Freedom Jam - The Weird Propaganda Band In Every '80s School
At times it can feel like everything is wrapped up in some kind of messaging. This week at Cracked, we're taking a closer look at propaganda and how it has shaped the world in ways that may not be so obvious.
Nowadays, if you want to pull kids into your right-wing sect, you just need to get into Fortnite or Roblox YouTube. But how did old-timey gun nuts go about indoctrinating people young in a time before the advent of (contemporary) mass murder arenas? Well, the answer is through the absolute bastardization of Van Halen, of course. If you Google “Freedom Jam band,” you'll find one hell of a lot of people remembering this fever dream of an act coming to their school. How about you, do you remember Freedom Jam?
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Well, the only prerequisite for knowing them is apparently having been alive during the '80s because they were hell-bent on visiting every single Junior High and/or High Schools in the country, you know, just like any ambitious recruiter band would. The act itself started off pretty cool; nothing like playing the devil's tunes to ensure kids they're not about to hear a lecture:
And then it probably stayed cool because kid's standards are low – especially so when you're an ‘80s kid yourself. (We know because some of us were '80s kids here.) But then, out of nowhere, one of the members would casually cut the song and mood to clarify that Freedom Jam is a patriotic act. With no one cool enough to say that no one gives a crap, or anyone brave enough to tell the Jam boys to keep politics out of music, the entire thing immediately devolved into some weird-ass revolutionary war reenactment:
And, in case the message wasn't still clear enough, the show then culminated in a nearly 10-minute long rant about how the audience, a literal room of children, totally had to stand up and fight against whatever red herring '80s Americans knew was totally coming to destroy them.
And well, despite all, there's one thing we gotta admit: still a better actor than Ronald Reagan.
Top Image: PIRO4D/Pixabay
