MARK JUDGE: Ron DeSantis wants to teach young people about communism. He should use rock ‘n’ roll.

Rock ‘n’ roll is an exciting, popular art form geared toward young people. It also has a proud (and largely ignored) history of anti-communism.

In their book, The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong with America, Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, who both work for the libertarian outfit Reason, reveal the often hidden history of popular music as a weapon against totalitarianism. In the chapter “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World,” they detail how the music helped defeat communism.

As Welch and Gillespie note, Vaclav Havel and the leaders of the 1960s revolt against communism in Czechoslovakia were deeply influenced by American rock and roll, particularly the band the Velvet Underground. A group of young Czech hippies formed the group the Plastic People of the Universe, named after a Frank Zappa lyric, and were soon banned by the government. A fan of the Rolling Stones, Havel saw and heard in rock and roll “a temperament, a nonconformist state of the spirit, an anti-establishment orientation, an aversion to philistines, and an interest in the wretch and humiliated.”

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In The Declaration of Independents, Welch and Gillespie note an incredible irony. In October 1989, a month before the Berlin Wall was torn down, rock and roll and hippie icon Neil Young released the album “Freedom.” Young meant the title ironically; the title track was about how the world was collapsing with Reagan-inspired greed and violence.  But when the album was received in Central Europe, the newly free young masses took to it without irony.

It’s an exciting piece of history. DeSantis should add it to Florida’s new pro-freedom curriculum.

Heh, indeed. Read the whole thing.™

Flashback: Welcome to the PMRC, Neil Young.