Revenge of the Juggalos

Filed under: Interviews, Music, Radio & Podcast, Radio/Podcast, US

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Repression, counter-insurgency, mass incarceration, and surveillance now pervade all aspects of many peoples lives. In the aftermath of the counter-insurgency war against liberation struggles and black resistance in the 1960s and 70s, both community policing and the militarization of repressive apparatuses began to grow across all aspects of society, but specifically targeting poor black and brown neighborhoods. Coupled with ‘broken windows theory,’ a new hypothesis began to grow in policing and intelligence circles that in order to avoid future revolt, the relationships which foster it needed to be policed into the ground. In the digital age, this ethic has been applied to the online world as much as offline, as imperial military operations inform domestic police, and policing informs counter-insurgency operations abroad.

With the marking in 2011 of Juggalos, (largely poor and working-class fans of the Detroit hip-hop group ICP), as a hybrid-gang, a largely (but not totally) white subculture was marked for increased repression and harassment as had communities of color before them. With the recent success of the Juggalo March on Washington DC, we ask how can we connect ongoing struggles against repression and white supremacy with the recent push by Juggalos to fight the gang label? How can radicals engage with Juggalos, and vice versa? Moreover, what all actually went down at the Juggalo March? Sitting down with Struggalo Circus, a pan-Left group of Juggalos, we talked about these questions and more.

More info: Struggalo Circus

Music: Blaze Ya Dead Homie and ICP

photo: Wikipedia Creative Commons (CC BY 2.0)

This post was written by It's Going Down