Thanks for posting this. Twenty-year-old Lydon had a scary amount of menacing charisma married to a raw and bitter intelligence. In a different era, he would have been political agitator and/or terrorist.
Re: Sex Pistols
Posted: 08 Mar 2020, 11:54am
by JohnS
Great find Marky, thanks. I've only seen about half of that clip before, if that. Great quality too.
Thanks for posting this. Twenty-year-old Lydon had a scary amount of menacing charisma married to a raw and bitter intelligence. In a different era, he would have been political agitator and/or terrorist.
Shame the dude never found a systematic critique to anchor his understanding of the world. He distrusts socialism because the first gasps of neoliberalism was defining the Labour government of the 70s, so he's been vulnerable to the rightward drift that has brought him to pathetic Farage-isms lately.
Thanks for posting this. Twenty-year-old Lydon had a scary amount of menacing charisma married to a raw and bitter intelligence. In a different era, he would have been political agitator and/or terrorist.
Shame the dude never found a systematic critique to anchor his understanding of the world. He distrusts socialism because the first gasps of neoliberalism was defining the Labour government of the 70s, so he's been vulnerable to the rightward drift that has brought him to pathetic Farage-isms lately.
His understandable bitterness and suspicion of power sent him to the false liberty of neoliberalism. He's a teenage libertarian who never made the effort to critically evaluate his beliefs. That he's succeeded materially under that system has also undoubtedly clouded his vision of whether it's actually just. That painful documentary where he's on the bus complaining about what's become of London—well, John, how and why do you think that's happened? That he spouts peace and love and freedom, yet expresses sympathy with monsters suggests he's not as suspicious of power as he claims.
