Ian Svenonius Quotes

There's no real nationalism in this county. If you're poor in America, that's a criminal offense. You're not only a criminal for being poor, but you're also stupid and deficient. We don't have this national feeling of fraternity. We live in an individualist state where everyone hates everyone else, except your immediate family. We live in a mafia state.

In underground music, there seems to be this real inability for people to express themselves in any kind of heroic or mythological way. There's this idea that we're all normal joes, and that creating a persona onstage or having schtick is somehow false and misleading and evil.

What is music in America? It's this stand-in for political action in a lot of senses. We have no democracy and we have no art culture, and we've long considered politics nebbish-y and hopelessly unsexy. So a lot of what would be considered political activism is channeled into cultural work.

I love lyrics. I've always been averse to the straight lyric idea. I guess a big part of it is, that songs that are literary always turn me off. Because they feel so abstract. Like a song. What is a song? We have to remember what the function of a concert and the function of playing a song for people are. It's all become really abstracted.

Kanye West hasn't really done anything worthwhile-- except maybe musically, I haven't heard him. But he hasn't overthrown the government.

I don't like the triumphalism of the American narrative, this kind of "chosen people" complex that American people have, so it's inspiring to see people snub their noses at the American empire and succeed.

If a Cuban refugee is escaping, we're saying they're a political refugee, but why isn't a Haitian refugee a political refugee? They're escaping the capitalism and degradation of economic imperialism. We don't call them political refugees; we call them unfortunate people.

We live in a unipolar world at this point with America as a moral arbiter and the whole morality is based on this insane corporatocracy.

When a capitalist looks at the river, all they can think about is, "How can I pollute this river and destroy it and make money from it?"

Cool thing about Fidel Castro is that the CIA and the mafia - which are both terrible organizations that tried to murder him again and again - haven't succeeded.

If your moon sign is in Leo, you have a lot of empathy for Leos. You empathize with their approach and their aims and their aura.

A lot of people come to America all the time for economic opportunities. This country is this huge work farm and you can make a lot of money here.