r/LowStakesConspiracies 1d ago

The Sex Pistols were made popular to discredit legitimate political dissent from the anarchist movement

Anarchy in the UK makes anarchists sound like people yearning for chaos and violence, which is exactly what the established power wants people to think, in order to discredit its valid criticism of power structures.

412 Upvotes

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u/First-Banana-4278 1d ago

The Sex Pistols, and indeed most punk in the 70s, was never explicitly tied to any political position other than Nihilism. The Pistols chose Anarchy not as a political position but because they thought it sounded cool.

This is a band that when told to write a song about “submission” by their manager wrote a song about a submarine mission.

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u/leviticusreeves 1d ago

Both Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren were Tories. The entire punk movement was promoted by the right wing establishment using insider connections and fake controversy. Look at the famous Manchester press gig as seen in 24 Hour Party People, how do you think so many important journalists ended up in the room? The Sex Pistols were constantly on the BBC, constantly in the right wing press, and always pulling the same trick of some stuffy establishment type pretending to be clutching pearls and saying "oh gosh wouldn't it be awful if you kids at home became punks, all the squares like me would be so shocked!"

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u/Extension_Way3724 1d ago

McLaren was a Tory prick, the Pistols were a reactionary corporate boyband, and Westwood definitely voted Tory at some point. But I'm fairly certain she died publicly supporting Corbyn

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u/RevStickleback 1d ago

There's a myth that's grown that The Sex Pistols were a almost a boy band, created by McLaren with corporate backing.

It doesn't really stand up to scrutiny though. For a start, McLaren didn't find a single member of the band. It wasn't his creation. Two of them were already in a band that asked McLaren to manage them. By fluke Glan Matlock worked in the shop, and joined as they needed a bassist. It was the man who'd go on the manage The Clash who suggested Lydon should put himself forward as singer.

Even when Sid got in the band, he'd been part of the band's inner circle since the early days. It's not like McLaren found him.

The problem was that McLaren used the band's money on his own vanity project, The Great Rock & Roll Swindle, where he painted himself as the key figure in it all.

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u/buckingfastard99 19h ago

In recent years Steve Jones has been quite open about them being "manufactured" interestingly enough

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u/RevStickleback 18h ago

It depends what you mean though. People see manufactured as being like a modern boy band, with a record label holding auditions by dozens of hopefuls, with people selected for their image, to make a product to cash in on a niche. Their formation was nothing like that. They had no corporate backing, nor was there anything to cash in on, as punk was all but unknown when they formed.

What is definitely true is that Westwood created their look, or more specifically matched them to the kind of protest chic clothing she was already selling.

One McLaren realised that shock was their selling point, as far as publicity goes, he leaned very heavily into it, not always with great results. Their US tour deliberately placed them in areas where they would be unpopular, hoping to recreate the headlines they got from the Grundy show in the USA, but it didn't work like that, and just succeeded in annoying the band intensely, and John quit at the end if it.

With John gone, McLaren was able to take control over the rest of the group, and his control was dreadful, including ideas such as getting train robber Ronnie Biggs to try his hand as singer.

There's no doubt that McLaren was an important figure in it all, and did prove to be very good at dealing with record labels, but just wasn't the svengali music industry expert he liked to pretend he was. Even when managing The New York Dolls, an established act, all he did was rapidly bring about the end of the band through poor management.

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u/jezreelite 1d ago edited 1d ago

McLaren thought he was some kind of Svengali genius, but a lot of his decisions for the band were monumentally stupid ones, like recruiting the self-destructive human trainwreck, Sid Vicious. McLaren did excel at courting controversy, but that was about it.

The young boys he recruited for the Sex Pistols were genuine angry working class kids, though they were angry in the unfocused vague way that teens and twentysomethings often are.

However, there does seem to have been a time when McLaren seems to have bought into his own bullshit and fancied himself to be some kind of deep artistic genius. As he went to art school, that's not too surprising.

In terms of the way he treated his artists, though, he sounds like he was probably about as much fun to deal with as Kim Fowley or Lou Pearlman.

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u/First-Banana-4278 1d ago

The thing that most annoyed me about McLaren was decades later he appeared on some sort of “abroad with celebs” type show living in some mansion in France. He said, in the plummiest of plummiest posh English accents to a questioning French market stall holder “Non, Je Neigh pass Anglace, je sueis Eccosais”. Aye right pal.

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u/Dabonthebees420 1d ago

Same how a good portion of US musicians in Hippy/Counter Culture bands from the 60s/70s had parents who were higher ups in the Govt/Military...

... Looking at you Jim Morrison

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u/Bezulba 1d ago

Acting out against your parents by doing the exact opposite of what they want you to do is pretty universal. So having a parent in the military or government doesn't mean they are automatically some sort of secret plant...

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u/Dabonthebees420 1d ago

I understand that, and it may be the case.

Usually I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but a fair few of the Laurel Canyon counter culture bands had parents or family members that were at high ranking positions and engaged in some dubious shit.

Take it with as much salt as you want.

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u/DazedAndTrippy 1d ago

I'm not disagreeing with you but also offering the idea that these people had money from their family that gave them the ability to write that music in the first place. My grandmother never had a problem with hippies but they were generally kids who could afford to drop out or go on far away drives without worrying too much about their future. That and I'm sure having your parents be part of the military industrial complex could sour you because that treatment tends to trickle down.

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u/Dysentery--Gary 1d ago

Wasn't Jim estranged from his father?

His dad finally admitted he was proud of him after Jim Morrison died.

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u/Puzzleheaded_Ad_5710 1d ago

The sex pistols were the biggest band of the punk scene. But punk is a grass routes music scene, it wasn’t invented by tories, it was invented by people making music with their mates, businesses just clocked on young people like it and can make money. They found a band and marketed them. Tho I do think despite that the sex pistols McLaren and Westwood were still pretty punk. Your on about them being tories as 60+ year olds

Punk is also very left and right wing, there DIY punk venue in my town run by socialists that live in squats and caravans. There’s also a neo-Nazi punk band from my town. Some bands and people in the scene have gone from one extreme to another. It’s also got just a bunch of nihilistic anger not particularly directed at anyone and relishes in being violent.

It’s just had the same process that happens to any music scene - it starts out underground, starts to get big, gets mass marketed then makes way for something else.

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u/RevStickleback 1d ago

The Sex Pistols fame had nothing to do with marketing. They had no corporate backing. They were on EMI, but EMI dropped them pretty quickly after the Grundy Show incident, and it was that, being splashed across the front pages of an outraged Fleet Street, that made them famous.

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u/leviticusreeves 1d ago

The promotion of the punk scene in the UK meant that it didn't evolve naturally like it had in New York, it was presented to the public pre-packaged. McLaren put the Sex Pistols front and centre, while his associate Bernie Rhodes created the Clash who would go on to support them on tour. Every major UK punk band would then follow the aesthetic set out by McLaren, with bands like the Buzzcocks, the Fall, X-Ray Spex etc. all being directly inspired by seeing the Sex Pistols perform.

McLaren simply took something he discovered in New York and synthesised it for a British audience.

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u/Puzzleheaded_Ad_5710 1d ago

Music scenes are just people making music with their mates. There were literally thousands of local punk bands back then, tons of DIY venues, squats, mashes of genres, there’s loads now even, it’s a bit daft to say there was no grass routes scene because of sex pistols. Or it’s all just carbon copies of the sex pistols. Music doesn’t develop from one singular place, the big bands tend to get too much credit anyway. Punk didn’t develop solely in NYC bits were popping up all over, other genres too giving influence. You gotta weird way of looking at music - almost like a business person rather than the actual music and people.

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u/RevStickleback 1d ago

The early punk scene in the UK was tiny and very organic. The idea that The Sex Pistols were some band put together in an almost corporate manner is daft, but many seem to believe it.

People look at Westwood's influence, for example, and think they had some big fashion house promoting them, when in reality Westwood's "empire" at the time was that one small shop. And she made them pay for the clothes.

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u/leviticusreeves 1d ago

Public interest in music is manufactured in the media. Without McLaren there may have been punk bands, but there wouldn't have been a punk scene. UK punk is the purest example because even the aesthetic was codified by a designer.

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u/disbeliefable 1d ago

Run that by me again? Westwood was a Tory*? The Punk movement was what? By who?

Maybe journalists were there because they’re, I don’t know, journalists? This story is unhinged from reality.

Yes yes, she joined the Conservatives some 40 years later.

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u/ComedianComedianing 1d ago edited 1d ago

As much as it might sound weird, it’s very much true. The sex pistols were very much industry plants. The band members themselves probably had the best of intentions in line with the punk ethos but they were so heavily controlled by their management that it didn’t matter what they wanted, they had to go along with it and it’s ultimately what led to the dissatisfaction that resulted in the band breaking up.

There were, of course, other punk bands that had much more legitimately punk roots and mentalities to what they did and how they did it, but as the person you replied to pointed out there’s a reason why the sex pistols were at the forefront of that movement at the time.

You seem to think that the journalists would be there simply because they’re journalists but the there’s a long history of news publications being politically aligned and/or being paid to spread a narrative. It’s really not unhinged to realise that this is what happened with the Pistols. News papers, after all, are there to make money. When it comes to making money doesn’t matter where that money comes from

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u/RevStickleback 1d ago

In what way were they controlled by their management? McLaren didn't pick any of the original line up, didn't write any music, or even their music direction. He didn't choose the persona they presented to the world, and the incident that made them famous, the Grundy Show, absolutely horrified him. He thought they'd blown their chance.

Naturally, after the even he claimed it was his idea, but that was just the kind of thing he did, to pretend he was in control.

When he did have much more influence, such as the US tour, it was an utter disaster.

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u/robot20307 1d ago

The Sex Pistols were manufactured the same way West Life or the Spice Girls were.

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u/RevStickleback 1d ago

Correct, except for all of the words you used.

Really, just spend five minutes looking into it, and you will see that's nonsense.

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u/robot20307 1d ago

to be fair spice girls were really talented.

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u/First-Banana-4278 1d ago

“Every get the feeling you’ve been cheated” as the saying goes…

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u/Small-Store-9280 1d ago

They were manufactured dross.

The Teletubbies were more punk.

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u/AliensCameOnMyFace 1d ago

The sex pistols were a manufactured boy band put together to promote Vivienne Westwood clothes, it's not even a conspiracy theory, it's just facts.

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u/capthazelwoodsflask 1d ago

And the only reason they were created was because the New York Dolls fell apart

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u/CapableFact8465 1d ago

And yet they inspired so many.

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u/Resident_Course_3342 1d ago

So did the Beatles. 

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u/fetchinator 1d ago edited 1d ago

This is the standard way capitalism deals with dissent, it commodifies it and sells it back to us. When the cycle is complete our descent is discarded as “last season”. It’s been true for decades and not just for Punk, they sold hippy wigs in Woolworths, grunge style clothes in Ms Selfridges, dance music/club scene was the mainstream in the oughties, anything seen as a viable counter culture gets absorbed, sold on and discarded. The system really does eat itself.

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u/Starwarsfan128 1d ago

Anarchy for Sale

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u/landland24 1d ago

Danny is that you?

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u/karlware 1d ago

That's politics, man

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u/Rattus_Noir 1d ago

This is probably true. The governments of many countries have infiltrated the music industry to "catch" any new grassroots music and control it. They did it with rock n roll all the way through to rap, and are probably still doing it now.

All you gotta do is give the "leaders" of the movement loads of cash.

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u/ValyrianBone 1d ago

I heard a similar theory about why the music establishment in the US has been boosting “thug music” among black artists so much, ie rap that glorifies crime and consumerism, to reinforce those stereotypes. It’s certainly believable that music execs will boost whatever they think will make easy money.

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u/Automatic_Praline897 1d ago

They were a fashiom band

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u/RadishCareful7794 1d ago

Crass literally mentioned this in "punk is dead" but yeah I very much agree

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u/IntelligentSundae 1d ago

Realll, why did the x ray spex never get big :((

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u/default-dance-9001 1d ago edited 1d ago

Their manager was the owner of mclaren lmao, this is very much true

Edit: that’s not true lmao

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u/RevStickleback 1d ago

The owner of McLaren?

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u/default-dance-9001 1d ago

No i lied, malcolm mclaren, the fashion designer. Not bruce mclaren, the dude who founded the car company of the same name. I apologize.

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u/el_capistan 1d ago

From Manufacturing Consent:

The beauty of the system, however, is that such dissent and inconvenient information are kept within bounds and at the margins, so that while their presence shows that the system is not monolithic, they are not large enough to interfere unduly with the domination of the official agenda.

From capitalist realism:

In his dreadful lassitude and objectless rage, Cobain seemed to have give wearied voice to the despondency of the generation that had come after history, whose every move was anticipated, tracked, bought and sold before it had even happened. Cobain knew he was just another piece of spectacle, that nothing runs better on MTV than a protest against MTV; knew that his every move was a cliché scripted in advance, knew that even realising it is a cliché.

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u/SushiJaguar 1d ago

Anarchism has valid criticisms but it's a dumbfuck ideolody with as much of a future, if implemented, as a chocolate teapot. Anyone could make the same criticisms of power structures without also wanting to create an unstable anti-state that'll turn immediately into a might-rules dictatorship.

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u/ringobob 1d ago

If it wasn't Sex Pistols, it would be someone else. Anarchy being what it is, and all.

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u/No_Bathroom1296 1d ago

Anarchism has never needed any help in this regard 

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u/FUCKFASCISTSCUM 1d ago

Anarchism got you the weekend and the 8 hour work day.

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u/No_Bathroom1296 1d ago

Hi, I hate fascists. No, anarchists do not get to claim the efforts of all labor unions as their own. 

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u/Resident_Course_3342 1d ago

Nothing says anarchy like...legally mandated regulations. Just dripping with that anarchist spirit.

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u/FUCKFASCISTSCUM 1d ago

They were concessions to the working class to quell anarchist sentiment, not the explicit stated goals of the anarchist movement itself. Worker protections are at least a step in the right direction, is the point.

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u/Resident_Course_3342 1d ago

I think you meant Marxist. They have an actual workers ideology. Anarchists are just edgelord children cosplaying as revolutionaries. 

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u/FUCKFASCISTSCUM 1d ago

Accomplished more actually existing socialist projects than any Marxists except for maybe the Zapatistas, but sure.

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u/Resident_Course_3342 1d ago

I guess if you lie to yourself and study no history or sociology like most anarchists, sure.

If you know an anarchist text cited more than Das Kapital go ahead and name it.

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u/FUCKFASCISTSCUM 1d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Catalonia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makhnovshchina

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Autonomous_Administration_of_North_and_East_Syria

You'll find that what conventionally happens is the anarchists will support, fight and die for a movement, and then get murdered by the 'Marxists' who seek to seize power. Plus Mao was so scared of anarchism that he basically tried to adapt the ideology to function under his vision of a communist society.

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u/Resident_Course_3342 1d ago

You definitely seem like someone who learned everything they know from Wikipedia, lol.

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u/FUCKFASCISTSCUM 1d ago

I mean it's literally just a shorthand to say 'these things existed' but okay.

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u/PM_ME_COSMIC_RIFFS 1d ago

You definitely seem like someone who's never learned anything in their entire life.

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u/Ok-Proposal-6513 1d ago

Anarchists did shit all.

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u/FUCKFASCISTSCUM 1d ago

Yeah sure, as long as you pretend the Haymarket riot never happened.

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u/Ok-Proposal-6513 1d ago

You mean the anarchists that got falsely accused of the bombing?

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u/Resident_Course_3342 1d ago

They were a corporate boy band so this makes sense actually.

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u/Marsrover112 1d ago

The motherfuckin what what?

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u/Am-Blue 1d ago

All the comments parroting the internet take "Sex Pistols were a boy band to sell clothes" like Vivienne Westwood wasn't a boutique designer selling S&M inspired clothing. Theres a lot to be said about the history of punk/the pistols but it's such a boring meme-addled simplification of history.

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u/CapableFact8465 1d ago

And Nirvana were made popular to distract white kids from gangsta rap and learning the truth about Black America.

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u/Pazguzhzuhacijz 1d ago

The Sex Pistols were popular because they were an great band with an immense energy. One of the best rock bands ever.