Conservatives keep saying, “Conservatism is the ‘New Punk’”. Nonsense. Conservatives have their soundtrack. It is country music, Christian rock, and Ted Nugent. Seriously though, what is concerning is that conservatives are rebranding themselves as something they are not, and people are buying it.

Two of the most genius tactics of the extreme right since the 90’s, have been:

• Redefining conservatives as rebels, anti-establishment, and victims; and trying to latch on to some of the coolness associated with underground movements like punk and the sixties counter-culture
• Redefining money, big-business, and property as a moral issue – implying that protecting individuals and businesses right to make money has the same moral imperative as say, not killing people or not stealing.

Both are complete nonsense. Money isn’t morality. For the Christian-right, that is particularly true. They need to read that book that they are always quoting, and see what Jesus said about money and the rich. It’s not positive. On the other hand, he spoke positively about charity, the poor, and the meek.

But let’s talk about punk rock and rebellion.

Rebellion is resistance or defiance of a government, ruler, authority, or convention. Rebellion is not implicitly good or bad. Whether a certain rebellion is cheered or disdained by aa group is mostly determined by whether they agree more with the views of the rebels or with the views of the target of the rebellion.

The “cool” rebellions that people idealize all have this in common: they are about fighting oppression to give a group of people more rights, more freedom, and more opportunity. Take the suffragettes, the civil rights movement, sixties counterculture, punk rock, and the Ukraine standing up against Russia as some examples.

It is a manipulative lie to represent “rebelling” to support discrimination and authoritarian ideals as being the same as the civil rights movement or punk rock, just because they are all “rebellious” movements. It’s like saying eating metal shavings and eating food are the same, because both involve swallowing.

True, like punk, the alt-right had its roots in a disaffected working class angry at the establishment; but the comparison ends there. Punk is generally pro-freedom, anti-corporate, anti-war, and pro-equality. Conservatism, now usurped by the alt-right, is the antithesis of these ideals.

The problem here is a fundamental misunderstanding of “freedom”. American freedom is based upon the ideas that all people are equal, and that all deserve the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To have that freedom, we have a social contract by which we all give up some freedom to not take freedom away from others (or have our freedom taken away by others). At the most basic level, this means that you give up the “freedom” to kill people in exchange for society agreeing that others should not kill you.

In a society where everyone was completely free, most people have less freedom, well-being, and happiness, because of the impact of other people’s “expression of freedom”, in the form of crime, exploitation, and discrimination. In a “free” society, we have the freedoms that do not harm others and society.

The problem with the current right is that they want to pretend that people and corporations deserve the “freedom” to take actions that interfere with other people’s freedom. That isn’t American freedom. It is a clever argument to make imposing on other’s rights sound like a right, and to make protecting people’s freedom sound like tyranny. When someone like Bannon talks about freedom, pretend it is Opposites Day. What he is talking about is giving some people the “freedom” to take away other people’s freedom.

There are rebellious groups that share the alt-right’s desire to impose upon other rights and support for authoritarian policies. Two that come to mind are the racist skinhead movement, and the brown shirts.

There is an honest slogan: “Conservatives are the new brown shirts”.

That is unfair to many conservatives who are not racist or pro-authoritarian, but I say this to them: you let extremists – extremists you should have stood up against -- take over your party because conservative institutions pandered to them. If you aren’t actively fighting against it, you are complicit.

Video: Jello Biafra (an actual punk rocker) responding racist rednecks that pretending to be punk. Reference link: Henry Rollins (an actual punk rocker) on Trump and modern conservatives.