I consider underground is hippy infested/ drug and sex driven discos like they had in the sixties, which run completely against a healthy society. Today, after the hippies it appears we no longer have an underground, the underground has become mainstream. These degenerates should be put back into small dark isolated and forgotten streets, far in depth of a large metropolis, and never uncovered or encouraged to be uncovered.

[telluro]

You're simply investing art and artistic expression with kneejerk moralistic thinking, that is all. You did not give a reason as to why industrial/electronic music is not music or why it is degenerate. Laughable is the example of the masses who keep away from industrial music because they're healthy - for the most part they keep away from it because they're sheep, and prefer cookie-cutter easy-listening pop music in the background. If you think the extreme underground genres are corporate mass-produced, and are somehow mainstream, you're wrong.

What is Plaro's and Dave's opinion of Futurist music (and Futurist art in general), seeing as 1. it was tied with Fascism, and 2. it can be considered as one progenitor of industrial, electronic, and noise music? Perhaps you'll see where I'm coming from - for me these genres are unavoidably tied with the proper creative conception of Fascist Futurism. The rebirth of civilization will be found in "new" radical art forms, not in some return to hallowed tradition, which will ultimately prove a failure anyway, and is itself symptomatic only of an archaeological civilization afraid of creating itself, of believing in itself, and obsessed only with preserving and perpetuating the other, the past. This is the main battle we've been facing as a civilization for over a century - the battle between an archaeological ideology, upheld by liberals (cultural nihilists) and conservatives (cultural mummies like yourselves) alike, and a futurist ideology (all but an abandoned project admittedly, but ultimately it's either unavoidable or civilization is permanently dead).

[youtube]JEIe4JuTMvU[/youtube] [youtube]VcHJySm7ZO0[/youtube]

[youtube]JR2YoFcVPUo[/youtube] [youtube]5jznjVTDmf8[/youtube]

[youtube]hhdvtbjzrUo[/youtube] [youtube]wcmZ5S1O4L0[/youtube]

Degenerates, huh?

[Benjamin Noyles]

Point well made. Reactionary hardline puritanism, whilst an improvement on much of the current state of affairs, and a form of strength to be harnessed and supported, is essentially luddite and self destructive. It is the sort of mindeset which had the new model army flog actors who dared to perform shakespere (who created the greatest litereary achivement in interconnective theatre in the west, and was our greatest playwright), Just because something is new does not make it degenerate. Forms of modernistic culture like some already mentioned can convey strength and beauty (among other constructive values) and have already been partly taken by the radical right, Martial Industrial chief among all comes to mind.

[Kman]

I dread the day that nerdy fascists start dictating to me what kind of music I can listen to.

[Figlio di Moros]

I agree, even though I'm a psuedo-fascist. The day Dave tells me Sweet Home Alabama, Simple Man, or Fortunate Son don't have the right pitch, rhythem, or tune is the day I start working for the opposition, if he doesn't proclaim miscegenation a crime before then.

[starman2003]

Considering the number and magnitude of the crises which would require its triumph in te first place, any new fascist/wholist regime will have FAR more pressing concerns than music. It is likely, though, that much of current music will disappear, replaced by martial or other tunes favored by the State, if only because music is largely a reflection of the times, and they could get much less frivolous.

[Figlio di Moros]

A crisis will exacerbate all previous existing conditions, which means that any viewpoint of the crisis(wholist, nationalist, Marxist, etc.) will see increased support. Only the status quo will remain unsupported.

For that reason, control of music might provide more important that realized, as a means of intellectual hegemony.

[Preston Cole]

I agree with telluro's opinion, somewhat. Going back to a hardline traditionalist view on the music industry will inevitably alienate a substantial, if not overwhelming, sector of a youth that nowadays tends to view all impositions of traditional mentality with outward scorn. An alienated youth movement will likely lead to that particular section of youngsters growing aggressively anti-governmental sentiments, and consequently, extremely prejudicial towards a radical right movement. And I need not emphasize the importance of the youth in kick starting a radical right movement.

I don't ascribe to banning typical youth rap and industrial genres. There are two prime distinctions in today's musical tendencies, in my opinion: 1) the archaic, mainstream pop, dance, bright-colored strain that promotes self-pity, tolerance for a governmental system that shoves the individual into a politically correct, environmentalist, cosmopolitan position while determining him to agree with its propositions of a non-national global perspective on life and 2) the splintering strand of music which includes underground movements like "In da' hood" rap, hard rock, industrial metal and industrial electronic: these movements are emotionally opposed to the former amalgamation of soft, free love pop, in that they promote self-improvement, violent self-awareness in progressing to a stage of one's life that they themselves feel comfortable with, and the less evident, but equally important, dedication to community action towards goals often times completely opposite to that of today's global politics. It's the community drive and solidarity that keeps black urban and suburban youth tied together in da' hood, rejecting the infiltration of cosmopolitan culture into their way of life, and upholding the interconnections and brotherhood between the individuals that make up this peripheral slice of society; their rap music teaches them to adhere to those values. I'm probably glorifying the gangsta' community too much here, but, compared to the death-bound, senseless environment of pop culture, those people preserve a sense of inter-individual responsibility that far surpasses that of "I know my rights, so I can say and do whatever the fuck I want because it's a democracy" type of civic responsibility the current world seems to train.

Identifying as more or less of a radical right-winger myself, I'd much rather limit the advancing trend of softy pop music than ban progressive, gangster and group-oriented culture.

[starman2003]

Only the status quo will remain unsupported

But that doesn't mean all the alternatives will get equal or enough support. Marxism is a dinosaur. The KKK is going nowhere either. To gain power, one needs military support, and some groups are more likely to get it than others.

For that reason, control of music might provide more important than realized, as it is a means of intellectual hegemony.

Secondary at best compared to more straightforward types of propaganda/indoctrination.

[telluro]

I dread the day that nerdy fascists start dictating to me what kind of music I can listen to.

I'm sure you'd much prefer the jocky ones.

[Figlio di Moros]

But that doesn't mean all the alternatives will get equal or enough support. Marxism is a dinosaur. The KKK is going nowhere either. To gain power, one needs military support, and some groups are more likely to get it than others.

Marxism is highly unlikely, but the far right is growing; perhaps not the Klan, but certain Nazi organizations have a greater potential for growth than your wholism. If the recent recession provides any indication, Paleoconservatism will find plenty of support, as well.

I find it odd you assume servicemembers will automatically latch on to totalitarianism.

For that reason, control of music might provide more important than realized, as it is a means of intellectual hegemony.

Secondary at best compared to more straightforward types of propaganda/indoctrination.

Uh, straight-forward indoctrination is too obvious and will meet a lot of opposition, especially from people with different viewpoints; subtlety is far more important than you seem to realize.

[starman2003]

...certain Nazi groups have a greater potential for growth than your wholism.

I just can't see racist groups getting very far. Certainly wholism is too intellectual to have much appeal; there will have to be some kind of "Americanism" label.
I meant that mlitary men, or officers, would support groups of the right, not left. But not paleoconservatives, if the latter are isolationist. In any event I don't think paleoconservatism can get enough enthusiastic support in this age of rapid change and hi tech. The ultimately successful movement IMO will be one which offers people a great futuristic vision, besides slamming the current system.
True, subtlety will be important, especally in the early phase of a new regime; new movies could play a role. And music, or lyrics. But a new system should indoctrinate the young ASAP in a straightforward way.

[Figlio di Moros]

Keep in mind, you're talking to someone who served for four years, one of which was at a join force command; many officers are democrats, and many enlisted would tell them to go fuck themselves if they tried to launch any sort of coup.

[starman2003]

Under present circumstances, that may be, but one should always bear in mind that no coup will ever be contemplated, let alone attempted, until the present system screws up so badly it'll have few supporters left, or at least enough opponents.

[telluro]

Why is this thread disappearing and reappearing?