Rebellion is cool.
Rebel was James Dean (and he was without cause).
Rebel was the Rebel Alliance in
Star Wars
.
Rebel was Ernesto Che Guevara, the one with the t-shirts.
Since the counterculture of the 1960s, May 1968, rebellion is a value considered positive and has thus been used subsequently in entrepreneurial and neoliberal discourse, even invading advertising.
Boltanski and Chiapello, in their book
The New Spirit of Capitalism
(Akal), explained how the capitalist system had adopted these forms of
coolness .
, rebellion and flexibility, artistic and social, for their own ends.
Be careful, General Francisco Franco was also a rebel, and his rebellion turned him into a dictator, repressor of other rebellions.
Rebellion can be very different depending on what you are rebelling against.
In recent times, rebellion has also been adopted by the new extreme right, the one that claims to rebel against the "progressive consensus", the "politically correct dictatorship", the one that says things "without complexes", the one that adopts theories conspiracies against supposed global elites that manipulate the world from the dark.
It is an inspiring story that reaps not a few followers;
this is the case of American movements such as the Tea Party or the
alt right
, the alternative right, always ready to create scandal and apparently subvert the system: the irreverence of Donald Trump.
Some industry magazine proclaims that conservatism is the new counterculture, the new punk.
Who would then be the new Sid Vicious?
Javier Ortega Smith?
In Vox it is considered rebellious to defend the "traditional family", as Espinosa de los Monteros assured, or to reject the measures to promote vaccination as a "health dictatorship".
More information
The Monster is Here: How to Fight Far Right 2.0
“This is a rebellion against the 'progressive elites' in defense of the 'common people'”, explains the Argentine essayist Pablo Stefanoni, author of
¿La rebeldía turned to the right?
(Siglo XXI / Clave Intelectual), "sometimes images are used that refer to a kind of progressive Matrix and the need to take the red pill to see a reality that progressive cultural totalitarianism would not let us see."
If the right wing of the 1980s and 1990s claimed that they had defeated communism, today's extreme right maintains that the left controls the main global ideological apparatuses.
The argument appeals to the conspiracy theory of so-called cultural Marxism: once the socioeconomic struggle was lost after the fall of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the neoliberal, the left surreptitiously maintains its hegemony through stories of feminism, equality, environmentalism or climate change.
"It's funny, because the left doesn't exactly feel like a winner," adds the expert.
The concept of "political incorrectness", promoted by the rogue right, is seen by certain progressive sectors as a way to cover up different forms of xenophobia, misogyny, anti-egalitarianism and reactionary positions.
The “incorrect” rebels complain that “nothing can be said”, but the truth is that almost everything can be said.
What is said, yes, is now subject to criticism, which they receive as a hypothetical culture of cancellation.
"The 'cancellations' operate many times motivated by bureaucratic or market reasons (it is convenient for certain businessmen or officials to fire someone denounced to maintain their personal or corporate image) more than for ideological reasons linked to the left", explains Stefanoni.
They do not "cancel" both the tweeting mobs and the institutions that enter the game:
The offense, moreover, is not the heritage of the left: the right is also offended, and in court.
In a kind of reverse “political correctness”, rappers have been convicted for criticizing the royal family and people have been prosecuted for jokes about terrorism or
irreverent
performances against religion.
Positions become blurred.
“It is funny that Vox is denouncing imaginary communism, even Mayor Martínez-Almeida would be a communist, while Macarena Olona [Vox spokesperson in Congress] vindicates, in a somewhat grotesque way, a true communist like Julio Anguita saying that he would support to Vox”, says Stefanoni.
The latest generation of populisms, of any tendency, as Carlos Granés observes in his book
Savages of a new era
(Taurus), have taken much from the rebellious artistic avant-gardes of the 20th century, from Dadaism to Fluxus, traditionally linked to the unruly or revolutionary left : the guerrilla use of communication, misrepresentation, appropriation or the meme could be tactics of the avant-garde's taste. Sometimes the figure of Isabel Díaz Ayuso rubs against Dadaism in
boutades
that generate fervor among her followers. (The one who was an advisor and author of his speeches, the political scientist Jorge Vilches, claimed last week in
La Razón
to “the new punk right” and its “rebel youth”).
Now, on Twitter and at press conferences, these avant-garde elements are a daily tool, perhaps unconsciously.
Assaulting the Capitol disguised as a bison could be a political
performance
devised by the countercultural yippie party, that anarchoid Youth International Party of Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin that in 1967 tried to levitate the Pentagon (based on mental power) in a protest against the war from Vietnam.
“The fascism of the first period was also presented as breaking with the existing order”
Steven Forti, historian
The current extreme right also likes to enter the field of the left to appropriate its flags.
LGTB leaders are appearing in Europe in far-right parties, in what is known as “homonationalism”: it is about capturing homosexuals by stirring up fear of an Islamic invasion that does not tolerate their sexual orientation (as in the novel
Submission
, by Michel Houellebecq, or in the conspiracy of The Great Replacement).
The so-called ecofascism is the ultra-right version of environmentalism.
An investigation carried out by the journalist Christian Raimo in 2018 showed that many Roman adolescents, even apolitical, think that the figure of Benito Mussolini is cool.
“The fascism of the first period was also presented as breaking with the existing order”, says the Italian historian Steven Forti, author of
Far Right 2.0
(Siglo XXI), “Mussolini himself, with his socialist past, presented himself as a revolutionary fascist ”.
The right wants to be transgressive, in an intelligent way, occupying a traditional space of the left, which cannot imagine new horizons.
What consequences can these punk postures have in the future?
"I don't think they are disruptive with respect to the social order, rather they cut rights and freedoms, but without changing the real order of things," concludes Forti, pointing out the crucial aspect of the phenomenon: that the new right-wing punk can increase injustice and discrimination. .
When did the monopoly of rebellion escape the left?
It is argued that he lost the connection with the most disadvantaged and that he sold himself to the
woke
values of identity minorities, which would explain the triumph of Trump, supported by the white working masses abandoned by the Democratic Party, against the "postmodern" Hillary Clinton.
The left would have gone from revolutionary to pure
establishment
.
It is not a far-fetched analysis.
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