I was at school back in 1986 when Chernobyl happened. When the news that something had happened- and as you state, nobody knew just how bad it was due to USSR obfuscation - the advice from the BBC was to to shut your windows. Feeling panicked, I turned to Radio 1’s Newsbeat (a news show aimed at ‘the youth’) for more details.. At the end of the news on Chernobyl, Radio 1 launched straight into playing ‘I’m Your Man’ by Wham. The juxtaposition of Chernobyl with such banal pop music, prompted Marr and Morrissey of The Smiths to write their track ‘Panic’, Marr later revealed the New Musical Express; “because the music they constantly play, says nothing to me about my life...hang the DJ, hang the DJ, hang the DJ...”
Indeed, Morrissey and Marr heard the same Newsbeat broadcast I did. This awful news then we’re straight into ‘I’m Your Man’ by Wham...they were sufficiently outraged to put pen to paper and call out the inanity of daytime radio and pop music in general. Panic was a huge hit in the summer of 86, but The Smiths refused to perform it on Top of the Pops. Us kids were scared about the clouds of radioactivity heading towards the U.K. - there were traces found in Northern Ireland where I was growing up then....Chernobyl showed us that the USSR we’d been taught to fear, was largely smoke and mirrors.
And yet today the music on the radio says everything about Marr's life. Woke, obedient and essentially wagging a finger at the plebs - telling them to trust the government rather than the ordinary bloke on their own grim street who doesn't have two pennies to rub together but can see his people are under attack. Marr now views that guy as the powerful bully who needs to be bound and gagged, so that he can neither spread hatred or punch down. Morrissey, it must be said, does not share that view. But for every man like him, there are a thousand of our old heroes who are happy to give us a kicking. They work for the same group of people today as they did back when we were young and fawning over them.
I think that Marr's frequent attacks on Morrissey are just his way of keeping the relationship going. He's a bit like the person you expected to thrive, while his partner floundered, once the divorce came through yet to everyone's surprise the opposite turned out to be the case. Marr was adequately replaced by good session musicians, while no other singer has ever written and sung a single line that could have been mistaken for one of Morrissey's. As for politics, Morrissey was never left-wing. He just hated the Conservative Party of the 1980s, particularly Margaret Thatcher. Then again, he was withering about almost everything back then including himself a lot of the time.
Lol, indeed Morrissey was withering about pretty much everything. His autobiography was a catalogue of his pet hates - the Royal Family, the government education system, the judiciary, the meat industry, the Catholic Church etc etc. He was always an old soul. You’re so right about how Marr was easily replaced, but Morrissey could never be. Johnny’s become the celebrity session musician. The only music that he’s done that’s made any real impact on my memory, is his collaboration with Bernard Sumner in Electronic and that was 30 years’ ago!! I agree, the exchange of barbed comments is probably the only means Morrissey and Marr have left to keep what’s left of the relationship alive. Like a bitter, divorced couple. When The Smiths broke up, I certainly felt like a child whose parents have announced they are separating...
The worst of the lot has to be Ian Gilmour for me, formerly my favourite Pink Floyd member. I always thought it was Waters who was going to be revealed as the sort of rock star that Tony Blair would want onboard. Turns put he's the most anti-establishment major artist living today.
Gilmour's A Great Day for Freedom includes the lines...
Now life devalues day by day
As friends and neighbours turn away
And there's a change that even with regret
Cannot be undone
He'll be first in the queue for the next jab, wagging his finger at those who won't join him. Pink Floyd seemed to provided the definitive soundtrack for those of us who mistrust the system, but almost all of all our favourite old bands are made up of men who have been indoctrinated by the television set for their entire lives.
https://youtube.com/@LadyOfShaIott. So sorry for the slow reply! And thank you - I have a video on William Morris and one on Nick Drake on the way... 🙏😊
Morgoth, I guess this excellent 2-part production offers hope. If Gorbachev was right, and that it was Chernobyl that actually brought down the Soviet Union, then optimists might look to the needlecraft fiasco and believe it could eventually spell curtains for the current tyrannical system. They might be correct, but what I see as being the main difference with our situation is that we don't have any idea what an alternative way of living might look like - at least not in the modern world.
Capitalism is the last girl at the Soi 7 beer bar. She's already got drunk on most of your money, stolen your watch and knee-ed you in the groin. Communism was the only other girl present when you came into the bar, all those long hours ago. She was mean, hard-faced and you didn't give her a second look. At some point, she departed the scene and has possibly re-appeared as the Mamasan on the other side of the counter, but you are now so well-oiled it's not easy to tell for sure.
The only smart thing to do is leave the bar and to turn your back on everything that's inside there. Infinite possibilities lay outside, but walking away is not easy without a clear head and a map to guide you home.
In Norman Davies history of Europe, he had a memorable line that people in the USSR who watched the collapse were like fish stranded on a beach as the tide receded.
Point being, they had no plan either. I was chatting with an old nationalist friend today, we discussed how the technological oblivion scenario was coming towards us faster than the racial oblivion scenario.
The system has lined all of its defences on the front of preventing racialism within white people, but it could be dealt a deathblow by something else. This is why I tend to wander far off the plantation in what interests me and what I write about.
You might enjoy this archived NYT review of the book, by Theodore K Rabb (Yes, of course he is!). He doesn't spit out his herring until paragraph 6, which includes belters such as "a skewed discussion of usury" among his many complaints!
Surely the ordinary people in Russia were licking their chops at the thought of Western capitalism breaching its walls, though? They would have heard lavish tales about Madonna, Pizza Hut, Levi 501s, kitten heels and the entrepreneurs who were being given a fair crack of the whip and living the dream.
There is nowhere left to cast envious eyes over, unless we now somewhat farcically look to Eastern Europe and leaders who at least pretend to care about the wellbeing of their own native people. The same part of the world we thought of as showcasing inhumanity at its very worst, a few decades ago.
I'm sure there were plenty of farsighted elders who looked upon the West and realised it was just another incorrect solution to a problem, but I would have thought they would have been in a small minority. However, Davies' book looks like something I really need to read myself. Perhaps I would feel differently, had I already done so?
Davies' book isn't ''red-pilling'' and you might have to hold your nose through some of it. It was something that stuck with me on a standard, if large, read on European history.
As for the USSR, as I've written before in articles such as ''America's Toxic Rebrand'' what America was offering in the 80s and early 90s was indeed highly appealing and most of America would have been a great place to live.
I didn't believe the depopulation by design argument, as all that is left is uncooperative people who didn't comply. I'm not so sure anymore. It's not hubris either.
America’s Chernobyl is already happening with the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Check out @TrashRadio’s thread on Twitter (aka stained Hanes). Alarm systems ignored. There will be more.
Another good essay, I'm glad you came back to this so soon.
I liked how you wove and contrasted 'On Power' to 'Chernobyl; History of a Tragedy'. By the end you make a good, grim point about how the people in the West no longer trust those who rule them. What will our disaster be? Or is "just" COVID. I suspect worse is to come. After all, there are four horsemen, not just one.
Great work, you make these connections no one else does.
I’ve believed since the Iraq wars that the American regime is every bit as false and cruel as the USSR ever was, probably worse. The people are bought off by the luxurious standard of living.
The first I heard of it was as a kid, my mum asked me to sit down and told me that she had to go for an operation to get a cancerous lump removed from her throat. The doctors later thought it was caused by the radiation which made its way to Scotland.
A virus that has gone through gain of function evolution in a lab to be incredibly deadly now ravaging the world might be the next thing to worry the elites enough to get them up before dawn.
I was at school back in 1986 when Chernobyl happened. When the news that something had happened- and as you state, nobody knew just how bad it was due to USSR obfuscation - the advice from the BBC was to to shut your windows. Feeling panicked, I turned to Radio 1’s Newsbeat (a news show aimed at ‘the youth’) for more details.. At the end of the news on Chernobyl, Radio 1 launched straight into playing ‘I’m Your Man’ by Wham. The juxtaposition of Chernobyl with such banal pop music, prompted Marr and Morrissey of The Smiths to write their track ‘Panic’, Marr later revealed the New Musical Express; “because the music they constantly play, says nothing to me about my life...hang the DJ, hang the DJ, hang the DJ...”
I never knew the story behind that, very interesting.
Indeed, Morrissey and Marr heard the same Newsbeat broadcast I did. This awful news then we’re straight into ‘I’m Your Man’ by Wham...they were sufficiently outraged to put pen to paper and call out the inanity of daytime radio and pop music in general. Panic was a huge hit in the summer of 86, but The Smiths refused to perform it on Top of the Pops. Us kids were scared about the clouds of radioactivity heading towards the U.K. - there were traces found in Northern Ireland where I was growing up then....Chernobyl showed us that the USSR we’d been taught to fear, was largely smoke and mirrors.
And yet today the music on the radio says everything about Marr's life. Woke, obedient and essentially wagging a finger at the plebs - telling them to trust the government rather than the ordinary bloke on their own grim street who doesn't have two pennies to rub together but can see his people are under attack. Marr now views that guy as the powerful bully who needs to be bound and gagged, so that he can neither spread hatred or punch down. Morrissey, it must be said, does not share that view. But for every man like him, there are a thousand of our old heroes who are happy to give us a kicking. They work for the same group of people today as they did back when we were young and fawning over them.
Really good point. Marr has been depressingly conformist since his bold days with The Smiths. I recently listened to a podcast which reviewed his autobiography https://open.spotify.com/episode/3NDL6aEEmJs7k9LRZbmvz1?si=P_H168sHQGeyd9kEJlFK4g. and the reviewers felt he was desperate to please and moulded his views to fit in with whomever he was with at that time - hence the bewildering range of musical collaborations, but none with that caustic spark he achieved with the Moz. As you no doubt saw, Morrissey publicly asked Marr to stop talking about and using him as clickbait...https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/move-on-its-you-cant-22876276?utm_source=linkCopy&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebar.
I should declare my bias - I adore Morrissey and have seen him live many times. Marr’s best days were those with the Moz.
I think that Marr's frequent attacks on Morrissey are just his way of keeping the relationship going. He's a bit like the person you expected to thrive, while his partner floundered, once the divorce came through yet to everyone's surprise the opposite turned out to be the case. Marr was adequately replaced by good session musicians, while no other singer has ever written and sung a single line that could have been mistaken for one of Morrissey's. As for politics, Morrissey was never left-wing. He just hated the Conservative Party of the 1980s, particularly Margaret Thatcher. Then again, he was withering about almost everything back then including himself a lot of the time.
Lol, indeed Morrissey was withering about pretty much everything. His autobiography was a catalogue of his pet hates - the Royal Family, the government education system, the judiciary, the meat industry, the Catholic Church etc etc. He was always an old soul. You’re so right about how Marr was easily replaced, but Morrissey could never be. Johnny’s become the celebrity session musician. The only music that he’s done that’s made any real impact on my memory, is his collaboration with Bernard Sumner in Electronic and that was 30 years’ ago!! I agree, the exchange of barbed comments is probably the only means Morrissey and Marr have left to keep what’s left of the relationship alive. Like a bitter, divorced couple. When The Smiths broke up, I certainly felt like a child whose parents have announced they are separating...
The worst of the lot has to be Ian Gilmour for me, formerly my favourite Pink Floyd member. I always thought it was Waters who was going to be revealed as the sort of rock star that Tony Blair would want onboard. Turns put he's the most anti-establishment major artist living today.
Gilmour's A Great Day for Freedom includes the lines...
Now life devalues day by day
As friends and neighbours turn away
And there's a change that even with regret
Cannot be undone
He'll be first in the queue for the next jab, wagging his finger at those who won't join him. Pink Floyd seemed to provided the definitive soundtrack for those of us who mistrust the system, but almost all of all our favourite old bands are made up of men who have been indoctrinated by the television set for their entire lives.
Looked for your YouTube channel but didn't find. Can you link
The video is in the main post.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzIe02cUmtDWJtch8mU3I9A
Sorry. I should have been clearer. Looking for link to Lady of Shallots YouTube channel. AA mentioned she had started one.
https://youtube.com/@LadyOfShaIott. So sorry for the slow reply! And thank you - I have a video on William Morris and one on Nick Drake on the way... 🙏😊
Morgoth, really a compelling article. thanks for all you do
Morgoth, I guess this excellent 2-part production offers hope. If Gorbachev was right, and that it was Chernobyl that actually brought down the Soviet Union, then optimists might look to the needlecraft fiasco and believe it could eventually spell curtains for the current tyrannical system. They might be correct, but what I see as being the main difference with our situation is that we don't have any idea what an alternative way of living might look like - at least not in the modern world.
Capitalism is the last girl at the Soi 7 beer bar. She's already got drunk on most of your money, stolen your watch and knee-ed you in the groin. Communism was the only other girl present when you came into the bar, all those long hours ago. She was mean, hard-faced and you didn't give her a second look. At some point, she departed the scene and has possibly re-appeared as the Mamasan on the other side of the counter, but you are now so well-oiled it's not easy to tell for sure.
The only smart thing to do is leave the bar and to turn your back on everything that's inside there. Infinite possibilities lay outside, but walking away is not easy without a clear head and a map to guide you home.
In Norman Davies history of Europe, he had a memorable line that people in the USSR who watched the collapse were like fish stranded on a beach as the tide receded.
Point being, they had no plan either. I was chatting with an old nationalist friend today, we discussed how the technological oblivion scenario was coming towards us faster than the racial oblivion scenario.
The system has lined all of its defences on the front of preventing racialism within white people, but it could be dealt a deathblow by something else. This is why I tend to wander far off the plantation in what interests me and what I write about.
You might enjoy this archived NYT review of the book, by Theodore K Rabb (Yes, of course he is!). He doesn't spit out his herring until paragraph 6, which includes belters such as "a skewed discussion of usury" among his many complaints!
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/04/bsp/20491.html?scp=47&sq=oxford%2520university&st=cse
Surely the ordinary people in Russia were licking their chops at the thought of Western capitalism breaching its walls, though? They would have heard lavish tales about Madonna, Pizza Hut, Levi 501s, kitten heels and the entrepreneurs who were being given a fair crack of the whip and living the dream.
There is nowhere left to cast envious eyes over, unless we now somewhat farcically look to Eastern Europe and leaders who at least pretend to care about the wellbeing of their own native people. The same part of the world we thought of as showcasing inhumanity at its very worst, a few decades ago.
I'm sure there were plenty of farsighted elders who looked upon the West and realised it was just another incorrect solution to a problem, but I would have thought they would have been in a small minority. However, Davies' book looks like something I really need to read myself. Perhaps I would feel differently, had I already done so?
Davies' book isn't ''red-pilling'' and you might have to hold your nose through some of it. It was something that stuck with me on a standard, if large, read on European history.
As for the USSR, as I've written before in articles such as ''America's Toxic Rebrand'' what America was offering in the 80s and early 90s was indeed highly appealing and most of America would have been a great place to live.
You are fucking dark. However, I think you are correct in every respect.
Haha well, my mind does wander......
I didn't believe the depopulation by design argument, as all that is left is uncooperative people who didn't comply. I'm not so sure anymore. It's not hubris either.
America’s Chernobyl is already happening with the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Check out @TrashRadio’s thread on Twitter (aka stained Hanes). Alarm systems ignored. There will be more.
It's like I have a crystal ball, spooky.
Or I'm cursed haha
Another good essay, I'm glad you came back to this so soon.
I liked how you wove and contrasted 'On Power' to 'Chernobyl; History of a Tragedy'. By the end you make a good, grim point about how the people in the West no longer trust those who rule them. What will our disaster be? Or is "just" COVID. I suspect worse is to come. After all, there are four horsemen, not just one.
Thank you for writing and recording this.
Great work, you make these connections no one else does.
I’ve believed since the Iraq wars that the American regime is every bit as false and cruel as the USSR ever was, probably worse. The people are bought off by the luxurious standard of living.
The first I heard of it was as a kid, my mum asked me to sit down and told me that she had to go for an operation to get a cancerous lump removed from her throat. The doctors later thought it was caused by the radiation which made its way to Scotland.
A virus that has gone through gain of function evolution in a lab to be incredibly deadly now ravaging the world might be the next thing to worry the elites enough to get them up before dawn.