billy bragg is accepted by his audience so uncritically. he has some good songs & seemingly has good intentions socially & politically in broad sense. BUT he constantly makes glib, superficial & meaningless public statements on any given political or social topic from education to constitutional reform. even worse when on international tours he insists on lecturing those audiences about their own issues in a superficial manner, trust me i’ve seen it. yet despite his audience’s appreciation of his generalised sentiments, he’s rarely particularly well informed in any given area, & just offers the usual vacant terms, fascist/oppression/compassion & rarely has more to offer than a ‘we must do better’ vagueness. he wants to be more than a singer songwriter, ie an activist, but he lacks the substance or any clear ideas on how to transcend that role.
in reality his position is ill defined & vague, he has often assumed the rheotoric & imagery of radicalism but really his current position seems a fairly fuzzy centre left. is it seriously meaningful, or purposeful, to come out with statements opposing fascism in the 21st century, & even worse that term is never adequately defined or stable with bragg. bragg’s superficiality makes him easily digestable without too much thought. the audience can feel an inkling of insight or superiority to the bulk of popular culture, without having to address their own position too critically or the broader failings of the left, it’s all a bit fuzzy.
bragg has made some serious clunkers too. back in 1999 he was codemning the serb’s as the latest fascists in europe, drawing paralells to 1930′s continental europe & endorsing direct NATO action against serbia. however in 1999 the international ‘crisis’ bragg jumped upon was over kosovo, not the previous actions of ethnic serb militias in croatia & bosnia. kosovo was about the serb state proper & broader geopolitics, a distinction bragg never bothered to remark upon. ethnic albanians had been agitating for greater albania in kosovo throughout the 1980′s & with the serb state in moral & political freefall at the end of the nineties they saw a good opportunity, & increased their efforts. these were violent, not just against kosovar serbs, but against kosovar romas,jews & catholic albanians, & were designed to provoke response from an already pariah serbia. prior to 1999 the usa had listed the kla/ albanian militia as a terrorist organisation with links to arms/heroin trade & muslim extremists, but the usa abruptly changed tack, & applied heavy pressure on western allies to support kla. they did, result 78 day non stop rolling NATO bombing of serb state, and it’s forces. end result kosovo an independent state. however a closer look shows that kosovo today has the largest usa military base outside of usa, camp bondsteel, in central balkans close to russia, previously totally impossible given serb & russian links. furthermore independent kosovo now ensures a transoport route to adriatic sea for the new trans-balkan oil pipeline, the AMBO pipeline named after its builder and operator the usa registered albanian macedonian bulgarian oil corporation.
the point of above is that bragg lacks substance. he was quickly on board the no blood for oil approach on iraq, but competely lacked the insight or inclination to research the issue of kosovo & oil, at the time or retrospectively. indeed serbia & kosovo gave bragg the chance to drag out the simplistic fascist bogeyman again. bragg’s position on kosovo was essentially akin to his governments & rest of western powers & their media apparatus, all at usa’s behest for usa’s geopolitical advantage. this says a great deal about bragg’s lack of analysis & substance.
my final word on subject belongs to a friend. a friend who grew up in eastern europe oblivious to most western pop culture & certainly billy bragg. after seeing bragg accidentally on morning tv, she said of him, he is no better than bono, full of meaningless rheotoric that is as much about his profile as social commitment. ouch!