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Before I begin, I know that there is a lot of discourse on what is or isn’t punk and always has been. Ask any die-hard britpunk what they think of the Sex Pistols (the band often cited as the first major punk group), and you will get some very interesting responses – almost all of which relate to them being Tories (an alternative name for the British conservative party). More recently, Against Me!’s sudden departure from the community after hostility to lead singer Laura Jane Grace coming out as a trans woman forced a conversation about queerness in punk (which I broadly think the larger community has accepted since then). And then there’s the Dead Kennedys tweets about Mitt Romney and Lindsey Graham. That said, I do think the current discourse about conservatism and punk is distinct, and we need to talk about it – because the number of people who are currently claiming you can be conservative and punk is high.
First, punk is definitionally not conservative. It’s not centrist. I’d also argue it’s not liberal, either. Punk was either a counterculture or an anti-culture from the start (most punk is probably countercultural, though more anarcho-punk strains might stray into anti-culture). It had its birth from the broad counterculture movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Either way, counterculture and anti-culture both center around the dismantling of oppressive social, political, or economic systems (and sometimes religious or other systems of power). Conservatism, by definition, is about upholding these systems. Centrism takes a neutral viewpoint to them. While we in the United States use “liberal” and “liberalism” for social views, that’s not what liberalism is about – the textbook definition is about upholding free market economics (which disproportionately harm low-income households and minorities, i.e. still upholding an economically oppressive system).
Now, I’ll acknowledge that Trumpism isn’t conservative. Conservatism upholds institutions, but Trumpism is trying to dismantle them. That said, Trumpism is a form of regressivism, which attempts to return to an earlier point. In our current climate, this would increase the options for systems to be oppressive (for instance, ending birthright citizenship would strip people of their rights). It is theoretically possible that, at some point in the future, regressivism might be punk. If we ever get to the point where going back to an earlier state would reduce oppression, then regressivism might meet this definition. But that’s not where we are now, so regressivisim isn’t punk either.
And most commentary I’ve seen ends here. Conservatism and Trumpist regressivism aren’t punk, so that’s what matters. But I want to at least posit a few theories about why this is happening, because it’s currently the center of discourse in the community. These are my theories, but I am going to try and back them up as best I can.
On average, there is some amount of conservative shift as people age (“Political Ideology over Life Course”, Sam Peltzman, 2019). It isn’t nearly as strong as folk wisdom suggests, but it does occur, and it’s much more likely to be a shift to the left than to the right (“Do People Really Become More Conservative as They Age?”, Johnathan C. Peterson et al., 2020). Looking issue by issue, some data suggests that this shift is mostly that the specific political positions are more or less consistent, but that position is seen as more conservative because the average position has shifted to the left (“Age and vote choice: Is there a conservative shift among older voters?”, Benny Geys et al., 2022). Additionally, research is consistent that older people are more conservative than younger people (“Changing Partisan Coalitions in a Politically Divided Nation: Age, generational cohorts and party identification”, Pew Research Center, 2024). Let’s go back to the Sex Pistols for a moment. Whether or not you as an individual consider them punk, their success did represent the first moment that the punk music subculture became culturally mainstream. Their debut single, “Anarchy in the UK”, came out in 1976. A young adult when it came out would be about 67 years old today. Someone who shifted to the right might still want to hold onto the music of their youth, so still sees themselves as “punk” despite no longer reflecting that politically.
Second, there are individual cases where a flip has happened, which does legitimize a thought process. Looking to the Dead Kennedys for a moment. In their early days, they were undeniably a punk group. “Kill the Poor” (1979) is about how capitalism will disregard the health and safety of the poor to increase profits, “Let’s Lynch the Landlord” (1980) is about housing access, and “Police Truck” (1979) points out how people wouldn’t accept police violence if anyone else was being violent, to name a few. That all lasted until the Dead Kennedys tweeted support for Mitt Romney (and later Lindsey Graham) and were widely criticized for it. Now, some members of the band have since said that this was a social media manager and doesn’t represent their thoughts, but the damage was already done. If you were a conservative looking to show the Dead Kennedys shared your views, you now had the tweets. This legitimized the idea that punk could be conservative.
I also want to add a part “B” to this sentiment when we look at legitimately punk bands who have intentionally disentangled themselves from the punk community, and their reasoning why. This represents a much smaller subset of this topic but shouldn’t be overlooked. The poster child for this is Against Me! and their song “I Was a Teenage Anarchist” (2010). According to interviews that Grace has given, this was meant to be a criticism of how stifling the punk community had become – a sentiment reinforced when she came out as a trans woman two years later in an interview with Rolling Stone. Grace faced a lot of hostility from members of the community, which indirectly led to the band’s eventual break-up. That was a progressive punk band disavowing the punk community and eventually leaving it. I don’t think it was Grace or Against Me!’s intention to do so, but this does give the impression that punk isn’t a place for progressivism.
Third, conservatives generally lack media literacy – which corresponds with a rise in the use of figures of speech within punk music. I don’t want to imply any type of causation here, but the correlation is still worth discussing. Early examples of punk (especially in its anarcho-punk roots) were extremely explicit. The Dead Kennedys song “Chemical Warfare” (1980) includes the lyrics “Now I got my own mustard gas in my pocket/Climb on a tree branch and drop it/On a country club full of Saturday golfers”, while the Sex Pistols song “God Save the Queen” (1977) opens “God save the queen/The fascist regime”. Whether or not you agree with the opinions expressed, there’s no confusion there. Compare that to more modern songs. “Bullshit” (2016) by Rise Against says “Thank you for your silence, your continuing compliance/It’s your buried head so deep in the sand that ushered in the virus”, while “Let the Bad Times Roll” (2021) by The Offspring has the line “Now it was all a lie (lie)/But that bitch won’t get in my way/Keep shouting what I like (lock her up, lock her up)/Now that’s a good one I gotta say.” In context, “virus” is probably a metaphor for nationalism, which they’ve repeatedly spoken out against, but this was about when the phrase “the woke mind virus” was gaining mainstream recognition. While The Offspring was writing from Donald Trump’s perspective to satirize him, it can just be read as supportive. For better or worse, uses of figurative language like this are becoming more common in punk music, meaning you need at least some media literacy to understand it. Multiple studies have found that people who self-identify with being conservative are more likely to struggle with media literacy (“Conservative Media Use and COVID-19 Related Behavior: The Moderating Role of Media Literacy Variables”, Porismita Borah et al., 2022; “News media literacy and conspiracy theory endorsement”, Stephanie Craft et al., 2017). This would make someone more likely to misinterpret the actual meanings of these songs.
Fourth, there is something to be said that sometimes, the message does sort of mean what conservatives think it does – just not for the reasons they think. “I Was a Teenage Anarchist” and “Holiday in Cambodia” (Dead Kennedys, 1980) criticized members of the community who oversimplified issues due to youthful inexperience. In an interview with Two Guys Metal Reviews, Grace even stated explicitly that “I Was a Teenage Anarchist” doesn’t mean she no longer associated with ideologies, just that she’s matured: “I WAS a teenage anarchist. I’m NOW 35 years old. So that’s what the past tense meant in that.” Similarly, Rise Against’s “Make It Stop (September’s Children)” (2011) criticized people’s unwillingness to accept queer people – which, at that point (and arguably still today, depending on what aspect of the community we’re talking about) was a major issue within institutions on the political left as well as the right, such as the ongoing Obama administration. While their song “Blood-Red, White, and Blue” (2003) was originally meant to criticize Bush-era Middle Eastern interventionism and America’s role as an aggressor there, in concert in 2024, lead singer Tim McIlrath also said it applied to Biden-era interventionism and their willingness to supply weapons to Israel. These groups are willing to criticize some of their own unreasonable politics, as well as the political left. (This is why I wanted to make the distinction that liberalism isn’t punk, either). So yes, in that sense, conservatives are right to see the criticism. They just miss that it’s self-critical rather than critical due to having opposing viewpoints.
Finally (and probably most significantly), conservatives have a martyr complex. They falsely believe they are the ones being oppressed (the clearest example is probably Gina Carano’s now-infamous tweet comparing being a conservative in 2020 to being a Jewish person in the Holocaust). If punk ideologies protest oppression, then it would make sense for them to identify with it. I don’t have time to debunk an entire mentality, but let’s at least go through a few points. Most notably, while some conservative viewpoints are censored, they are much more likely to be in violation of terms of service than leftist viewpoints that are similarly censored (“Disproportionate Removal and Differing Content Moderation Experiences for Conservative, Transgender, and Black Social Media Users: Marginalization and Moderation Gray Areas”, Oliver L Haimson et al., 2021). Even when it happens, it’s more likely to help conservative causes if they are censored, as it creates a reaction that propels their voices (“The Censorship Effect”, Bill Ottman et al., 2022). Additionally, conservatives are somewhat more likely to self-censor (“The Self-Censoring Majority: How Political Identity and Ideology Impacts Willingness to Self-Censor and Fear of Isolation in the United States”, Alycia Burnett et al., 2022), and some evidence exists to suggest conservative media does more to neuter conservative ideology than social media censorship (“Status Threat, Social Concerns, and Conservative Media: A Look at White America and the Alt-Right”, Deena A Isom et al., 2021), so to any extent that this censorship does exist, the call is coming from inside the house.
I’m sure there are other reasons, but as a member of the community, these are what I see as the most likely explanations for this increase in people who self-identify as conservative but still consider themselves punk. And again, to make it entirely clear: you cannot be punk and conservative. Punk is, by definition, either a counterculture or anti-culture. Conservatism seeks to uphold those cultural institutions (and again, current forms of regressivism would be more culturally oppressive than conservatism). I’m not sure what the next steps are, either. But given this phenomenon is becoming more and more common, I think it’s important to not just discuss what it is, but why it’s happening. Some combination of these (and other factors) likely explains a lot of it.