Music has long been a force for political expression, giving a voice to the oppressed and mobilizing communities towards resistance. Protest music is an all-encompassing term for the diverse body of music used to platform the need for social change. Simultaneously, there is a vast sea of labels that outline the particular aims of each cultural and social movement, such as liberation, revolutionary, and counterculture music. This article explores the idea of militant music, the aim of which is to express support for a political or social cause through confrontational, and often violent tones. Militant music does not merely comment on issues, but mobilizes its audience to take action against oppressive institutions.
Folk music is one of the earliest protest traditions in the United States, from its humble origins in labor struggles, tenant organizing, and anti-fascist movements. It carried the voices of working-class people — coal miners, farm workers, union organizers — who used simple melodies and direct lyrics to name their enemies and demand change. Woody Guthrie stood at the center of this tradition in the 1940s. His music took aim at those who exploited the working class to expand their wealth. With “This machine kills fascists” scrawled across his guitar, Guthrie didn’t merely sing about injustice — he sang as a means to end it. In his famous “Tear the Fascists Down,” he calls for direct confrontation with authoritarianism, refusing the idea that music should comfort rather than agitate.
Over time, though, Guthrie’s legacy has been stripped of its edge. Folded into the sanitized myth of Americana, he’s remembered as a folk hero rather than a political threat. His most radical songs have been buried under layers of nostalgia, while cultural memory reduces his legacy to a relic of America’s heartland. This is how the industry handles radical voices: not by erasing them outright, but by polishing them until they shine just enough to sell. Guthrie’s case shows how easily militant music can be disarmed — not by censorship, but by co-optation. It’s a pattern that echoes across genres, where political clarity becomes marketable only after it’s been made safe. While music has historically served as a revolutionary tool for resistance, it is increasingly absorbed and softened by capitalist markets. As the music industry becomes more consumer-driven, the line between genuine resistance and commodified dissent blurs. In today’s digital landscape, counterculture music faces an undetermined fate — either as a tool for revolution or a product repackaged for mass appeal.
Where militant music hinges on decentering profit to produce meaningful activism, popular consumer music — even when engaging with political or social themes — relies on market forces. While consumer music may incorporate the language or aesthetics of resistance, it is designed for mass consumption rather than mobilization.
Taylor Swift is perhaps one of the most influential and popular examples of white feminism in music. In songs such as “The Man” released in 2019, she expresses her real struggles in the industry as a woman, all while forwarding a reductive strain of feminism that centers her experience as a bourgeois white woman. While she may believe in feminism insofar as the equality between men and women, she does not take into account the liberation of all oppressed identities in her idea of equality. And why should she, when she so clearly profits off of the market economy, racism, and even the patriarchy. As a wealthy, conventionally attractive white woman, she is positioned to be palatable and widely marketable to global audiences, allowing her to benefit from the racial hierarchies and beauty standards upheld by white supremacy.
Taylor Swift’s brand and music exploits the profitability of feminism without disrupting the unjust structures that necessitate feminism. Consumer music like this often transforms political ideas into digestible content, stripping them of their confrontational edge. Instead of challenging oppressive institutions, consumer music tends to reinforce them by packaging activism as entertainment, ensuring that political engagement remains symbolic rather than truly effective.
However, Taylor Swift is not alone in producing what appears to be surface-level political messaging. Another artist who makes consumer music with political themes is M.I.A., a British-Sri Lankan artist well known for music openly criticizing Western immigration policies in tracks such as “Paper Planes” and “Borders.” In recent years, M.I.A. has drawn attention for openly endorsing U.S. President Donald Trump on Twitter and during a 2024 concert. Her support for a leader whose policies actively endanger and dehumanize migrants and refugees raises questions about the sincerity of her past political messages. While her impact on the music ecosystem is not to be discounted, one wonders if she was genuinely committed to advocating for displaced communities, or if her activism was merely a contrarian stance.
All this said, we do not necessarily require nuanced and well-developed political stances from our pop music queens. Chappell Roan recently spoke out in an interview on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast about her frustrations regarding people seeking informed political information from her, merely because she is gay. She admits: “I don’t know everything about everything I have opinions on. I don’t know everything about being gay.” Her statement reflects a broader tension within pop culture, where artists — particularly those with marginalized identities — are often expected to serve as spokespeople for complex social issues.
While musicians can play a crucial role in shaping public consciousness, the assumption that their artistry must translate into informed political leadership risks flattening both their creative work and the movements they are associated with. However, if artists represent their work as taking on a political stance or raising awareness of a certain issue, then they warrant a valid critique of how their desire for political progress matches up against their desire for profit in the music industry. At the end of the day, none of these artists are making music to dismantle the establishment; they exist within it, selling culture rather than overthrowing it.
Militant music must distinguish itself from the surplus-value music produced by the industry by ensuring that its means of production are not informed by profit motives. It is music that insists on revolution — both musical and political — and remains committed to transforming the world, not just performing protest for an audience. Our very own Los Angeles has long been a site for hardcore punk, a genre that champions independence and resistance to mainstream absorption. The city’s scene has upheld hardcore’s legacy as a space for radical expression and community-driven action. Even as digital platforms complicate the divide between underground and mainstream, LA’s hardcore community continues to foster independent venues, self-organized shows, and a rejection of industry interference.
Building upon Los Angeles’ rich legacy within the hardcore punk scene, initiatives like Mosh For Youth (MFY) exemplify the genre’s enduring commitment to community empowerment and transformation. Founded in 2021, Mosh For Youth is a non-profit organization that hosts hardcore music festivals to fund college scholarships for underserved youth in East Los Angeles and Pomona. Recognizing the financial barriers that often prevent capable, low-income students from pursuing higher education, MFY aims to alleviate these challenges by raising scholarship funds. In its inaugural year, Mosh For Youth successfully raised $3,500 for two students at UCLA and Cal Poly Pomona. This innovative approach not only creates a community space for resistance, but also directly addresses educational disparities within these communities. Building on this momentum, MFY expanded its initiatives by launching a record label, Mosh For Youth Records, in 2023. This platform allows local hardcore bands to produce and distribute music, with proceeds further supporting scholarships for students.
For music to bring about revolution, it must be political in not only its content, but also its form. Before digital music, it was easier for artists to maintain anti-establishment identities because they could operate entirely outside major label distribution, relying on physical media, DIY touring circuits, and underground networks that were harder for the industry to infiltrate. The rise of streaming and digital platforms has blurred the lines between independent and mainstream music, making it more difficult to sustain a radical stance when distribution is often mediated by corporate-controlled algorithms such as Spotify. Nonetheless, there is a diversity of music genres — underground hip hop, U.K. drill music, and hardcore punk — that fit within this framework of anti-establishment music. While they are substantively diverse, these genres share a core ethos: They are confrontational and community-driven, existing outside of traditional industry structures. They maintain autonomy through independent production and distribution, as well as a rejection of industry co-optation.
The weaponization of music against oppressive regimes is not limited to America, but rather can take even more influential shape in global contexts. In the case of IKHRAS (“Shut Up” in Arabic), a U.K. hardcore band fronted by Palestinian-British vocalist Hass Ta-Fa, music is a “soundtrack to destroy colonialism.” The distortion, speed, and vocal abrasion of their music channels the emotional and physical toll of colonial violence, demonstrating how hardcore is a powerful and effective medium of resistance. Music that creates a space for rage allows marginalized communities to explore and express their anger and frustration in ways that challenge dominant power structures. Rage, often dismissed or even suppressed in mainstream society, becomes a legitimate and necessary emotional response in music that is directly aligned with political struggle.
IKHRAS forces listeners to confront a struggle that is both historical and ongoing by using both Arabic and English vocals. This is what sets bands like IKHRAS apart from consumer music: They don’t seek to universalize their rage or render it palatable and they are uninterested in abstraction or symbolic gestures. Rather than serve politics on a silver platter for the consumption of the masses, IKHRAS requires its listeners to directly engage themselves with the struggle for liberation. Their music is meant to destroy — colonial mindsets, sanitized liberal narratives, and the structures that erase Palestinian lives. It’s a reminder that revolutionary music is not metaphorical; it’s a rallying cry against colonial powers.
Some argue that revolutionary music cannot be born from pre-revolutionary institutions — that true revolutionary music cannot be born from capitalist markets continuing to mediate the interaction between listeners and music. Yet, militant music challenges this notion, asserting that music is not simply an expression of revolution but a force capable of actively shaping it. As seen from Woody Guthrie to Taylor Swift, the industry often repackages dissent into something palatable. But in the shadows of these mainstream narratives, communities like Los Angeles’ hardcore scene and global acts like IKHRAS offer a different vision for revolutionary music. True militant music insists on transformation — not only through the content of its lyrics, but also the form of its production and distribution. To challenge systems of oppression, music must refuse to be consumed easily. It must reject the silver platter entirely and demand collective liberation from oppressive systems.
