The Counterforce: Building a DIY Punk Infrastructure Against Corporate Platforms

The Counterforce is a DIY punk project that launched on the symbolic date of May 1st, 2024, and it’s quickly become one of the projects I’m most excited about. Based in Montreal but run by an international collective of contributors, it focuses on scenes from all over the world. As a webzine, it shares a lot in common with DIY Conspiracy, but it goes even further in its principles—refusing any presence on corporate platforms. Instead, The Counterforce pushes back against the corporate capture of hardcore punk by promoting the Fediverse through its own Mastodon server, experimenting with open-source tools like local Ask A Punk show calendars, and encouraging the use of RSS feeds, decentralized and open-source alternatives to streaming platforms, and more secure forms of online communication.

Alongside the webzine, The Counterforce also runs a Print-It-Yourself zine and distro, a directory of like-minded DIY projects (zines, blogs, online punk radio, and more), and is hosting DEMO FEST 2025. For those unfamiliar, DEMO FEST began in Montreal during the Covid lockdowns in 2020, bringing together over 200 punk demos to raise funds for migrant justice. This year it’s back, with submissions opening October 1st.

DEMO FEST is one of the main reasons for this interview, but there’s much more to talk about, so I encourage you to read through the whole conversation.

Hardcore has often been described as more than music, and Profane Existence had the motto “making punk a threat again!” In your manifesto, you frame it even more directly as a mutual aid–based autonomous zone. Can you explain what you mean by that, and what The Counterforce is for people who haven’t read the manifesto or aren’t familiar with the project?

The Counterforce is a umbrella for a bunch of projects, some online and some offline.

Online: There is a website with a webzine comprised of contributor-submitted reviews, scene reports, interviews, how-to guides, and more (similar to DIY Conspiracy!). There is also a directory of other “punk websites” to collect everything hardcore punk on the Internet that isn’t on a corporate social media platform. And there are also other experiments, like a network of Ask A Punk calendars and a Mastodon server. And of course, DEMO FEST!

Offline: The Counterforce is also a regular print zine and zine distro. The print zine compiles everything on the website every two months or so (there are 7 issues so far). In addition to that, we produce other zines, like standalone how-to guides and monthly MRR review digests. We don’t mail or sell these zines. Instead, everything is provided as a printable, imposed PDF in a digital zine distro. Print It Yourself! Anyone is free to grab these PDFs and print them or to contribute to/start a zine distro in their town. There are several other hardcore punk zines produced by others included as well.

We want to see hardcore punk zines function the way many anarchist zines do: a physical medium to spread ideas and recommendations person-to-person but without relying on expensive shipping or an exclusive product. Anyone should be able to print these zines themselves, and there should be a zine distro at every show where physical zines full of reviews and scene reports from around the world can be found.

In terms of what is meant by the framing of punk/hardcore/hardcore punk, I’ll just cheat and quote directly from the manifesto:

“The hardcore punk subculture consists of people, bands, spaces and projects that perpetuate an internationally distributed autonomous zone. It is underground, existing outside the media mainstream of capitalism. Entities within this zone—bands, zines, distributors, promoters, labels, etc.—follow a largely not-for-profit, DIY (Do It Yourself) ethic to achieve common goals, either on the micro level (pulling off a show) or a macro level (the perpetuation of the subculture itself). Individual participants voluntarily contribute what they can in a cooperative and reciprocal way. This subculture is a manifestation of mutual aid, and it exists, to a great extent, as a radical alternative to the dominant capitalist culture.”

The Counterforce draws a hard line against corporate platforms, but this critique isn’t new. Ever since Crass declared “Punk is Dead,” political punk has warned about the risk of punk becoming just another commodity. What makes the situation different today? What dangers exist now that didn’t back then, or that make things harder to resist?

Certainly the fight against “selling out” is as old as punk, and I’m personally old enough to have witnessed several different eras of this struggle. What’s different now is the near-total domination of culture by corporate social media and streaming platforms—how pervasive, invasive, and powerful these platforms are, and the “enshittification” trajectory they all follow.

Twenty years ago, MySpace was popular for punks but there were still many other well-used on- and offline ways to learn about shows and connect with each other. Now we are at a point where shows are only promoted by Facebook events or “flyers” posted to Instagram, Instagram itself being the de-facto communication and coordination tool. Everyone is concerned with their follower counts. Many bands exclusively post their demos to Spotify, and well-known punk labels are happy to participate in the pay-for-play algorithmic race to the bottom that these platforms create. All of these systems are profit-driven and carefully designed to trap us as users and consumers. You can only find out about shows if you have a Facebook account. Your band only gets booked if you have an Instagram account. You can only listen to new releases if you pay for Spotify.

As if the dominance of these corporate platforms on our culture wasn’t bad enough, these companies are also just totally evil. They collect and sell our data, they intentionally addict us with algorithms, they snitch on us, and they actively perpetuate the war machine.

For punks who might not be familiar with it, can you describe what the Fediverse is and why it matters for building alternatives to the corporate internet? Why did you decide to host your own instance, and what does that change compared to just “joining Mastodon”?

The Fediverse (Federated + Universe) is an open, decentralized social network. It’s purpose is to facilitate social connections online. Contrast this to corporate social media (Facebook, Instagram, X, etc), whose purpose is to make a profit by collecting user data, selling advertising, and keeping people online as much as possible. Using the Fediverse can look a lot like using Instagram or Twitter, but fundamentally and structurally it’s totally different in ways that really matter.

As a Fediverse user, you can follow and interact with someone even if they are on a different server or using a different app. No one company or individual can control the Fediverse. There are big “flagship” servers, where most new users end up, but anyone with a little technical skill can run their own server that connects with the rest of the network. Communities can self-organize on their own servers, deciding how to manage moderation, data privacy and hosting costs.

In Montreal, where I am based, we have our own Mastodon server for the local punk scene, and it’s working. Local punks use it to chat, promote shows, start bands, argue about records, etc. A few local bands have their social media accounts there. As a city-based “local server,” there is a lot of local chatter, but we also follow and interact with punks (and non-punks) from all over the world.

If this sounds cool to you, check out our “Guide to Mastodon and The Fediverse for punks”, which includes step-by-step instructions for signing up for a Mastodon account. It felt appropriate to set up a Mastodon server that people could use when following this guide, rather than directing them to one of the big mainstream servers, so we also have our own server: counterforce.social

This server is for anyone reading the guide to who wants to sign-up, contributors to The Counterforce, and any other similar punks or punk projects (like other zines, distros, labels, etc.) who want to get on the Fediverse. Long-term, we don’t want counterforce.social to become “the punk server” for the whole world. We hope there will be a lot more punk Fediverse servers in the future, for different scenes, cities, and communities.

A common reason older punks still use Meta is because it’s where they find out about local shows and events. In contrast, one of the things I loved most in The Counterforce is the Ask A Punk calendar in Montreal, along with your directory of similar calendars in other cities around the world. You already have a detailed article about it, but can you give us a summary here, and talk about the broader problem of how we spread the word about underground events in today’s oversaturated online spaces?

The Montreal Ask A Punk calendar actually predates The Counterforce. I have tried many different projects over the year to provide alternatives to Meta for promoting local shows both on- and offline. It’s really hard to find out about events on these apps without an account, and so by centralizing the online part of our scenes there, we are forcing people to sign up to corporate sites just to participate in our scenes, or exclude them if they are not willing.

Each Ask A Punk calendar is essentially just a website, with a calendar that lists all the shows. No account is needed to view it, and anyone can submit a show anonymously (there are few editors who approve submitted shows). Local promoters also have accounts so they can add and update their shows directly. There are also some technical perks—for example, you can follow a calendar from the Fediverse or using RSS.

I will stress that I also think offline things are just as important: flyers, newsletters, zines, paper calendars, etc. But as far as online things go, I think it’s clear that Facebook and Instagram are not ideal for promoting and sharing shows.

The Counterforce sets out to push back against the corporate capture of hardcore punk, especially as social media apps and streaming platforms dominate how we share and distribute our music and ideas. But from my experience, bands from wealthier countries in Europe, the US, and Canada are often the ones putting their music up for free download, avoiding social media, and staying off Spotify, while bands from the Global South are more likely to set a (sometimes ridiculous) minimum price on Bandcamp, send Spotify links to reviewers, and rely heavily on social media promotion. Your thoughts on that?

I’m not sure I have the same experience as you. In my travels both online and IRL I’ve encountered many North American/European bands who have an extremely corporate-friendly approach like you describe. In some scenes I know, I would say it’s acceptable behaviour to the point of being the norm.

To the extent that I see the same type of approach from bands in the Global South as you say, I think maybe there are two factors at play. First, US culture is extremely influential on the rest of the world (for the worse). It’s shoved in our faces. So, the recent trends to embrace corporate platforms and social media marketing, which originated in the US, are repeated by punks elsewhere in the world. It feels necessary to be relevant as a punk band. It is the US platforms being favoured, after all (Instagram, Bandcamp, YouTube—Spotify is Swedish but arguably stole the market share originally carved out by Apple).

Second, there is a sampling issue. I guess I can see how it appears like more bands in the Global South are favoring these corporate platform strategies, but those are just the bands are are most easily encountered by someone from the Global North who exists online: these are the bands e-mailing their press kits to English-language blogs in the Global North, being super active on North American/European-centric social media platforms, etc.

But in my experience I’ve found that there are many more punks in the Global South who are highly critical of or intentionally eschew these platforms. They also tend to resist the hegemonic dominance of US/Global North punk more broadly. When I meet new people through The Counterforce, it is more often punks from the Global South who resonate with the project’s anti-corporate goals compared to typical North American punks. I think it can be harder to hear about these bands and punks with the way international punk culture is dominated by those who do buy into the US corporate platforms, and that contributes to the perception you are describing.

There is a separate discussion to be had about how to build and maintain international punk community in a world where the most accessible tools are these corporate apps and platforms, where postage is expensive, and where global travel is a privilege that has always been more accessible to some and now afforded to less and less. One goal of The Counterforce is provide one hub for surfacing international bands and projects to each other, and explore the various alternative online tools we are discussing here.

As a side note, I always thought the ridiculous high minimum price on Bandcamp was just a hack. It’s a way of using Bandcamp to provide free streaming for your demo but discouraging anyone from actually buying the digital download for bands who don’t want to “sell” their music digitally that way. But I’m not much of a Bandcamp expert I admit.

With so many young people on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, and with underground music so easily accessible on streaming platforms, even subgenres like crust, d-beat, grind, or mincecore can sometimes feel more about aesthetics than politics. Do you think the form of punk itself has become the commodity? Does punk still carry political content, or has the style swallowed the substance?

It is a cliché for older generations to lament what the youth are doing with their culture. Certainly it can feel like all hope is lost when you realize the young punks are learning about crust pants from TikTok videos. I have certainly felt very hopeless at times!

But in organizing The Counterforce (a punk project with politics), I have been inspired and given hope many times now by meeting young punks who “get it”. Younger punks have grown up completely on corporate social media, but they’ve learned how to take what’s valuable (all genres, style and diverse perspectives at their fingertips) and retain a sharp skepticism and often emerge with great politics. I’m regularly inspired by zoomer punks!

Historically, protest music, from folk and rebel songs to old-school hip-hop and the anti-Reagan/Thatcher punk of the ’80s, spoke directly through its lyrics. Do you think today’s punk lyrics have become too derivative, often repeating not just the sound but also the lyrical themes of their respective subgenres? Does this make it more important than ever to write original, personal, and emotional lyrics, or even to create lyricless music like Montreal’s Godspeed You! Black Emperor, who remain one of my all-time favorite groups and could be argued to be more political than most DIY punk bands?

Personally I prefer lyrics with a coherent message, whether it is directly political, personal, or poetic. I usually don’t like lyrics that are stupid, or shocking, or just meaningless filler. But I try not to be too snobby about it. We can all easily sing along to derivative “War Bad” lyrics together at a show, and that provides a cathartic physical experience with many other humans which I think is very valuable.

Most of today’s music websites and webzines seem to look for different ways to monetize their work, while also doing a lot of PR articles and curated playlists for bands and labels. It feels like a replication of what mainstream music media has always done, with the only difference being that they promote DIY bands and labels instead of serving as major-label mouthpieces. Your thoughts on that?

I’m against trying to monetize punk culture. The world is capitalist enough as it is. The hardcore punk underground is a small space we’ve created outside of that capitalist system and I don’t think it makes sense to actively create more capitalism by turning punk into another job. I think we can create a punk culture that isn’t monetized and will help spread more anti-capitalist mutual aid to the rest of society. And I think we can do this while recognizing and balancing the different privileges individuals have that allow them to participate in a such a subculture in different ways and to different degrees.

And what about older white, male hardcore punk zinesters publishing on Substack or other corporate-owned blog and newsletter platforms with paywalled content?

I don’t really care much about how punk bloggers/”music journalists” try to monetize with paywalls or whatever. I’m not really aware of that many such websites, though I don’t doubt they are out there. They are just doing something very different than what The Counterforce is and I don’t think whatever they are doing is really that punk or interesting.

The only thing I’ll say about Substack is although it’s obviously not great (e.g. openly platforms actual Nazis), at least it is a blog where one can easily read (non-paywalled) articles without an account (or even better, with an RSS reader!). So it’s at least slightly better than just posting on Instagram.

Kent McClard’s HeartattaCk and many ’90s zines had a policy of not reviewing records with barcodes, and MRR had its own rule against covering major labels or labels exclusively distributed by major-owned distros. Today, most punk zines, and especially webzines, don’t seem to bother at all. Why do you think setting rules like that is beneficial for the underground? And what do you think could be today’s equivalent of the no-barcode policy?

In conceiving The Counterforce I initially wanted the editorial policy to be “no bands that are on Spotify”—then I realized this would exclude way too many bands! That war was already lost (although these days it seems like more people are waking up to Spotify and taking their music off the platform).

Instead, the policy is no bands that are only on corporate platforms like Spotify, and no links out to Spotify, Instagram and similar sites. The more “off” corporate platforms a band or project is, the more excited we are to include it. There are still links to Bandcamp and YouTube. As time goes on, I hope the line can be pushed as non-corporate alternatives to Bandcamp and YouTube become more viable, and as more bands figure out other more DIY ways to get their music online.

I think “policies” like this are valuable, and fit into what I was saying about having a manifesto. They can provide a coherent framework for a project and help keep it true to its values over the long run. At the same time, you can’t have your head totally up your ass.

I also want to ask about DEMO FEST 2025, which is one of the main reasons I wanted to do this interview in the first place. It began in Montreal during the Covid lockdowns, can you explain what it is, how the idea first came together, and why you’re bringing it back now under The Counterforce? And is this the second edition after the original in 2020?

The first DEMO FEST happened in 2020 during a peak of Covid lockdowns, as you say. Punks spent the fall writing/recording/producing a new demo and sent in the audio files. Everything was released online on the winter solstice (December 21st) on a Bandcamp site. We received over 200 demos, from mostly Canada and the USA (and Will Killingsworth mastered everything!).

DEMO FEST gave isolated punks motivation and encouragement to do something creative during lockdown. Many people recorded demos with their partners or roommates or finished weird solo projects. Plenty of bands started with a DEMO FEST demo and continued on to become active bands. The release day was a gift to everyone, dropping 200 new demos on the longest night of the year going into what was sure to be a long, cold, and hard winter here in Montreal.

When doing something like this it is a no-brainer to make a benefit. So we raised money for Solidarity Across Borders (SAB), which is a local mutual aid migrant justice collective. Their needs are ongoing, but at the time many people living without status were both unable to work to due to Covid measures and illegible for government benefits available to Canadian citizens. All donations collected on Bandcamp went directly to SAB, and there was also a pre-order for USB drives containing all the demos, and other fun “surprise gifts boxes”. There was even an all-night telethon-style stream on release day. In all, we raised well over $10,000 CAD.

The world is a different now, but many of the needs are the same, so DEMO FEST is back for the 2nd time. We’re raising money for Solidarity Across Borders again, as things in the US are pushing many migrants up to Canada, and Canada’s own homegrown xenophobia is surging again. Punks always need some external deadlines and motivation to finish a project, try something new or play music with new people. Many people asked if DEMO FEST would return because they missed it the first time or want to participate again, and so here it is. Maybe it’s an every-five-years event, we’ll see!

Submissions open on October 1st, with a deadline of December 1st. Can you go into more detail about what’s accepted and how bands can participate? Are there any rules about who can take part, and do you ever reject submissions?

To participate, visit the DEMO FEST website and submit your demo. You’ll be able to submit starting in early October (hopefully not too late after the 1st). There are no “rules” really. The music should be new, as in newly recorded for DEMO FEST and not previously released elsewhere. Genre doesn’t really matter, but it should be punk in spirit. If you are an ambitious career band hoping that being a part of DEMO FEST will bring you exposure for your new LP, please don’t submit. Do something fun, with friends, playing a new instrument, with people who’ve never been in bands before or who you normally wouldn’t be in a band with. The stakes are low, it’s just a demo!

Last year I think maybe there was one submission that required a discussion about the name of the project or lyrical content, but I can’t even recall the specifics. It was not a big deal. We have no obligation to you, so if your submission abuses our good faith and/or is clearly sketchy, we probably won’t hesitate to skip it. After all, anyone can just release music themselves and donate the proceeds to a good cause. You don’t need DEMO FEST to do that for you if we don’t agree!

Those almost 200 demos from the first DEMO FEST were all uploaded on Bandcamp, but for DEMO FEST 2025 you’re trying out a static site generator called Faircamp. It would be really interesting to hear more about that. Also, what do you think of emerging Bandcamp alternatives like Ampwall and Subvert?

I think a lot about alternatives to Bandcamp, so I’m sorry you are going to get a long answer to this one.

There are maybe a dozen different alternatives akin to Ampwall which are trying to callback to Bandcamp’s earlier days, sometimes with a slightly more ethical business model. These projects generally offer little or nothing that’s structurally or fundamentally different from Bandcamp. A few are cooperatives, which is more interesting. But overall, they are just proposals for another centralized online music distribution business. There is nothing to stop them from becoming shitty in 5-10 years, forcing us all to find something new again. I’m not interested in options like that.

Instead, I want something that lets us have more control and autonomy over how we share music online. A project that isn’t a new centralized site, but something that is open-source and self-hostable, so we can DIY it. I want punks to be able to both share and listen to each other’s music online without having to deal with a shitty company or corporate platform.

Faircamp is a (free, open-source) static site generator. Basically, it’s a program that makes a website that looks like a Bandcamp band/label profile. All the releases and tracks are organized nicely and presented for streaming/download. It doesn’t handle any payments or sales (but you can include a link to a PayPal to receive money). To use Faircamp, you install it on your computer, give it all your wav files, art, notes, lyrics, and Faircamp will put it all together and generate the HTML files. But, crucially, you need to take those HTML files and put them on a server yourself in order to have something people can reach on the Internet. It’s a bit technical and not easy for everyone. It’s not like Bandcamp where you can log in and just drag and drop everything to create or update a profile. You can see an example of a punk site built with Faircamp here.

We plan to use Faircamp for the DEMO FEST 2025 release, because it will take all the submissions and generate a nicely presented and organized website where all the releases can be streamed/download. I already host The Counterforce myself, on a web server I manage and it’s not too difficult for me to set up another one for DEMO FEST.

But Faircamp is not what I’m dreaming of. Ultimately, I want something open-source and self-hostable so anyone can set up a DIY Bandcamp. Some technical skill from a person like me would be needed to set up each site, but bands could easily just sign up and upload their music as they do with Bandcamp now. I could run one of these for my local bands here, labels could run them for releases they put out, basically any person or group could set up their own. Hosting stuff on the Internet costs money, but any of these little autonomous Punkcamp sites could decide if they want to throw benefit shows, collect donations, or take a small cut of sales. It’s the same principle behind the decentralized Ask A Punk calendars, or Mastodon and the Fediverse.

There are two projects I know of that are working on something like this. One is Mirlo and the other is Bandwagon. Both are open-source and plan to be self-hostable soon. Bandwagon is also part of the Fediverse (you can follow a band’s page from a Mastodon account) and Mirlo has plans to add Fediverse features as well. I’m in touch with the creators of both projects, eagerly awaiting when I can try setting up my own version. When that happens I’m sure you’ll hear about it on The Counterforce.

Finally, as far as I can tell, Subvert is just a zine and a bunch of graphic design and unknown money sources pretending to be a radical Bandcamp alternative. I haven’t seen or heard anything about to suggest that it isn’t just a scam.

DEMO FEST is still raising funds for Solidarity Across Borders. In recent years, I’ve seen online compilations where hundreds of international bands contribute a track, and the collective sharing generates massive support for a cause. Do you think that’s one of the best things about today’s online culture?

I think most regular huge online benefit comps are good for bringing together a lot of people in solidarity across international borders and raising awareness for lesser-known struggles. I’m not always sure how effective they are at raising much money.

DEMO FEST 2020 started as a reaction to the isolation of Covid lockdowns, and it was immediately obvious to make it a benefit. I was already in the practice of participating in (and sometimes organizing) different benefits and actions for Solidarity Across Borders, and I knew about their particular need for funds and awareness at the time. I think everything we do as punks should be linked to anarchist political action and related struggles. This is how something like DEMO FEST becomes a benefit.

Conversely, if my starting goal is to raise awareness or funds for SAB, or other struggles I try to act in solidarity with as an anarchist, my first instinct is not always to organize yet another online benefit comp or something like DEMO FEST. There are often more effective or impactful actions we can take—even if they are less fun, less visible, riskier, or required a deeper level of engagement on an issue.

My perspective here is probably biased by being in North America, where punks in general are less politically active. But I think instead of just online benefit comps, punks need to be more politically active overall, and more imaginative in how they turn their politics into action when doing punk. Use the platform of being on stage to make a stand and inspire others to take action (with more than just slogans or a song “about the war”). Distribute political zines at shows. Get educated and aware so you can take principled political stances and effect change. Initiate or participate in local organizing and direct action with other punks (and non-punks). As you quoted earlier, “making punk a threat again”.

What are some other good practices you’d like to share that we haven’t touched on yet? And do you have any upcoming ideas for The Counterforce, or ways people can support and get involved?

First, if you play in a band, want to start a new band, want to start your first band, or have an unfinished solo project please participate in DEMO FEST 2025! Otherwise, get ready for December 21st to check out all the new music and donate to Solidarity Across Borders.

As I said in the beginning, The Counterforce is not meant to be a personal project. If any of the things I’ve said in this interview resonate with you, please contribute! Reviews, columns, letters, scene reports from your local scene or report-backs from fests or tours. Interview a local punk band or project.

If you have or want to start a zine distro, infoshop, collective space, or record shop, grab the PDFs of our zines from our distro and print them out (there are several in A4 already)! There are new issues/zines added all the time. And if you make a regular hardcore punk zine, consider sending us the printable PDF so we can include it in the distro. Your zine will be printed and distributed worldwide!

If you are interested in Mastodon/the Fediverse read our guide and sign up on counterforce.social. We also have similar how-to guides on using Signal and RSS feeds and what goes into setting up an Ask A Punk-style online show calendar.

At times I have probably sounded like a bit of an opinionated purist curmudgeon in this interview, but in practice I’m really about meeting people where they are at. The Counterforce is putting forth a lot of alternatives and ideas to try, but that doesn’t mean you have to go cold turkey and stop using Instagram and Spotify tomorrow. Just know there are other things out there and consider giving them a try, even in small steps. Whenever you are ready, The Counterforce is there!