The Case for Planet of the Bass Nationalism
The absurdist post-irony of Planet of the Bass as the anthem for the Postmodernist Right
Planet of the Bass is a newly released song, that parodies 90s Eurodance music, created by TikTok comedian, Kyle Gordon, as DJ Crazy Times, performing alongside Ms. Biljana Electronica. Gordon co-wrote the song with singer-songwriter, Chrissi Poland, and TV writer, Brooks Allison. I was not at all familiar with Kyle Gordon until this song came out. Planet of the Bass has become a viral sensation, reaching over a million YouTube hits in about a day, an example of something magnificent created on a modest budget.
Planet of the Bass appeals to Millennial childhood nostalgia, and I am of that generation, growing up in the 90s. I also lived in England for 6 months, when I was 16-17 in 2002, which was the tail end of Eurodance, when DJ Sammy was big. 90s nostalgia is a huge fad now, much like 80s inspired New Retrowave was a decade ago. In contrast with today, the 90s were a very optimistic era, and Eurodance encapsulates that naïve optimism. The neoliberal mantra of the 90s was to make money, have fun, and avoid issues of politics or identity. While Eurodance represents capitalism and consumerism, it was also uniquely European, before the total cultural homogenization of pop culture, which reactionaries would criticize as fetishizing earlier waves of liberalism.
How Does It Mean?
The success of Planet of the Bass, besides the great rhythm and melody, is its utter absurdism. Take the lyrics, “If the sky is not green, but the sky is blue. Have a passion in a million way,” or “women are my favorite guy,” implies that we should embrace the absurdity of the world, but also that one can shift identity, or shape shift, and achieve the power to change perceptions of reality, as the actresses playing Biljana change throughout various versions of the song. This epitomizes postmodernism where everything is meaningless, or like woke people saying that women can have penises and men can have vaginas, to the irk of conservatives. However, it also implies that distorting truth is the hidden key to metaphysical ascension.
Embracing contradiction is very Crowlian, as Aleister Crowley said that “Balance every thought with its opposition. Because the marriage of them is the destruction of illusion,” and that “The Great Work is the uniting of opposites. It may mean the uniting of the soul with God, of the microcosm with the macrocosm, of the female with the male, of the ego with the non-ego—or what not.” Søren Kierkegaard said that “The absurd is that the eternal truth has come into existence in time,” and that its “immediate recognizability is pre-Socratic paganism.” This is also in line with Alan Watts’s belief that the universe is absurd, and that God is playing a game with us. While not political, the song pokes fun at the absurd and irrational state of the world, much like the Alt-Right’s Clown world/honk pill meme.
YouTube commenters will say that they listened to the song somewhere in Europe in the 90s. Even if joking, this is an occult technique to re-write history by changing peoples’ memories. This is in line with New Thought mystic, Neville Goddard’s, Law of Assumption, that anything is possible if you think or dream it, that one can rewrite their own past via changing their memories, and that your imagination is God. Mystic author, Colin Wilson, said that “Imagination should be used, not to escape reality, but to create it.” There is also this occult concept that creativity comes from having some attunement to the unseen.
The lyrics, “Life it never die,” hints at Transhumanism/radical life extension, or Francis Fukuyama’s End of History, which encapsulated the zeitgeist of the 90s. The lyrics “cyber system overload,” hints at the limitations of techno-optimism and the psychological overload of living in cyberspace. The lyrics, “When the pleasure is a dream on a secret love,” makes me think of Colin Wilson saying that sex “is a craving of mingling of consciousness, whose symbol is the mingling of bodies.” Not to mention references to “Sex on the phone,” which is a purely psychological experience. These concepts, the song references, such as love, sex, and peace, are often illusions shaped by our consciousness.
The lyrics, “Danger and dance,” and “We are losing control on a floor tonight,” is a call to embrace the Dionysian, or chaotic primal force while having fun, much like Bronze Age Pervert’s message. The lyrics, “When the Rhythm is glad. There is nothing to be Sad,” and “Heaven is a time today,” are in line with Alan Watts’ belief that life is a dance, and that one must live for the moment, or rather embrace the synth and pumping bass. Right after DJ Crazy Times says “Put your hands up in the air,” like a preacher saying praise the Lord, you start to feel the hairs on the back of your neck tingle around the lyrics, “All of the dream. How does it mean?” A music producer has a YouTube video explaining how the chord progressions build tension and then release, to create an emotional response. Daft Punk’s very melancholic, Veridis Quo, is another example of a song that uses this musical technique, it was also popular with 80s pop music, and I’m sure there are examples from Classical Music. This musical formula relates to the concept of sacred acoustics, which attempts to recreate spiritual or mystic experiences with music, a type of spiritual science. Music can be a way to get into a mystic trance and create new metaphysical realms, by changing perceptions of consciousness.
Ms. Biljana Electronica is presented with a screen that asks the cryptic question, “BECOME THE HUMAN” with the choices Y or N. She chooses yes, and then transforms from a hologram to human form. This subliminally implies that most people are not fully human, but rather conformist drones who chose to live as robots, living life on autopilot, and refusing to wake up. This may work for them and is what social mechanisms incentivize, even if people still want to feel like they have agency, via things like politics.
The aliens in the music video represent the controllers who program the simulation. “All of the dream. How does it mean,” implies that we are living in a dream or a simulation, and that consciousness is subjective. This is relevant to the Red Pill meme from the Matrix, which is very gnostic, as well as Collin Wilson’s view that people function like machines (see Beyond the Robot by occult historian Gary Lachman). Not to mention that Lachman was the bass guitarist for Blondie, if that isn’t some ironic symbolism. Colin Wilson’s The War Against Sleep, makes the case that for one to “become the human,” they must increase the intensity of consciousness. People try to achieve this expanded consciousness with a wide range of activities from drug addiction to extreme sports.
Richard Spencer recently tweeted that “Danger and Dance > Rich Men From Richmond.” Richard Spencer was declared the leader of the Alt-Right by the media, though is now known as this centrist contrarian who supports Joe Biden, and is outspoken against the right. Richard Spencer is still fundamentally a Nietzschean, Social Darwinist and elitist, thus he identifies with the “winners,” the ruling class, and views the right as “losers.” However, Spencer embraces the Camp, like singing karaoke to Depeche Mode, and there is nothing more Camp than Eurodance. Regardless, there is a valid point that Rich Men North of Richmond romanticizes despair and defeat while Planet of the Bass celebrates the Promethean/Faustian spirit of Hyperborea. Though Spencer fancies himself an Apollonian while Planet of the Bass is more Dionysian.
One of the replies to Richard Spencer, declared that Planet of the Bass is the White Man’s anthem, and Miss Biljana could symbolize this pagan Aryan goddess. There have been many cases of the Alt-Right embracing random pop culture icons as their own memes. While it makes sense that the dissident right would latch onto Chet Hanks’ White Boy Summer, adopting Taylor Swift as an icon, or Barbie Nationalism, claiming the Barbie movie for the right, seems utterly absurd. Planet of the Bass is the perfect meme that anyone can give meaning to, in a theosophical sense. For instance, a socialist twitter account said that, “When DJ Crazy Times says "Everybody Movement!", this is a call for the workers of the world to unite.” Richard Spencer declared that the song’s lyrics were by Friedrich Nietzsche, and a reply declared that the lyrics were by Jean-Paul Sartre. One Twitter commenter even declared: “BREAKING: Video has surfaced of the “Planet of the Bass” singer ordering the slaughter of women and children in Chechnya,” which reminds me of that meme of Sam Hyde’s picture being used as the culprit for any mass shooting. Perhaps Richard Spencer’s Hail-gate incident was just his DJ act, chanting “Put your hands up in the air! Hail Eurodance! Hail Victory!” Then some drunk bigots in the audience gave the Roman solute. Very much like how David Bowie, and Punk and New Wave artists flirted with fascist imagery and the occult to be transgressive. Perhaps DJ Crazy Times is actually Richard Spencer’s alter ego?
Kyle Gordon’s comedy is actually fairly normie, non-offensive, and family friendly, and the song’s producer, Brooks Allison, writes for Jimmy Fallon, the antithesis of the transgressive, which adds further to the irony. Planet of the Bass is a metaphysical realm, in the way that the Alt-Right’s envisioned ethno-state was nostalgia for a place that does not exist rather than a serious political proposal. Alt-Right posters would create a juxtaposition of Fascist and Greco-Roman imagery, 80s nostalgia, retrofuturism, Hentai/anime, and pop culture icons. This phenomenon is explained by trying to find meaning from consumerism, taking something from the disposable cultures of the 20th Century, to create something more permanent. Much like how Planet of the Bass uses Vaporwave imagery of the early internet, 90s icons like Bill Clinton and Bill Nye, illuminati/occult symbolism, references to outer space, and the phrase World Peace as Vaporware, or a feel good platitude. It is also a kind of aestheticism, of embracing imagery because it is aesthetically pleasing, regardless of politics. Eurodance is very much about the aesthetic, and also often references dreams, planets, the cosmos, and Heaven, in an almost pagan or Greco-Roman sense. Postmodernism is a new polytheistic religion where pop culture icons become like demigods.
Both the Alt-Right and MAGA movements had occultist elements, which are well documented by Gary Lachman’s book, Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump. Lachman, in an interview, mentioned that a lot of people in the occult scene are actually happy that reality is up for grabs. MAGA was a kind of trickle-down metaphysics, such as manifest yourself to victory, and the synchronicity of pumping enough energy into the internet to effect reality, like Crowlian chaos magic via the internet. Coincidentally, Planet of the Bass references “Digital Chaos.” For instance, Trump came from hyperreality and then became real, meme magic like Pepe the frog and an obscure 80s Italo Disco song, Shadily, got Trump elected, and the meme that Trump would make anime real. Trump was a representation of pop culture, as a Reality TV star, and was also very Camp, such as dancing on SNL, and latter to the song, YMCA. Trump was also heavily influenced by New Thought author, Norman Vincent Peale, who was Christian but also influenced by occultism and likely Neville Goddard.
The Alt-Right was fundamentally Postmodern rather than reactionary or traditionalist, in that it lacked core ideological tenets, yet also embraced identity politics, was a product of mass media, epitomized hyperreality in the blurring of distinctions between online and reality, and were extremely irreverent and embraced being offensive and provocative for the sake of it. Basically Post-Irony, in which “earnest and ironic intents become muddled,” such as defending the use of racial slurs as Hipster-like irony, while also sympathizing with those racial sentiments. The Alt-Right also used postmodernist arguments to deconstruct leftwing thought as dogmatic and sanctimonious, while viewing all established ideals and truths as obsolete. I am not necessarily critiquing the dissident right for being Postmodern but rather they should just embrace that they are a product of the modern age, rather than cope or LARP as traditionalists. If anything, the right’s shift to postmodernism helped expand the Overton window and allowed for previously marginalized ideas to enter political discourse.
Planet of the Bass Nationalism is embracing exuberance over despair, living life to the fullest, having fun, believing that anything is possible with the power of imagination, rejecting bullshit and arbitrary societal mores, letting go of all mental constraints, not taking things such as politics too seriously, laughing at the expense of your adversaries, embracing the absurdity of the World, and being flamboyant and Camp. Mass culture today is stagnant, fake and demoralizing, and it is great to see something new that is fantastic, even if nostalgia. We are going into some very dark times and will witness things that will defy all semblances of normalcy, so take this lighthearted anthem for these perilous times, reminding us of more innocent times.