This Playlist Kills Fascists
This is a playlist I made of music written for historical anti-fascist movements, music that is symbolic of anti-fascist movements, and music that showcases anti-fascist values and ideas. I made this and am posting it here as part of the final project for one of my classes this quarter. The playlist is 21 minutes long and contains folk, punk, and rap in several languages.
Under the cut is an annotated track list, and some additional context for the playlist. If you decide to read it please let me know what you thought!
Fascism is a complex right-wing ideology that can’t be explained without a lot of nuance. Roger Griffin‘s “palingenetic ultranationalism“ and Umberto Eco‘s Ur-Fascismare are two frequently cited explanations. Regardless, fascistic societies are always highly oppressive, unstable, and bigoted.
Anti-fascism is the belief that the formation of a fascist society should be opposed at all costs. Most anti-fascists are leftists, and may be involved in a wide variety of other social movements.
-1 Modena City Ramblers “Fischia Il Vento” (2015)
Starting off the playlist is “Fischia Il Vento” (The Wind Blows), an Italian anti-fascist resistance song originally written in 1944 (I chose to use the Modena City Ramblers version, it’s a bop). I chose to play this song first because Italian resistance to Mussolini was the first organized anti-fascist movement (1920s). These partisans were largely communists and anarchists.
to conquer the red spring
where rises the sun of the future
The lyrics use “the conquering of the red spring” as a metaphor for establishing a communist society, which directly opposes the aims of fascists. This is why leftists are the most opposed to fascists taking power.
-2 Frente Popular “A las Barricadas” (1936)
“A las Barricadas” (To the Barricades), was a song popular among National Confederation of Labor (CNT) members during the Spanish civil war.
Though pain and death may await us,
Against the enemy by duty we are called.
“A las Barricadas” shows the way anti-fascists oppose fascism at all costs, even if it means percinal harm. “Fischia Il Vento“ also mirors this sentiment.
-3 Los Pinochet Boys “La Música del General” (1984)
Los Pinochet Boy’s story is exhilarating. They were a clandestine punk rock band that formed during Pinochet’s fascist dictatorship of Chile. Every show they played was a revolutionary act that would end in a police raid. “La Música del General” is one of the two surviving recordings of the band’s music and shows the need for expression under oppression. (Naomi Larsson Piñeda. “A fascist tried to electrocute us on stage” 2023)
Musical Dictatorship
Nobody can stop dancing
The music of the general
The music of the general
-4 National Wake “International News” (2013) [The original release is from 1979]
National Wake was the only multi racial punk band in apartheid South Africa. Like Los Pinochet Boys, their music was illegal to make. Under apartheid white and black South Africans were not allowed to live and work together. “International News” showcases the way international (American, and British) media failed to adequately cover the violent response to the Soweto uprising, where student’s protesting the forced use of Afrikaans in schools were met with extreme violence from the police. (Alexis Petridis “National Wake: the South African punk band who defied apartheid” 2013)
'put a blanket over Soweto
They put a blanket, nowhere to go, no
They put a blanket over the news
They put a blanket, nothing to choose
-5 Killah P “I won’t cry, I won’t fear” (2012)
Pavlos Fyssas, who went by the stage name Killah P (killer of the past) was a Greek anti-fascist rapper. In 2013 he was murdered by a group of Golden Dawn members (the Golden Dawn is a fascist Greek political party). His death sparked a weeks long protest in Athens that garnered 10,000 people and put pressure on the Greek parliament to investigate the Golden Dawn as a criminal organization. Pavlos is remembered as a martyr, and his music remains a symbol of anti-fascism in Greece. (Patrick Strickland. “Greece mourns slain anti-fascist...” 2017)
-6 Dead Kennedys “Nazi Punks Fuck Off!” (1981)
I would be remiss not to include this song. The early punk scene had a Nazi problem. Some punks wore fascist symbols for the sake of offending people, fascists came to shows not realizing the music was mocking them, and Neo-Nazi gangs would violently disrupt shows. (Steve Knopper. “Nazi Punks F**k Off... “ 2018) Making it clear to fascists that they are unwelcome, and that there are consequences if they don’t stop being a fascist is a tactic effectively used by groups like Anti Racist Action. (Mark Bray. Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook 2017)
-7 Rainbow Coalition Death Cult “Blue MAGA” (2022)
“Blue MAGA” begins with a sample from Leroi Jones’s “Young Spirit House Movers and Players”.
WHAT HAS AMERICA DONE FOR ME? NOTHING BUT MADE ME A ZOMBIE!
The use of the word zombie (think Haitian Vodou, not The Living Dead) aligns perfectly with how Iris Young describes powerlessness in “Five Faces of Oppression” as an “inhibition to develop one’s capacities, lack of
decision making power, and exposure to disrespectful treatment because of the lowered status”. RCDC then compares this social powerlessness to political powerlessness.
"Pipe down and tow the line, you got no room to whine Censor those who don't comply, we're the best that you got." Some say they'll put up a fight, they really don't have the spine Just an image they hide behind, to make you feel like we won
They then end the song
The truth is they're all full of shit
Suggesting that the status quo isn’t the best that we can get, and that action can be taken to make our lives better.
-8 G.L.O.S.S. “Give Violence A Chance” (2016)
Despite the majority of antifa activism being nonviolent, anti-fascists take a systemic view of violent self defense and act on it accordingly.
KILLER COPS AREN'T CROOKED
SOLDIERS FOR BASTARDS, THEY DO AS THEY'RE TOLD
THE COURTS AREN'T CORRUPT
MALICIOUS, VIOLENT, THEY MAINTAIN CONTROL
Even when the cops kill and the courts falsely convict it’s not seen as violence because they have the approval of the state to do that violence. The same would apply to borders, and immigration bans which can only be enforced with a threat of violence that an anti-fascist would say justifies self defense, violent or otherwise. (Philosophy Tube "The Philosophy of Antifa" 2017)
-9 Noname “Song 33″ (2020)
I struggled to find a single song that could symbolize my thoughts on the protests following George Floyd’s murder at the hands of the Minneapolis police. For many people in my generation 2020 was an awakening. Even if you were aware of the racism inherent to policing and America broadly (if you were white) it might not have seemed as totalising, and urgent as it is. Song 33 embodies this feeling. Noname asks
He really 'bout to write about me when the world is in smokes?
When it's people in trees?
When George was beggin' for his mother, saying he couldn't breathe
You thought to write about me?
and
Distracting from the convo with organizers
They talkin' abolishin' the police
And this the new world order
We democratizin' Amazon, we burn down borders
Textually, She’s asking rapper J. Cole why he wrote a rap about her tone when he could be rapping about what matters. Subtextually, she is asking the listener the same question.
She also highlights the intersectional solidarity of the anti-fascist movement, drawing parallels between BLM’s goal of abolishing the police, labor rights, and abolishing borders.
-10 Woody Guthrie “All You Fascists Bound To Lose“ (1942)
Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger were both well known anti-fascist musicians in America during their lives. Both of them made anti-nazi music durring the war and continued to make music that espoused anti-fascist values afterward. Guthrie’s iconic “This Machine Kills Fascists” sticker is still a common anti-fascist slogan.
I wanted to end on this song because of how hopeful it is.
The people in this world
Are getting organized
You’re bound to lose
You fascists bound to lose
Fascism is bound to loose in the end. But only because people are fighting back against it, organizing, and standing in solidarity with one another.
Thank you for reading this, I hope you got something out of it.
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