Self-styled cultural rebels often become the establishment without realizing it

Evidence

Perhaps those a little deeper into middle age than I am were still subject to the proscriptions and prescriptions of a Leavisite high culture. But it seems to me that popists now are like Mick Jagger confronted with punk in 1976: they don’t seem to realise that, if there is an establishment, it is them. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1210

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the Frankfurt School’s insight that oppositional positions get absorbed; connects to Fisher’s broader k-punk arc about cultural cynicism and the ‘establishment’ inversion. — connects to: An anti-establishment artistic movement can be absorbed into authoritarian nationalism — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1986; Self-aware rebellion against spectacle is itself absorbed and commodified — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 24; Enduring cultural movements arise from insular real-world subcultures — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 864 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Self-aware rebellion against spectacle is itself absorbed and commodified #exemplifies (0.85) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 24
• Radical movements get assimilated to bourgeois culture via nationalism, essentialism, and fragmentation #exemplifies (0.80) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 265
• An anti-establishment artistic movement can be absorbed into authoritarian nationalism #exemplifies (0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1986
• Cultural elements that appear to persist can secretly shift their social meaning and function #expands (0.75) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 993
• Enduring cultural movements arise from insular real-world subcultures #complicates (0.70) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 864