I Don't Want To Watch The Execution

Anti-Flag, Monsters, Means and Ends

Last Wednesday veteran Punk outfit Anti-Flag suddenly broke up. Little explanation was given outside of a short statement saying they had disbanded and would be turning off and refunding their Patreon. Their entire online presence vanished as well as the online presence of some of their members. This was…strange to say the least, the band had tours planned for the fall, they’d been a fixture of the Punk scene for nearly 30 years, to so suddenly and unceremoniously end is out of character especially considering their tenure and career. Very quickly after, rumors started swirling that lead singer, Justin Sane (a stage name if that’s not clear) had been accused of rape, pointing to a recently released episode of a podcast wherein a guest gave an account of being raped by the unnamed lead singer of an unnamed political punk band roughly 15 years prior. Using details provided during the interview and another anonymous comment on tumblr, the punk community inferred that Justin was who she was speaking about, and so began a public campaign of accusations and denouncements that have become commonplace within the scene. [UPDATE] This week Justin and the rest of Anti-Flag would release a statement, denying the accusations, but confirming they had disbanded. It would do little to change the conversation.

I wasn’t going to write about this kind of stuff again, at least not for a while, my previous piece detailing this dynamic, and my encounters with it left me pretty drained. I want to write about a lot of different things here. I am obviously incredibly interested in what I see as a nascent moral panic in America, especially in relation to American panics in the past, and I want to write about it while it’s happening, rather than after. I think there’s a lot be written about the how we are haunted by the spirits of puritanism, McCarthyism, the satanic panic, the war on terror and how those events, and further our failure to learn the lessons they teach, shape American life in a very specific way. But I also don’t know if I want that to be my “beat”, or at least not my only beat. I had figured I’d write some version of this piece next time one of these things popped off, I’d toyed with it before, I just didn’t expect it to happen this soon, or this close to home, and it feels wrong to ignore it.

To say Anti Flag were an important band to me feels reductive. Along with Rise Against they were the first strictly Punk band I got into. The radio emo boom of the mid 00s had exposed me to a lot of stuff that was punk influenced, I’d been into politics and Rage Against the Machine, but Anti-Flag, for me, is where it all started, a spiraling rabbit hole into a scene that would shape…really everything in my life. I remember exactly the first time I heard them, where I was, what I was doing, I was transfixed. I remember that feeling that so many young men yearn for, and few are lucky enough to ever grasp; “this is where I belong”. For a lonely kid who felt alien nearly constantly, that was world changing. Their music was great, angry and aggressive but well written and accessible. Their loud political stance felt so in tune with my view of the world, something that had been previously entirely inaccessible to me in Bush era suburbia. They felt authentic in a way other things just didn’t. The spark of Anti-Flag changed me, I read books I never would have read, became involved in political action I would’ve missed, I listened to every piece of music I could get my hands on with a passion and hunger few other things would ever inspire, I got some of the worst haircuts known to man, all in pursuit of getting closer to what had resonated. I was simultaneously growing who I was while being part of something, I was a tribe unto myself. I was a Punk. I d love lots of bands after, many much more, but they hold such a specific, special place.

Anti-Flag were deeply political, perhaps the most political band I can think of, and they’ve been a political band since long before that was a cool thing to be, though admittedly they found a lane of success. In fact part of the reason I’d eventually drift away from them more towards bands like Rise Against, The Menzingers, The Gaslight Anthem, and Against Me! was simply that their songs varied in subject matter far more. Progressive causes flowed through every song, Anti-War, Anti-Racist, Anti-Corporation, Anti-Police Brutality, Environmentalism, Veganism, Feminism; all those things were central to every song, every note, the bands very image. The Trump election did cause Anti-Flag to go into an outrage overdrive, letting legitimate concerns about a rising tide of ethnonationalism obscure the fact that Trumps election was just as much a genuine reaction to the same unbearable conditions they had always sang about, and the inability of the progressive hegemony to address them. But everyone overreacted to that, it’s hard to single them out, or really criticize a punk band for lack of nuance.

It is likely that the band’s hardline stances on these kinds of social issues, being so vocally in the camp of believing any accusation leveled at anyone will make it impossible for them to move forward as a band outside of this turning out to be a Connor Oberst type situation, in which Justin has never met or even been in a room with this person. While very few groups survive this kind of thing, Anti-Flag’s rhetoric reduces the chance of rolling out of this thing from infinitesimal to none. This of course all stems from an accusation, not an investigation, not a formal charge, certainly not a conviction.

Call me crazy, but I do think whether or not someone actually did the thing they’re being punished for on a massive scale matters. Western culture I think is having very important conversations about the place of punishment as a larger cultural force; does it work, and how we can realistically create change? But it seems strange to in the same “anti-carceral” breath assert that someone accused of a serious crime is simply and unquestionably guilty from just an informal accusation and there is no need to adjudicate that. Instead we need to jump straight to sentencing, which is always total destruction of someones life and social connections followed by banishment. Maybe I’m too close to look at this objectively, or maybe I’m just close enough. I know a significant amount of my beliefs in civil rights and due process were formed by that band, seems only right to exercise it.

On Today’s Episode

The story the woman recounts is harrowing and heartbreaking, providing a great deal of details that implicates Justin. This of course, means nothing, plenty of cases that turn out to be bullshit are filled with compelling, detailed accounts of something that didn’t happen. There’s some inconsistencies, some contradictions, some weird tangents. Conversely, none of those things mean she’s lying, true testimony can be contradictory, memory is notoriously malleable. I’m not here to or particularly interested in litigating the truthfulness of the claims, it’s nearly impossible to anyway as all we’re provided with is a verbal account. I did notice how carefully crafted everything the alleged victim said was, almost perfectly sharpened, providing as much identifying insinuations while maximizing plausible deniability that would shield her from any kind of legal liability, which to me seems a bit like hedging, if you’re going to say something that is so blatantly true, just say it, but again, that’s not an indication of really anything.

I think it’s also worth noting that what is being alleged here is a serious crime, she’s not just saying he’s an asshole, or mean, she’s accusing him of a felony. Obviously people have the right to talk about their experiences but I think there’s at least some discussion about whether or not people should have the right to accuse someone of a formal offense that requires adjudication, in an informal way. I don’t have an answer for that, I’m a pretty strong free speech advocate, but I think it’s at least worth examining.

It was the podcast itself that made me want to put a gun in my mouth though. Calling the “enough.” podcast Trauma Porn seems somewhat insulting to pornography, but it’s little more than someone describing traumatic events for the consumption and entertainment of a credulous audience and hosts. It’s coated in the moralistic language of “speaking your truth”, “raising awareness” and “accountability”, but make no mistake, this is entertainment. This kind of thing used to be the providence of daytime talk shows, Pat Donahue, Ricki Lake, Oprah, all filled the same void in the lives of bored comfortable suburbanites a generation ago, providing them with an unending stream of pseudoscience, pop psychology, true crime, and moral panics to pass the time. It seems that podcasts have now filled that gap if you want to find soulless hosts get increasingly more giddy as the details of an alleged traumatic event unfold, already salivating at the prospect of all the likes and shares this latest trauma dump is gonna do for their careers.

Even outside of the trauma porn angle, the podcast and the way it’s stewarded is insufferable. It’s wrapped in a particular brand of Punk self aggrandizement, one in which people constantly assert that this scene is uniquely important, that what is happening isn’t music and concerts, but very important social change work. And it’s because of this very important work that you’re doing by getting drunk with your friends and going to concerts, that these kinds of violations are so much more serious. Playing right into one of the long held criticisms of the victims rights movement, that somehow the fact that a crime happens to a “good” person makes it a worse crime. One of the hosts even goes as far to say that something along the lines of “you don’t see people as invested in Country or Electronic Music or Rap like you do with Punk”, which is incredibly moronic and betrays that you’ve obviously never met EDM or Rap fans, or any young person really, though I suspect that if they ever actually met any black teenagers, they’d be speed dialing the Police. They all repeatedly insist that the this music scene has not reckoned with sexual assault, as if we all just got back from the Brand New/Daughters/PWR BTTM world tour. It’s just as disingenuous as them pretending that these things have been swept under the rug for the past decade and not all resulted in the same conclusion for nearly every accused party.

But even if the hosts weren’t making dumb ass comments, what exactly are these people’s qualifications to be doing this kind of work and leading these kinds of discussions? There are very specific parameters surrounding how alleged victims need to be questioned, and those parameter exist partially because of the disastrous outcomes seen in previous moral panics. Are the hosts following those parameters, hell are they even trained in such parameters? The girl does PR, because of course she does, bloodsuckers are attracted to blood, her good male feminist™ cohost runs a film festival…these are the people we’ve decided are both equipped and accountable enough to handle this? I must’ve been out of town when we elected these people judge, jury, and executioner because surely they haven’t just deputized themselves to wildly accuse people of major crimes?

Do they even know if Justin and this woman have been in the same room? Is there a screening process? If there is that kind of evidence, why are we not privy to it? If these things are going to be tried in the court of public opinion I’d at least like to see what the prosecution is entering into evidence. And when, not if, they get this wrong, and end up blowing up the life of someone innocent, what recourse does anyone have? What “accountability” exists for when this podcast and the overzealous dipshits that run it get the wrong guy, because of gross negligence or just the sheer inevitability of it? Is there even enough oversight with any of this? The answer is no, but that’s the whole point, if you never investigate anything past initial accusation, you’re never wrong in your tireless crusade. You can merely dodge by saying you’re “starting the conversation” without ever having to take any responsibility for what results from what you started. Did we ever get any meaningful answers with any of the hundreds of accusations that have been thrown around this scene over the years? No, we simply shot from the hip and moved on, you never have to sift through the wreckage to see if you’re wrong if you can’t be bothered to look or care.

I feel like any sort of criticism of this ultimately responds in accusations of “not taking accusations of sexual assault seriously” or “dismissing rape” which is strange for people that want the entire adjudication of a serious crime to be done through the same medium of social media that your Mom shares minion memes on, or the internet radio shows middling comedians use to hawk dick pills. I take it all very seriously, so seriously in fact that I believe both parties are entitled to the full process guaranteed to them as a part of a functioning society, not some shell of a kangaroo court presided over by room temperature IQ Trauma Ambulance Chasers looking to grow their brand.

Angry Mob Justice

The podcast very quickly set off the internet sleuths, who focused in on Justin as their target, which is a bold thing in itself, to point the finger at someone who wasn’t named based on insinuation alone, but such is the providence of the internet. By the end of the day Justin and all the bands accounts had vanished. This was of course, used as evidence of guilt by the internet mob who had already begun their ritual of denouncement, accusation, and demand for blood, yet totally ignores that remaining silent isn’t an indication of guilt, neither is running from the mob that wishes you harm.

But I think nothing really encapsulates the strange inquisition energy of the community surrounding this this entire thing than the statement released by Oakland band Pity Party who announced their leaving of Anti-Flag’s record label AF records with the following statement. I’ve bolded what I think are the important parts.

Hi friends, we want to take a second to address the horrible news that came out earlier this week about a band that we once looked up to for many years.

First and foremost, we want to speak directly to the victims of this monster and any one else who is a victim of Sexual Abuse: we SEE you, we HEAR you, we BELIEVE you. We will continue to show up for you and continue to police our scene in order to keep you safe, to keep ourselves safe, to keep our community safe. We only have one another, so we have to lookout for each other.

We wanted to also update you on our affiliation with A-F Records. While we do know that the fine people who run the record label had nothing to do with these acts and we have never dealt with the abuser himself directly during our time on the label, we feel it isn’t right for us to continue to associate with a label affiliated with this individual and are no longer an A-F artist.

We were due to announce a new record out through A-F in the coming days and unfortunately have already started the pressing process. The announcement will still come and the record will be put out through SBAM alone, instead of as a joint release. We will be donating profits from the A-F share of records directly to Sexual Assault prevention and recovery organizations in both the Bay Area and Pittsburgh. More details to come.

Lastly, we just want to express how heartbroken this entire ordeal has left us. As we said before, we have all looked up to this band for most of our entire musical careers. Unfortunately, monsters come in all shapes and sizes, and can be quite easy in charming you into thinking they are someone they’re not. People (predominantly men) like this get away with these heinous acts because we don’t want to believe that someone we have been inspired by, or look up to, or get along with, or have a good time with, or share similar tastes or hobbies, could be capable of doing such things.

WE HAVE TO DO BETTER. WE HAVE TO LISTEN TO VICTIMS. WE HAVE TO BELIEVE VICTIMS. WE HAVE TO ENCOURAGE THEM TO SPEAK UP. AND WE HAVE TO FIGHT BACK AGAINST THESE TYPES OF PEOPLE. KEEP EACH OTHER SAFE, ALWAYS.”

There you have it folks, this band who doesn’t know any of the parties involved, and who have never dealt with them have shown up to definitively say what happened 15 years ago on the other end of the country and pass the ultimate judgement. Hilariously they were able to almost recreate the famous Simpsons clip lampooning this very dynamic 30 years ago during the Satanic Panic.

The same people who have been beating on and on for the past couple years about abolishing the police are climbing over each other to be the punk scene’s top cop, they’re not even hiding it by avoiding saying the word police anymore. They “see” they “hear” they “believe” apropos of fucking nothing but their own self righteousness just like the forefathers holding “we believe the children” signs outside the McMartin trial. The “nice is the new punk” “we protect us” brigade turn into little Eichmanns the second they’re given even a modicum of power and someone they can point the finger at. They deploy the label “monster” with such ease and abandon the very second they can, dehumanizing somebody they don’t even know, let alone have any insight into his actions, because it makes it easier for them and everyone else to justify their bloodlust. For all of their utopian ideals of dismantling oppressive systems and building a new world, in practice all they manage to do is recreate the absolute worst most punitive tendencies of the criminal justice system while stripping out all of the protections offered to those who find themselves within it. I’ve said it before but these people have no issue with a boot on the neck, so long as it’s their boot. Finally what the world needed, an army of tender-queer Derek Chauvins doing their best Rorschach monologues, so kind of Pity Party to answer the call. Of course the braying morons on the internet ate it up, nothing more radical, stunning, and brave than declaring yourself the new Stasi.

A good question to ask about whether or not a certain behavior is bad or not is “would I be in favor of this if a cop did it?” If a cop started broadcasting deeply damaging accusations of a serious crime that incited huge social repercussions against citizens who hadn’t even been charged with that crime just because somebody said or they think they’re guilty, you’d rightfully see that for the gross abuse of power it is. But when someone with the same music taste as you does it, suddenly it’s fine? If your complaint is that the police lack accountability, oversight and transparency I hate to be the one to break this to you, but internet mobs have even less.

The good allies will repeat over how it’s just so easy to be a good person and not commit these kinds of acts, that they’ve always gotten consent and look how good they are. But my question to them is that if asked, could you prove your last sexual encounter was consensual if it was contested? Nobody films or fill out a love contract every time they fuck, and even then it's no guarantee. The modern contractual model of consent really protects no one, especially if there’s no contract. To those who think these kinds of cancellation spectacles are justified or work, remember your entire ability to exist in the world relies on your partner feeling the same way about you and a private situation for the rest of your life, if that changes even slightly, guess what, you’re one internet post away from banishment yourself. If you think cheering on these endless spectacles and blind belief will protect you if your number finally gets called, all I can ask is how is that working out for Anti-Flag right now?

These people are virtually indistinguishable from the right wing Qanon psychos running rampant right now, replace the word “groomer” with “abuser” in any statement made by either side and you’d be hard pressed to tell me which is which. They operate under the same worldview, that the world is filled with bad people constantly getting away with horrific acts, aided and supported by society and the powers that be, and that the only way to stop it is by assigning yourself whatever extrajudicial powers necessary, because conveniently, you’re the good guys. For people who are such stunning and brave truth tellers, they sure shoot from cover a lot, they avoid anywhere their targets could meaningfully fight back or defend themselves, any arena in which they won’t be allowed to totally dominate and destroy their targets with impunity.

Speak English Doc, We Ain’t Scientists

When asked simply how this kind of behavior can be justified the response usually has to do with a particular strain of Feminism that is popular in these scenes. It is a strain of Feminism that believes that false allegations simply don’t exist, or are so statistically insignificant that it no accusation is worth investigating, so handing these problems over to the mob is necessary. Anyone who asserts any kind of concrete number regarding false accusations is fucking lying to you. There’s no good studies on false accusations, the data varies wildly based on inconsistent definitions of what constitutes “false” and the most recent study is nearly 20 years old. The assertion that these things are rare is based almost entirely on the fact that if they repeat it enough to enough people it will magically become true.

They’ll then pivot to how we have to believe these things uncritically, because so many people don’t report, then sight some statistic from the de facto charity surrounding these issues, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), about “X massive number of sexual assaults go unreported”, which on its face should give everyone pause but apparently doesn’t. How the fuck do you quantify something that isn’t reported? Curious on how RAINN became clairvoyant I decided to do some digging through their methodology. You know where they get the number of unreported sexual assaults from? The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), a fucking survey. They treat any answer to a survey, which is not investigated, AS A COMPLETED ASSAULT. It’s not based on convictions, or police reports, or any hard data, it’s a self reporting survey and they treat it as fact. This of course means that everyone from the Duke Lacrosse Girl to Eleanor Williams would be counted, by RAINN, as an assault that happened. This is such a level of purposeful creative statistic fabrication and intellectual dishonesty that it defies any explanation as to how this could be anything but conscious deceit. Whatever RAINN’s altruistic aspirations, they’ve become little more than the modern equivalent Children’s Institute International, less concerned about reality, and more focused on bending everything to fit their preconceived notions and provide a faux scientific justification to whatever suspension of due process is currently being cheered.

Obviously sexual assaults occur, obviously an amount go unreported, but these people are fueling a cultural panic on fucking junk science. This data of course is only relative to cases reported to police and has absolutely no bearing on social media accusations, something whose numbers and validity are entirely immeasurable, and exist on a platform where it is easy lie. These people want to engage with the reality of how we curb sexual assault, but won’t engage with anything that doesn’t flatter their priors.

We’re constantly told “It has to be true, why would someone lie about that? It doesn’t make sense for someone to make that up” but that only works if you believe that everyone acts morally and logically all the time. Someone who is crafting a false allegation is doing something immoral, illogical, their reasons for doing it won’t make sense but it doesn’t change that they’re doing it. Liars will always prey on the fact that they believe others won’t think they’re lying.

Modern Feminism itself has never had any qualms about aligning itself against due process and cheering on moral panics. From Gloria Steinem's endorsement of McMartin investigations or recovered memory junk science to Dworkin's Spurious Rape Accounts the movement has continually showed itself as having no issue with fascistic tendencies so long as the targets are male, even if a few women get caught in the crossfire. It is that vein of reactionary Feminism that undergirds this entire process. I’d like to think the people who play into this unending dynamic simply don’t know, but I think they just don’t care, they don’t care to learn, let alone glean, anything from the past.

Every time the music scene comes together to do one of these, completely oblivious of any sort of historical context or precedent, I’m always reminded of this quote from The Abuse of Innocence: The McMartin Preschool Trial by Paul and Shirley Eberle, who were among the few reporters who accurately reported on the case.

A lawyer peripherally involved in the case was engaged in conversation with a group of reporters. One of them asked him “What do you think of this, so far?”

“It reminds me a lot of Joe McCarthy,” he answered.

“Who was Joe McCarthy?” she asked. “I never did know what that was all about.” She was working for one of California’s largest daily newspapers. The lawyer spoke with another reporter who was with on of the big, network television stations. She, too, knew nothing of Joe McCarthy nor the Seventeenth-century witch trials. These are the elite of the Los Angeles press corps, the ones who get the big stories.

This Is The End (For You My Friend)

These moral panics and personal decimation around accusations will continue, simply because there is no incentive for them not to. People love gossip, they especially love allegations of wrong doing, they love a feeling of moral superiority and love to shit on the target of the week. It drives clicks, which in turn drives ad revenue. It drives new audiences to podcasts, which opens up new monetization strategies. It moves bands up and down the ladder. It gives everyone a feeling that they’re one of the good ones.

Here’s the thing: even if everything about Justin is 100% factually true, it wouldn’t justify this response. The argument against vigilantism is not that it never gets the right people, it’s that it places everyone in danger, is unaccountable, and frequently gets things wrong. Surely some of the people in Guantamo Bay are dangerous terrorists, but it doesn’t change the fact that we undermined nearly every tenet of human rights or a fair society to put them there and that that is an unconscionable offense, nor does it change that we also put away a hell of a lot of innocent people. We don’t defend due process because it protects the guilty, we do it because it protects the innocent. And you have to defend it everywhere, in every situation, because it’s the slow erosion of civil liberties that ends up undoing everything. It’s the handful of times you say “well you know this guy seems really guilty, do we need to really do all of this investigating?”, it’s the handful of times you listen to the person saying “this person is so dangerous we simply cannot afford them basic civil liberties.” and before you know it it’s all gone. That’s why this matters. The court of public opinion may not be an actual court, but it doesn’t make the principles of fairness any less important.

I am sure that if anyone actually reads this, I will inevitably be accused of being a rape apologist, of enabling these kinds of behaviors. But that’s always the charge isn’t it? If you don’t believe in this vigilante action, you must love bad things happening. I’ve heard it all before. If you don’t believe cops should be allowed to kill people, you must want crime. If you don’t believe in torturing people, you must want another 9/11. If you don’t believe in Satanic Ritual Abuse, you must want kids to be hurt. If you don’t believe in witch trials, you must yourself be a witch. Did the patriot act make us safer or did it just give more power to war hungry psychos? Did the McMartin trial protect any of those kids? Did the Witch Trials make the people of Salem any safer? These people know the answer. It’s tiresome.

Anyone who is accused of a crime deserves a fair and transparent system to adjudicate their guilt, and deserved to be protected from extrajudicial punishment. Anyone who disagrees with that is a fucking fascist and should be treated as the cops they are. Kendra Sheetz, Rich Gill, Pity Party, and everyone else who is enabling this stupid fucking podcast and this stupid fucking culture, can we get your badge numbers?

We can either be the people who stood with the West Memphis Three, or the people of West Memphis, we can’t be both. I don’t want to watch the scene do this to anyone. I don’t really want to watch our culture do this any more, and yet we do it, again and again and again, it’s uniquely American. Are there not enough examples in the historical record to show that these kinds of vigilante approaches don’t work? Is there not enough evidence of how that abandoning civil liberties hurts everyone in time? Has the ejection of due process ever once made anyone safer in the long run? Why do people want so badly to destroy other people that they’ll believe anything so long as it justifies their desire to hurt others?

I ask myself, how do you have no doubt in your mind as you bring the sword down, let alone do it with glee? How could anyone live with destroying the wrong person? And then I look out and see these people and I get my answer.

Just fine.

Editing Note 8/1: I thought I had linked to Freddie DeBoer’s excellent essay Planet of Cops at some point within this but upon reread realized I had not. That essay was a huge inspiration for this one and is perhaps one of the most cogent pieces on this dynamic and is worthy of your time.

You can find me on instagram @jacktorrancefakeshisdeath