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Unrelated to Gaza, biker gangs are interesting since they operate as franchises that also expand to non-American contexts, leading to cases like the Nordic Biker War between the Swedish/Finnish branches of Hells Angels and Bandidos, two 1% gangs that originate in the US. These also attract or are in some cases dominated by immigrants from outside of Europe, such as in the notorious case of Satudarah, a gang that has caused news in several European countries (I had actually assumed it was Swedish before opening up the Wikipedia page since I had mostly encountered news about the Swedish chapter).
It's interesting that non-Americans and even non-Westerners interested in joining the criminal lifestyle would so often choose a format that is, as said, so very specifically American, both historically and regarding cultural signifiers. It's a problem for the concept of integration that we now have transnational criminal gangs and indeed criminal subcultures that offer one potential model of integration... just integration into something that is not beneficial to the host socities.
A couple lines I cut mentioned this. As an American, the aesthetic does feel like it should be out of place in the Netherlands (Satudarah), but clearly somewhere like the Mongolian Steppe is natural. I have no idea if Mongolian riders share criminal aspects. Australia also shares (or shared) a comparable individualist frontier spirit and history, along with a similar fascination with bushwhacker outlaws, that it also seems a natural candidate for outlaw bikie gangs.
I just read a few (extremely boring) books for a social studies exam, and one thing that I still manage to remember from them is a claim, in a section mentioning the analysis of subcultures, that motorcycle gangs can be seen as a replication of certain elements of industrial working class existence, like the machinery, the noise, the metal surfaces of the bike etc. resembling a factory and the general idea of conquest of nature, which would of course also apply to Western European industrial working class descendents.
Nordic countries also share wide open spaces in the Northern regions, apart from Denmark.
See, Finns on bikes seems appropriate. Swedes? Ehhh...
Neat. I am only partially surprised this connection has been made. You could also tie in the post-war origins that @HereAndGone provided context for above. The American proletariat returned home from the war to replace the women in manufacturing who they perceived as having emasculating their manhood. Without any other way to ease their suppressed class consciousness or account for their male insecurity they sought out to create alternative recreational hobbies with an industrial identity...
I offer an alternative:
Machine go brrhuum-brrhuum-brrhuum and chuugha-chuugha-chuuugha-chuuugha and vvvvvvrrrRRRRRrrrroooooom. Boy like machine. Boy ride machine. Machine go fast.
Yeah, I never watched Sons of Anarchy when this was the big new hit TV show, but didn't the motorcycle club in that start off that very way? Vets back from the war (Vietnam in this case) found a motorcycle club, and gradually over the years it becomes a criminal outfit.
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I mean American red tribe culture is globally very competitive, especially among non-elites, more broadly. BBQ tastes good, guns and pickup trucks are cool, jeans are real practical and comfortable, country music is easy to inculturate and you can dance to it, etc. That comes with the good, thé bad, and the ugly.
Jeans are absolutely not “American red tribe culture.” They were invented by two Jewish immigrants in San Francisco, and popularized as casual wear by urban greasers in the 1950s and 1960s.
This is only true if you strip it of much of the sociocultural content that was central to country music for much of its existence. The oeuvre of Conway Twitty is not global dance music. Country can only be made into a global commodity by converting it into “generically lower-middle-class music with aspirationally-American characteristics.”
Conway "first, pop hits in the '50s" Twitty? I mean sure he later made a country turn but it's ooooooonly maaaaaaaaaake believe! :D (Sorry, it's just too apropos; I know he did actually always want to be country, etc.)
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I mean, have you heard modern country in its heartland? French, Afrikaans, irish, etc country music is truer to form than that.
is often a continuation of hair metal: https://youtube.com/watch?v=tB4049jsY7U?si=eJOU4o5nJyC1OvwX but it's not too hard to find stuff truer to form: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9CZ5X-c8Lng?si=cMSqzbs4447DyCfc or https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ew43GEJaj3A?si=GOz3kVfo9eqDDXMa
Already in the 80s, power ballads made this move. Many Skid Row songs sound like bluegrass with distortion https://youtube.com/watch?v=2pkpsxEyi-k?si=C5ANtceRZXBWn1Nm or Poison and Cinderella playing "the blues" https://youtube.com/watch?v=D7wdLAM1yjc?si=7PsmZOLhKvbzShft
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