Tim May wrote...
Silliness. The name "cypherpunks" was a pun on "cyberpunks," a pun suggested by Jude Milhon, a woman writer for "Mondo 2000" at the time.Sometimes I keep asking myself if the author of statements like these is really pretending Guru-like to be clueless just to elicit a response.
Being that there is no body which "decides" what our group is called, or even that it _is_ a group, saying that someone's pun on top of someone else's pun means some political ideology attached to degenerates like Sid Vicious, the Dead Kennedy's, etc., is pure silliness.
Whether even "cyberpunks" had anything substantive to do with the so-called punk music scene is debatable, but cypherpunks certainly did not. The political ideology of all musical "punks" I have met is decidedly leftist, and not in the way libertarians often like. Rather, the leftists of British socialism, of American Democrat statists, and of Trotskyites in general.
But it's obvious here that whoever "Tim May" is he's just about clueless.
In the discussions about the meaning of the suffix "-punk" I don't remember seeing any suggestion that "Cypherpunks" had any connection politically or music-wise to punk music. The posts were meant to explore what quintessentially punk flavorings might be implied by the name or that may be reflected in the overall makeup of the list.
And yes, I was aware of where the term originated from, and it was clear to me that the intent of the naming was to imply a sort of anti-establishment "don't give a crap we're going to code and unload crypto apps" attitude.
And to some extent, the list (no, not a group, but a set of lists with the name cypherpunks) has aspects of that character. But it always pisses me off when I see the local jocks or other thoughtpolice come on out and enforce whatever ideology it is desired we bow down to.
Hmmm...a song lyric comes to mind...
"If you've come to fight, get outa here
You ain't no better than the bouncers
We ain't trying to be police
When you ape the cops it ain't anarchy"
(From "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" by the Dead Kennedys)
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