Jungle carried an anti-capitalist politics that never met a matching political movement

Evidence

MF: In my book Capitalist Realism, I quote an article that Simon wrote on jungle for the Wire magazine. Simon put his finger there on how crucial the concept of “reality”, of “keeping it real”, was for both jungle and US rap. Simon writes of an implied political position in jungle: how it was anti-capitalist but not socialist. That always struck me as very suggestive — but these politics were never developed. I would tend to agree with Jeremy Gilbert — that the encounter between jungle and politics never really happened. But this wasn’t only a failure of the music; it was also a failure of politics. During the Nineties, the British Labour Party courted the reactionary rockers of Britpop. But where was the politics that could sychronise with the science fictional textures that jungle invoked? — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1271

Categorization

• SEED: The question of which music forms actually pair with emancipatory politics, and how movements fail to meet the music political movements already imply — could anchor an essay on the musical left’s missed connections.
• XREF: connects to: Genres like Jungle sustain an anti-capitalist politics that is explicitly non-socialist — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1539; Jungle’s realism naturalises winner-take-all reality along with defensive anti-capitalism; The left’s anti-elite movement energy never translated into political power — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 404 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Jungle’s realism naturalises winner-take-all reality along with defensive anti-capitalism #corroborates (0.86)
• The left’s anti-elite movement energy never translated into political power #corroborates (0.75) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 404
• Anti-capitalist protest becomes carnivalesque background noise without an alternative model #corroborates (0.72) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 32