tumblr user who listens to bands like the beatles, chooses kindness, considers themselves to be anti-war, fights for the liberation of marginalised groups, advocates community resources and free services etc. you’re not a punk. you’re a hippie. and that’s okay.
I was unironically telling one of my best friends a week or so ago that more people need to like the idea of being hippie instead of mislabeling themselves as punk. Radical kindness is a hippie thing, not a punk one! Plus, if the hope is to be subversive and push against conservatism, as someone else said, your average conservative will be probably more offended by a hippie than a punk
That last point is an interesting one to bring up, because there’s been a wave of conservatives trying to reclaim punk for themselves, and a lot of people online have mocked this development as a paradox because “it’s impossible to be conservative and punk” but the problem is… punk is specifically an anti-establishment movement. Bigots usually (if not always) view themselves as the victims of targeted attacks on their freedom of speech or their right to live comfortably, which can easily breed anti-establishment sentiments, hence why Nazi punks have existed since the beginning of the punk movement itself. You don’t know which establishment a punk is against, and it might not be the same one as yours.
Hippies, on the other hand, are everything that conservatives hate. A movement that was built on body autonomy, sexual freedom, anti-war and total liberation is exactly what conservatives are shitting their pants over. Punks are easier for conservatives to hijack and claim, but a conservative wouldn’t touch a hippie with a barge pole.
This isn’t to undermine the punk movement as a whole, I just think it’s important for people to take off their rose-coloured glasses when it comes to a single music subculture and not treat it like the be all and end all of political activism, especially when it can lead to unknowingly sharing spaces with extremely dangerous bigots.
