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This is about how TV brainwashes people. (thanks, Louis - London, England)
The band recorded this before ever playing it live. (thanks, Nick - Paramus, NJ)
The message of this song: Don't blindly accept your gang, your religion, or even your nation. The people who walk complacently through life accepting all that is put in front of them, might as well have bullets in their heads. Television is a weapon used to pacify those who watch it into the living dead. Until people take control of their lives, they are mindless components of the entire machine. (thanks, Tim - Pittsburgh, PA)
Comments (18):
Mike Watt - "History Lesson, Pt. 2"
Mike Watt of the Minutemen tells the story of the song that became an Indie Rock touchstone. It's also the story of what Mike calls "The Movement."
Best Band Logos
Queen, Phish and The Stones are among our picks for the best band logos. Here are their histories and a design analysis from an expert.
Mark Arm of Mudhoney
When he was asked to write a song for the
Singles soundtrack, Mark thought the Seattle grunge scene was already overblown, so that's what he wrote about.
The Ironic T-Shirt Corporation created the Anti-Ribbon to express our opinion that the yellow ribbon and "Support Our Troops" slogan is a form of propaganda, and pro-war propaganda at that. We believe that whether they know it or not, people who put yellow ribbons on their car are telling the rest of the world that war in Iraq is okay, and that war, in general, is an acceptable, viable solution to our problems.
We read a Noam Chomsky quote dealing with yellow ribbons as propaganda a long time ago that became one of the inspirations for the Anti-Ribbon:
"Americanism. Who can be against that? Or harmony. Who can be against that? Or, as in the Persian Gulf War, "Support our troops." Who can be against that? Or yellow ribbons. Who can be against that? Anything that's totally vacuous. In fact, what does it mean if someone asks you, Do you support the people in Iowa? Can you say, Yes, I support them, or No, I don't support them? It doesn't mean anything. That's the point. The point of public relations slogans like 'Support our troops' is that they don't mean anything. They mean as much as whether you support the people in Iowa. Of course, there was an issue. The issue was, Do you support our policy? But you don't want people to think about the issue. That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. It's crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about."
Noam Chomsky
From "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media", edited by Mark Achbar, p. 79
Think for yourself, letting a band think for you is just as bad as letting the government or media think for you.
'...Then the time has come for you to take the last step. You must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him: you must love him.'
He released Winston with a little push towards the guards.
'Room 101,' he said. "
http://www.freeleonardpeltier.org