We Need A Revolution

we need a fucking revolution.
in the past, almost everyone i knew was about revolutions, riots, uprisings, resistance... the bands and artists i listened to, too. when 2000 came nearer, and afterwards, this changed drastically. the demand for radical change, revolution, was now seen as something childish, immature, a thing of the past. mind you, not only by these artists and people, on which you could perhaps blame it on "growing up" after they went past the 30 year old mark, but *especially* amongst the new bands and new generation.
but apart from this very easy to see through strategy to associate radicalism with "childishness", which is a very often used as a conservative tactic - for the monarchs, "democracy" was a child's dream too, "women's rights" were a "childish concept" for the men of the 19th century - there was a not as easy to refute criticism and analysis of revolution, riots, and radicalism.
that consisted of two parts, that were joined together. had the revolutions of the past not made everything worse instead of better? was the regime of stalin not worse than that of the tsar? what about the revolutions in south america, that just installed a new dictatorship in place of the former?
so would it not be better, if things stayed as worse as they are - instead of going into the horror of a post-revolutionary society in which everything is worse?
the second critique addressed revolution and politics in general. are politics in general not *always* a trap?
and so, isn't revolution, too, a trap? with politics, you have a program, a concept, ideas, a structure, and are these things not bound to create an even bigger failure than the status quo? people are oppressed because of the ruling class. but if you establish a society in which everything is geared towards the ideal of "equality", doesn't this turn into a form of oppression too? just like stalin, who justified his deeds, not by proclaiming a thirst for power and extension of his rulership, but with the ideals of justice, equality and freedom of socialism.
i can only hint at this critique in this text. the question of the "tyranny of the ideals", the tyranny of symbols, could fill a whole book. or rather, a whole library. just let me add that a lot of thinkers, philosophers, and also poets, have pondered about this question.

this critique convinced me too, as it convinced almost everyone, consciously or subconsciously.
i too tried to purge the "revolutionary" vocabulary out of my statements, my thoughts, my demands.
my interest switched to authors, art and music that i deemed subversive and radical without overts claim for a revolution, such as psychobilly, early punkrock, rock'n'roll, krautrock...

there was two things i didn't notice at first.
the first of these i quickly learned, though.
which was that often, those people that now laughed at and criticised revolution, social upheavel and the rest of the political radicals that were still around, were the same people who were amongst the most radical proponents of radical change before. so the same people who hurried people to change everything, were now the ones who tried to tell people that they should stay calm, accept the status quo and accept the way society is.
this for themselves secured a position of intellectual leadership and social status, as the people were eager to listen to and follow these ideas.
there was something extremely fishy about this for me. these persons often had now found success - if even only in their "underground" extended social circle - and it seemed these recommandations to abstain from social radicalism and change also handily helped them to maintain their own "comfortable" position they had in society now.

there was something i didn't notice at all at first, and which took me a very long time to realise.
which was that it was the radical left - or if the word "left" is not the right description for all these people and groups, that espoused change in the direction of freedom, anarchy, anti-authoritarism - that dropped the concept of revolution. the right didn't think twice if they should drop the idea of radical societal change and a large scale "upheavel" or coup. they didn't say that "reform" or "moderate demands" should replace the concept of a total recreation of society. in their minds, such a change was "necessary", and more important, realistically possible, while for the left a revolution in the near future had become an "unrealistic" concept.

for many people, a claim by a hippie, an anarchist, a leftist for a revolution was completely laughable.
but if a rightwing person called for a radical, profound change of society, they were suddenly eager to agree.

it's horrible that we ended up in such a situation and it's necessary to change it.

let us get back to revolution, let us get to the desire for revolution, for freedom, for anarchy, for liberty, for creativity and expression. let us not get bullied by the others into thinking that revolution is a thing of the past or a child's play (keep in mind a child's concept can be full of wisdom too).

let us go... for revolution.