Kentucky Fry the Tyrants!

18Mar11

Two great posts at John Eden’s fantastic Uncarved Blog.

Colonel Gaddafi’s Kentucky Fried Britain

On the 1986 occupation of Gaddafi’s London HQ. An extract:

Hopefully Gaddafi will be gone by the time this post goes live. I certainly won’t miss him, but I will grudgingly admit that he brought a certain erratic charm to international politics.

In the eigties and nineties fascist idiots like Nick Griffin and Blood Axis’ Michael Moynihan fell for this charm, distributing the Colonel’s Green Book – seemingly in the belief that he was a profound thinker.

fascist loons Nick Griffin and Derek Holland pose under a Gaddafi portrait in Libya

Griffin actually went one step further and headed off to see Gaddafi in the hope that he’d be able to tap him up for some funding for the National Front. Apparently this didn’t come to anything (unsurprisingly!), but the episode is certainly worth remembering now that Griffin has gone pseudo respectable and rabidly anti-Islam.

More enjoyable by far were the punks who recognised that Gaddafi’s charm was more about his flamboyant mentalism than any insightful philosophy.

God Told Me To Do It were a Hackney-based band would be universally recognised as being rubbish, were it not for their genius sense for the controversial and a neat turn in slogans. Their artwork was liberally reproduced in Vague back in the day and they were notorious for winding up the po-faced.

Having used the Colonel’s image on a few flyers, the group noticed in 1986 that the Libyan Embassy in London was temporarily  vacant, presumably in the aftermath of WPC Yvonne Fletcher being shot by one of its occupants whilst policing a demonstration outside…

Gaddafi squat KFC frenzy

An extract:

Hours after my post yesterday about the occupation of the Libyan emabassy in 1986, a group called Topple The Tyrants squatted Gaddafi’s son Saif’s £10 million mansion in Hampstead…

Comrade Sufi over at Dissensus brought me up to date with the Gaddafi Kentucky Fried Chicken meme:

Mubarak KFC

This image emerged from the Egyptian uprising. There is a branch of KFC in Tahir Square.

Desperate Egyptian dictator Mubarak accused the protestors of all being pro-american lackeys who ate KFC etc. This lie was then replicated in the state media with reports thatprotestors were being paid $100 US and given free KFC meals. (This has echoes of various left wing protestors in the UK, from miners’ strike supporters to anti-capitalists at May Day being accused in the tabloids of being paid…)

The protestors then took the piss out of Mubarak with the above image.

In fact the KFC in Tahir Square was closed after the Jan 25th protests. A makeshift medical clinic was set up in front of it for the duration.

The protestors also defaced said KFC thusly:

Apparently this text reads “No to Mubarak the U.S. Client.” (Another image, slightly clearer is here).

The anti-dictator/KFC image now seems to have gone viral, which brings us right back to Gaddafi:

Gaddafi KFC

Now far be it for me to suggest that eighties Hackney squat punks God Told Me To Do It had any inflence on this…

Related Articles

• Libya Protestors Using Photoshop To Make Caricatures Of Gaddafi (gizmodo.com.au)
• Muammar Gaddafi: Politics, Totalitarian. Fashion, Dior? (cifwatch.com)
• BNP member’s pro-Gaddafi Facebook group snares politicians (telegraph.co.uk)

Filed under: atutonomous culture, Autonomous politics, Middle East, music, Street art   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: Colonel Gaddafi, Derek Holland, Libya, London, Muammar al-Gaddafi, National Front, Nick Griffin