"I keep thinking of World War III”: American Punks Rock against Reagan

This paper examines the emergence of leftist activism in American punk circles in the early- to mid-1980s.   Growing up in the late seventies and early eighties meant growing up with a mushroom cloud hanging over one’s head; it seemed the Cold War had always existed and always would.  In the mid-1970s, American punk rockers had been largely apolitical, a position befitting a time of widespread political disillusionment.  But this changed as the seventies gave way to the eighties, and Americans watched their president lead an aggressive arms race against an “evil empire.” Although some in the subculture remained avowedly apolitical and a handful embraced a (frequently racist and homophobic) conservative agenda, many more punks became leftist activists unified by their opposition to Ronald Reagan and fear of a potential World War III.  As more punks became politically engaged, however, a sort of left orthodoxy appeared within certain corners of the genre, threatening the foundational ideology of the movement: individual subjectivity.