Some­how this one slipped by me, and per­haps by you too. In recent weeks, Chi­nese dis­si­dent artist Ai Wei­wei post­ed a video par­o­dy­ing Gang­nam Style, the unex­pect­ed­ly mas­sive hit record­ed by the South Kore­an rap­per Psy. To date, the music video for Gang­nam Style has been viewed 792 mil­lion times on YouTube. That has to be some kind of record. And every­one has had fun riff­ing on it. The North Kore­ans have used it to mock rival South Kore­an politi­cians. And Ai Wei­wei seems to be tak­ing a shot at Chi­na’s rul­ing par­ty (you see the hand­cuffs, no?). Or maybe he’s just blow­ing off some steam.

Ear­li­er this month, the artist also pro­duced a new video titled “How to Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Remove a Shiny Screw with Chi­nese Char­ac­ter­is­tics From a Mov­ing Vehi­cle in Eigh­teen Turns.” The video, writes Hint­mag, fol­lows Ai Wei­wei “on a bus mak­ing its way through Beijing—notably pass­ing by Tianan­men Square—while lit­er­al­ly unscrew­ing a screw. It’s thought to be a state­ment on the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of Chi­na and the new 18th Nation­al Con­gress, which took office two weeks ago.” You can watch it right below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who’s Afraid of Ai Wei­wei: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

Ai Wei­wei and the Seeds of Free­dom

Back in 2008, Bruce Spring­steen threw him­self vig­or­ous­ly behind Barack Oba­ma’s cam­paign. He played small con­certs on Oba­ma’s behalf, and then wrote on his per­son­al web site that Oba­ma “speaks to the Amer­i­ca I’ve envi­sioned in my music for the past 35 years, a gen­er­ous nation with a cit­i­zen­ry will­ing to tack­le nuanced and com­plex prob­lems, a coun­try that’s inter­est­ed in its col­lec­tive des­tiny and in the poten­tial of its gath­ered spir­it.” Fast for­ward four years, Spring­steen is back at it again, though per­haps with a few more reser­va­tions. This sum­mer, he told David Rem­nick, the edi­tor of The New York­er, that he admired Oba­ma “for the health-care bill, for res­cu­ing the auto­mo­bile indus­try, for the with­draw­al from Iraq, for killing Osama bin Laden.” But, on the flip side, he’s “dis­ap­point­ed in the fail­ure to close Guan­tá­namo and to appoint more cham­pi­ons of eco­nom­ic fair­ness, and .… an unseem­ly friend­li­ness toward cor­po­ra­tions.” [This is The New York­er para­phras­ing his con­cerns.] Aloud, he won­dered whether he could go out there again:

I did it twice because things were so dire.… It seemed like if I was ever going to spend what­ev­er small polit­i­cal cap­i­tal I had, that was the moment to do so. But that cap­i­tal dimin­ish­es the more often you do it. While I’m not say­ing nev­er, and I still like to sup­port the Pres­i­dent, you know, it’s some­thing I didn’t do for a long time, and I don’t have plans to be out there every time.

That was in July. But, fast for­ward to Octo­ber and Novem­ber, and we find the Boss stump­ing again for the pres­i­dent in swing states. Spring­steen appeared in Madi­son Wis­con­sin today (below) and Char­lottesville, VA on Octo­ber 23. You can watch the six-song acoustic set above, which fea­tures “We Take Care Of Our Own,” “For­ward, “The Riv­er,” “Promised Land,” “No Sur­ren­der” and “Thun­der Road.”

There’s not much that’s pos­i­tive about this cam­paign. Every day when you turn on the TV, we’re remind­ed of how spe­cial inter­ests have cor­rupt­ed our politic process, all with the bless­ing of the Supreme Court. But if there’s a sil­ver lin­ing to be found — a free set by the Boss — we’ll take it. Go out and vote tomor­row, no mat­ter which can­di­date you sup­port. And we’ll see you on the oth­er side.

Amid the many dis­turb­ing reports of ris­ing fas­cist groups in Europe comes one par­tic­u­lar­ly egre­gious sto­ry of the small town of Jamel in the east Ger­man region of Meck­len­berg. Accord­ing to The Inde­pen­dent, in the tiny vil­lage of some 40 peo­ple, sev­en of the ten hous­es are owned by mem­bers of Germany’s far right Nation­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (NPD), mak­ing the vil­lage “almost a pure neo-Nazi strong­hold,” where oth­er res­i­dents and neigh­bors of the town are fright­ened into silence. Der Spiegel writes that the NPD, “which glo­ri­fies the Third Reich,”

has been in the state par­lia­ment since 2006 and neo-Nazi crimes are part of dai­ly life. In recent months, a series of attacks against politi­cians from all the demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ties has shak­en the state. Some­times hard­ly a week goes by with­out an attack on anoth­er elec­toral dis­trict office, with paint bombs, right-wing graf­fi­ti and bro­ken win­dows.

Despite their dom­i­nance in minis­cule Jamel, how­ev­er, the NPD does not go unop­posed. Two res­i­dents, Horst and Bir­git Lohmey­er, have decid­ed to fight back with the most potent weapon they could find: music. The Lohmey­ers, who migrat­ed to Jamel from Ham­burg, seek­ing a rur­al retreat, have instead found them­selves orga­niz­ing a music fes­ti­val in their back­yard to counter the neo-Nazi pres­ence. The short film above, Jamel Rockt, doc­u­ments how the Lohmey­ers were gal­va­nized into action after their town was occu­pied by NPD. The film is full of cap­ti­vat­ing per­for­mances and inter­views.

The Lohmeyer’s mode of protest resem­bles any oth­er small-town out­door rock fes­ti­val, but its sig­nif­i­cance is thrown into high relief by the threat posed by their fas­cist neigh­bors. Kay Sond­gen, of the band Youth Red Cross, sums up the feel­ings of the par­tic­i­pants quite well, say­ing, “if you don’t fly the flag and just look away, then fear gains the upper hand. And lat­er peo­ple will say, ‘It wasn’t my fault. Noth­ing to do with me.’ You have to fly the flag! If every­one does that then extrem­ism, in what­ev­er form, sim­ply can’t gain the upper hand.” Sondgen’s phrase “fly­ing the flag” could mean any num­ber of things. For the rock­ers and fans of the Jamel fes­ti­val, it means coun­ter­ing extrem­ism with art, and refus­ing to be intim­i­dat­ed in a place “where right-wing extrem­ists can do vir­tu­al­ly what­ev­er they want.”

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.