Editorial: I Do Believe In Some Things; or, Why the Ska Scene Doesn’t Need the Return of Dicky Barrett

The opinions in the following editorial are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of TGEFM or TGEFM’s other contributors.

COVID Vaccines and the Dissolution of the Bosstones

A few years ago, I ranked The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ record When God Was Great as my second favorite album of 2021. In my review of the album that same year, I praised it, saying “the album shows a connection to, and knowledge of, the history of ska that I didn’t know they had anymore.” After the news came out of the Bosstones breakup and the rumors started circulating that the breakup was a result of frontman Dicky Barrett’s anti-vaccine views, I asked our editor Jeff Sorley if he would let me print a retraction. Jeff said that he’d prefer to keep the review as a sort of snapshot of my first impression of the album, which is fair. And, I will say, it is still a great album. But it’s packed with anti-vax messages, and, until Barrett came forward about his anti-vax views, I had tried to convince myself that Barrett couldn’t possibly be saying what I think he’s saying on that record.

Barrett has been in the headlines of sites like ours lately due to his new band, The Defiant, who are apparently putting out an album soon. But everywhere you go on the internet with people talking about his new band, you’ll find people calling out Barrett for his views on vaccines and mask mandates. To be clear, while these things may have started out as rumors, they aren’t just rumors anymore. Barrett has become very vocal about his views since the Bosstones broke up, having given interviews about his anti-vax views to The Highwire, which is owned by the Informed Consent Action Network, one of the major anti-vaccine organizations; and another one with Joseph Arthur on his podcast Joseph Arthur and his Technicolor Dreamcast on TNT Radio– a man who, according to The Boston Globe, has compared vaccine mandates to the treatment of the Jewish people by the Nazis during the holocaust.

In the interviews, Barrett has confirmed that the band broke up because of his views on COVID. “If somebody [got vaccinated] because of me, and something happened to that person — I don’t care if it’s one, I don’t care if it’s 100 — then I would have trouble sleeping and feel like I did something wrong,” he told Arthur. “I had to do what I had to do. I don’t think I had a choice” (via The Boston Globe). Barrett’s fears are, of course, unfounded. According to the World Health Organization, COVID-19 vaccines “go through a rigorous, multi-stage testing process, including large clinical trials that involve tens of thousands of people.” The results are then reviewed by another panel of experts chosen by the World Health Organization. According to the CDC, over 672 million doses of the vaccine have been administered and only nine deaths have been confirmed to be caused by the vaccine. Still, Barrett seems to think there’s still a huge risk involved. “I felt that what was happening was dangerous and I couldn’t signal to people, or even let them think, that I was taking part in it,” he told Arthur in the aforementioned interview.

The Power of Authority versus Authoritative Expertise

It seems there’s a split in the punk community, with those who support vaccine science calling anti-vaxxers idiots and anti-vax punks calling the pro-vaccine punks bootlickers. But I think what we’re getting down to here is a problem with language and what it means to be punk. One of the central tenets of punk is questioning authority, and I don’t think there’s anyone in the community who would disagree with that. But the problem comes with the fact that there are two very different definitions of the word “authority,” and punks may confused about which one they’re supposed to be challenging. The very first definition of “authority” on Dictionary.com is “the power to determine, adjudicate, or otherwise settle issues or disputes; jurisdiction; the right to control, command, or determine.” In fact, the first four definitions are basically variations on that one, with the fourth definition saying “persons having the legal power to make and enforce the law.” As punk has always been an anti-establishment movement, it makes sense to challenge this type of authority. The problem comes when we get to the fifth definition, which is “an accepted source of information, advice, etc.” So, what we get down to is that the two meanings of the word “authority” are “person in power” and “expert.” It makes a lot less sense to challenge an expert on something since, by definition, an expert knows what they’re talking about. When we call the WHO an authority on vaccine science, we’re saying that they’re the people that know the most about it. And challenging that type of authority gets very risky.

The other problem is that I think a lot of punks are confusing questioning authority with blindly rejecting authority, which are two very different things. Questioning authority means to examine what that authority tells you to do and decide if what they’re telling you to do is a good idea. It does not mean doing the opposite of everything that the authority, like the government, tells you to do. The government says it’s illegal to rape someone, but that doesn’t mean that it’s really punk rock to go out and commit sexual assault. When the government says that people need vaccines, punks need to examine if that statement is true and, if they’re following the facts, they’ll find that it is.

However, If they’re simply rejecting authority instead of questioning it, then it follows that they would decide not to get the vaccine, often relying on information from non-expert sources to inform them. Punk rock is now and always should be pro-science. There’s a reason why members of bands like Bad Religion, The Descendents, and more are literal scientists with advanced degrees. Science isn’t–or at least, in theory, shouldn’t be–about power or control, it’s about facts and following those facts to the right conclusions.

“But what about the individualism of punk?”

Now, Barrett and his supporters will say that they aren’t against masks and vaccines, they’re just against mandates, which isn’t a largely substantive difference. It’s all well and good to say that masks and vaccines are each individual person’s choice, but that’s not exactly how pandemics work. Those who have refused to mask and vax are putting the immunocompromised at risk, and there’s absolutely nothing punk about putting other people at risk due to either mis- or ill-informed opinions or, at worst, a misguided sense of personal liberty.

Furthermore, if you look at the comments section at The Highwire’s interview of Barrett (linked above), you’ll find a lot of comments with blatant falsehoods. “It[‘s] definitely a cover up, those are not normal elements of a natural death,” writes a user named Jonco. Another user named LIONESS goes down a rabbit hole of hypotheticals saying “So…does anyone remember when the videos came [out] of CHINA of those that were just PASSING OUT…no reason…what IF, they had GOTTEN THESE JABS, LIKE PRE-EXPERIMENTAL!! WHAT IF?!?! these days. Who knows how deep this pandemic goes…” Obviously that’s all speculation that doesn’t prove anything and just deepens existing conspiracy theories. Even if Barrett and others want to claim that they’re moderate on this issue and that they’re just protesting government control and not the actual science, it’s hard to deny that the people tuning into what they have to say are the same people spreading false information.

Jer Hunter of We Are the Union and Skatune Network posted on Twitter last year saying “I just sat through (D)icky Barret’s interview on why he’s an anti-vaxxer and he really ended it basically saying ‘I want to be the messiah that brings the anti-vax revolution to ska.’” Now, Hunter was paraphrasing more than a little bit, as Barrett didn’t quite say anything quite that narcissistic in the interview. But he did say that it was important to him to bring the anti-vax message to the ska crowd, saying that he would like to tell the community “Hey, ska people, wake the fuck up!”

While it may be true that pandemic restrictions are winding down and the initial urgency of the pandemic is behind us, it’s still important to remember first of all that that only happened thanks to vaccines and masks, and second of all that over 6 million people died, with hundreds still dying each day. The ska-punk community doesn’t need the message that putting others at risk is punk rock.