Original article is located here.
https://www.alternativenation.net/trent-reznor-reveals-90s-grunge-era-better-shitty-modern-rock/

From the article :
"“In the 90’s, it did feel dangerous, it did feel – as an artist – that you were taking chances,” Trent explains. “The power you had as an influencer to culture felt combustible at times. I’m not saying a song doesn’t resonate with someone these days. But as a cultural force or sense of rebellion? America is imploding right now, I don’t hear that in the music.”"

---

My Thoughts

One of the things I think we should mention right now is that Trent admits that "America is imploding right now" yet he doesn't quite seem to understand why its imploding. Trent makes the correlation that at a time like this is exactly when it would make the most sense for us to have politically charged combustible counter culture.

Trent Rezner was at his height at around the early 1990s. One of the things that was going on around that time was the satanic moral panic. This meant that there was a large amount of fear surrounding Christian dogma. At the time, people were losing their minds at the idea that satanism was eating America alive.

We started to see this panic call for the banning of movies and video games. In the late 80s it was even possible to lose your job and be ostracized for being a possible devil worshiper. These were scary times for anyone who might have said anything that might have got them branded as a satanist.

---

Moral Panic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic

A moral panic is a feeling of fear spread among a large number of people that some evil threatens the well-being of society. A Dictionary of Sociology defines a moral panic as "the process of arousing social concern over an issue – usually the work of moral entrepreneurs and the mass media".

---

We are right now in the middle of another moral panic.

Once you understand what a moral panic is, it will likely be hard not to look at the current political climate and not see it for yourself. We are, right now, in the dead center of a new moral panic. We are seeing literally all of the exact same aspects surrounding the phenomenon from the previous moral panic.

Replace Nazi with Satanist and its almost comical at this point to not see it as plain as day. You might see people who consider key people as "suspected Nazis" and even just talking to the wrong person might land you a Nazi sympathizer status.

And for that matter, what the hell even is a "suspected Nazi" is the guy a Nazi or not? Is he a secret Nazi? Those devil worshipers are evil secretive people after all. Maybe its part of his evil satanist plan to pretend to be good when he hides an evil devilish agenda!

We will see people wanting to ban music, movies and video games for promoting sexism/satanism! Video games are promoting patriarchy/satanism and a brain washing our men/kids into toxic masculinity/satanism.

In the 90s the moral panic was about satanism. Anyone could have dressed up in all black and yell how "god is dead" and it would cause a shit storm of controversy.

The best kind of controversy is when you do something obviously harmless and it still causes people to lose their minds.

People who are sick of the moral panic will almost always instantly resonate. That was why it worked so well in the 90s. It was the heart of the combustive counter culture.

---

Not everything is the same though.

The interesting thing will be how this will cause a schism within goth culture as a lot of goths have become moralist authoritarians. This tends to be mostly true in my personal observation.

A lot of people are still trapped in this mindset that we are only moments away from seeing piles of dead bodies filling the streets at the hands of some insane supremacist uprising.

Another thing is that the fear takes on a lot of names this time around. You see the term Nazi used a lot but you will also see a lot of different groups all using slightly different terms. Patriarch, Nazi, sexist, Racist, Islamophobia and yada yada. Each term boils down to essentially the same exact thing as calling the person a satanist though. But things are a lot more splintered this time around.

Another difference is that while devil worshipers come off as basically calling someone a witch or a magical unicorn. Neo Nazi's actually do exist. They also promote shitty authoritarian ideas. In the 90s it was a lot easier to just dress like a devil and it was instantly cool.

The next counter culture is going to be constantly riding a much finer line when it comes to how things are said and done. While in the 90s adding more Satan was a lot like adding more cowbell. Coming on stage looking like a 12 foot tall demon was an obviously awesome thing to do. You probably wont have the same results dressing like Hitler...

If we are lucky we might just see a push back on authoritarianism in general. If the 90s showed us anything its that moralists always lose in the end. It doesn't matter who or what they are. Maybe what we are seeing now is just a lot more moralists this time around thus the controversy will likely be even more explosive as well.

---

My main take away on this is that...

When you promote bad ideas loudly enough you ultimately promote the opposite of what you wanted to say, while giving people something to galvanize around. That is exactly why the christian evangelicals practically birthed the industrial and metal era as well as the alternative music scene.

The social Justice Warriors are going to birth a new scene and its going to be a lot like the 90s all over again.