CAHUN YOUR ENTHUSIASM (18)
By:
March 4, 2026
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… anti-fascist art! Series edited by Josh Glenn.
THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED
Every Wednesday I climb up over the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway with a bunch of other tactical weirdos to hold signs against the regime.
DEPT OF WAR CRIMES
RFK JR MAKES US SICK
ICE OUTTA NYC
GRAB HIM BY THE FILES
WTF, CHUCK?
ALL I WANT 4 XMAS IS THE ACA
NO BLOOD 4 OIL
REGIME CHANGE STARTS AT HOME
When it’s dark at rush hour, we light the letters with fairy lights. When it’s light at rush hour, we dance around with brightly colored children’s umbrellas. It’s always very loud up there, and often too loud to talk. We have a shared Tidal playlist so we can have a silent disco and the very first song is Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”
I’ve been thinking about that song a lot.
Gil Scott-Heron wrote the poem in 1969, while watching a Mets-Phillies series, and organizing a protest on his campus after three student deaths. He recorded the spoken word piece on his first album in 1970. The inter-inning product placement – Xerox, Coke, Ultrabrite, Esso, Playtex Girdle, Hertz, Liquid Plumr, Gillette Techmatic – and the machine gun cultural references – Joan Baez, Timothy Leary, Spiro Agnew, Jackie O., Ray Wilkins, Whitney Young, Julia, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, Search for Tomorrow – have had uneven staying power in the popular imagination.
But the song has all the legs. It has inspired people fighting authoritarianism all over the world: the Arab Spring; Otpor; Occupy; BLM. And it never leaves the popular imagination. You can find it in Prince’s “The War” and in KRS-One’s Nike ads; in Kendrick Lamar’s Superbowl performance and Sarah Jones’ “Your Revolution.” Labelle covered it and Kiki and Herb covered it; and the 6th verse line “Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction will no longer be so damn relevant” is the shibboleth in One Battle After Another.
It is exhausting to oppose the regime, is the thing. All the work happens in small moments in meatspace: protecting your neighbors, filling community fridges and free thrift shops for asylum seekers, patrolling your street for ICE. The horrors are gutwrenching, and global; the work is tiny and local and endless. The rage and grief are overwhelming, and most days I feel the only answer is a curse: that I will carry that rage and grief into my grave until my disparate electrons haunt these ghouls forever, cling to their uglyass suits and Botox scars and dead eyes.
But when I climb up over the BQE with a bunch of other tactical weirdos, when I am in motion with other people, when I hear the honks of solidarity, I can sometimes laugh at all the absurd incompetent villainy. I sometimes feel like we can win. The revolution will be televised, of course. Indeed, we actively seek coverage. But, like the man says, you can’t watch the revolution on TV because both the work and its rewards are tactical, unsponsored, and eternal.
CAHUN YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Mark Kingwell on ONCE UPON A HONEYMOON | Lynn Peril on ZAZOUS | Judith Zissman on DIE GEDANKEN SIND FREI | Annie Nocenti on MEDIUM COOL | Mike Watt on FASCIST | William Nericcio on LALO ALCARAZ | Josh Glenn on THE LADY VANISHES | Carlo Rotella on INQUIETUD | Heather Quinlan on CASABLANCA | Adam McGovern on HEART OF GLASS (MAD JENNY) | Matthew Battles on WOODY’S GUITAR | Carl Wilson on PALACES OF GOLD | Ramona Lyons on UPRIGHT WOMEN WANTED | Lucy Sante on CAMOUFLAGE | Adelina Vaca on THE LIVES OF OTHERS | Tom Nealon on THE BARON IN THE TREES | Nikhil Singh on PARIS PEASANT | Mandy Keifetz on THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED | Gordon Dahlquist on THE CONFORMIST | Michael Grasso on PYNCHONIA | Gabriela Pedranti on THE ETERNAUT | Heather Kapplow on ANTI-FASCIST PASTA | Marc Weidenbaum on (WHAT’S SO FUNNY ’BOUT) PEACE, LOVE, AND UNDERSTANDING | Peggy Nelson on PUPPETS | Sonia Marques on CARNATIONS AGITPROP.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!