Please tell me that you don't consider the later appropriation of "Let's Roll" to somehow mean that people like Neil Young had committed the original sin of supporting the wars. By that logic, is Todd Beamer guilty of the same?
It's startling the ease and quickness with which some people will see a way ascribe some perceived right-wing guilt to someone like Neil Young. I'm not a fan of Young, and my politics are very different than his, but I certainly won't lay blame at his feet for being too right-wing or supporting wars, as this was never the case.
"Let's Roll" was a Bush slogan when Neil released that song.
If you read my comment carefully, I said he "eventually came around", i.e. the 2006 album.
I specifically remember him being on TV supporting war in the middle east. I found some quotes to corroborate my memory:
"Many artists also seemed to take unpredictable positions as spokespeople. Neil Young shocked his audience at the 2001 People for the American
Way gala, at which he received a Spirit of Liberty Lifetime Achievement
Award, when he endorsed administration policy by saying that “we’re
going to have to relinquish some of our freedoms for a short period of
time.” [1]
"We're going to do the job, and then we're going to get back to being who we are." [2]
But somehow my comment gets flagged, because everyone can't believe that their hero made a mistake, which over 90% of the US population made by the way.
Thanks fallacy bot. I was not trying to discredit Neil Young’s “argument.” I was simply stating my opinion that he sucks and it’s funny that he was once a part of a counter culture and and now he’s “fighting” for the “side” that’s already “winning.” If the fallacy manifested in the latter part of my comment I think you missed the forest for the trees.
This is needlessly confrontational and insulting. I'm not making fun of Neil Young. I'm a fan and always will be. I'm still going to listen to his music. I legitimately felt bad for him because what he did was an instant PR disaster.
A lot of people in this thread are correctly pointing out the Neil Young is within his rights to only allow his music to be played on censorious platforms. What's missing is anyone saying that he isn't.
A racist is within their rights to publically discuss their views. I will happily argue that that is the way it should be until the heat death of the universe. But, importantly, you will never catch me saying the they're a decent person or they're doing the right thing. Young can be against basic human rights without exceeding the bounds of his own, but being authoritarian is still morally abhorrent.
There’s a key difference: Neil Young isn’t dangerous because he’s not portraying himself as someone he’s not. He’s not presenting contrarian hot takes but simply saying that the experts are right on this and we should listen to them.
When you try to dismiss that as a “biased narrative” or “authoritarian” it demonstrates the danger of this intellectual sloppiness: you’re conflating two positions as equally worthy of attention without acknowledging that one of them has near-unanimous consensus among experts and has been extensively validated. Trying to “both sides this without accounting for that weight is making you less informed, not more.
I am surprised news outlets are still trying to give life to this manufactured crisis. Who cares what Neil Young thinks about any of this? Why are these celebrities put on a pedestal by news media and individuals? At best, Neil Young is a has-been whose music will soon be forgotten by newer generations that have long since moved on.
More importantly, Neil Young has shown himself to be for censorship and against the free exchange of ideas. His stance is fundamentally at odds with free societies that harbor enlightenment values. The problem is not Rogan or Ek, but Young and the new authoritarian pro-censorship/deplatforming political tribes, who abuse their voice and power to silence those who don’t share their ideology. That’s not the stance of reasonable people - that’s the stance of zealots, no different than religious zealots of a different era.
Politically-speaking, its hard to exorcise the ghost of his 1980s pronouncements, when he swung hard-right behind the Reagan presidency and lashed out at gays ("you go to the supermarket and you see a [censored] behind the fucking cash register, you don't want him to handle your potatoes") and welfare spongers. "Stop being supported by the government and get out and work," Neil advised. "You have to make the weak stand up on one leg, or half a leg, whatever they've got."
I’m only talking about the narrative around the whole “we need to shut Joe up”. I have no interest or idea in why Neil Young himself thought it’d be a good idea to get himself into this, at least in this manner.
And it wasn't the only one. I remember a short snippet of Fortunate Son was used to imply it was a patriotic song in a TV ad (Wrangler jeans I think?). The line being "Some folks were made to wave the flag, ooh the red, white, and blue"
The song, released in 1969, is quite clearly a criticism of the US's Vietnam policy. It's not likely to be mistaken for anything else (the way Born in the USA occasionally is), but still was aggressively misused.
Neil Young is an angry old man who is inconsistent about what he throws temper tantrums about. It's not becoming for a counter-culture icon to try to impose his views through bullying.
hahaha you surely must be joking. what a ridiculous spin! being political & caring about the world is not new. Young has been a strong advocate, loudly held moral stances for probably longer than many many of the readers on HN have been alive[1]. having backbone, a stance, caring: it's not new.
this isnt really that different than asking Young to share a show with someone. our systems and our services have gotten more centralized, more controlled. the connection is not as clear & apparent as sharing a stage. but this is not some new radical new interpersonal cruelty Young has fostered. it's the simple desire to not associate with trash & cruelty, to find better spaces. that's not new. it's just good sense.
we dont all have to follow the same code, but we should not be party to those supporting the despicable. obvious, & anything else anything less in madness.
This is an impressive bit of historical revisionism, entirely in tune with the pro-war memes saturating American corporate media these days related to the continued war in Ukraine (and the official state opposition to a negotiated settlement). In particular, it manages to entirely avoid mentioning Vietnam! Is the author and editor really unaware of that aspect of Bob Dylan's history? Let's see if we can help them out:
> "Through Bob Dylan’s music, the Vietnam War was able to be fought through the use of music as a means of protest. His songs clearly addressed the war, demonstrating that people were speaking about it, as well as expressing the ambivalence that many in the field felt. Despite the fact that the majority of his anti-war songs were written to protest the Vietnam War, many of them are still used today to express opposition to current-day conflicts... Masters of War, The Times They Are A Changin’, and All Along the Watchtower all discussed the atrocities of the war, whereas The Weight, as well as All Along the Watchtower, addressed the general unrest and unease of the time."
"If you aren't familiar with the work and impact of Neil Young"
What I find hilarious is the number of folks of a, certain political persuasion (the fact a public health issue is politicized is absolutely nuts), have deemed Neil Young and Joni Mitchell as irrelevant dinosaurs from an artistic perspective. Some even going so far as to say their historical importance is of a mere footnote.
Of course the firestorm their actions caused in the public discourse on this issue has shown their voice matters quite a bit.
Apologies if you felt shitted on, but I do believe that you are inventing straw men pressure groups and ignoring the fact that there might be a legitimate organic movement. So I am, in fact, making my case.
> It's a few [...] musicians making a negative publicity fuss
One thing I'd like to add on this point is that this kind of negative publicity fuss, raised by musicians, can be incredibly powerful. If you aren't familiar with the work and impact of Neil Young, especially songs like "Southern Man" and "Alabama," I encourage you to consider his work.
His music likely opened some eyes in the 70s while the American South was still gripped in racist fervor (as someone who grew up in the south, I too was impacted by these songs when I encountered them in the early 2000s). Musicians have the power to influence public opinion. That public opinion is influenced by them does not imply that all influence is the result of a greater agenda.
Yeah but Neil Young's steadfast support of patriarchal dominance of the music industry and the treatment of female artists as sex objects over the past 50 odd years coupled with his so called "dangerous misinformation" on GMO foods isn't a good enough reason to try and silence him. Besides some of his old music really isn't too bad at all!
It's startling the ease and quickness with which some people will see a way ascribe some perceived right-wing guilt to someone like Neil Young. I'm not a fan of Young, and my politics are very different than his, but I certainly won't lay blame at his feet for being too right-wing or supporting wars, as this was never the case.
reply