"Play ethnicky jazz to parade your snazz"
Dead Kennedys are one of my favorite bands of all time and their flagship song is probably "Holiday in Cambodia". The song is a masterpiece on its own musically, but it always stood out to me for the lyrics, which come off as surprisingly reactionary. This is a surprise, given that Jello Biafra is firmly a hard leftist. For background, this song came out in 1979, when the Khmer Rouge regime has been firmly in power in Cambodia. It was a Marxist regime that focused intensely on achieving national self-reliance through agricultural collectivism. Towards that end, it enacted a ruthless purge of anyone or anything which did not directly advance this goal. The estimate of the number of people killed by the regime range from 1 to 3 million. Or, anywhere from 15% to 34% of the entire country's population.
So, you've been to school for a year or two
And you know you've seen it all
In daddy's car, thinkin' you'll go far
Back east, your type don't crawl
Play ethnicky jazz to parade your snazz
On your five-grand stereo
Braggin' that you know how the niggers feel cold
And the slums got so much soul
The song came out in 1979 but the message is prescient. The song is clearly skewering privileged white liberals who steep themselves in the culture of the downtrodden. The archetype is not at all alien to today. You can immediately think of young people who dip their toe in college and feel an unshakeable command of how the world works, while dressing up as a protector of the poor. The second half of that verse is just masterfully biting.
Now you can go where people are one
Now you can go where they get things done
What you need, my son
What you need, my son
[Chorus]
Is a holiday in Cambodia
Where people dress in black
A holiday in Cambodia
Where you'll kiss ass or crack
[...]
Holiday in Cambodia
Where you'll do what you're told
A holiday in Cambodia
Where the slums got so much soul
This is a direct challenge to these privileged connoisseurs. You say you want a collectivist utopia, why not move to one right now? The annotation on the lyrics puts it well:
The statement about “soul” is about how there are many people in privileged social standings that enjoy media from minority cultures yet remain socially distant and unhelpful to those same cultures. The idea is that they get to look at slums through rose-tinted glasses since they have no connection to them, causing them to be unmotivated to fix the issue of slums.
Furthermore, this line is a callback to the previous lyric: “Braggin' that you know how the Niggers feel cold / And the slums got so much soul” which mocks the act of self-righteous posturing by way of discussing the plight of people or listening to their art.
Sounds familiar?