Nazi Punks F^ck Off!

Dead Kennedys – Nazi Punks F^ck Off cover

For the past few weeks, I’ve had a song stuck in my head, or at least a part of it. The song is “Killing in the Name”, which ends with a long, repeated, expletive-filled crescendo that almost perfectly captures the feeling I have been experiencing and seeing in many places over recent weeks.

However, I already have a post mentioning the song and it kind of feels like cheating to re-use it, so I decided to look around at other “protest songs”. While I saw several interesting lists, I stopped with RollingStone’s The 100 Best Protest Songs of All Time, as it included most of the songs on other lists, and also provided summaries of the songs and the context in which they were written.

These songs range over nearly a century, cover many genres, and discuss justice, racism, economic inequality, politics, nuclear war, and many other topics. Some are savage mockery, some are sad, some are hopeful, and some are angry, but all are trying to highlight something that is wrong and needs to be fixed.

While I really like and respect most of the songs on the list (some of which I already knew, and others I had not heard before), most of them don’t quite capture the specific feeling I mentioned above. I think the difference is that recent events make it clear that we are very close to the brink of fascism in many places, which increases the urgency but also inspires anger in those who have been warning about the direction in which we have been moving for years.

Then I found a song that captures both the urgency and the anger.

The Dead Kennedys were known for their harsh lyrics and biting satire. And, while punk music was usually anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian, that did not stop far-right groups from missing the point, and thinking that song titles like “Kill the Poor” were something other than ironic, as was the occasional use of fascist iconography within the punk sub-culture. This may seem strange, until you recall that far-right groups are usually lacking in both imagination and empathy.

In any case, the Dead Kennedys apparently felt that they needed to clarify their position, resulting in a song which is not only a clear message to Nazi punks that they were not welcome, but also a succinct summary of the punk ethos, and a cathartic release of pent-up anger.

Nazi Punks F^ck Off (apologies for censoring, but I want this to be “family friendly” for people who are legitimately sensitive to explicit language, or those who might get their knickers in a twist at the idea of a “bad word” but are not offended by misogyny, racism, or bigotry) is where I currently am on a path which began with worrying about the direction we were going, then quoting President Barack Obama when he said:

“How hard can that be, saying that Nazis are bad?”

President Barack Obama, 2017

Then came the impeachment of Donald Trump, Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 US election, and the January 6 insurrection, which was quickly followed by Impeachment 2: The Sequel.

Then, during the presidency of Joe Biden, there was an air of relative sanity, while various investigations were under way, resulting in numerous prosecutions and the eventual conviction of Trump on 34 charges in New York. Sadly, though, the US Supreme Court appears to have been, let’s say... “affected” by the politicization and polarization of US politics over recent years, leading to (among many other frightening decisions) the finding that former presidents have “some immunity from criminal prosecution”.

Then he won again, which highlights the fact that the issues in the US are much deeper than they appeared to many. Even if you argue that people who voted for Trump in 2016 were misled, his presidency demonstrated to the world what he was. Then, if you argue that people who voted for Trump in 2020 were misled again, it is a real struggle to be sympathetic, but even so the January 6 Insurrection and all of the other attempts to overturn the 2020 election made it very clear that he was not only unfit, but also extraordinarily dangerous.

In 2024, Trump’s authoritarian leanings became too clear to ignore. While he had made comments which were reminiscent of Hitler previously, and actively courted far-right figures who could be clearly tied to Nazi groups, the parallels became even clearer.

There was the video referencing the “unified Reich”, his ties to the authoritarian playbook Project 2025, his stated intention to use the Justice Department to investigate and arrest his political rivals, his promises to release people convicted of charges after January 6, his “I want to be a dictator for one day” comment, his promises of a “blood bath” if he lost the election, and the October rally at Madison Square Garden, which shared a number of features with the 1939 Nazi rally at the same location.

Now, after the transition, it’s just getting worse, as many of the things that people were being mocked for worrying about are being done, and President Musk is giving Nazi salutes at the inauguration. Interestingly, the Wikipedia article is (at time of writing) called the Elon Musk salute controversy, formerly the “Elon Musk gesture controversy” – maybe it will change again...

There’s no controversy. No one honestly sees it as anything other than a Nazi salute, as is very clearly illustrated by Scott Jennings calling it “ridiculous”, but refusing to do it on TV when confronted by Catherine Rampell. I’ve seen a lot of people echoing that, and saying to people trying to come up with excuses for Musk being told that, if the gesture is innocent, they should make it at work, or school, or wherever. Interestingly, no one seems to be willing to do so, except those who acknowledge that they are Nazis... Hm...

I’m also reminded of the fact that, many times over the past few years, there have been many social media posts criticizing Nazis, anti-semitism, facism, and so on, which do not name Trump in any way, but are still somehow taken by his supporters as being attacks on Trump.

Trump may not be a Nazi in the purest sense, but many of his supporters seem to think he is, many of his supporters are certainly neo-Nazis, and many other supporters are close enough that it’s hard to tell the difference.

Maybe we should just consider the term “Nazi” a useful shorthand for whatever he is.

Cheers!