Life & Mortality Quote by Jello Biafra

Punk survives, Jello Biafra argues, precisely because it resists being turned into a product. The line lands like a provocation, but it’s also a diagnosis of how subcultures get neutralized in late capitalism: not by censorship, but by merchandising. If punk’s original charge came from sounding unmanageable - too loud, too angry, too DIY to be politely consumed - then “death” isn’t a lack of bands or fans. It’s the moment punk becomes a safe aesthetic, stripped of its threat and sold back as lifestyle.

Biafra’s intent is less nostalgia than a warning flare. Coming from the Dead Kennedys frontman who watched hardcore morph from scrappy scenes into marketable “alternative,” he’s pointing at a familiar pattern: corporations don’t kill rebellion by arguing with it; they kill it by packaging it. The subtext is that authenticity is not a vibe but an infrastructure. When the distribution, venues, labels, and media narrative are corporate-owned, the music can keep its distorted guitars while losing its oppositional function.

There’s also a sly challenge tucked inside the slogan. Punk “not dead” is a cliché; Biafra sharpens it by defining punk’s life as a moving target. If exploitation is the test, then punk has to keep mutating - staying local, autonomous, stubbornly inconvenient. The line doesn’t romanticize purity so much as expose the real enemy: comfort masquerading as culture.