Nobody pushed culture as hard as Public Enemy.
Rappers shook up society in the late ’80s and early ’90s with anthems like “Don’t Believe the Hype,” “Fight the Power” and “911 Is a Joke.”
Today’s musicians are kowtowing to power, from obeying extreme COVID-19 mandates to ignoring attacks on free speech. When Eric Clapton and Van Morrison questioned pandemic ordinances, counterculture bible Rolling Stone pounced and capitalized on them.
Public Enemy’s co-founder thinks he knows why.
Chuck D told Rolling Stone’s Australian division what keeps him going… Too many stars remain silent on key issuesSpoiler alert: It’s all about cancel culture.
“Everybody is scared, man… Musicians, artists, entertainers have now been ruled by fear, the fear of being cancelled.”
“In my case, I don’t know who orchestrated all this. All I know is that it’s crazy.”
The rapper is either being a hypocrite or has never visited a right-leaning news site.
Cancel culture is, for the most part, a byproduct of the left. Progressives attack pop culture of yesteryear, eager to find “offensive” material or embarrass the artists who created it.
The modern left twists words to ensnare unsuspecting souls, demands progressive purity and rages against free speech. And when one has broken its laws, it’s time for the “hostage apology.”
Except apologies They are not always accepted.
In Public Enemy’s heyday, social conservatives were frowned upon by the band’s views, to put it mildly. Today? Conservatives are the leading defenders of free speech and creativity.
The saddest thing? Chuck D seems to be just as scared as his fellow artists, by his own admission.
He complained that what emerges from social media today “is so noisy that the best human intellectual response is to stand back and watch it all unfold. I can’t make any statements about the madness I’ve seen in the last six months.”
Are you referring to Hamas’s barbaric attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 people and left hundreds at the mercy of the terrorist group? Or are you attacking Israel for defending itself against these barbarians?
It is not clear.
What’s obvious? If more artists stood up to cancel culture, it would eventually fade away like a concert T-shirt. Instead, old-school rebels like Chuck D, Howard Stern and Neil Young they lack the courage to speak.