The Batlord

I'm often confused, conflicted, and even suspicious about my motivations for listening to hate music. Is it just a lark? Is it a subconscious relation to fascism? Is it a weird conglomeration of stimuli and reactions that are almost impossible to quantify in much the same way that all musical appreciation is, but this specific case seems to call for specific justifications just so I don't sound like a two-dimensional Nazi trying to rationalize myself?

Man I don't even know half the time and the other half of the time I'm thinking back to the time that I was a libertarian, now trying to make connections to when I was a right wing goofball and possibly to Hitler himself as if a guy who liked anything resembling this... thing, must be irredeemable.

But with a song like this I think I understand the appeal in a more concrete sense. Left wing ideology is often reaching for an ideal that has never or almost never been reached. Left wing ideology is looking to the future, trying to deconstruct modern ways of thinking so that we can move past them and "fix" something wrong with our society, or just pining over theoretical pure socialism while being sad about Stalin. There are real examples of socialism that can be pointed to but are very short lived forms that do not speak to a proof of concept that can be looked to as a blueprint for a global society to move into a longterm future, and the modern European democratic socialist examples are really just modified capitalism that's nice and all in comparison to American consumerism but hardly worth pumping your fist over.

A song like this though offers about as much real world proof of longterm fascist ideology as the Clash, but we can look to the emotional quality of the song to get a feel for the mental place that such a band would be in when they are eulogizing about such a society that could never exist and never existed in the first place no matter what they might think. Far leftists are hoping for something to hope for, but far right wing people feel that they have something to point to to justify their world view. There used to be honor, there used to be patriotism, there used to be non-degenerate society, and no matter what you tell these people they will believe that this is true and the very existence of this almost certainly non-existent world to them is proof that not only are they working toward a feasible goal but that this goal had already been reached at some point so what the **** are you talking about that this is nonsense? It's not nonsense, it's history, right? It's simply how the entire world operated before modern Western society was infiltrated by the Jews or whatever.

And when I listen to this song I get a view into this ideology that isn't simply hatemongering and reactionary nonsense, I get a very emotional plea to remember something very uplifting, simple, and beautiful. I'm being taken by the hand and asked to believe that all the hate and violence is unfortunate but necessary to fully realize something that is like a lightning strike to my complacent, petty, and worthless modern sensibilities so that I might be touched by something truly pure and transcendent. I feel this in my bones and it's seductive and wonderful and complete garbage and that makes me kinda sad.

Why can't something so beautiful and positive actually be beautiful and positive? Why does it have to be hideous and negative simply because I know full well that it is? Behind all the malignancy of the movement and the music this is the allure and this is something that the left simply does not have because it does not have a history of it "existing".

I just want to be able to love my country, my race, my history, something connected to me, as something that I can shed a tear over in wonderful remembrance and possibly as a future to be grasped. Is that so wrong? Apparently it is. Truly it is and I know that. And that is kind of painful but I have to get over it and move on to something that isn't simply a fairy tale.

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