Anyone who thinks they're a leftist today should study Oliver Anthony's "The Rich North of Richmond." In just a few days, this lament for the working class exploded into the "protest song of our generation" with tens of millions of views. Positive reactions are dominated by words authentic: no special effects, just the voice and guitar of the worker, recorded with an ordinary camera. The unmediated, raw voice of Americans ignored by the mainstream media: the working poor barely making ends meet, with no clear prospects for a better life. Here is (most of) the lyrics of the song:
I sell my soul, I work all day
Overtime for piss-poor pay
That I can sit and ask for my life
I drag myself home and drown my torment.
*
It's a damn shame what the world has fallen to
For people like me and people like you
I wish I could wake up and it wasn't true
But it did, oh it did.
*
Living in a new world, with an old soul
And those rich people north of Richmond
God knows they all just want total control
To know what you think, to know what you do
They think you don't know, but I know you do
Because your dollar is worth nothing and is endlessly taxed
Because of the rich people north of Richmond.
*
I wish the politicians would protect the miners [miners]
And not just minors on an island
Lord, the people on the street have nothing to eat
And the fat people milk the welfare.
*
For God's sake, if you are five feet tall and weigh a hundred kilos
The tax is not for your bags of chocolate chip cookies
Young men end up underground
Because this damn country keeps tearing them down.
The truths spoken by Anthony are obvious. Yes, millions work while the rich exploit them; yes, large corporations and government agencies exercise terrifying control over us. But it's the details that make up the context that are troubling - and the details are important. Why "North of Richmond"? Because Richmond, Virginia was the capital of the Confederacy during the Civil War - a clear indication of Anthony's political leanings.
And why chocolate biscuit [fudge rounds]? This term has a double meaning: (1) a caramelized, round cookie with chocolate buttercream; (2) during anal sex, the woman loses control of her bowels, leaving a circular imprint around the base of the man's genitalia - again, hinting at the connection between the nouveau riche and sexual perversions. (Elsewhere, with minors "on some island," Anthony refers to Jeffrey Epstein's infamous island.) Who are these "fatties" living comfortably thanks to the tax overload of working people? They are at the same time the new corporate elite that controls us and members of the lazy (racial, sexual) minorities who grow fat from the generous handouts of the welfare state.
This song should be placed in the context of the right-wing protests of the lower classes this summer. There is also a movie The sound of freedom (Alejandro Monteverde, 2023), based on the true story of a former government agent who turns vigilante and embarks on a dangerous mission to save hundreds of children from sex traffickers in Latin America. The liberal media wrote off this surprise low-budget hit (it earned more at the US box office than the new Indiana Jones sequels and Impossible missions) because the lead actor Jim Caviezel is close QAnon conspiracy theories. It is also striking that in the film some children are sold as sex slaves to the leaders of the movement FARC - in Colombia - sexual slavery is thus portrayed as something that connects the corporate elites of Hollywood and the extreme revolutionary left.
But child trafficking and sexual slavery jesu terrible things and it's all too easy to leave them to the new populist right while the Hollywood mainstream is preoccupied Woke with projects like the new Disney remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in which Snow White is not white, the dwarfs are not dwarfs but "various" people, and the end seems not to be the old one (with the prince who wakes up Snow White with a kiss) but it will be the empowerment of Snow White, who will become a new the legitimate ruler. Sad thing about With the sound of freedom is that we have a modest film, produced outside of the Hollywood machinery, that deals with sexual crimes against children from poor Latino families and is a surprise hit at the box office, but it was made by right-wingers.
The new wave of right-wing labor protests and the corporate liberalism of "minority protection" are not mere opposites: what they have in common is that they avoid confronting the basic social antagonisms that characterize our age. While right-wing working-class protests address real problems that afflict many workers, they see the "rich," corporate and state elites, and "lazy" welfare recipients as enemies. The fight against racism and sexism is therefore dismissed as an elite strategy in controlling workers and productive capital. There is an old fascist idea at work that unites workers and productive capital against the parasitic extremes: elites and beneficiaries of the welfare state. These protests are a reaction to what is false in today's liberal left, which skillfully manipulates the fight against sexism and racism and for minority rights to avoid facing the perverted logic of global capitalism.
A protest may be authentic, but that does not mean it is based on truth. Even the most brutal forms of racism and sexism can be experienced as an authentic feeling. At the beginning of August 2023, my country, Slovenia, was in the global news: thousands of houses were destroyed in floods and landslides, and entire cities were cut off from the world. The reaction was one of unexpected solidarity: the Slovenians offered more help and volunteers than was necessary; even war-torn Ukraine sent aid. Although this solidarity was sincere, it is small compared to what will be needed in the disasters that await us. For the vast majority in Slovenia, life went on as normal, and the show of solidarity allowed us to feel good without changing our lifestyle. For a moment we acted as if a comfortable everyday life wasn't the only thing to strive for, and our moderate sacrifices made us feel that life had meaning. The act of solidarity was thus an expression of a desperate desire to ne let's face the depth of our crisis.
Let's go back to Anthony's poem. The left's first question about the lyrics of his song should be: "Okay, poor working people are being exploited, so why doesn't the song mention the standard solution - form a union?" All the old working-class protest lyrics point in that direction, from songs dedicated to the labor activist Joe hill over Solidarity Forever (Solidarity forever) Pita Sigera, do There Is Power in a Union (There is power in the union) by Billy Brega. As for American patriotism, how far Anthony's song is from the great left-wing protest song of the working class, Born in the USA (Born in USA) Bruce Springsteen! Here are her opening lines: "Born in the city of the dead / I took my first hit when I hit rock bottom / You end up like a beaten dog / You spend half your life just trying to patch yourself up" - a similar experience of oppression, but from a completely different political background.
I wouldn't be surprised if Anthony's song is praised by billionaires from Elon Musk to Donald Trump - the rich man from Mar-a-Lago, who avoided paying taxes for years with complex legal tricks. One of the richest people in the world, Warren Buffett, was shocked when he found out that he pays less tax than his secretary. It's no wonder that when President Obama was accused of irresponsibly introducing "class warfare" into political life, Buffett retorted: "Yes, there is a class war, but that war is being waged by my wealthy class and we are winning."
Anthony's poem represents the final triumph of the rich in the class war: even the oppressed proletarian fighting for social justice has sided with them.
(The New Statesman; Peščanik.net; translation: M. Jovanović)
Bonus video:
