Anarchy 84/Fake revolt and mystic double-think

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Fake revolt
and mystic double-think

REG O’LUCIAN

THE FAKE REVOLT by G. Legman (New York, Breaking Point, 1967)

This most sarcas­tic but overdue tract rips apart phoney youth revolt in psycho­pathic America, and by exten­sion, “her cheap imita­tors”. The Fake Revolt was pub­lished this year. The author, G. Legman, is not of the age group he says has had it. I detect nos­tal­gia for the sim­plici­ties of so­cial­ist revo­lu­tion­aries in the 30’s and ratio­nali­sa­tion of rile at missing out. Under the flash viciouis style lies a pessi­mist and a puritan, some­times under­esti­ma­ting, always stimu­la­ting. He takes the Bomb as the supreme fact hanging over the world, fact making non­sense of all revolts stop­ping short of tearing down State and capi­tal­ism.

s1

REVOLT DIVERTED

  Legman picks on three blind alleys down which the rebel­lious have been led; ges­tures that merely raise the ante, e.g. sloga­ni­sing, hitting cops; the cult of cool; and “perver­sion”, sexual and chemi­cal, e.g. sadism (“The Atom Bomb is nothing but the Marquis de Sade on a govern­ment grant”) and LSD culture. He re­serves his har­shest tirades for youth’s mis­leaders—the camp con­trol­lers of fashion, the psy­chede­lic busi­ness­men, media-men and acade­mics; these last, the poten­tial critics of the system, si­lenced by their share in the national lolly.

s2

SELLING OUT

  Increasingly big busi­ness makes equally mea­ning­less the idea­list’s desire to improve the world and the dis­illu­sioned’s desire to escape its decay. Money and Power between them buy up most threats to the status quo. Sell out is the way out. Legman cites girls leaving their lovers for money bags, boys shed­ding commu­nist skins when McCarthy turned on the heat, and worse still those who are waiting in the wings with ready made excuses for their tardi­ness in promo­ting revo­lu­tion. “Every­body wants to be your bed­fel­low, the whole scene trem­bles con­tinu­ously on the para­noid edge of vio­lence.” Revolt is mea­ning­less when consu­mer-orien­ted; revo­lu­tion­ary, no, deli­cious­ly revol­ting, yes.

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CAMP

  Camp is apo­liti­cal, con­cerned with style not content. The daring pose or “revo­lu­tion in dress” tends to dis­guise the reac­tion­ary vacuum in the mod psyche. Camp pleases the eye when you are out of your mind. Where else can one be when analy­sis of soci­ety’s dyna­mics reveal no easy poli­tical “way out”? So let’s be beau­tiful people.

s4

CIVIL RIGHTS

  After the sell out what’s left of revolt? Legman dis­mis­ses the civil rights workers for a start. “Getting bashed by the cops or by Southern sher­iffs makes them feel in­volved.” Vio­lence is impli­cit in revolt. He accuses the non-violent of shying from the guilt that attends the use of vio­lence, sett­ling for ges­tures instead of revolt leading to revo­lu­tion.

s5

PROVOS AND DIGGERS

  He dis­mis­ses provo­ca­tion likewise, without gran­ting that to provoke is a way of trying out one’s strength by setting autho­rity against people until people take sides or suffer. The Diggers he writes off as mock-pious fake Utopi­ans. He ignores their en­tire­ly volun­tary base: “How exactly is it a revolt against muddled middle class parents to try and crowd the govern­ment into beco­ming a parental welfare state com­posed of nothing but a mam­moth Food and Drug connec­tion.”

s6

DRUGS

  He points out that a drug scene is nothing new—the poet Theophile Gautier was turning Paris on to pot and long hair in the 1830’s, and nothing revo­lu­tion­ary—your parents booze them­selves silly. He prefers to ignore that some drugs are more illu­mina­ting than others. Use these if you will. But don’t pretend to being revo­lu­tion­ary while laid up in your pad out of your skull, unfit for mis­lea­ding even the thick­est of fuzz, now bat­ter­ing your door down.

s7

DATED?

  Curiously, with its tone of com­pre­hen­ding every­thing, The Fake Revolt omits mention of the ghetto riots, the Vietnam War and “The Resis­tance”. Events have over­taken the author, words like these no longer stand. “It cannot come out for any­thing radical without going to gaol so it has come out for nothing.” Other judge­ments are still sharp. “A hippie or a beatnik is a fran­ti­cally self-adver­ti­sing coward and para­site, all tired and beaten by a strug­gle in which he somehow never engaged” and “The revolt against punc­tua­tion, art anatomy and sexual nor­mali­ty replaces any revolt against the Atom Bomb and the profit system whose swan­song it is”.

s8

COOL NAILED

  The best part of The Fake Revolt is the analy­sis of “Cool” as leading to total affect­less­ness or the inabi­lity to feel and the fear of touch. Time will show whether <span data-html="true" class="plainlinks" title="Wikipedia: Love-Ins">Love-Ins and Flower Power have in the least checked the “new vene­real disease”. Legman rightly diag­noses cool’s sur­vival value or more than a matter of fa­shion­able accep­tance by Madison Avenue. “Keep Cool”, common in­junc­tive among the hip, has two dis­junc­tive senses; don’t lose your head and/or stay out of trouble. In the latter and preva­lent sense, cool smoothes over the wide­spread

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failure of nerve out­si­ders com­plain of. Cool is then “a let-out for every af­fect­less person to do any and every rotten thing he or she is called upon to do by the Job”. Af­fect­less persons deny to them­selves that they are res­pon­sible for any­thing or can even touch any­thing and that any­thing can touch them. Cool des­troys the indi­vidu­al’s inner world of feel­ings and sexual potency just as surely as it subsi­dises global world de­struc­tion. Save Earth Now.

s9

POLITICS OF APOCALYPSE