Rock the Casbah

       A few weeks ago, I spent several hours creating the Animoto for I was responsible for the civil war group. We used a song by The Clash, "I Fought the Law." I chose that song mainly for the obvious connection between the chorus of the song, "I fought the law and the law won," and the themes of our presentation, and for how clear and understandable the lyrics are. After finishing the presentation, I looked through a few more songs by The Clash, and found some that were interesting, and dealt with themes of law and justice in more depth than "I Fought the Law," which is basically a repetition of the one line above for three minutes.One in particular that caught my focus was the song "Rock the Casbah," which is the video above. The full lyrics can be found here.
       What I initially noticed, listening, was the link between the events of the song and the Arab Spring, about which I have written on this blog in the past. The song deals with repression and resistance in the Arab world and presents many parallels to the current revolt. There is one significant difference between the dictatorship in the lyrics and those involved in the revolutions up to this point; The Clash's repressor is a theocratic government analogous to those of Saudi-Arabia or Iran, a government that uses religion as a tool to oppress and control its people. The dictators under pressure today, by contrast, are mainly secular despots that repressed religious organizations along with any other form of civil society that posed a possible threat to their power, with the semi-exception of Muammar Qaddafi.
       On an in-depth examination, the narrative of the music is much more complex and detailed than a simple story of a king attacking his own people. The story touches briefly on an array of complicated issues, among them oil politics ("The oil down the desert way has been shaking to the top") and corruption of religion ("The sheik he drove his Cadillac").
       Fundamentally, however, the song is a story about the basic human desire to express themselves. We have been discussing freedom of speech quite heavily in class recently with our perilous times unit. We have focused heavily on political speech and restrictions related to wartime necessity, but "Rock the Casbah" deals with speech that has direct relation to politics or social issues. The people are simply trying to choose what music they want to listen to. They are exercising one an extremely basic forms of self expression. The song makes  the point about how difficult it is to suppress something so basic, and how human will can overcome even bombs and mass violence. The Clash are trying to say that no government can truly defeat the will of the masses, if they want a freedom. Most cases we have discussed in class ended with the successful infringement of some freedoms by the government, and in several cases the government appeared to abuse its power and unjustly restrict civil liberties. Applying the principle expressed by The Clash, all that is truly necessary to prevent such abuses is for enough people to stand up against them.