In America, critics and proponents of military policy use popular musical forms. The "folk revival" of the 1950s and early '60s drew on antagonism to the Cold War and responded to fears of nuclear holocaust. Examples include Pete Seeger's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone," Barry McQuire's "Eve of Destruction," and Bob Dylan's "Talkin' World War Three Blues." The Vietnam era wedded rock music to anti-war sentiments but with occasional expressions of popular patriotic support, as in the "Ballad of the Green Berets" by Sgt. Barry Sadler and Robin Moore.

1 Relationships between popular culture and dominant systems of power can emerge more clearly in crisis than in routine times. Powerful economic and political forces attempted to use 9/11 as a rationale to discipline popular culture. Here I examine how this happened and how it spurred a form of at least provisional cultural resistance. I look at two instances of attempted repression of popular culture that occurred post-911 and at how the success of each was limited by popular cultural reactions against it.