Considering patriotism in the context of anti-establishment politics

Two things happened to me this week that made me consider what it means to be patriotic.

First, I got hold of a copy of the new Titus Andronicus album Local Business. Titus Andronicus, especially on their last two albums, have a strong sense of patriotism and love (sometime begrudging) towards America.

A photo from the lyrics booklet of Local Business

Second, a few days after that, I attended a Yes Scotland meeting/debate in Falkirk, which aimed to continue the spread of grassroots activism which many people say will be the key to Scottish independence.

Throughout my life I have been uncomfortable with the concept of patriotism and, especially, nationalism. Not just uncomfortable, in that I felt these terms could never apply to me, but also struck with a sense that to pride yourself on what imagined community (to use Benedict Anderson’s phrase) you were randomly born in was absurd.

Similarly, although until recently my politics were ill-defined I’ve always desired to be ‘anti-establishment’ in some way. I’ve long idolised punk music and the protests of May ’68. I was enthralled by the anti-globalisation protests in Scotland against the G8 when I was younger, even though I had no real idea what they meant. Patriotism/nationalism – essentially, allegiance to ‘the state’ and its historical, usually conservative context – was against what I scratchily believed in.

Back to Titus Andronicus – one of the reasons I love them is that they are a proper punk-rock band, in ethic more so than aesthetic. They, like all punk should, eschew the mainstream, corporate music industry. And yet they, as I pointed out above, have a strong current of patriotism that runs through their music. Is this compatible? An excellent Stereogum article by Liz Pelly asks this question, framing the attempts of Titus Andronicus to bridge the void between punk and patriotism (a quest made explicit on several occasions by several members of the band, as Pelly notes) in a wider sense of where Americans, of their generation, also belong in this context. Pelly, like TA, believe it is possible to be both and patriotic. In fact, to be both can even be radical - the virtues of the Founding Fathers are so different from the current American values, yet actually similar to the values of punk. Therefore, embracing true' Americanism, and at the same time punk ethics, are a rebellion against contemporary neo-liberal, Christian right America. 

This I find very interesting, mainly because listening to Titus actually makes me feel faintly patriotic for the US (to put this in context, I never been to America and, as befits my radical politics I talked about earlier, have long considered them 'the enemy'). I feel as if I can believe in the early disciplines of America, which were based on liberty and equality. Current America has twisted the 'American Dream' to mean that the only way to be truly free is economically, and this, to some extend, makes me sad. America could - should - be a great country. It is not. It may never be.

So how does this fit into Scottish patriotism? I could not consider myself an American patriot, as I am not American. Can I consider myself a Scottish patriot?

I do not love Scotland - at least, I do not love it unconditionally. There are things I love about Scotland, certainly. The country has a fantastic scientific and cultural legacy for it's size. Two of the greatest novels I've ever read, Alisdair Grey's Lanark and James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner are both particularly Scottish novels, in that they would lose their impact of separated from their national context. Both novels aim to say something about Scottish national identity - Lanark through politics, Confessions... through religious mortality (I'm aware this is a hugely simplistic explanation).

I love that in certain parts of Scotland (Glasgow, and the general Western Scotland area) it's acceptable to use the otherwise offensive word 'cunt' as a term of affection (e.g. "See that cunt over there?" "You're an alright cunt!"). I even love Scottish football, grudgingly. 

On the other hand, combined with a dislike for kilts and bagpipes, I still cannot feel comfortable with patriotism. Therefore, I could never love Scotland in the way that many of the people at the Yes Scotland meeting certainly did.   

In that case, why am I so devoted to the cause of Scottish independence? Other than a hatred for Britain as an entity and identity, I love what Scotland could be. I've written before about the strain of working class pride that is deeply ingrained in parts of Scotland, and that these would come to the forefront of Scottish politics were independence to be achieved. The Scottish Labour party, traditionally the main Scottish party (although heavily defeated by the SNP at the last general election here) are inexcusably tied to the reactionary British Labour party, which is still shrouded by New Labour and ashamed of it's working class, trade union roots. It is hopeless, and the Scottish Labour party is tainted by association*. People on Scotland (including myself, until recently) overwhelmingly voted for Labour as a way to combat the legions of Tories from across the border. We would no longer need to do that in an independent Scotland. At the Yes Scotland meeting, local author Alan Bisset laid out his vision for the future of Scottish politics. It goes:

• Under independence, the centrist SNP would become the party of the establishment
• The current largely pro-union, right of centre Labour party would disintegrate, being reborn as a smaller but left-wing Labour party, comprised of those MSPs who were pro-independence
• The Tories, entirely pro-union, would also wither away to even greater political insignificance than they already have**. The Lib Dems have already done so.
• The Green party, currently with two MSPs and numerous councillors around the country, would be resurgent, as would the SSP (or, even better, a Left Front-type group of the various small 'People's Front of Judea' parties of the Scottish left)
• Therefore, the shape of the Scottish parliament would be overwhelmingly left-leaning to openly left-wing.

This all brings me back to what we can justifiably be proud of - what we are working to. In this context, patriotism could be seen as something to earn. We must build a country to be proud of, not just settle with mild pride for what we have. Independence is just a facet of this. The problems in Scotland will not disappear overnight come a Yes vote in 2014. Years of hard work will follow. What differs from the rest of Britain (I could be a British patriot, but I am vehemently not) is that in Scotland this remains a faint possibility. The nature of Britain, with it's power structure concentrated in the hands of the rich and the privileged, a power solidified through time.

As Alisdair Grey said in my linked article above, "Work as if you live in the earlier days of a better nation". A nation that one day we could concievably be proud of. 


*A month or so ago two incidents concerning these two Labour parties almost motivated me to write a mocking obituary of the party. The first being Ed Miliband admitting in an interview with the Telegraph that he admired Thatcher. The second being Johann Lamont attempting to remove Scottish Labour's dedication to the welfare state. I never wrote it, but I meant it - the Labour party can no longer be seen as the party of social progress.

** I follow the situation of the Scottish Conservative party with some interest, and, given my hatred for all things Tory, a good deal of laughing. They exist in a strange nether-zone - big enough to have a good presence in the Scottish parliament, but not quite big enough to actually have any real impact on the goings-on. The Greens only have two MSPs, but they a fringe party, and so shouldn't be expected to have a huge number. The Tories also have such a toxic reputation in Scotland that no one dare work with them - there are certainly smaller parties with less supporters, but perhaps no major party endures the hatred that the Tories have in here. It's so bad that one of the contenders for the party leadership wanted to disband the entire party and re-brand it as something non-Tory, as to avoid the bad rep.


http://500revolutions.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/album-review-titus-andronicus-local.html

Album Review: Titus Andronicus - 'Local Business'

RATING: 8/10

How do you follow an album like The Monitor? It's an album adored by many people (me included), one of the best of the last decade. It sums up the ethos and attitude of Titus Andronicus so competely that it will always be regarded as their calling card.

The first point to make is that Local Business is not The Monitor. Nor is it simply The Monitor: Part Two. To try to top it would be foolish, so Titus Andronicus have shifted their sound to a different plane. The entire album feels less ramshackle. The songs are reined in, the band itself thinned down and refined to a core of five. Singer Patrick Stickles sounds less like he is hauling notes out of his throat from the pit his stomache, and the pace throughout is slower, like an album comprised of the first half of 'Theme From Cheers.' Overall, Titus Andronicus continue to draw from their punk rock background - when I considered this at first, I wanted to draw a comparison to The Clash recording London Calling, embracing a world of different influences as the confines of punk music dawned on them. But, despite adopting a style more suited to classic rock (there's even a hint of country rock at the start of '(I Am The) Electric Man') Titus still stay true to their roots. After all, they expanded a love of punk into a concept album about the American Civil War as a metaphor for a coming of age journey to New Jersey. The boundaries of genre perhaps do not matter here.

Punk or no punk, Stickles' lyrics continue the trend found in both The Monitor and their debut The Airing of Grievances. Albert Camus continues to linger a heavy influence ('Titus Andronicus Vs. The Absurd Universe (3rd Round KO)' being a good example, with it's sole lyric of 'I am going insane'). The opening gambit of Local Business is: 

Okay, I think, by now, we've established that everything is inherantly worthless
And there is nothing in the universe with any kind of objective purpose

Later in the same song:

I heard about my authentic self - what would I say were I ever to meet him?
I guess "Yr guilty of a terrible crime, and I know it was my birth"
I'm doing twenty-six to life now on planet Earth

An obsession with Camus' Absurd prevails, but the most powerful section of the album is when Stickles addresses his eating disorder on the self-explanitory 'My Eating Disorder', (preceded by the ironic 'Food Fight!'). Detailing the 'amorphous monster' that prevents him from consuming food, he moves between the artifical medication of vitamin pills and the self-medication of cigarettes.

Again, like their previous two albums the lyrics are strong, with regular moments of genius.

Your gonna get your chance to be hung
You'll make a great gift to gracious girls
Try to swallow while your still young
That your dick's too short to fuck the world

is an early personal favourite. The only problem is that some the lyrics begin to seem lazy. Both 'Titus Andronicus Vs The Absurd Universe' and 'Food Fight!' are limited to one line each, while the album closer 'Tried To Quit Smoking' has good lines, but makes the mistake of stretching them over ten minutes which begin to drag half way through. The astonishing 'The Battle of Hampton Roads' which closes The Monitor, by comparison, runs for fourteen minutes and flies by, by virtue of cramming in as many ideas as you could find in entire albums by other bands.

And there, the main problem with Local Business raises it's head again - the spectre of The Monitor, in escapable. Simply, Local Business is on no level as good as it's predesessor. We never should have expected it to be. The trouble is not with the album, but with the expectations. As a stand-alone album, Local Business is great - as part of the wider Titus Andronicus canon, not so much.

In an interview to promote The Monitor, Patrick Stickles remarked that the Civil War battleship from which the album took his name from hung over his thoughts, and his experience with New Jersey, that The Monitor, as impressive as it was, began to cloud everything. How right he was. 

On 'The Monitor', Bruce Springsteen, and identity crisis

When I first heard The Monitor, the second album by New Jersey band Titus Andronicus, I dismissed it as a punk-rock take on Bruce Springsteen that would provide a bit of short-term fun. I underestimated the power of the album to get under your skin, to open itself further with every listen, and, of course, the phrase ‘punk-rock take on Bruce Springsteen’.

I heard it first over a year ago, and listening to it now, the Springsteen-references are not just a lazy way to describe an album, but actually the key to what the album is trying to say. Springsteen himself embodies the traditional, New Jersey working man. He speaks to blue-collar Americans in the way that politicians wish they could, because he is a working class American. One of the reasons for The Boss’ enduring success, it was once said, is that you can almost imagine that when he isn’t touring, Bruce actually goes back to his hometown and works in a factory with the same people he grew up. At the end of his shift, he goes to the same bar he always has and drinks PBR with those same people again. That is not the case, obviously, but perhaps more than any musician who sings extensively about his roots, he has maintained his pre-fame identity.

The working-class of New Jersey, and all around America, that Springsteen writes about and embodies, has been romanticised in much the same way that British miners were before Thatcherism – it wasn’t a glamorous life, or a desirable one, but it was their life, an honest life that was driven by a ‘honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay’ philosophy. It was the generation eulogised by Frank Sobotka in series two of The Wire, when he says ‘We used to make shit in this country, build shit.’
That quote represents the point where Titus Andronicus and other bands which count Springsteen as their inspiration split. The Gaslight Anthem, with a lead singer who worked for nearly a decade in a car factory before becoming a singer, are in love with the image of Americana that Springsteen promotes. Titus Andronicus, however, see things much differently. Their New Jersey is that of the sons and daughters of the people depicted in the songs of Springsteen and The Gaslight Anthem – some of the many victims of globalised capitalism and the crisis of identity which resulted from it.
The process of globalisation, which has really been happening throughout history, gathered momentum in the second half of the twentieth century. It was bad news for the working class of New Jersey, as their jobs were transported to the other side of the world as using Eastern-based wage slavery became an economic reality for multinational companies. The next generation, the Titus Andronicus-generation, were promised a new start, increased levels of economic freedom, free information, and everything else.

But globalisation, in a bid to create a global identity, tore up the roots that once gave people a real sense of self. Under Thatcherism and Reaganomics, class was apparently dissolved into one.
The real problem this created was that, when it opened new windows for young people, globalised capitalism made sure it bolted any doors closed, and moved those doors out to countries where it is legal to pay people less than a dollar a day. A vacuum of jobs for young people was created, and those that belonged to families of the working class apparently saw their history being erased by ‘trickle-down economics’ which never fulfilled their promise.

The Monitor is filled with references to depression, anxiety, alcoholism and worthlessness – they form the feeling of emptiness that comes from the lack of fixed identity. At the same time, the album reflects what, if anything, was good about globalised society – the spread of knowledge. Titus Andronicus is a consciously-cleverer album than any of those of Springsteen – it’s a concept album based on American history, is strewn with references to myriad other influences. The band name even comes from a relatively obscure Shakespeare play.

If The Monitor was given a human embodiment, it would be the slightly pretentious, university-educated son of a former New Jersey steel factory worker. The clash between the references and the dark lyrics, and the audible influence of traditional American anthemic rock, is the playing out of a struggle between this generation’s past and present.