The Beantown Brownshirts

The above images are, respectively, the front and back gate cover's for rock band "Boston"s 1976 debut album. The front of the album displays a fantastic, "trippy" image of an alien spacecraft, while the interior shows the band posed in the quintessential "cool guys next door" pose. While the style of both images is typical for the era and seemingly mundane, it is in the larger context clearly a message that to be a "normal guy" is to be cosmically magnificent. This is a central tenant of classic fascism; That males of the "chosen people" who adhere best to that peoples historical mores become endowed with unfathomable power, able to conquer anything in their path so long as they have the will. Remember how the Nazis praised rustic Bavarian farmers as the epitome of Aryan virtue while also believing that the Aryan race was spawned out of pure snow by warrior space gods. Recall now that "Boston"'s trademark spacecraft is large enough to fit the entire city of Boston inside. Who else could could operate such a behemoth but the immortals?

If you doubt this is the message "Boston" is trying to convey, consider their signature hit "More Than a Feeling". While decades of hipsters have snickered at Bradley Delp's melodramatic wail and the pomposity of the pre-chorus crescendo, I think it's time for us to admit to ourselves that these laughs are born out of discomfort. Discomfort at horror and revulsion towards the whole spectacle, to be sure, but also a sort of admiration and even awe, an awe that would surely be much more intense if felt collectively in a large group, reveling in the sheer forcefulness of the leader as he stares down on us from high above. This is the purpose of fascist art. Not to be beautiful for its own sake but to overwhelm our senses and dull our reason, so that we are instilled with the nonsensical feeling of invincibility through submission.

And these "cool dudes next door" certainly seem to have horribly intense feelings, don't they? If I were to pride myself on being the "dude next door", a "regular guy", just what would it mean for me to have feelings that are MORE THAN FEELINGS? It would mean that my feelings are the sole arbiter of truth, far superior to anything that godless science or bloodless rationality could ever come up with. Anything I love is the reason why everything has ever existed BECAUSE I love it. Anything I hate is objectively and indisputably evil BECAUSE I hate it, and if the forces of weakness, decadence, and envy ever conspire to bring about my romantic downfall, than I have not only the right but the duty to burn down any world that would dare cause an Olympian hero like myself such pain. This is the message that millions of middle-aged White men, plagued by professional frustration and declining virility, hear over classic-rock radio every day. Knowing this let there be no complacency among you, no peace of mind while you take your lover home tonight. The eye of liberty must never sleep, lest it wakes up to find everything it holds dear smokin.