“Stay silent if you’re not a revolutionary,”
he said to the crowd packed into the El Rey Theatre for the hip-hop
show, inciting an explosion of drunken noise. There in that
20-somethings crowd, screaming for revolution were some of the
mythical silent majority that is supposed to exist in our political
arena. Looking at the options this year between King George the
Pious and Status Quo Kerry, revolution sounds better than silence.
At the same time, it just doesn’t sound realistic.
And so, I didn’t scream.
But that was the night I realized I would join the silent
majority out of the helplessness I felt and move into a new level
of helplessness. It was on the night of third anniversary of the
terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. My stomach had been turning in
disgust, anticipating the patriotic extravaganza the media would
roll out this year as they had for the preceding anniversaries. I
knew the world would be bubble-wrapped in a giant American flag,
and my gut instinct told me to run as if I was standing under one
of towers that day. After seeing how the 2004 Republican National
Convention shamelessly prostituted (not to say hijacked) that
horrific tragedy to be the backdrop for the Republican
Party’s election-year propaganda, I ran for shelter.
So my shelter of sorts was an underground hip-hop show starring
Immortal Technique, one of the most outraged and outspoken critics
of President Bush’s administration ““ and his un-elected
regime ““ in the hip-hop world. I can guarantee you will never
hear any of his music on mainstream radio, despite his hypnotic
beats and spellbinding lyricism. As he says in a song called
“Industrial Revolution, “If you go platinum, it’s
got nothing to do with luck. It just means a million people are
stupid as fuck.”
That logic could be reversed, but I’ll return to that
later. The reason I went to the show was that I needed a break from
empty political slogans, mindless (objective) media coverage and
the Super Bowl of both now known as Sept. 11. Immortal Technique
grew up in Harlem in New York City, lost friends in the attacks, is
decisively anti-war. Congress voted for us to go to war instantly,
but none of their kids serve in the infantry
But you don’t have to be a revolutionary to connect with
his ideology. The things that he says are just common sense, at
least to me. “You want to put me prison because I don’t
want to trade my humanity for patriotism.”
But even in my little propaganda shelter I found a different
kind of hype that also made my stomach uneasy. Immortal Technique
has connected its message of resistance with revolution, and the
kids of all racial backgrounds at the show answered his call to
arms and reported for duty in the uniforms of street soldiers ready
to receive their marching orders.
Looking around at all the Che Guevara and Emiliano Zapata
T-shirts, camouflage pants and skirts, military hats and football
jerseys, I asked myself, “What beyond their revolutionary
clothes makes these kids revolutionary?” Aren’t his
fans the very same coffee-shop revolutionaries Immortal Technique
ridicules in his songs?
I had a hard time putting my fist in the air when Immortal
Technique demanded that all the true revolutionaries in the crowd
do so. I didn’t. I know that I’m no revolutionary. I
was a middle-class white kid at a hip-hop show in the Miracle Mile
district of Los Angeles who feels that things aren’t right
and spent $25 and waited five hours in line to hear someone scream
in outrage that something’s very wrong.
It was a kind of catharsis that Howard Beale in the movie
“Network” unleashed by inspiring a nation of people to
scream off their rooftops, “I’m mad as hell, and
I’m not going to take it anymore.” But while my fist
refused to budge, leaving a little hole in a sea of drunken
skyward-thrust fists, my mouth screamed in unison with a thousand
others when lyrics condemning Bush came on.
I joined in for a chant of “fuck Bush” that repeated
like cries for “four more years” at the Republican
convention after a poignant speech. It was a feel-good event, and
screaming those things made me feel good.
But this is what bothered me ““ it could be argued that
Michael Moore and rappers like Immortal Technique are exploiting a
growing frustration with a society that disenfranchises dissenting
voices, simply for their own financial gain.
So now that everyone was gathered and fired up over the
injustices perpetuated by our government, what were the marching
orders given to this group of angry revolutionaries? A little
slogan bouncing above Immortal Technique’s fuming sweaty bald
head which read “fucking vote.” I had heard Tech in an
earlier interview say that voting really makes no difference, that
the vested interests who really control the levers of power in the
country are too deeply entrenched. (I agree.) Regardless, I
understood he had to try and give some kind of answer, no matter
how ridiculous.
I realized this is not the kind of place people go to for
answers. They go to events like this and watch “Fahrenheit
9/11″ for the same reason the pious go to church ““ to
be absolved of the guilt of doing nothing in the face of the evils
they know exist. They put on their Che shirts (church clothes), pay
$25 bucks (collection plate), get drunk (Christ’s blood) and
angry and scream, “Fuck Bush,” (the prayer). They go
home happy then feel guilty until the next show.
But the frustration has to be there for it to be exploited.
Technique and Moore didn’t create it. In fact, in a sense
they were created by it. These people don’t have the money to
create markets for their products. It is not the responsibility of
two men to make up for the irresponsibility of two houses of
Congress, the entire mainstream media and the institutions of
higher learning.
If the official guardians of the peoples’ interest
actually did their job, Immortal Technique wouldn’t be forced
to call his message revolutionary, and he would have been
performing at the Democratic National Convention at Ground Zero,
not in the “underground” in Los Angeles on Sept.
11.
Then maybe a message to go and “fucking vote”
wouldn’t sound so ridiculous.
Lukacs is a third-year history student.