{ "article": { "title" : "Raising the Price of Protest", "author" : "Travis Nichols", "category" : "essays", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/raising-the-price-of-protest", "date" : "2025-03-20 10:31:00 -0400", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/2025_03_20_Greenpeace_S3.jpg", "excerpt" : "Greenpeace Staff Attorney Deepa Padmanabha outside the Morton County Memorial Courthouse after closing arguments.", "content" : "Greenpeace Staff Attorney Deepa Padmanabha outside the Morton County Memorial Courthouse after closing arguments.For the past three weeks, in a state courthouse in Mandan, North Dakota, the fossil fuel company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline has been trying to put a dollar amount on the price of protest. Their starting bid was $300 million.In a civil suit, Energy Transfer claimed Greenpeace secretly orchestrated the Indigenous-led Standing Rock protests through a campaign of misinformation, tortious interference, and, I guess, black magic.Wednesday afternoon, the jury awarded Energy Transfer over twice what the fossil fuel giant originally asked for. Hundreds of millions of dollars.The decision has a very real chance of bankrupting Greenpeace in the US, and will have financial implications for Greenpeace offices around the world.——————————————————————By blaming Greenpeace, Energy Transfer framed Standing Rock as a monolithic movement with a centralized, top-down power source. This power source, some mythical “Greenpeace,” made decisions for everyone, doled out money, and gave permission for various actions across time and space.That strict hierarchical world is the only one Energy Transfer can imagine, a world where everything has a centrally-controlled price that dictates decisions. They can’t conceive of a distributed power network of self-organizing resistance hubs where needs or rights might not have a dollar value. They can’t imagine large numbers of individuals who share the same values, embodying collective resistance and protection. There has to be a big, rich boss. Greenpeace.And while Energy Transfer, part of MAGA’s private wing, is working to bankrupt protesters through legal slop, MAGA’s enforcement wing is physically detaining protesters without the due process the constitution requires.Last Saturday, federal agents kidnapped, without charge or explanation, Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil—a legal, permanent U.S. resident—at his home, in front of his pregnant wife, then transported him a thousand miles away to a detention center in Louisiana, where they’ve held him since.Now, they are fighting tooth and nail to deport him. Why? Because he protested the U.S. enabling of the genocide in Gaza, peacefully exercising his rights to free speech and assembly.In Mahmoud Khalil’s case, the punishment for speaking out against government policy is arrest, detention, and deportation..In Greenpeace’s case, the punishment for speaking out against corporate abuse is half a billion dollars.This oligarch affinity group of private interests and government agents are raising the cost of non-compliance for anyone engaged in meaningful resistance.They want non-compliance to feel impossible.On the corporate side, Energy Transfer is part of an effort to commodify protest by tying its cost directly to the theoretical economic impact resistance might have on company value. They are falsely claiming that, somehow, Greenpeace led the #NoDAPL resistance at Standing Rock, and that the campaign of “misinformation” and “tortious interference” caused the company multi-million dollar delays, exorbitant security costs, bad PR, and just generally bummed them out.Price? Half a billion dollars.According to economist Karl Polanyi, a “fictitious commodity” is something that was not originally produced for sale but is treated as if it has a market price. So, for example, human activity is not something naturally produced for sale—it’s a fundamental part of life—and yet we have hourly wages, gig economy services, and salaries that allow companies to translate our human activity, our life, into a flexible, market-traded service. Labor.Or, another example from Polanyi – land. Land is a shared communal space, not “naturally” for sale, but corporations like Energy Transfer have turned it into a commodity, filled with other extractable commodities. They understand the price.And now, Energy Transfer is trying to turn protest into a “fictitious commodity” with a price that can be calculated, both by corporate interests, and, they hope, protesters who will have to think twice about whether they can afford it.These moves aren’t just about punishing Greenpeace— though the oligarchs are clearly relishing that part—they’re about establishing a financial formula for suppressing dissent. It’s about making disobedience an externality in economic calculations, rather than a fundamental political right.If this logic holds, the right to protest will no longer be an inherent democratic right but a cost-burdened activity—one that could be priced out of existence for groups without the financial means to withstand these lawsuits.It’s not just about suing Greenpeace for damages but about setting a precedent: the more expensive a project, the more financially risky it will be to protest it. At the end of the day, it’s about making sure corporate power dictates what kind of activism is financially and legally survivable.——————————————————————Beyond imprisoning and bankrupting protesters, the oligarchs are also trying to fix protest in their MAGA worldview, where gold cards replace green cards and dissent requires a fixed payment, like membership dues or an HOA fee.In their world, if, for example, you want to protest Elon Musk’s unelected gutting of humanitarian aid programs by holding up signs outside a Tesla dealership, then you need to weigh your disobedience on the Mahmoud Khalil/Greenpeace scale. Is it worth it to speak out?Do you have half a billion dollars? Do you want to be deported without due process? Can you risk it?And even if you’re not a protestor. Even if you aren’t holding up signs, chanting, or marching. You’re just somebody who works with federal grants to help transition the economy off of fossil fuels. Because you believe climate change is real.Then, you’re also at risk. The FBI recently informed Citibank that it had received ‘credible information’ about a possible conspiracy to defraud the United States through the Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF). And until the FBI can find out just what’s going on here, the EPA has frozen billions of dollars in funding for Habitat for Humanity, the United Way, the Climate United Fund, Appalachian Community Capital, and a few more partner organizations.So you, too, need to weigh your work on these newly tipped scales. Can you afford to work on clean energy? On Gaza? On gender? On justice?It’s all part of the overall campaign to raise the cost of disobedience until it feels impossible. This is how authoritarianism grows: not just through sweeping military takeovers or riotous occupation— but also through a slow, methodical increase in the physical, financial, and mental price of resistance.Protesters aren’t just assaulted and jailed; they are sued and financially squeezed, legally entangled. Lawsuits make speaking out unaffordable. Immigration laws make activism life-threatening. Police make dissent a bodily risk.The goal is not just to punish protest, but to make the very idea of defiance feel too costly to attempt.The next stage won’t look like the military coups we’ve seen elsewhere. Like everything else, it will be as “American” as apple pie. Idiocracy as prophecy. A mesmerizing spectacle, while the courts chip away at representative government, the price of disobedience rises, until everyday people become too scared—or too fatigued—to fight back.If they can make Greenpeace pay $600 million, if they can disappear Mahmoud Khalil into a detention center, then you should probably just keep quiet. Pick your battles. Save your powder. You survived the first Trump administration, right?Right?——————————————————————Photo by Stephanie Keith/GreenpeaceAmber Massie-Blomfield, in her book Acts of Resistance, writes:“Lately, I’ve been reminded of the story of A. J. Muste, a prolific American pacifist who, according to legend, during the years of the war in Vietnam, stood outside the White House with a candle, every single night. For years. When a journalist asked him, ‘Do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone with a candle?’ he answered: ‘Oh, I don’t do this to change the country. I do this so the country won’t change me.’”Resistance starts with a decision like this, a choice to refuse compliance, to refuse silence, to refuse to look away. But individual resistance is not simply about high-profile symbolic acts—candles or banners—it’s about sustained, boring, uncomfortable defiance. It’s about school board meetings, abortion funds, mutual aid, and calling out bad actors, even when it’s inconvenient. It’s about discomfort, pushing back against people we might know and love but who we know, in our heart of hearts, are wrong.It will, most likely, mean being seen, being labeled, and being targeted.It will cost a lot. But not as much as silence.Follow Alleen Brown’s reporting on the Greenpeace trial here: https://bsky.app/profile/alleenbrown.bsky.socialAnd share why you’re with Greenpeace here: https://www.greenpeace.org/international/act/we-will-not-be-silenced/" } , "relatedposts": [ { "title" : "Legalized Occupation: Dissecting Israel’s Plan to Seize Gaza", "author" : "EIP Editors", "category" : "", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/legalized-occupation-dissecting-israels-plan-to-seize-gaza", "date" : "2025-08-09 10:13:00 -0400", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/EIP_Cover-Legalized_Occupation.jpg", "excerpt" : "Israel’s newly approved plan to “take control” of Gaza City and other key areas of the enclave is being presented to the world as a security imperative. In reality, it is an extension of a long-standing settler-colonial project—another chapter in the ongoing dispossession of the Palestinian people.", "content" : "Israel’s newly approved plan to “take control” of Gaza City and other key areas of the enclave is being presented to the world as a security imperative. In reality, it is an extension of a long-standing settler-colonial project—another chapter in the ongoing dispossession of the Palestinian people.The language of “control,” “buffer zones,” and “security perimeters” is not neutral. It is a calculated rhetorical strategy designed to obscure the material realities of occupation, annexation, and ethnic cleansing. This is not a temporary maneuver aimed at stability. It is the consolidation of power through the seizure of land, the dismantling of Palestinian civil society, and the deepening of Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe—all in violation of international law.The Political Calculus Behind the OperationTo understand the decision, we must first acknowledge its political function for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Facing mounting domestic discontent, the collapse of public trust, and arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court for war crimes, Netanyahu is cornered. His far-right coalition partners demand an uncompromising expansionist agenda, and his own political survival depends on delivering it.Occupation has always been a cornerstone of this political project. By launching a military campaign to seize Gaza’s largest urban center, Netanyahu signals strength to his base while sidestepping accountability for the escalating humanitarian disaster. That disaster is not collateral damage—it is a form of collective punishment meant to force submission. It is also a bargaining chip: an occupied, starved, and displaced population is easier to control and harder to resist.A Continuation of the NakbaThis plan is not an anomaly; it is the latest manifestation of a decades-long pattern. Since the Nakba of 1948, the forced displacement of Palestinians and the destruction of their communities have been central tools of state policy. In Gaza today, we see the same logic: empty the land of its people, destroy the infrastructure of life, and claim it under the guise of security.International law is explicit: annexation through military force is illegal. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits collective punishment and the transfer of an occupying power’s civilian population into occupied territory. Yet, as with the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel has consistently acted with impunity—shielded by the political, financial, and military backing of powerful allies.The Humanitarian FrontGaza has already been described by UN officials as a “graveyard for children.” The enclave’s population has endured a near-total blockade for 18 years, compounded by repeated bombardments that have destroyed hospitals, schools, and basic infrastructure. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced since the start of this latest escalation. Food insecurity is at catastrophic levels; medical supplies are almost nonexistent.Israel’s seizure of Gaza City—home to hundreds of thousands—will further collapse what remains of civilian life. Humanitarian organizations warn that the move will trigger mass displacement, deepen famine, and cut off the few remaining supply routes. These are not accidental outcomes. They are part of a strategy that weaponizes deprivation as a means of political control.Narrative as a BattlefieldThe battle over Gaza is not only military—it is discursive. The words chosen by political leaders and media outlets shape how the world understands, or misunderstands, what is unfolding. In Netanyahu’s framing, Israel is not occupying Gaza; it is “liberating” it from Hamas. In this telling, Palestinian civilians become invisible, reduced to collateral casualties in a counterterrorism campaign.This is why reframing is crucial. We must reject the sanitized vocabulary of “security zones” and “temporary control” and speak plainly: this is occupation, annexation, and the forcible seizure of Palestinian land. It is not liberation, it is domination. And it is not about peace, it is about power.Global ConnectionsIsrael’s actions in Gaza are not isolated from broader global struggles. From the forced removal of Indigenous peoples in North America to the apartheid regime in South Africa, the tactics of dispossession, militarization, and narrative control follow a familiar pattern. This is why solidarity movements around the world—led by Indigenous, Black, and other colonized peoples—see their own struggles reflected in Palestine’s.The link is not merely symbolic. Israel’s military technology, surveillance systems, and counterinsurgency tactics are exported globally, often marketed as “field-tested” in Gaza and the West Bank. These technologies underpin policing, border control, and repression from Ferguson to Kashmir. In this way, Gaza is both a site of profound local suffering and a laboratory for global authoritarianism.Discrediting the PlanIf the goal is to discredit this plan in the eyes of the international public, the strategy must be twofold: expose contradictions and center Palestinian agency.Expose contradictionsNetanyahu insists Israel does not seek to govern Gaza permanently, yet the seizure of land, establishment of military perimeters, and destruction of civilian infrastructure point toward long-term control.Israel claims to act in self-defense, yet the scale and method of its campaign far exceed any proportional response under international law.Center Palestinian agencyElevate Palestinian voices—journalists, doctors, teachers—who are documenting life under siege.Highlight grassroots forms of resilience and resistance that defy the portrayal of Palestinians as passive victims or inevitable threats.Name the enablersIdentify the governments, corporations, and financial institutions providing material or diplomatic cover for the occupation.Show how this complicity undermines their stated commitments to human rights and international law.Connect to global strugglesFrame Gaza as part of a worldwide resistance to settler colonialism, authoritarianism, and militarized capitalism.Build coalitions across movements to break the isolation that occupation depends upon.Everything Is PoliticalFrom a political-analyst perspective, the key insight is that this is not simply a geopolitical crisis—it is a crisis of narrative. If we accept the occupying power’s framing, we have already conceded the first battle. That is why the work of reframing—naming what is happening, connecting it to historical patterns, and centering the perspectives of the colonized—is not ancillary to the struggle; it is the struggle.In the end, Israel’s plan to seize Gaza is not about security—it is about sovereignty. Not Palestinian sovereignty, but the sovereignty of a state built on the denial of another people’s right to exist on their land. That is the truth the world must see clearly, and that is the truth we must continue to tell, relentlessly, until occupation becomes not a political fact but a historical memory." } , { "title" : "Ziad Rahbani and the Art of Creative Rebellion", "author" : "Céline Semaan", "category" : "essays", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/ziad-rahbani-creative-rebellion", "date" : "2025-07-28 07:01:00 -0400", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/2025_7_for-EIP-ziad-rahbani.jpg", "excerpt" : "When I turned fourteen in Beirut, I came across Ziad Rahbani’s groundbreaking work. I immediately felt connected to him, his words, his perspective and his unflinching commitment to liberation for our people and for Palestine. My first love introduced me to his revolutionary plays, his unique contributions to Arab music and very soon I had listened to all of his plays and expanded my understanding of our own culture and history.", "content" : "When I turned fourteen in Beirut, I came across Ziad Rahbani’s groundbreaking work. I immediately felt connected to him, his words, his perspective and his unflinching commitment to liberation for our people and for Palestine. My first love introduced me to his revolutionary plays, his unique contributions to Arab music and very soon I had listened to all of his plays and expanded my understanding of our own culture and history.Ziad Rahbani’s passing marks more than the end of a brilliant life—it marks the closing of a chapter in the cultural history of our region. His funeral wasn’t just a ceremony, it was a collective reckoning; crowds following his exit from the hospital to the cemetery. The streets knew what many governments tried to forget: that he gave voice to the people’s truths, to our frustrations, our absurdities, our grief, and our undying hope for justice. Yet he died as an unsung hero.Born into a family that shaped the musical soul of Lebanon, Ziad could have taken the easy path of replication. Instead, he shattered the mold. From his early plays like Sahriyye and Nazl el-Surour, he upended the elitism of classical Arabic theatre by placing the working class, the absurdity of war, and the contradictions of society at the center of his work. He spoke like the people spoke. He made art in the language of the taxi driver, the student, the mother waiting for news of her son.In his film work Film Ameriki Tawil, Ziad used satire not only as critique, but as rebellion. He exposed the rot of sectarian politics in Lebanon with surgical precision, never sparing anyone, including the leftist circles he moved in. He saw clearly: that political purity was a myth, and liberation required uncomfortable truths. His work, deeply rooted in class consciousness, refused to glorify any side of a war that tore his country apart.And yet, Ziad Rahbani never lost his clarity on Palestine. While others wavered, diluted their positions, or folded into diplomacy, Ziad remained steadfast. His support for the Palestinian struggle was not an aesthetic position—it was a political and ethical commitment. And he did so not as an outsider or savior, but as someone who understood that our futures are intertwined. That the liberation of Palestine is integral to the liberation of Lebanon. That anti-sectarianism and anti-Zionism are not contradictions, but extensions of each other.He brought jazz into Arabic music not as a novelty, but as a defiant act of cultural fusion—proof that our identities are not fixed, but fluid, diasporic, ever-evolving. He blurred the lines between Western musical forms and Arabic lyricism with intention, not mimicry. His collaborations with his mother, the legendary Fairuz, carried the weight of generational dialogue, but his own voice always broke through—wry, melancholic, grounded in the everyday.Ziad taught us that being a revolutionary doesn’t require a uniform or a slogan. It requires listening. It requires holding complexity, laughing in the face of despair, and making room for joy even when the world is on fire. He reminded us that culture is the deepest infrastructure of any resistance movement. He refused to be sanitized, censored, or simplified.As we mourn him, we also inherit his clarity. For artists, for organizers, for thinkers: Ziad Rahbani gave us a blueprint. Create without permission. Tell the truth. Fight for Palestine without compromising your own roots. And never forget that the people will always hear what is real.He was, and will always be, a compass for creative rebellion." } , { "title" : "Saul Williams: Nothing is Just a Song", "author" : "Saul Williams, Collis Browne", "category" : "interviews", "url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/saul-williams-interview", "date" : "2025-07-21 21:35:46 -0400", "img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/EIP_SaulWilliams_Shot_7_0218.jpg", "excerpt" : "Saul Williams: Many artists would like to believe that there is some sort of sublime neutrality that art can deliver, that it is beyond or above the idea of politics. However, art is sometimes used as a tool of Empire, and if we are not careful, then our art is used as propaganda, and thus, it becomes essential for us to arm our art with our viewpoints, with our perspective, so that it cannot be misused. I have always operated from the position that all my work carries politics in it, that there are politics embedded in it. And I’ve never really understood, if you are aiming to be an artist, why you wouldn’t aim to speak directly to the times. Addressing the political doesn’t have to take away from the personal intimacy of your work.", "content" : "Collis Browne: Is all music and art really political?Saul Williams: Many artists would like to believe that there is some sort of sublime neutrality that art can deliver, that it is beyond or above the idea of politics. However, art is sometimes used as a tool of Empire, and if we are not careful, then our art is used as propaganda, and thus, it becomes essential for us to arm our art with our viewpoints, with our perspective, so that it cannot be misused. I have always operated from the position that all my work carries politics in it, that there are politics embedded in it. And I’ve never really understood, if you are aiming to be an artist, why you wouldn’t aim to speak directly to the times. Addressing the political doesn’t have to take away from the personal intimacy of your work.Even now, we are reading the writings of Palestinian poets in Gaza and the West Bank, not to mention those who are part of the diaspora, who are charting their feelings and intimate experiences while living through a genocide. These works of art are all politically charged because they are charged with a reality that is fully suppressed by oppressive networks and powers that control them.Shakespeare’s work was always political. He found a way to speak about power to the face of power, knowing they would be in the audience. But also found a way to play with and talk to the “groundlings,” the common people who were in the audience as well.Collis Browne: Was there a moment when you realized that your music could be used as a tool of resistance?Saul Williams: Yeah, I was in third grade, about eight or nine years old. I had been cast in a play in my elementary school. I loved the process of not only performing, but of sitting around the table and breaking down what the language meant and what the objective and the psychology of the character was, and what that meant during the time it was written. I came home and told my parents that I wanted to be an actor when I grew up. My father had the typical response: “I’ll support you as an actor if you get a law degree.” My mother responded by saying, “You should do your next school report on Paul Robeson, he was an actor and a lawyer.”So I did my next school report on Paul Robeson. And what I discovered was that here was an African American man, born in 1898, who had come to an early realization as an actor that the messages of the films he was being cast in—and he was a huge star—went against his own beliefs, his own anti-colonial and anti-imperial beliefs. In the 1930s, he started talking about why we needed to invest in independent cinema. In 1949, during the McCarthy era, he had his passport taken from him so he could no longer travel outside of the US, because he refused to acknowledge that the enemies of the US were his enemies as well. He felt there was no reason Black people should be signing up to fight for the US Empire when they were going home and getting lynched.In 1951, he presented a mandate to the UN called “We Charge Genocide.” In it he charged the US Government with the genocide of African Americans because of the white mobs who were lynching Black Americans on a regular basis. [Editor’s note: the petition charges the US Government with genocide through the endorsement of both racism and “monopoly capitalism,” without which “the persistent, constant, widespread, institutionalized commission of the crime of genocide would be impossible.”] When Robeson met with President Truman, Truman said, “I’d like to respond, but there’s an election coming up, so I have to be careful.”Paul Robeson sang songs of working-class people, songs that trade unionists sang, songs that miners sang, songs that all types of workers sang across the world. He identified with the workers and with the working class, regardless of his fame. He was ridiculed by the American Government and even had his passport revoked for his activism. At that early age, I learned that you could sing songs that could get you labeled as an enemy of the state.I grew up in Newburgh, New York, which is about an hour upstate from New York City. One of my neighbors would often come sing at my father’s church. At the time, I did not understand why my dad would allow this white guy with his guitar or banjo to come sing at our church when we had an amazing gospel choir. I couldn’t understand why we were singing these school songs with this dude. When I finally asked my parents, they said, “You have to understand that Pete—they were talking about Pete Seeger—is responsible for popularizing some of the songs you sing in school.” He wrote songs like “If I Had a Hammer,” and he too was blacklisted by the US government because of the songs he chose to sing and the people he chose to sing them for, and the people he chose to sing them with. I learned at a very early age that music and art were full of politics. Enough politics to get you labeled as the enemy of the state. Enough politics to get your passport taken, or to be imprisoned.I was also learning about my parents’ peers, artists whom they loved and adored. Artists like Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, and Nikki Giovanni, all from the Black Arts Movement. Larry Neal and Amiri Baraka made a statement when they started the Black Arts Repertory Theatre School in Harlem that said essentially that all art should serve a function, and that function should be to liberate Black minds.It is from that movement that hip-hop was born. I was lucky enough to witness the birth of hip-hop. At first, it was playful, it was fun, but by the mid to late 1980s, it began finding its voice with groups like Public Enemy, KRS-One, Queen Latifa, Rakim, and the Jungle Brothers. These are groups that started using and expressing Black Liberation politics in the music, which uplifted it, made it sound better, and made it hit harder. The first gangster rap was that… when it was gangster, when it was directly challenging the country it was being born in.As a teenager, I identified as a rapper and an actor. I would argue with school kids who insisted, “It’s not even music. They’re just talking.” I would have to defend hip-hop as music, sometimes even to my parents, who found the language crass. But when I played artists like KRS-One and Public Enemy for my parents, they said, “Oh, I see what they’re doing here.”When Public Enemy rapped, “Elvis was a hero to most, But he never meant shit to me you see, Straight up racist that sucker was, Simple and plain, Motherfuck him and John Wayne, ‘Cause I’m Black and I’m proud, I’m ready and hyped plus I’m amped, Most of my heroes don’t appear on no stamps,” my parents were like Amen. They understood. They understood why I needed to blast that music in my room 24/7. They understood.When the music spoke to me in that way, suddenly I could pull off moves on the dance floor like doing a flip that I couldn’t do before. That’s the power of music. That’s power embedded in music. That’s why Fela Kuti said that music is the weapon of the future. And, of course, there’s Nina Simone and Billie Holiday. What’s Billie Holiday’s most memorable song? “Strange Fruit.” That voice connected, was speaking directly to the times she was living in. It transcended the times, where to this day, when you hear this song and you understand that the “strange fruit” hanging from Southern trees are Black people who have been lynched, you understand how the power of the voice, when you connect it to something that is charged with the reality of the times, takes on a greater shape.Collis Browne: Public Enemy broke open so much. I grew up in Toronto, in a mostly white community, but I was into some of the bigger American hip-hop acts who were coming out. Public Enemy rose to a new level. Before them, we were only connecting with punk and hardcore music as the music of rebellion.Saul Williams: Public Enemy laid down the groundwork for what hip-hop is: “the voice of the voiceless.” It was only after Public Enemy that you saw the emergence of huge groups in France, Germany, Bulgaria, Egypt, and across the world. There were big acts before them. Run DMC, for instance, but when Public Enemy came out, marginalized groups heard their music and said, “That’s for us. Yes, that’s for us.” It was immediately understood as music of resistance.Collis Browne: What have you seen or listened to out in the world that has a clear political goal, but has been appropriated and watered down?Saul Williams: We can stay on Public Enemy for that. Under Secretary Blinken, Chuck D became a US Global Music Ambassador during the genocide in Gaza. There are photos of him standing beside Secretary Blinken, accepting that role, while understanding that the US has always used music as a cultural propaganda tool to express soft power. I remember learning about how the US uses this “soft power” when I was working in the mid-2000s with a Swiss composer, who has now passed, named Thomas Kessler. He wrote a symphony based on one of my books, Said the Shotgun to the Head, and we were performing it with the Cologne, Germany symphony orchestra, when I heard from the head of the orchestra that, in fact, their main financier was the US Government through the CIA.During the Cold War, it was crucial for the American Government to put money into the arts throughout Western Europe to try to express this idea of “freedom,” as opposed to what was happening in the Eastern (Communist) Bloc. So it was a long time between when the US Government started enlisting musicians and other artists in their propaganda campaigns and when I encountered this information.There’s a documentary called Soundtrack to a Coup d’État, which talks about how the US Government used (uses) music and musicians to co-opt movements and propagate the idea of American freedom and democracy outside the US in the hope of winning over the citizens of other countries without them even realizing that so much of that art is there to question the system itself, not to celebrate it. Unfortunately, there are situations in which an artist’s work is co-opted to be used as propaganda, and the artist buys into it. They become indoctrinated, and you realize that we’re all susceptible to the possibility of taking that bait." } ] }