I've been trying to put together a playlist of accidental self owns by Big Media(TM) where they tried to make music slamming those on the right, but ended up making something catchy and being embraced by the very people they're railing against.
Two particular examples I found were Bad Religion's "The Kids Are Alt-Right"
Lyrics: https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/badreligion/thekidsarealtright.html
And a song from Far Cry 5 called "Keep Your Rifle by Your Side"
Lyrics: https://genius.com/Dan-romer-keep-your-rifle-by-your-side-lyrics
In the former, BR tries to paint the right as a cult (who doesn't these days) but it's hard to take seriously when the lyrics are:
We love God, We love our women, We love tradition, We love kin, We've got shiny new tools, For ancient impulses, That we can't even understand, So if you feel alone, And downtrodden, There's an elixir for your ills
So a bunch of people who feel alone and downtrodden found a group willing to accept them? Well that's not so different than the left in many cases. But they also love tradition and family? Personally, I find it hard to take any of that negatively.
In the latter, for context, the song was written by the in game doomsday cult, but if you're like me and are familiar with Ruby Ridge and Waco the lyrics hit kind of different. Essentially, the group sings about how the government will keep coming after them and it is their duty to defend themselves, their families, and their land by force. It does have a religious tinge to it but not exactly something that makes me want to dislike them. The video on YT has 2.3 million views when everything else in the album is sub 1 mill and the comments are absolutely flooded with people agreeing with the sentiments in the song. And it's catchy as fuck.
Anyway, if any of you have found something similar or have something to add, I'd love to hear it.
I've been trying to come up with a name for this phenomenon.
The best example is always Alan Moore creating Rorschach, a character he comically believed to be a reprehensible caricature of conservatism. In reality, Moore is so far left that he has become disconnected from ordinary morality, and he subsequently cannot understand why people identify and agree with his strawman. By pure delusion, he accidentally created a conservative paragon.
A similar thing happened more recently with Red Skull. They turned him into a mainstream anti-immigration caricature, complete with contemporary anti-immigration screed, but most of the people who actually read his "cruel words" found them to be eminently rationally. Turns out you can't just attribute the ideas of your political enemies to a comic book villain and expect people to automatically reject those ideas based on your new chosen "source".
Again, I'm not sure what to call this phenomenon. Maybe the Moore Paradox.
Well barring anything else, calling it the Moore Paradox sounds excellent.
Ror is also a ripoff of Steve Dtko's Mr. A
Jerkass Has A Point
Of course they turned the comments off on the BR song. I remember when the song came out. Every single comment for the video was along the lines of, "Damn, the alt-right sounds awesome!" or "What's wrong with any of these things?" or people calling them out for being out of touch sell-out tools.
It's a short film rather than a song, but M.A.M.O.N was supposed to be critical of Trump's immigration policies but was embraced by his supporters because "actually we kinda do want Trump to pilot a giant mech to deport people".
Comments being disabled tells you all you need to know about what went down when they released that film.
That was fucking hilarious.
Not music, but I'll tell you an unintentional counterculture game: the most recent Deus Ex.
They tried SO HARD to make it into one big allegory about racism, how the augmented humans are oppressed and abused and everyone hates them and it's just not fair and everyone's equal, only the reason why they're hated is that, at the end of the previous game, they all got infected by a virus and went on a murderous insane rampage and almost destroyed civilization. So the hate and fear is entirely justified. So the unintentional message of the game in reality is "Even if a group of people almost ends civilization and may do it again at any time, if you dare to notice some groups are more violent than others, even if it is literally every single one of them, you will still be painted as a monster"
Bad Religion is still alive? Jesus Christ, is Louis Armstrong or Chopin gonna release a song calling out teh nazis next?
Not exactly what you mean, but I've been meaning to record a cover of Dead Kennedy's Nazi Punks Fuck Off, but as Commie Punks Fuck Off and I hardly need to change any of the verses.
Its so applicable to wannabe commies
If you ever get around to it, I'd love to hear it.
Cool, tell me when it's done.
DO IT! Punk is so beyond pozzed with Commie shits, it'll be hilarious.
"American Woman" is highly unintentional in its cultural impact.
"American woman, stay away from me/just let me be/just go away" is the recurring line in the song, and yet it is played as both pro-American and pro-woman.
But that's not really a self-own so much as it TRIED to be a self-own, but people didn't listen to the lyrics and just heard the words American Woman and rocketed it to the top.
I think that's the OPPOSITE of what you're looking for, though...
Same thing happened with Springsteen's "Born in the USA." And yeah I guess I'm specifically looking more for anti-right music that doesn't smear us near as hard as they think it does.
Because they don't realize that the band that first sung it wasn't American, and it was meant to be critical of and a rejection of American culture. It's basically about the Americanization of Canadian culture that was warned against in the 60s and 70s (kind of a leftover of "Manifest Destiny" fear) and was written about the time the USA was trying to pressure Canada into getting into VietNam (which is what the "war machines" are all about). Or was a general response to it, anyway.
Remember it's from 1970 and the Guess Who, not that Lenny Kravitz whoever the hell he is one-cover-song-wonder.
Archetype of this:
Alex Jones Rants (Indie Song)
Unironically one of my favorite songs lol
Now that's what I'm talking about.
Allegedly Ubishit was pissed that people liked that rifle song.
From what I've been reading in the comments of that video they had another one up but Ubi either locked the comments or deleted it because people kept showing up to say how great it was as a libertarian kind of song.
Yep. Supposedly some of the devs had a hissy fit about it on twatter then deleted the tweet when mocked/passed around. Might still be available as a screenshot on proper kia or kia2.
The image of the statue of liberty with a crown of knives is pretty badass!
Early 2000s Green Day is still in my playlist rotation. They're definitely more manufactured pop-punk than real punk, but I can still dig it.
A lot of Rage Against The Machine songs, despite their obvious leftist leanings, could be used as right wing with only minor tweaks (if at all). Same applies to Audioslave, which is basically RATM with the singer changed out.
Fuck, old RATM attacked both sides. The lyrics "more for Gore or the son of a drug lord, none of the above, fuck it cut the cord" come to mind.
Doesn't quite fit in the same way, but Green Day's American Idiot seems to fit this description. A song embraced by the left of the Bush era, now embodied by the left since the Obama era.
He was the one who got dropped from his label for being at the Capitol right?
Mm, I guess there'd be "Bomb the Boats" by the Forgotten Rebels, if one believes the backpedalling of its lead singer (I sure as hell don't).
Ministry - Antifa
Dislikes say it all. Really doubt it worked out as the circlejerk propaganda these out-of-touch junkies hoped it would be.
I'm not entirely sure either fits the mould you're looking for, but I find it fascinating that 2 songs originally written as anti-right in the days of Thatcher and Reagan can be just as anti-left (or at least anti-crony-left) today: one is Chris Rea's 'Road to Hell' crooning about the risk of losing yourself on the road to success, and the other being the Judas Priest classic 'Breakin the Law' screaming the anger of the out of work, dispossessed youth.
(note: if my understanding of these songs is wrong, feel free to correct me, that's what I was understood these songs were 'meant' to be about' from reading and talking to people)
Closer. I guess I should clarify, I was looking for music that was intentionally made to mock the right, but unintentionally becomes counterculture because nothing in the song is actually anything people on the right, or really, normal people, would disagree with.
Yeah, I figured that's pretty much what you meant - but honestly I don't have any examples and figured a. these are interesting as examples of a similar phenomenon and b. I could share two of my favourite songs.
Bad Religion - I want to conquer the world https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBbRSq4W_1o
Lyrics https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/badreligion/iwanttoconquertheworld.html
A brutal lampoon of leftist authoritarianism, yet they seem to be completely blind to what occurs before us.
I'm sensing a pattern with Bad Religion...
Punk is branded as anti authority but it really isn't, it's anti right authority. Notice how rarely ANY punk song or band has libertarian or even centrist views vs being commie scum or anarchists who are secretly commies or socialists and almost never criticize the left....MAYBE (not really familiar with early punk) in the 70s/80s but now it's all DNC or commie cucking.
You gotta look up incelcore, or I think some people are calling it bedroom punk. It's proper current counterculture punk. The biggest name in it rn is Negative XP/School Shooter. There's a few compilations up on Bandcamp under MK Ultra Support Group
Pretty much just a bunch of dudes putting stuff up on SoundCloud, so it tends to be LoFi. But if people with no experience recording their own music isn't punk, I dont know what is
They funnel the dangerous rage of the teens and young adults into the controlled environment of punk that helps them advance their schemes.
Curious, what would your opinion on this be? Punk or nah?
kinda? reminds me of REALLY early 70s garage rock or proto punk.
They're certainly good at making you think.