"BTW when did punk become left-wing?"
Chris,
I think we've had the "how did punk get left wing" discussion plenty of times before.....
Originally punk wasn't any -wing in the beginning, just an amorphous kind of shock rock-y, provocative thing, wannabe Dada-inspired, avant garde thing. Yes, the Pistols sang "Belsen Was a Gas" while simultaneously complaining about "the fascist regime" that was England. Makes no sense. Some bands wore swastikas, some hammers and sickles, some circle-A's, some all of the above, some just dyed all their clothes gray, like Subway Sect. The first Joy Division EP had a pic of Hitler youth on it and the name referred to units of sex slaves the Nazis kept, etc etc etc etc etc, while the Durutti Column named themselves after Spanish anarchists.
"RAC" (Rock Against Communism) and neo-Nazi skinhead Oi! bands exists to this day. Resistance Records. I'm sure Chip Berlet has a lot of info on that.
What's historically, retrospectively regarded as the bulk of the punk scene shifted left I'd say around the early 80s, thanks to the political UK bands, of whom there are almost too many to mention (Clash, Crass, Stiff Little Fingers, the Rock Against Racism circuit, the CND rallies at Trafalgar, Gang of Four, the entire stable of Crass Records bands -- which was a lot, and extremely influential -- the Subhumans, etc.) It seemed to somehow be working its way in that direction anyway by 1978.
In the US, according to Joel Schalit, it was also "in the early 80s the Dead Kennedys were instrumental in providing American punk with a leftist political philosophy that transcended the nihilism, ignorance, and stupidity of the early hardcore scene," (_We Owe You Nothing_, p. 33) and I think that's basically when punk as a whole began leaning heavily towards the left. And Maximum Rock & Roll, specifically under Tim Yohannon, was a big help, trashing right-wing bands, promoting vigorously left ones, all of which the mainstream media ignored anyway. The DKs absence from American Hardcore is why it's such a flawed movie, because their influence on the 'ideology' of punk is hard to overestimate. There were always shock-type bands anyway, like Nig Heist, Meatmen, GG Allin, etc. But after the DKs, and MRR becoming the de facto national punk zine alongside Flipside, which was also liberal, and bands like MDC, The Dicks, Articles of Faith, early Bad Religion when they were still vital, bands like The Proletariat, the Dils, DRI "Capitalists Suck" era, the "Rock Against Reagan" concerts, the DC Revolution Summer/Punk Percussion Protests against apartheid, etc., etc. it veered culturally leftwards. There were and are still lunkheads. Have The Mentors ever broken up? What about a lot of the sexist stuff Dwarves-type bands did & do? That's a whole sub-sub-genre, beer-swilling gutter trash scum rock.
It wasn't a worked-out political platform that was then committed to music suddenly in 1977; the closest thing to that was what Crass did, and they inspired/helped out dozens of bands.
-B.
Chris Doss wrote:
"The Sex Pistols certainly weren't -- 'you're just a little faggot, sealed with a kiss' and all that. Also, Bodies has got to be the best anti-abortion song ever written. 'Strapped on the table in the factory... illegitimate place to be... she was the one who killed her baby... die little baby screaming... it's not an animal, it's an abortion... I'm not a bunch of mucous, I'm not a bunch of protein... I'm not an animal... I'm not a body, I'm not an animal' or something like that. Come to think of it, 'Holiday in the Sun' isn't exactly lefty either."