Jesus H. Christ, not to mention Saint Sid Vicious—when the hell did Exene Cervenka become one of them? There’s nothing worse than including someone on your ideologically pure team for years and then suddenly discovering they’re secretly about as progressive as that glue-sniffing stooge Johnny Ramone.

For those unclear on who exactly “them” are, let’s flash back to ancient times—1984, in case you are curious. That’s when a band called Black Flag released a record called My War. Truth be told, it wasn’t very good; for the high-grade Flag stuff, start with the absolutely essential Damaged (1981) and then work backward. What My War was memorable for was the title track, in which Henry Rollins spent good chunks of the proceedings practically frothing at the mouth while bellowing the words “You’re one of them.”

He never really made it clear who “them” were, but fans of Black Flag, not to mention X, the Big Boys, the Flesh Eaters, and D.O.A., knew. The enemy included every future accountant and lawyer standing right of centre, as well as those who voted for Ronald Reagan, supported the NRA, and couldn’t wait for the invention of FOX News. To be on Team Punk meant being part of a movement that was socially conscious, politically left-leaning, and, GG Allin aside, not bat-shit crazy.

How utterly traumatizing, then, to discover that Cervenka has seemingly turned into the female equivalent of Ted Nugent or that guy who sang “Hound Dog” in the ’50s.

X, the band that made her famous, hasn’t produced anything of value since 1983’s More Fun in the New World, but the singer has certainly been busy on the Internet. Posting on Twitter and a YouTube account that’s since been deleted, the punk pioneer has turned conspiracy theorist, ranting about everything from the Boston Marathon and World Trade Center tragedies being government projects to how the secret ingredient in Pepsi is baby fetal tissue.

The real powder keg was set off last week, though, when Cervenka declared the recent Santa Barbara shooting to be a “hoax” that was set up to make the gun lobby look bad. She’s also convinced that shape-shifting lizards rule the world, which, in her defence, makes sense if you’ve ever seen Donald Trump or Gary Bettman.

Such behaviour, while strange, isn’t unheard-of. Once upon a time, former alt-folk It Girl Michelle Shocked described herself as a “radical skateboard punk-rock anarchist”. Last year, she made headlines as a born-again Christian who took the stage in San Francisco and announced, “Go on Twitter and say, ‘Michelle Shocked says God hates fags.’ ”

What makes such public displays of insanity sad is that every marginalized kid who ever sang along to “The Have Nots” or “Anchorage” is suddenly faced with the reality that they might as well have been aligning themselves with Dave Mustaine all these years.

There’s an old saying that goes “Love the art, not the artist,” but when the artist is running around suggesting that mass shootings have been, to quote Cervenka’s Twitter account, “Staged For Gun Control”, that art becomes sullied. The Internet can take part of the blame for the uproar.

Despite his punk credentials, Johnny Ramone was a card-carrying Republican proud of his beliefs. Because he lived in a time before the Internet ruined everything, the only folks who knew his dirty little secret were his bandmates, local polling officers, and that wife he stole from Joey.

Luckily for Johnny, by the time he announced “God bless President Bush, and God bless America” at the Ramones’ 2002 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, it was hard not to cut him slack. Not because he was dying of prostate cancer, but because, really, was there anything more contrary, and therefore punk, than pledging allegiance to George Bush at the start of the Iraq War?

Cervenka, meanwhile, doesn’t even have the nards to stick to her guns. Evidently unclear on the reality that if you are going to tweet like a nutbar, you are going to be called out on it, she’s now taken to the web to announce that she’s decided to shut her mouth and play music from now on.

She wrote: “The hatred, rage and intolerance of one’s opinions and the threatening language that I have been receiving through the media makes me realize that this is not a path I want to be on. I don’t want to be a source of hatred and rage. I don’t like it being directed at me.”

How sadly unpunk: bailing on one’s beliefs once they prove too unpopular for the mainstream.

Cervenka really has, in more ways than one, become one of them.