Straight Edge: how a punk movement became a violent cult
When I was in my early 20s, I was interning at a reputable music magazine when it came up that I don’t drink alcohol. The reviews editor of that magazine, who I’d not said a word in anger to the entire fortnight while I was in the building, turned to me and said verbatim, “You don’t drink? That’s ok, but I don’t trust you anymore.” Yet, people still wonder why the punk subculture Straight Edge got weird and violent.
It’s true, I am teetotal, and it began by discovering straight edge hardcore when I was about 15 years old. I’d love to say that I heard the Minor Threat song that gave the movement its name and never went back, but it was actually the professional wrestler CM Punk who introduced me to the concept. I know how that sounds, but one, he is actually legitimately straight edge in real life, so get off my back, and two, I didn’t just swear off booze, cigarettes and drugs because of my fandom.
I actually did look into the movement and found the philosophy appealing. A particular tenet of it that I still try (and mostly fail) to live by today is that if you have to rely on conscience-altering stimulants to put up with your life, you should probably change your life rather than just put up with it. That shit is catnip to a 15-year-old, especially when I was watching people I loved become the worst version of themselves night after night after night. It promotes clarity and autonomy without being conservative or moralistic, which really appealed to me.
With that in mind, imagine how disappointed I was when, after a few years of identifying proudly as straight edge, I’d read a little further into the subculture and find out something truly depressing.
About 15 years prior, it had gone from a subculture producing some of the best hardcore around to a bunch of holier-than-thou assholes beating up drunk punks at all-day shows in Chicago, Salt Lake City, Pennsylvania, or anywhere with a functioning punk scene.
The original culprits seem to be the legendary hardcore crew Friends Stand United (FSU). They originally formed in Boston by Elgin James as a way of keeping any Neo-Nazi presence out of its hardcore scene. A respectable goal and what’s more, one that worked. Factions formed in hardcore scenes all over the US and thankfully, the worrying amount of Nazi punks had done as the Dead Kennedys had told them to, and fucked off.
Once they were dealt with, another problem arose. Sure, FSU had worked and the Nazis had (mostly) gone back to the hole they spawned from… but what then? Hardcore is a way of angry young people (mainly men) to work out their aggression, and a fair few members of FSU had gotten used to intimidating and attacking people they didn’t like the look of. Suddenly, they sought real-life physical violence and for a number of people involved in FSU, the thrill hadn’t been collective activism to stamp out fascism, it had been punching people.
This was combined with a number of people taking the initial idea of straight edge to more extreme levels. For some, no alcohol, smokes or drugs wasn’t enough. You also had to be vegetarian (vegan ideally) and for the real die-hards, celibate. Combined with all the testosterone running through the hardcore scene at the time and suddenly, all these subsections of the original subculture were at each others throats, running a scene they’d banded together to save.
Of course, this was a minority. One that the media of the time ran with because punks were the scare story of the moment. However, there’s never smoke without fire and there were straight-edge crews with some genuinely scary connections. Elgin James himself speaks freely of how at the peak of his criminal activity with FSU, they were running guns for inner-city gang members in exchange for rehoming pit bulls used in dog fighting rings.
There’s a chance this is all posturing. It’s punk rock, of course there is. However, what’s more punk rock than an ideal based around self-betterment, integrity and community support souring into meat-headed, half-understood violence?
Though to be clear, that editor wasn’t convinced I was some hardened tough-nut who’d concuss someone who couldn’t recite the alphabet backwards. He was just being snide little prick. Also a tried and tested punk pasttime.