AEA Magazine Mar 2008
AEA Magazine (NY)
March 2008
Your publication A Rebel Life is described as “the New York hardcore punk memoir of violence, drugs, gangs and classism.” What are all the things this description entails? What purpose is its publication intended to serve?
I wrote with philosophical undertones, but rooted in a working class language. I get many kids who barely read tell me this is one of the few books they have read. I think it’s because I speak about the raw and real happenings of the streets, without some cowboy glorification that we are accustomed to seeing in action packed movies and books. So when I speak to these working class kids that barely read, it is from the heart and about a story of growing up in the streets of NYC, in the eighties, during one of its most violent periods. I’m telling them about experiences that they know all to well such as violence, drugs and gangs. But, I’m also telling them about who the real enemy is and how we are conditioned into our roles from birth. I’m presenting them nothing short of a manifesto on understanding our working class situation, and conforming as best we can into this corrupt system and finally waiting for the right moment when the revolution is true. I’m declaring through this book and the blood of my brother that I have not sold out my people, no matter what I look like and where I am in this class hierarchy. I will be on the front line of this war, spilling my blood and all of my material assets until justice is brought to my brother’s grave. So, the purpose of this book is to wake up my working class people and understand our created divisions of race, nationality, culture and religion and unite under one working class commonality. Ultimately, this book is written for my daughter, who was conceived and being conditioned to fight our enemies one day in a way that my ignorant and emotional mind could not find.
In A Rebel Life you take the position that the upper classes are ultimately responsible for the death of your brother, Archie. You argue that people are only responsible for themselves when they have total freedom to decide for themselves. Since the lower classes are controlled by the upper classes, they don’t have such freedom. In what ways do you see the upper classes as controlling the lower?
I think the hierarchy of status, power and wealth is the most obvious. It’s a primitive stratification of society that comes right out of our ape ancestor. It was used as a survival mechanism, when human society by enlarge, did not have the potential of reaching a higher individual consciousness, as Nietzsche acknowledged with his Overman doctrine. Human evolution has for the first time in history within the past one hundred years, spearheaded the growth of the mass human mind. It is a growth towards individualism. No one can predict the outcome, but we can say that this old form of hierarchy has no more purpose in the twenty first century as technological advancements equalizes the masses. We have seen the catalyst to its destruction in the twentieth century with some of the bloodiest class wars.
To get back to the question, the most obvious way the upper classes control is by their concentration of wealth to small groups of people throughout the world. Other examples are their living, working, eating, fighting, and schooling segregations. The way their dietary intake is usually far healthier and the safety in their neighborhoods much more soothing. And the way their education is far more superior, leading them to a more enlightened state of being and the inside knowledge of the system they are given assures a high position in the great machine of inequality. And how their rational thinking, obtained by these higher universities, helps them to conquer their animal nature and therefore control the drunken, working, sporting, soldiering, sexed up, drugged up mess that makes up the 98% of the world’s population that fight each other for half of the world’s wealth. The way they are assured through history that we will remain in our primitive nature, hoping to win the lottery or for the few of us to sell out our kind so that they may exploit and leave us an empty religious, national, racist shell of a human animal. This master class has one inherent defect in their being that makes them even lower, in terms of morality and ethics than the slaves they subjugate, and that is the awareness of their crime of purposeful inequality. For the majority of them, they are conscious of their actions and the majority of us simply react to our environment that they manipulate. It’s a classic analogy of a chess game.
The lower classes simply don’t have access to the same opportunities and it is not because as they would have us believe from our choosing. As I said in the book, no one consciously chooses ignorance.
How long has A Rebel Life been in publication? How well has it been received since it was first published?
The book has been out about a year now and given my limited resources and not beholding to any corporation, it has been well received.
A second edition of A Rebel Life has now been printed. Do you expect this edition to reach more people than the first?
I wanted to make a broader appeal with the new artwork, as I know many people judge immediately by the cover. My book has been defined by some as angry, maybe to fanaticize these timeless truths I am merely echoing from other great thinkers that came before me. I think my justified anger is just one component of the book, along with love, redemption, and truth.
What interviews have you done that are most worth mentioning in that the interviewer gave you an opportunity to provide the most informative answers?
I’ve done a few interviews and I think all of them have given me the opportunity to express and clarify my views I laid out in the book. I think your questions and the ones from the Free Society magazine have given me the greater opportunity to express my political and philosophical views.
You left home at sixteen, lived on the streets for a number of years, and then decided to return to school on a path toward a mainstream career. When hearing Archie passed away of a drug overdose, you opted to take revenge not through violence but rather through uprooting the system from within. Today, do you see the early stages of your rebellion as a journey? Do you believe you would have eventually arrived at the point you are now if Archie was still alive?
I probably would not have arrived at this conscious rebellion if my brother had not died. I have always understood the class struggle from the moment I hit the streets, but after torturing myself through gangs, constant violence and drugs, I gave up on the struggle in a way and conformed. Sure, I lied to myself like every other bourgeoisie liberal and said I’m going to change the system from within, but I was disillusioned with this struggle because human beings seem to never change their animal nature. When my brother died, I looked over everything about my life and its purpose. I’ve come to realize that you cannot beat a rich man within his system. You can’t even fight the system head-on and win. The fuel of a greedy and corrupt system is the ignorance of its people. How do you change the nature of people, though education? Unlikely. Through force? Unlikely. Wait for the biological evolution of man’s genetic makeup to naturally select out the greed and ignorant trait? Unlikely or too long. The masses have one hope to equalize society and become true individuals in an earthly utopian paradise and that is through technology. Embrace it at every level, unhindered and as scary as it may appear because it will correct our genetic makeup and strength our minds and destroy the few who want the masses the way they are today – in chaos.
In the interview you did for Free Society you said, “Capitalism and Communism are simply propaganda labels by the wealthy fighting their own personal wars, such as Democracy and Dictatorship.” What exactly did you mean by that?
I simply meant that these are ideals that have never existed on earth. They are a way to divide the working class to fight for a few rich people. America is not a true Democracy because it doesn’t have a society of equals and it isn’t a capitalist system with free markets unhindered by government and major corporations that not only influence, but manipulate the supposedly free playing ground. I’d like to know what these working class soldiers are bringing to the Middle East as they advertise Democracy from their lips and some of us know it’s nothing more than a few American rich families destroying a few Iraq rich families. And in the end, both soldiers, if they have survived, go back to working under Democracy, Dictatorship or what have you. It’s the same in Communist systems where the few control the majority of the assets, and although the class stratification might not be as severe, there is a concentration of wealth and power. Again, no equals, just empty labels.
There are a handful of dream sequences in A Rebel Life. What are these intended to represent?
There are three dreams the main character has which are titled God’s Dream, Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and My Brother’s Dream. In the first chapter God’s Dream, I pay homage to Nietzsche’s popular death of God philosophy where God is killed by his own creation, man. With this chapter I try to bring the reader to understand that the God concept and the rich man are one and the same. I tried to convey the message that religion and the God idea is a creation of the rich to subjugate the working class. With the second dream, I borrowed the title of one of Dostoyevsky’s short stories called Dream of a Ridiculous Man, where a man that is dissatisfied with the world is determined to commit suicide. In my chapter, the main character has the same sentiments, because he understands that most likely the working class will always remain in their ignorant and animal nature. In the last dream sequence, My Brother’s Dream, the main character envisions an alternative lifestyle for his younger brother. This was the hardest part of the book for me to write and that dream that still haunts me to this day.
How well has the press received A Rebel Life since its publication? Are there any countries where it received a particularly favorable response because of the socio-political climates there?
So everyone understands, we are not talking about the popular press, like the New York Times or Oprah. I’m not sure how they would respond, probably not favorable to the ideas I put forth in this book.
For the magazines and people that have reviewed the book, they have all had good things to say. There is no doubt, if I had the reach to market the book in Europe and the rest of the world that is where I would get the majority of my readers. A handful of my reviewers come from small, rather underground magazines from Europe and Canada, and it seems like they appreciate my critique of a rich man’s America. I get emails all the time of solidarity from non Americans.
How in your view do classic movies like 1984, Brave New World and A Clockwork Orange reflect our society today?
These movies show that there is an underground of ideas that do not trust the main stream with their delusion outlook of the future. These are not just movies. They are a look into a possible future.
Explain how you feel organized religion might have contributed to the current state of affairs in the U.S.
There have been books written on this topic and without taking too much time I’ll just say that religion, spirituality, faith and any metaphysical belief serves as a purpose to dilute the masses from the truth of their existence. And this truth does not look good.
How do you see mainstream pop culture’s societal influence from the 80s to the present, in terms of perpetuating the ideas of conforming to specific dress codes, keeping up with the Joneses and remaining in competition for the most toys?
I’m honestly not sure. I really don’t pay much attention to pop culture and how it influences people, it is just another mechanism to pacify the masses.
Do you see more of a complacent “it is what it is” or “you can’t fight City Hall” attitude towards the rich these days as opposed to the time you were involved in the punk scene? Are people less likely to speak their minds about what they see happening in the mainstream for concerns of being suppressed? Is the power of money or the power of knowledge ultimately stronger?
For the first question, I think the complacency of the masses has always existed. It’s only when they are severely pushed that they react or speak up, such as the draft during the Vietnam War. If the masses have bread in their stomach and an illusion of opportunity, they don’t mind the feeding these vampires do on their mindless carcass. Knowledge does not presuppose a higher conscious human being. Money and knowledge go hand-in-hand, it is ethics, morality and convictions that are stronger.
Since the late 80s the media has put the message across to the general public that the skinhead culture is inherently racist. From Geraldo Rivera onward, media has long equated skinheads with bigotry and racial violence, and all but overlooked the fact that the traditional skinhead movement is rooted in Jamaican and English culture. What do you believe is the reason the media focuses solely on racist skinheads, telling only one side of the story while refusing to shed more light on the other?
It’s obvious to me, especially since I studied the media closely in graduate school, that they are an extension of the propaganda machine the wealthy have in place. When current news, actors, and advertisers are mixed together, the result for the uneducated, which are predominantly working class people and poor, are deadly. People tend not to be able to distinguish between the three. It amazes me sometimes when I hear people hum an advertiser’s jingle or they bring their kids to indoctrinating camps like Disney World. The Nazi and Soviet propaganda machine pales in comparison to our modern propaganda behemoth. So, to go back to the question of why the media popularizes the racist skinhead culture or religious suicide bombers for that matter, we have to ask who gains when the working classes divide? As you know, I am no proponent of racism or religion, but I can tell you that the wealthy, through the media, create these radical extremists in the working class. If the rich didn’t exist, there would be no need for such radicalism, because the resources that are concentrated in the environment would be evenly distributed. Fundamentally, all these groups are fighting to control a limited amount of resources in the environment. We know the statistics of the concentration of wealth as I gave earlier.
You were in the audience on the Geraldo Rivera show, for the purpose of informing people that not all skinheads are racists. Do you feel your appearance made a difference on how people views the skinhead culture? From your point of view, what took place during the brawl that broke out in the studio? What happened during the aftermath when they cut to commercial?
I was an Eighteen year-old idiot from the streets that was being used to entertain the masses and fill the pockets of Geraldo and his corporation. My appearance made no difference other than to show the world that we make enemies of ourselves. This class divide that has existed from the moment man gained consciousness a couple of million years-ago, is the cause to all the other divisions that exist today. As our primitive ancestor used the first tools and ushered in the great awakening, his second conscious thought carried from its ape ancestor, must have been how I can use it to subjugate or kill my enemy. Modern man eventually evolved from this with a hierarchical system. When the few couldn’t subjugate the masses, they were killed or like we see with the extinction of Neanderthal man, completely eradicated off the face of the Earth. When I hear of all the working class division that exists, I know its historic roots and understand only one true division exists.
As far as the brawl, I went there to support my friends and the racist skinheads threw a chair at Geraldo and his panelists, not us. I wasn’t defending some corporation. I guess we were there to tell the world or at least New York City that we weren’t racist. At that time the city went through some tough racial problems and we were branded with a racist label that just wasn’t true.
Anti-Heroes sued New Line Cinema because “American History X” featured a racist skinhead with a tattoo of their name. According to the Internet Movie Database, they didn’t want to be associated even with fictional racists. They even recorded the song "NLC" about the studio. Should this point out skinheads are not intrinsically linked with race hatred? Is assuming so simply another form of prejudice? After all, the Bad Brains are considered one of hardcore’s most influential bands ever.
Absolutely, but let’s put skinheads into context. Just because they weren’t racist doesn’t mean they weren’t violent. There are many skinhead factions and I don’t understand any of them that aren’t politically motivated and rooted in a working class anarchist or even socialist ideology. Skinheads are a working class movement that is actively against the system. They shouldn’t just want to drink and fight like rowdy cowboys or sports fans as most of them are known to do in Europe and the US.
Daniel Schweizer’s 2003 documentary Skinhead Attitude explores skinhead’s true origins in Jamaican culture. Which books or movies would you recommend to people who want to discover the traditional non-racist skinhead movement?
I don’t know. I have always relied on word of mouth and OI bands like the business.
The eviction of CBGB by the Bowery Residents’ Committee is viewed as the loss of a club that not only revolutionized New York culture but revolutionized world culture for years to follow. Wetlands and Coney Island High are no longer in existence. Continental no longer features live bands. All these clubs hosted underground punk, hardcore and metal band. Also, Long Island’s Empire Records has closed, and Slipped Disc is to close. The reasons are often financial. Do you see this as part of the gentrification of New York that’s gone on the last few years? How much have punk and hardcore been affected by this?
I am not sure if it is because of a gentrification of New York as much as it is from the music becoming main stream. There are many places in shitty towns on Long Island and NYC that still have punk and hardcore shows and might be breeding a new type of underground music. Older people, especially from my generation, tend to get nostalgic with CBGB’s and other clubs that showcased underground music, but the heart of the scene has never been in those walls or even with the bands. It has been with the people that meet and find common view. Playing in a garage or hip hoping on a corner has always been and will always be where the underground meet.
The attempted eviction of the punk club/art house/activist center ABC No Rio was stopped following legal battles that began in 1994 as the city revoked its lease to sell the building to another activist group. Wikipedia. org says, “…Attempting to divide non-profit community groups had been used many times to split groups that the city approves of from more confrontational ones was used frequently against Lower East Side squatters throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.” The fight for the club was eventually won when a renovation deal was struck. Does this present a hope that some clubs can survive gentrification?
If the people are behind it they could survive a war.
How important would you consider the projects ABC No Rio is still involved in (i.e. hardcore/punk matinees, art shows and the Book Through Bars, Food Not Bombs & the Lower East Side Biography programs) as far as giving people of like minds to associate and spread knowledge of what is happening in the world?
In the context of educating, ABC No Rio is extremely important for people of like minds to gather. Places like this serve as a networking center.
In his movie America: Freedom To Fascism, director Aaron Russo (The Rose, Trading Places) says America was originally founded not as a democracy, but as a constitutional republic. Russo said democracy was made to sound good as a word but it is the worst form of government that can exist since it favors majority rule and offers the minority no protection. Would you agree or disagree with this point. Please explain your reasons.
Absolutely agree. We don’t have a Democracy and never did. I mean, the ancient Greeks never even had a Democracy when women, slaves and non land owners could not even vote. We don’t even have a constitutional republic when people of money and power manipulate the law and the system for their benefit. What we have is a global Aristocracy that transfer’s wealth from within small groups throughout history. They fight wars, they conquer each other, and they make agreements and packs while the working classes remain the same and these wealthy groups shift wealth around. The labels are to divide the working class. If you can’t see the proof of this right in front of your eyes, then you never will. For over twenty years and out of 300 million people in the United States we have only been able to find 2 families that can lead this nation? It should be an outright crime to have a presidential line up of Vice President Bush, then President Clinton, then President Bush and now we are looking at President Clinton again? Even if she doesn’t get elected, she is an influence within the system. And there is another Bush in the background as the Governor of Florida waiting his turn. The joke is on us.
What books and/or authors would you most highly recommend to those who have read A Rebel Life?
So many authors have influenced me from a variety of fields from philosophy to the hard sciences. I quoted a bunch in the book so I would start with them I guess. I have been mostly influenced by old philosophers like Nietzsche, Darwin and Marx and modern theorists like Dawkins, Dennett, and Kurzwell.