Hawkwind political messages

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Sun, Dec 10, 2006 at 10:49:45PM +0000, Amphetamine Embalmer typed out:
> Its the same way Star Trek was in the 60's, a unified vision of peace
> etc. I do think it clashes with anarchism to be libertarian or
> unified, Hawkwind seem to be more feudal dictators in way, as self
> proclaimed "Hawklords" etc., drugs seem to float about and noone gets
> harmed and gets sick or dies from it as long as they are protected by
> The Hawkwind... Lots of anarchist sentiments in Hawkwind, against
> opression of the individual like surveillance and cencorship, though
> they are a band who could take over the world if they were as popular
> as David Bowie...

	<snip>
	
	I think Hawkwind's political stance, as far as it has one, has 
varied a lot depending on who was the dominant force in the band at the 
time. Really early Hawkwind has Nik and Dave both preaching like 
peaceniks who want a ticket off the planet before man finishes screwing 
it up, and the lyrics are mostly melancholy or escapism or both. I think 
the warrior/anarchist thing is almost entirely from Bob, with 
Moorcock's more doomed samurai ethic maybe allowing this to blend with 
Dave's earth-brotherhood thing to produce Black Sword sort of stuff. 
When it comes down to detail on politics though recent Hawkwind lyrics 
have been a bit inconsistent. Luddite `Robots are taking over' versus 
sixties sci-fi about how great they are, for example, and of course the 
great surprise: who would have thought that the man that wrote the words 
`Duplicate forms and ID cards / Are next in line to disregard' would 
have set up the Hawkwind Passport scheme? So I guess maybe `Hawkwind' 
politics is surer about who the enemies are and how we don't need them 
than what we could do instead. Which is certainly quite like some 
anarchists I know but doesn't really have the tyrannical `organise! 
organise! organise!' hardcore ethic of the real activists, more the 
`it'll all just work out somehow if we stop paying taxes to the Man 
because life is beautiful when people can stop and look at it' 
philosophy of the peacenik still.

	As you can probably tell I'm too hung up to like either of these 
ethics much :-) But the music forgives the occasional naivete, I reckon. 
Yours,
	Jon

-- 
"When fortune wanes, of what assistance are quantities of elephants?"
	    (Juvaini, Afghan Muslim chronicler, c. 1206)
 Jon Jarrett, Fitzwilliam Museum, jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk