The Pilling Of Dicky
By Lavender Demi & Michael Wanamaker
For nearly forty years, the Mighty Mighty BossToneS stood out from their peers in a genre that has long been relegated to a punchline for boring people who have no joy in their lives. Their music was electric, danceable, and their lyrics could be sentimental, political, angry, and passionate. My feet have literally exploded through the soles of my shoes on more than one occasion as I stomped about the circle pits to my favorite songs. Although I knew this day would come, I couldn’t have foreseen this heartbreak. The BossToneS journey has come to a sudden and bitter end.
“After decades of brotherhood, touring the world, and making great records together, we have decided to no longer continue on as a band,” read a post made to the BossToneS social pages and web page last week. The notably brief announcement was a seismic gut-punch to BossToneS fans everywhere. As a long time attendee of the annual Hometown Throwdown (the iconic three night, end-of-the-year celebration hosted by the band at Boston’s House of Blues), I’ve met people at those shows from all over the country, people who were BossToneS fans back in the 80s and 90s, people who were now bringing their kids to the shows. We all feel hurt. Not just heartbroken, but hurt. Slighted. Our last Throwdown was in 2019, and the event was sensibly canceled in the pre-Covid-19 vaccine era of 2020. But as live music became possible again with the presentation of a vaccine card or a negative test result at the door, we anxiously awaited the announcement that the boys in plaid would finally make their triumphant return home in 2021 to ring out the New Year. But December came and went with no announcement of the BossToneS return to the stage. While this was a disappointment, it was no cause for speculation for me; the Covid-19 pandemic was and remains a threat to public health, and although they played a few outdoor shows over 2021 and had some booked for the coming year, there would be no Hometown Throwdown 23. It was easy enough to accept and move on; after all, it’s an annual show, so we could wait for the next one. Only weeks later, the band made the announcement that they were throwing in the towel for good. With the abrupt disbandment of the BossToneS announced in such a short message, I was devastated.
It didn’t take long for news to spread that someone named Dicky Barrett had produced an anti-vax music video that was used to promote a “protest against medical tyranny” organized by known conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr (yes, that RFK). While it remains unconfirmed that it’s That Dicky Barrett, the video was released only a few days before the break up announcement, and Dicky’s refusal to comment and deny a rumor that is damaging to his reputation and his legacy, well, that speaks volumes. It immediately became a hot topic of debate within the online ska community; we all assumed what seemed obvious, alongside the obligatory debate on personal liberty and whether getting vaccinated or the refusal to get vaccinated was more “punk rock.” We all seemed willing to accept the same parameters for our discussion: the fact that the BossToneS were dead, and the fact that Dicky was almost certainly an anti-vaxer. But it may be about more than just vaccines — this BossTone may have had a gulp or two of some more sinister Kool-Aid, and lost his wallet in the process.
Assuming we’re looking at the right Dicky Barrett (we are, allegedly), it’s worth discussing his lyricist for the project, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. You’ve maybe seen Kennedy’s name in the news paired with names like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Warren Davidson, and other politicians who’ve likened mask-wearing and vaccinations to the Holocaust. Kennedy was making waves as he organized his anti-vax rally, with the (or a) Barrett-produced song “Heart of Freedom” as part of the promotional materials. Kennedy is a longtime peddler of anti-vax conspiracy theories, including the harmful, insulting, and provably false association of vaccinations and autism. He has cultivated an even greater anti-vax following during the Covid-19 pandemic by pushing “Plandemic” narratives. Kennedy has gone as far as to claim that Microsoft founder Bill Gates may use his power to starve the unvaccinated to death if they refuse to be vaccinated, and that the vaccines themselves are a part of an evil scheme to implant tracking microchips inside the bodies of unwitting Americans. Kennedy’s disinformation campaign during the pandemic led to the termination of his Instagram and Facebook profiles, although he continues to be active on Twitter.
In 2021, Kennedy appeared as a speaker on Clay Clark and Qanon favorite General Michael Flynn’s “ReAwaken America Tour.” In his 30 minute talk, he claimed that the CIA had sponsored a years-long series of top secret drills aimed to prepare “hundreds of thousands of police officers, healthcare workers, and first responders in every community in the country to censor and silence, to impose and control,” in what he referred to as a long-planned “coup d’état against American democracy.” He also claimed the Feds were actively discussing a plan to turn America into a totalitarian state, instead of spreading the gospel of the horse paste Ivermectin. Yes, you read that correctly. The federal government is using fascism to hide horse paste from American citizens. He alleged that in 2000, Bill Gates had phoned Dr. Anthony Fauci and proposed a partnership in “vaccinating the world.” As his speaking time came to an end, Kennedy told the audience that they could fight for their democracy and stand up to people like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and that the best way to do that was by logging onto Amazon and buying his book.
“It’s all planned.” He said, promising that his book would make the reader say “Holy cow. This isn’t a conspiracy theory. This is a conspiracy.”
This is when people typically jump in to laud America’s right to free speech. After all, Kennedy can say whatever he wants, and he can grift — I mean, profit off of — I mean, collect donations for his nonprofit from anyone who takes his words to heart and buys his book from Amazon to stick it to Jeff Bezos. Under a video shared on the Great Awakening message boards, participants promoted Kennedy’s book to one another: The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. The Anons, i.e. those who directly participated in the Qanon conspiracy theory, agreed that the book could serve as an effective red pill. The term “red pill’’ references a scene in the 1999 Wachowski-directed film The Matrix, where Morpheus offers Neo a choice between two pills: the blue pill would keep Neo content in ignorance of the truth, while the red pill would allow him to see reality for what it truly is, allowing him to take the plunge down the rabbit hole.
The rabbit hole runs deep. Flynn and Clark’s ReAwakening Tour is, by all intents and purposes, a mass Red Pilling on wheels. The basic rules of how we perceive truth and how we consume information are rejected, and then restructured around the core concepts of their own conspiracy. This is part of why it is so difficult to “unpill” someone, or similarly (maybe even synonymously), to extract someone from a cult. There is an inherent logical fail safe in order to keep hold of its participants — when your core tenants of reality have changed, outsiders are unable to breach the walls of the conspiracy. Our logic, what we find objective, is oriented around structures that a pilled person has already rejected, so there is no argument that applies within their altered belief system. The perfect example of this is the concept of “fake news,” where certain networks are deemed liars and untrustworthy in their reporting, and therefore they cannot make any argument against it, because that argument is also “fake.”
Fake news, election anxiety, and the world-shattering Coronavirus pandemic primed the American imagination for conspiracy theories. Where were we supposed to turn when locked inside of our houses except the internet? Qanon quickly rose to prominence and is arguably the most widespread modern conspiracy theory. You’ve heard of it; it’s been in the news, at least two documentaries have been released (one is definitely better than the other), and it’s been a punchline in late night programming. It’s not worth detailing here because at this point, it is quite literally too much to explain, because the ideology is so amorphous. The particular success of the conspiracy theory relies on it being vague and flexible, which is how it successfully aggregated a number of fringe belief systems and slotted them nicely into the larger Qanon social family: the Anons, but also the Evangelicals, the flat earthers, anti-Semites and Nazis, the LA anti-vax new age yoga moms, the alien enthusiasts, the Obama-Trump voters, the numerologists, those people that think there are lizard people in Antarctica. Everyone had a place under this “big tent” conspiracy theory, whether or not they were aware of the alleged figurehead(s) of the movement simply known by the Anons as “Q.” Whoever (and wherever) you are, there is a path to Qanon laid out just for you.
This is why we can’t fault Dicky for doing what the rest of us did when the lockdowns began, when we all said goodbye to our coworkers and expected we’d see them in two to four weeks (assuming our jobs survived). Two weeks passed, then two months, and we now are rounding the bend and entering Year 3 of living with Covid. Confused and afraid, and with politicians and pundits proselytizing to varying levels the severity of Covid-19, we all fell to our screens and bathed in the warm embrace of the Internet. After all, this is how regular old non-pilled people showed up to Summer 2020 rallies against child sex trafficking under banners like #saveourchildren because it’s maybe the only thing everyone in the world can agree on: bad things shouldn’t happen to kids. With no knowledge of “Q,” and no understanding that the event they were attending was organized by conspiracy theorists, people began to “do their own research” in order to understand why the things they were learning were so far removed from the reality they thought they knew. Unbeknownst to them, they were taking the red pill.
At this point in 2020, the algorithms of Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube did not yet understand the implications of these conspiracies and how they were snowballing. Autoplay began to aim the hapless armchair researchers towards now infamous videos such as The Great Awakening and Plandemic, lengthy documentary-format content that introduced them to concepts like the Storm, a supposed event where perpetrators of child trafficking and adrenochrome harvesting (we can’t even get into it) would be arrested en masse. Assuming this Storm took place, this would then instigate the Great Awakening, a worldwide pilling where the liberals and centrists realize they have been duped by the government, and that Hillary Clinton has been drinking child blood this whole time. (The fate of the leftists is unclear, I think it’s guillotine or Guantanamo or something.) According to the Qanon followers, the Great Awakening will launch a utopian age of civilization, with all the hoarded cures for diseases like cancer coming to light, all financial debts cleared, and all of their least favorite people dead. To take part in this revolution, all the Anons need to do is ignore all criticism of Q, read the drops, follow the links, share the posts, and trust the plan.
It is now important to clarify that there is no evidence that Dicky is Q-pilled or an Anon, although Jimmy Kimmel has discussed Qanon on his show a number of times, so Dicky was at least aware of the conspiracy theory. But given that a close associate of Dicky was publicly anti-vax on their social media (we don’t dox, but their twitter was deleted the night of the breakup announcement, and following hashtags are now removed from their Instagram: #operationundergroundrailroad, #saynotobillgates, #standforhealthfreedom), it would be sensible to assume that he at least had direct relations with someone with an anti-vax mentality.
From the axioms that the ska community settled on after the breakup, Dicky at least became anti-vax if he wasn’t already. Assuming he was on the internet at any point over the course of the pandemic (he was), this positions him as one of the countless vulnerable people that were siphoned into the larger conspiracy network. And whether or not he is aware of it, that content became a part of their final album.
The Mighty Mighty BossToneS final record “When God Was Great” was developed over 2020 and released in May 2021. Some of the themes were consistent with the BossToneS that we knew and loved: the desire for unity amidst social turmoil, equality, self advocacy and encouragement to think for yourself and not to join the masses in passivity. The new content was explicitly Covid and lockdown related, even with references to Zoom and social distancing. Some of the lockdown sentiments gave people pause, but nothing worth fixating on. We were all frustrated, and it was easy to blow past it all. But to those who are inundated with the vocabulary of the Great Awakening (for better or worse), there’s two numbers in particular that stand out. The third to last track, titled “IT WENT WELL,” carries the carefree energy of a Jimmy Buffet tune as Barrett declares he’s “wide awake,” and that he’ll “not live in fear, be complacent or comply.” Assuring the listener that “there is way more to this than what meets the eye,” Barrett says that when the listener too awakens, he will still be there to embrace them as a friend. Sure, it’s totally possible that it is some generic ska punk rebellion about “sheeple” written by a man in his 50s, but the vocabulary is consistent with many coded phrases associated with the Great Awakening.
In isolation, the dog whistling content of “IT WENT WELL” would be insignificant. However, the song that follows, “I DON’T WANT TO BE YOU,” also has some red flags for those who know too much about Qanon. The song rails against oppressive forces acting on those who won’t notice until it’s too late; it has a “frog not realizing its boiling” feel to it. In the bridge, he sings, “ I don’t wanna be bought, I don’t wanna be sold / And I don’t want to be high / And I don’t wanna die or be passive like the masses.” Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s an accident that these lines match with the most well known themes of the Qanon conspiracy: trafficking children to harvest adrenochrome for the cabal of Elites, unbeknownst to the average non-pilled American that passively consumes mainstream news and lets the government make decisions for them. Maybe it’s a coincidence that the two songs that seem to have the most pilled content are buried at the end of the album when a lot of listeners have mentally checked out, right before being drawn back in by an eight minute star-studded closer. And maybe we’re “baking” just like the Anons — drawing connections between things that are unrelated in order to fit our theory. But you know when something fits a little too well? The bridge closes, …”I don’t wanna be right, / I would rather be wrong / I don’t wanna fight, I’d rather get along / I don’t wanna be weak, I gotta stay strong.” If Dicky was dabbling in anti-vax internet content, then it’s likely he was vulnerably bounced through a conspiracy theory-laden algorithm until he internalized a narrative of martyrdom that is common to the Qanon community: they are crusaders, nobly spreading truth in the face of strong resistance. They will ravage their relationships before bending to arguments from their rejected belief system. I want to be wrong too, Dicky, but it seems like the BossToneS were ravaged by conspiracy theories and disinformation, just like the rest of us.
Many of us have now seen firsthand how families, friendships, and marriages crumble as one person watches in horror as someone else tumbles headfirst down the rabbit hole with no way to stop them. You cannot stop someone from believing something that they want to believe. But the reality is that when they are in this position, they are likely to fall victim to predatory, grifting conspiracists, whether or not those grifters actually share their beliefs. And that’s exactly what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is: a grifter. After touring with Gen. Michael Flynn, Kennedy inundated himself as a part of the Qanon lore, just as the Qanon community has become a part of his own following. He has commodified belief, and can now reap the social and financial benefits of the communities that didn’t initially have any connection to his anti-vaccine crusade, because they are now connected through the reaches of the Qanon movement. It’s no one’s fault that they felt vulnerable and confused, or that they were tricked by algorithms and grifters, but everyone does have agency. And it would be an insult to the intelligence of somebody like Dicky Barrett to say that he was so vastly unaware of Kennedy’s alleged belief system that he doesn’t hear the same words that the rest of us do when Kennedy speaks. He’s fraternizing with someone who hosts Proud Boys at his rallies. He got pilled, and he made his choice.
Boston’s prodigal son has now retired to Sedona, Arizona. It’s the home of fringe and Q friendly conferences, but that’s none of my business. We can give Dicky the benefit of the doubt, assuming that he’s never done a cursory google search, or that he’s never had a conversation with Kennedy. We can assume that he is totally unaware of the pandemic profiteering and/or the cult mentality Kennedy employs to push his anti-vax bullshit, or the low-key smattering of Nazism at his rallies. But Let’s Face It: whether this is just a temporary trip for Dicky, or whether he is not around after this sad, silent speculation, or whether he is wearing one hell of a tin foil hat, simply being adverse to vaccine mandates is a pretty sad excuse to use in justifying his palling around with RFK Jr. The impression that I’ve always gotten is that the Kennedys are not “punk rock.” In fact, more and more each day, the Kennedys are a little bit ugly.
