CaliforniaMozGirl
Member
My brother forwarded me a not so complementary article regarding Morrissey's comments to NME. See below...
ZNet Commentary
They Are Human and They Need to be Loved...Does Morrissey have a problem with
immigrants? January 17, 2008
By Alexander Billet
It's been over a month and I still can't bring myself to listen to the Smiths.
The controversy over Morrissey's recent comments regarding immigration in the
Britain's NME is well worth examining on this side of the pond. It should be
said straight away how disappointing and unacceptable they are. They also,
unfortunately, shed light on an element completely absent from the narrow debate
on immigration taking place this election season.
In late November, the former Smiths singer blurted in an interview with the NME
that "the gates of England are being flooded. The country's been thrown away."
Moz didn't stop there. In the interview he seemed troubled by what immigration
meant for British culture. "Other countries have held onto their basic
identity," he said, "yet it seems to me that England was thrown away... If you
walk through Knightsbridge [in London] on any bland day of the week you won't
hear an English accent. You'll hear every accent under the sun apart from the
British accent."
It's the kind of remark that smacks of Eric Clapton's 1976 comment that England
was becoming a "black colony," where he urged fans to vote for anti-immigrant
Member of Parliament Enoch Powell. Those comments would be one of the reasons
for the foundation of Rock Against Racism, the forerunner to today's Love Music
Hate Racism campaigns against the fascist British National Party.
Ironically, Morrissey himself had only days prior agreed to endorse LMHR, and
have its logo present at all UK shows in 2008. Yet he sees no conflict between
formally being against racism, and letting slip remarks that make out immigrants
to be a threat of some kind. It brings up a fundamental question: who does
Morrissey exactly think the BNP are whipping up their racist drivel for in the
first place? Racism isn't an abstract concept in the UK. Like the US, it has a
large immigrant population that hails from places as diverse as Jamaica and
India, and a large number of hate crimes are directed against these communities.
"Paki-bashing" isn't infrequent. Since the London bombings of 2005 the
profiling of immigrants (mostly folks of color) has been quite common. This is
not the first time Morrissey's racial politics have been questioned. In 1992 he
draped himself in the Union Jack at a carnival in Finsbury where a sizeable
neo-Nazi turnout was expected. The NME also took him to task for that move.
His 1988 song "Bengali in Platforms" was immensely condescending toward its
South Asian immigrant protagonist. Moz ends the song by saying it may be best
for the young man to "shelve his western plans." And his "National Front Disco"
hardly seemed to take any kind of clear stance on the National Front.
His politics haven't always been in question, though. Songs like "Margaret on
the Guillotine" and "The Queen is Dead" were rather open protests against
Thatcherism. More recent songs like "America is Not the World" have taken Bush
to task. He has even been investigated by the FBI and British intelligence, so
vocal is his opposition to Bush and Blair.
His alliance with LMHR was rightly welcomed. But these comments throw his
actual commitment to the cause into question. While Moz hardly identifies
himself as a racist, the fact is that putting British culture on a pedestal and
trying to hermetically seal it off from "outsiders" creates an us-versus-them
dynamic that Bush and Gordon Brown are all too happy to take advantage of.
Moz has given little sign of backing down from his comments. In fact, the
ever-litigious rock star is now suing the NME for speaking ill of him. His
behavior is that much more regrettable when one considers the fact that Stephen
Patrick Morrissey was himself born to Irish Catholic immigrants. The culture he
comes from seems to pose no threat to Britishness, but evidently those from
non-English-speaking, brown-skinned countries do. No doubt, Morrissey hardly
recognizes this as racist.
That recognition is also completely absent from the immigration debate in the
US. Presidential candidates like Mike Huckabee can take advantage of the
Pakistan crisis by exaggerating the number of Pakistanis here "illegally." Lou
Dobbs makes outrageous claims that Mexicans bring leprosy across the border.
Though both may be called out for being incorrect, the media rarely has the guts
to peg them as bigoted.
Morrissey is hardly as bad as these buffoons. Nonetheless, when an artist who
enjoys sticking it to the worst politicians in society starts to sound like
those very same politicians, it is, to say the least, disappointing.
The line needs to be drawn as boldly as possible: if you are an anti-racist,
then you stand up for the rights of immigrants. As for Moz, one can hope he'll
apologize for what he said, but I'm not holding my breath. It's going to be a
while until I can listen to his stuff again.
Alexander Billet is a music journalist and activist living in Washington, DC.
He is a regular contributor to Znet and Dissident Voice. He is currently
working on his first book The Sound of Liberation: Music and Social Change in
the 21st Century.
His blog, Rebel Frequencies, can be viewed at http://rebelfrequencies.blogspot.com.
To subscribe to his column, contact him at [email protected].
ZNet Commentary
They Are Human and They Need to be Loved...Does Morrissey have a problem with
immigrants? January 17, 2008
By Alexander Billet
It's been over a month and I still can't bring myself to listen to the Smiths.
The controversy over Morrissey's recent comments regarding immigration in the
Britain's NME is well worth examining on this side of the pond. It should be
said straight away how disappointing and unacceptable they are. They also,
unfortunately, shed light on an element completely absent from the narrow debate
on immigration taking place this election season.
In late November, the former Smiths singer blurted in an interview with the NME
that "the gates of England are being flooded. The country's been thrown away."
Moz didn't stop there. In the interview he seemed troubled by what immigration
meant for British culture. "Other countries have held onto their basic
identity," he said, "yet it seems to me that England was thrown away... If you
walk through Knightsbridge [in London] on any bland day of the week you won't
hear an English accent. You'll hear every accent under the sun apart from the
British accent."
It's the kind of remark that smacks of Eric Clapton's 1976 comment that England
was becoming a "black colony," where he urged fans to vote for anti-immigrant
Member of Parliament Enoch Powell. Those comments would be one of the reasons
for the foundation of Rock Against Racism, the forerunner to today's Love Music
Hate Racism campaigns against the fascist British National Party.
Ironically, Morrissey himself had only days prior agreed to endorse LMHR, and
have its logo present at all UK shows in 2008. Yet he sees no conflict between
formally being against racism, and letting slip remarks that make out immigrants
to be a threat of some kind. It brings up a fundamental question: who does
Morrissey exactly think the BNP are whipping up their racist drivel for in the
first place? Racism isn't an abstract concept in the UK. Like the US, it has a
large immigrant population that hails from places as diverse as Jamaica and
India, and a large number of hate crimes are directed against these communities.
"Paki-bashing" isn't infrequent. Since the London bombings of 2005 the
profiling of immigrants (mostly folks of color) has been quite common. This is
not the first time Morrissey's racial politics have been questioned. In 1992 he
draped himself in the Union Jack at a carnival in Finsbury where a sizeable
neo-Nazi turnout was expected. The NME also took him to task for that move.
His 1988 song "Bengali in Platforms" was immensely condescending toward its
South Asian immigrant protagonist. Moz ends the song by saying it may be best
for the young man to "shelve his western plans." And his "National Front Disco"
hardly seemed to take any kind of clear stance on the National Front.
His politics haven't always been in question, though. Songs like "Margaret on
the Guillotine" and "The Queen is Dead" were rather open protests against
Thatcherism. More recent songs like "America is Not the World" have taken Bush
to task. He has even been investigated by the FBI and British intelligence, so
vocal is his opposition to Bush and Blair.
His alliance with LMHR was rightly welcomed. But these comments throw his
actual commitment to the cause into question. While Moz hardly identifies
himself as a racist, the fact is that putting British culture on a pedestal and
trying to hermetically seal it off from "outsiders" creates an us-versus-them
dynamic that Bush and Gordon Brown are all too happy to take advantage of.
Moz has given little sign of backing down from his comments. In fact, the
ever-litigious rock star is now suing the NME for speaking ill of him. His
behavior is that much more regrettable when one considers the fact that Stephen
Patrick Morrissey was himself born to Irish Catholic immigrants. The culture he
comes from seems to pose no threat to Britishness, but evidently those from
non-English-speaking, brown-skinned countries do. No doubt, Morrissey hardly
recognizes this as racist.
That recognition is also completely absent from the immigration debate in the
US. Presidential candidates like Mike Huckabee can take advantage of the
Pakistan crisis by exaggerating the number of Pakistanis here "illegally." Lou
Dobbs makes outrageous claims that Mexicans bring leprosy across the border.
Though both may be called out for being incorrect, the media rarely has the guts
to peg them as bigoted.
Morrissey is hardly as bad as these buffoons. Nonetheless, when an artist who
enjoys sticking it to the worst politicians in society starts to sound like
those very same politicians, it is, to say the least, disappointing.
The line needs to be drawn as boldly as possible: if you are an anti-racist,
then you stand up for the rights of immigrants. As for Moz, one can hope he'll
apologize for what he said, but I'm not holding my breath. It's going to be a
while until I can listen to his stuff again.
Alexander Billet is a music journalist and activist living in Washington, DC.
He is a regular contributor to Znet and Dissident Voice. He is currently
working on his first book The Sound of Liberation: Music and Social Change in
the 21st Century.
His blog, Rebel Frequencies, can be viewed at http://rebelfrequencies.blogspot.com.
To subscribe to his column, contact him at [email protected].
