This week I had the pleasure of sitting down with Myca over a cup o’ joe and some great phu soup over here in San Francisco. While we were talking about our interests Myca wanted to know more about hip-hop, my podcast, and what artists he should look out for as he would want to get more involved in that musical genre.
For those of you out there in Alas land (yeah…that’s what I call it folks) who are interested you can click on the icon below to get an archive of my podcasts over at my blog. The podcasts are short (they run anywhere from 12 to 18 mintues) and cover (mostly) leftist and/or progressive hip-hop artists.
Also, you can automatically subscribe to my podcasts over at iTunes by clicking on this icon below.
Awesome, Jack. Thanks! It was really cool to meet you, by the way.
The site I mentioned that I’d been enjoying for a while was Ill Doctrine, which has some great hip-hop and politics video blogging.
—Myca
Really? A hammer and sickle—a symbol of class hatred and of one of the greatest humanitarian disasters in history—posted approvingly? And no else has a problem with this?
Or have all the critical comments been disappeared?
Yep.
Actually, Brandon, the Hammer and Sickle is a symbol of the unity of industrial workers and agricultural workers, though I wouldn’t expect you to know that.
Since this is Jack’s thread, I don’t want to derail, though, so why don’t you offer us some of your favorite picks for good, politically progressive hip-hop, Brandon? I’m sure you weren’t just dropping in to snipe off-topic, and that you have a lot to offer that will enhance the quality of discussion.
—Myca
Myca:
And the swastika is a symbol of prosperity, and a burning cross a symbol of rebellion against tyranny. How much slack are you willing to give people who proudly display those symbols?
I don’t care much for hip-hop, progressive (sic) or otherwise, so I can’t help you there. And it’s not off-topic to object to the uncritical display of so deeply offensive a symbol as the Soviet swastika.
Actually it is. I have many Hindu friends (in fact; I’ll be celebrating Hindu New Years tomorrow, Dewali) and the swastika is actually quite prevalent in Hinduism and is seen in many houses and shrines and temples.
As for the hammer and microphone (which is what it is) it’s a hammer and microphone not a hammer and sickle you silly billy (or as I like to say; you shillies billies).
As for the Hamemr and Sickle Myca is quite correct.
The history of the hammer and sickle is quite interesting. Originally it was a hammer and plough which was adopted by the Red Army in 1917; the red army was essentially working class Russians with peasants. The hammer represented the workers while the plough represented the peasants. This was unique to Russian communist and socialist history as Orthodox Marxists circles in the 19th century (and early 20th) considered that there needed to be a bourgeois revolution and a time of industrial upheaval which in turn would lead to an advanced stage of capitalism before there could ever be a socialist revolution.
There were quite a few Russian socialists however that thought this put Europe at the center of the world and in turn argued that Russia was essentially left in the cold by European socialists as their arguments seemed to damn Russia until Europe could move toward revolution. Out of their uniquely Russian context Russian socialists developed the theory of the small, but revolutionary, proletariat in the urban centers allying with the massive, and potentially revolutionary, Russian peasantry. This of course caused great strife in Russian socialists circles as it essentially rejected Marx and Engels’ line of thinking (on that question at lest) and in turn revolutionized Marxist thought. Instead of waiting for Europe to move the Russian proletariat would move in an alliance with the peasantry (which was against Orthodox Marxist tenants which viewed the peasantry as conservative and backwards).
Thus the symbol of the sickle and plough was essentially the symbol of worker and peasant solidarity in the face of an extremely repressive and murderous Tsarist state.
However; shortly after a horrible civil war, foreign invasions by America and other Western powers, and a crippling blockade certain unsavory elements emerged from the Soviet Communist Party which changed Russia for the worse. Many view this as a sign that Marxist Karl Kautsky was right in his analysis that any revolution would fail in Russia as it had no economic capitalist base.
Your assertion, however, on the hammer and sickle is incorrect in essentially equating it with Stalinist Russia which in turn was essentially a degenerated one-party capitalist system; you need to look at the history of strife, solidarity, and revolutionary upheaval by Russian peasantry and workers in their striving to create a better world from themselves; plus it is now a symbol for communism world wide which it itself wasn’t necessarily debunked with the fall of the Soviet imperial power.
Also, as this thread is needlessly getting way off topic I’m going to keep my comments to that unless people actually want to talk about hip-hop of course.
Too bad, not sure why you don’t, you should give it a chance. It’s a musical tradition steeped in racial and class history born from the demolition and gentrification of Black housing projects and houses in the Bronx.
That is one curvy hammer!
perhaps you mean a sickle and microphone? :)
Doh!