Hardline (subculture) - History

History

The hardline movement grew out of the hardcore and hardcore punk scenes in the 1990s. Although one of the basic tenets of hardline is that it has existed in various forms since the beginning of time, the ideology was largely formulated by Sean Muttaqi of the band Vegan Reich. The hardline philosophy is said to be rooted in one ethic (the sacredness of innocent life), but in reality the ethos rested on that base and on an idea of an immutable natural order. Hardline can be described as a synthesis of deep ecology, straight edge, veganism, animal liberation, with religious philosophies such as Dharmic and Abrahamic morality.

The movement began to attract followers shortly after the 1990 release of Vegan Reich's "Hardline" EP and the official founding of the movement. Other bands soon formed; the most notable of them being Raid from Tennessee.

Although Sean Muttaqi was still editing the zine Vanguard (hardline's official press organ) and therefore exerting massive ideological influence on the movement, the center of its activities quickly shifted to Tennessee. Many in the Memphis hardcore scene adopted Hardline stances and started editing zines, organizing protests, engaging in direct action against industries that exploited animals, and otherwise acting on their new beliefs. Some of the most notable achievements of Memphis Hardline were organizing the movement's first annual Gathering and founding the long-standing and relatively mainstream The Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade (CAFT) As things began to fade in Memphis, and Muttaqi left for Jamaica to explore the Rastafari movement and decided to leave the hardcore scene along with hardline altogether, the movement was gaining attention and momentum in central Indiana.

Not wanting the movement to die, but not wanting to be responsible for it either, Muttaqi transferred the editing of "Vanguard". After a few years, the "Vanguard" torch landed with David Agranoff.

Under Agranoff's direction the movement made unprecedented inroads into activism outside of the punk and hardcore scenes. Hardliners were instrumental in CAFT, the Animal Defense League, and Vegans For Life. Some were also involved in Earth First!, anti-imperialist organizations, and other leftist causes and groups. Starting with Agranoff's Upstate Hardline chapter, some cells began making direct contact with the general public by hosting educational forums that were essentially lectures on current events centred on Hardline's perspective.

Running parallel to, but largely outside of, Agranoff's current was an attempt by some Hardliners from Massachusetts to establish an intentional community in Hawaii. The effort quickly failed due to personality conflicts (especially the ongoing debate among group members as to whether or not cooked food was natural enough) and a distinct lack of required agricultural and engineering skills. In an ironic coincidence, this self-defeating arc, reflects tensions in similarly idealistic communes of the 1960s and 1970s during the History of the hippie movement and the back-to-the-land movement.

When Vegan Reich briefly reformed in 1996, Muttaqi credited the movement with the spread of vegan straightedge ideals in the 1990s. Partially true, vegan straight edge came from hardline. Hardline was undoubtedly heavily inspired from its inception by straightedge. The original logo of the movement was an outline of a large "X" (the sign most often associated with straightedge) with two crossed M16 rifles inside it. Muttaqi has said that he was first exposed to the idea of fusing veganism and abstinence from drugs by an English punk named Rat (of the bands Statement, Unborn, Talisman, and others). Rat had allegedly coined the term "vegan straight edge" by the mid-1980s.

However, Rat was doing little to spread his ideology while Muttaqi was transforming and propagating it. Vegan Reich was for many in the hardcore scene their first exposure to ideas about militant animal liberation, and the controversy they aroused drew considerable attention to their positions. Those in the subculture who gravitated toward animal-related causes but disagreed with some of hardline's finer points found themselves becoming vegan straightedge. Vegan straightedge band Earth Crisis initially wanted Muttaqi to release their debut EP "All Out War" on his record label, Uprising Records.

As the movement came into its own, many hardliners decided that their philosophy was so beyond the narrow scene politics of straightedge that the two were entirely different things. The "X" was removed from the crossed rifles logo, straightedge was harshly criticized, and hardliners were encouraged to leave the hardcore scene. Much of this sprang from the momentum being gained by the more activist-oriented elements within the movement. Eventually hardliners came to consider their network wholly divorced from the hardcore scene. However, the nature of information dissemination in a mostly pre-Internet media environment made recruiting from outside the hardcore subculture next to impossible. Although hardline served to involve people heavily in political activity, the overwhelming bulk of new members were straightedgers who would with time come to identify primarily as activists instead of hardcore kids.

In mid-1998 the movement experienced a massive internal upheaval as Sean Muttaqi returned to Hardline and with a group of new followers issued the eighth edition of "Vanguard" without warning Agranoff or the rest of the extant membership. "Vanguard" number eight announced the reorganization of the movement under the authority of the newly created Hardline Central Committee (HCC) and castigated Agranoff and his comrades for softening the network's ideology through their refinement and development of it. Chapters were instructed to report to the Committee for evaluation and were told in no uncertain terms that they would not be recognized as cells until they submitted to this review. Also in the issue was a document about the stages through which the Hardline revolution would progress which was presented as being from 1990, but had never before been seen and was suspiciously contemporary feeling.

Many chapters (including Agranoff's) opted to leave hardline entirely and instead established a new activist network called Education For A Sustainable Future (ESF). ESF differed from its predecessor in that it took no stances on sexual politics, was not a membership organization, and was entirely based in activism instead of subcultural activity.