With the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War recently having passed, I'm sure many of us have found ourselves in a reflective mood. Recalling how odious the build-up was. The obvious lies promoted by the US government to justify the campaign. The way anyone who was against the invasion was literally labeled a "terrorist" by the news media. At present, most people claim to see the error in instigating that conflict and acknowledge to misinformation used to rationalize support for it, but if you were actually against the war during its build-up and initial phase, you are probably still nursing some psychological trauma from witnessing the entire political and media framework of the United States leveraged into a single a tidal wave of psychopathy, baying for the blood of innocent people who did not, in fact, pose a threat to you, or I, or anyone else in this crack-pot country. Twenty years is a long time though; a whole generation has passed since the brutality of "shock and awe" air strikes on Bagdad were repeatedly broadcast on corporate news programs like a perverse Fourth of July fireworks display. Even amongst those who did participate in the resistance to the war effort and its consequences, might be forgiven for forgetting the justifying ideology of these attacks, that being Neoconservatism: A long percolating strain of right-wing cosmopolitanism that believed that because the United States had the military ability to directly intervene in the affairs of other countries, it had the absolute right to under the banner of "spreading democracy." It is a dangerous kind of derangement that still afflicts the brains of many in our country's leadership today, partly due to the fact that none of the people responsible for the aforementioned criminal intervention were ever held accountable. Even though we're far from having escaped the bloody shadow of neoconservative war-mongering, it's refreshing to be reminded that there was a period in our history when it actually raised alarm bells when politicians only discussed their plans to police the world (Cue your favorite clip of George Bush senior repeating the words "A New World Order.") I've been listening to a lot of industrial outfit NEOCONS their self-titled EP from last year as a result- it is an album that recaptures not only the style of late 20th-century industrial disco, but also the justifiably paranoid, heuristic worldview of that by-gone era's underground dance culture. Juxtaposing the vocalist's warry, throaty shout with genuinely frightening soundbites from various saber-rattling psychos and heartening clips of ordinary people protesting for their dignity, the album submerges these contrasting conversations into a thick jungle bed of mecha-tribal Bambaataa beats, laser-focused heavy metal riffs, and a winding slither of big, hungry funk bass parts, all of which combine to prompt the overwhelming impression of a people in a struggle for their very lives, twisting in the grip of a leather-clad hand that has been squeezing their larynx like a stress ball. Industrial music of the era which NEOCONS is drawing from had a complicated relationship with the machinery that society relies on, as the computer technology and industrial infrastructure of the modern era enabled a certain level of relative affluence and literally made their modes of expression possible, while simultaneously, many of these same highly-technical innovations, as well as the country's industrial base, were inextricably linked to a system that made nuclear armageddon, during the cold war, and beyond, a hauntingly real and possible future. This interplay and entanglement with the war machine makes the urgent compulsion to dance all the more pressing, in my opinion, and causes the kind of industrial disco NEOCONS are performing to remain prescient in this day and age. We all may just be small creatures, attempting to stay between the threads of a colossal apparatus of death as it rolls over us, but if we can use that same technology that oppresses us and others for something besides killing, as a source of joy and connection even, then there may be a possibility of transforming the use of these terrible tools of destruction, and the social structure that they depend on, towards building a path to perpetual peace. Kind of like fighting fire with fire; only the heat we deploy against the war machine, rather than napalm, is of the variety we find in our hearts.
