Love what we do?
Become a member for unlimited access to EIP digital and print issues, attend Slow Factory’s Open Edu, and support us in continuing to create and publish.
Join us today.
You’re logged in, but don’t have an active membership.
Join Us
All memberships give full digital access, online and in-person events, and support climate justice, human rights, and freedom of expression.
Annual memberships available too!
$20
Member —
All digital access (suggested amount)
$40
Benefactor —
Receive a monthly(ish) printed journal
$100
Movement Builder —
Become an ambassador
Question? Ask us anything!
Why Fascists Fear Education
Donald Trump has now directed the federal government to cut funding to libraries across the country, and has signed an illegal executive order deliberately overstepping the powers of the president to begin the dismantling of the Department of Education. On March 15th the American Library Association released a statement in response to what they describe as, the “White House assault on the Institute of Museum and Library Services.” In the statement these librarians who serve all of our communities describe how Trump is trying to eliminate the entire Institute, which helps fund both libraries and museums around the country.
They write:
“By eliminating the only federal agency dedicated to funding library services, the Trump administration’s executive order is cutting off at the knees the most beloved and trusted of American institutions and the staff and services they offer:
- Early literacy development and grade-level reading programs
- Summer reading programs for kids
- High-speed internet access
- Employment assistance for job seekers
- Braille and talking books for people with visual impairments
- Homework and research resources for students and faculty..”
And more. All of this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what libraries provide, they are one of the most important and under-appreciated public goods in this country. The very idea of a library is radical and beautiful in today’s world. They’re places where we can exist, for free, where we can learn, for free, and where we can access countless resources and workshops and tools, for free. None of this should be controversial, in fact all of it should inform and be incorporated into how we structure society—but conservatives and fascists have a very different vision.
This far-right vision is made even clearer by the Trump order to dismantle the Department of Education. Trump has directed the Secretary of Education to take “all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the States.” The part about returning authority to the states is code for both axing crucial federal funding, and allowing states to further privatize education. The results will be detrimental any way you look at it. A few private charter networks and their wealthy owners will benefit, and everyone else will suffer – particularly the children of anyone who isn’t rich.
There is one other, often overlooked effect of this gut punch to our public education system. Public schools are, in addition to everything else, often community hubs. They hold town halls, people can use and rent their spaces, they bring communities together for athletic events, and more. Private schools rarely serve these functions; they tend to have a more far-flung student body and aren’t rooted in the physical communities they occupy the way public schools are. So as Trump and his accomplices hurt working class kids and families everywhere by defunding education, they’re also working to take communal centers away from us by attacking libraries and schools.
Rural communities will be hit especially hard, both by the attack on libraries and the gutting of public schools. In Oklahoma, DOGE’s funding will also result in fewer dollars for 16 Indigenous tribes, and for the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums. This too, is no coincidence. Cultural Heritage Centers, technological advancements, preservation initiatives, educational outreach and capacity building efforts that empower tribal institutions to serve their communities will all be affected, according to Kent Bush, public information director of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.
Attacking cultural preservation, archiving, and history is an attack on Indigenous peoples as a whole. It is an attempt to erase whole nations, an attempt to purge the native people from this land to further to white supremacist project that is so central to the far-right. Deliberating funding and protecting museums and preservation initiatives is part of the fight against fascism. Maintaining and upholding histories is part of the fight against fascism and erasure.
The programs and resources at risk in the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and across the country are the exact programs and resources that help empower Indigenous folks across the country, programs developed by tribes over decades. The fascist regime wants tribal communities disempowered just like they want folks to have more trouble gathering and building in cities and rural areas and at work and in all of our communities. We, of course, must resist – everywhere.
Topics:
Filed under:
Location:
Keep reading:
Global Echoes of Resistance:
Artists Harnessing Art, Culture, and Ancestry
Chavis Marmol
{
"article":
{
"title" : "Why Fascists Fear Education",
"author" : "J.P. Hill",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/the-war-on-education",
"date" : "2025-03-20 23:42:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/War_Education_EIP_Cover.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Donald Trump has now directed the federal government to cut funding to libraries across the country, and has signed an illegal executive order deliberately overstepping the powers of the president to begin the dismantling of the Department of Education. On March 15th the American Library Association released a statement in response to what they describe as, the “White House assault on the Institute of Museum and Library Services.” In the statement these librarians who serve all of our communities describe how Trump is trying to eliminate the entire Institute, which helps fund both libraries and museums around the country.",
"content" : "Donald Trump has now directed the federal government to cut funding to libraries across the country, and has signed an illegal executive order deliberately overstepping the powers of the president to begin the dismantling of the Department of Education. On March 15th the American Library Association released a statement in response to what they describe as, the “White House assault on the Institute of Museum and Library Services.” In the statement these librarians who serve all of our communities describe how Trump is trying to eliminate the entire Institute, which helps fund both libraries and museums around the country.They write:“By eliminating the only federal agency dedicated to funding library services, the Trump administration’s executive order is cutting off at the knees the most beloved and trusted of American institutions and the staff and services they offer: Early literacy development and grade-level reading programs Summer reading programs for kids High-speed internet access Employment assistance for job seekers Braille and talking books for people with visual impairments Homework and research resources for students and faculty..”And more. All of this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what libraries provide, they are one of the most important and under-appreciated public goods in this country. The very idea of a library is radical and beautiful in today’s world. They’re places where we can exist, for free, where we can learn, for free, and where we can access countless resources and workshops and tools, for free. None of this should be controversial, in fact all of it should inform and be incorporated into how we structure society—but conservatives and fascists have a very different vision.This far-right vision is made even clearer by the Trump order to dismantle the Department of Education. Trump has directed the Secretary of Education to take “all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the States.” The part about returning authority to the states is code for both axing crucial federal funding, and allowing states to further privatize education. The results will be detrimental any way you look at it. A few private charter networks and their wealthy owners will benefit, and everyone else will suffer – particularly the children of anyone who isn’t rich.There is one other, often overlooked effect of this gut punch to our public education system. Public schools are, in addition to everything else, often community hubs. They hold town halls, people can use and rent their spaces, they bring communities together for athletic events, and more. Private schools rarely serve these functions; they tend to have a more far-flung student body and aren’t rooted in the physical communities they occupy the way public schools are. So as Trump and his accomplices hurt working class kids and families everywhere by defunding education, they’re also working to take communal centers away from us by attacking libraries and schools.Rural communities will be hit especially hard, both by the attack on libraries and the gutting of public schools. In Oklahoma, DOGE’s funding will also result in fewer dollars for 16 Indigenous tribes, and for the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums. This too, is no coincidence. Cultural Heritage Centers, technological advancements, preservation initiatives, educational outreach and capacity building efforts that empower tribal institutions to serve their communities will all be affected, according to Kent Bush, public information director of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.Attacking cultural preservation, archiving, and history is an attack on Indigenous peoples as a whole. It is an attempt to erase whole nations, an attempt to purge the native people from this land to further to white supremacist project that is so central to the far-right. Deliberating funding and protecting museums and preservation initiatives is part of the fight against fascism. Maintaining and upholding histories is part of the fight against fascism and erasure.The programs and resources at risk in the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and across the country are the exact programs and resources that help empower Indigenous folks across the country, programs developed by tribes over decades. The fascist regime wants tribal communities disempowered just like they want folks to have more trouble gathering and building in cities and rural areas and at work and in all of our communities. We, of course, must resist – everywhere.Trump and Musk’s attempt to kill our spaces of gathering, our spaces of knowledge, our spaces of sanctuary where people can get a break from this world and find help and compassion is an attack on all of us. We must fight back with every tool, including the tool of building what they’re trying to tear down. That means freedom schools, people’s libraries, free education and third spaces. It means we create as we resist. It means we double down on Open Education, on mutual aid, on providing for each other, on creating the institutions and organizations we need in the ashes of the devastation. It means supporting independent media, from EIP to local journalism in your community. That is our task, no one is coming to do it for us."
}
,
"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."
}
]
}
