As Greg Sheridan writes in The Australian, “It was an iron rule of the Cold War that the more grotesque and horrible the communist regime, the more dedicated and active would be its fan club, its friendship societies and fellow travellers in the West”:
This has also been true of Arab and Third World dictatorships. The psychotic murderer Che Guevara is an icon of style chic, even today. Cuba’s revolting dictator, Fidel Castro, with his Havana Stalinism, was often touted as a great and wise statesman. Even a year or two ago the intellectual and moral giant Michael Moore paid tribute to Castro’s health service without mentioning his gulag of dissidents.
While the Cold War dealt with issues of freedom versus totalitarianism, the War on Terror introduced another element as well. As Mackubin Thomas Owens wrote in September of 2002, “9/11 revealed an emerging geopolitical reality: that the world’s most important fault line is not between the rich and the poor, but between those who accept modernity and those who reject it.”
QED: At Newsbusters, Tim Graham writes, “AP Notes Radical, Bush-Death-Wishing Guitarist Delights Union Crowd in Madison”:
AP reporter Ryan Foley’s update from Madison on Monday night included details about a rock musician causing the crowd to to roar: “At noon, guitarist Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine took to a stage on the Capitol steps to fire up the crowd. He said he flew in from California to lend his voice to the protest.”
While reporters like Adam Nagourney “worry” out loud that the Wisconsin Republicans are going to look too extreme, AP somehow left out Morello’s truly appalling and extremist stands, like speaking fondly of Philadelphia cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Maoist Shining Path terrorists in Peru. If that didn’t seem pro-violence enough, then there’s Morello praying for the drowning of President Bush in 2007, as reported in the Washington Post:
Onstage, when the Nightwatchman [Morello] sang, “I pray that God himself will come and drown the president if the levees break again,” the Jammin’ Java crowd’s attitude was chilling. People were praying.
As Brian Doherty noted a decade ago in Reason, Rage Against the Machine is more adolescent shtick against the machine than anything else; particularly since, at least at the time, their arch anti-capitalism was putting millions into Sony’s coffers:
“A good song should make you wanna tap your feet and get with your girl. A great song should destroy cops and set fire to the suburbs. I’m only interested in writing great songs.”
So says Tom Morello, guitarist for the Los Angeles—based band Rage Against the Machine. He and his bandmates are not simply against cops and the suburbs, of course. They also stand for the Zapatistas and the Shining Path, for freeing Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier, for giving California back to Mexico, and for destroying stores where rich people like themselves shop.
That’s pretty strong stuff coming from work-for-hire employees of one of the great cogs in the global capitalist machine, the megaconglomerate Sony, which wholly owns and distributes Rage’s music and even is a co-owner of the group’s publishing. Since 1992, Rage has sold nearly 7 million records, and it’s safe to say that nobody has benefitted more from that commerce than the band’s unabashedly capitalist paymaster.
Much more after the page jump.
“speaking fondly of Philadelphia cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Maoist Shining Path terrorists in Peru. ”
We now know what “American” labor unions plan for their fellow citizens, er, subjects. They’re not useful idiots. The labor unions’ goal, since the 1960s, has been the shining city of Havana and its glorious leader.
If only fundamentalist Muslims weren’t just so darned fundamentalist, there would be a huge opening on the left for “Cafeteria Islam”, where liberals could embrace the most anti-capitalist aspects of the religion, while eschewing the tenents they disliked, such as those rules on women, sex in general, pilgrimages to Mecca (couldn’t they substitute a trip to the Sundance Film Festival instead?) or having bacon for breakfast.
American leftists don’t mind Islam’s rules about women at all. Phyllis Chesler has written quite a bit on this site about “feminists” defending vile practices like female genital mutilation and child brides.
Re #2 John -
Don’t forget Islam’s rules on hygiene as well. That’s enough to keep any leftist from converting.
#3 Phillyjim: Don’t forget Islam’s rules on hygiene as well. That’s enough to keep any leftist from converting.
Such as taking a bath on occasion or not shaving? I figured the left was already on board with those rules. I’m not sure how many rocks a leftist uses to wipe their a$#.
2 big; 3 little; or a handful of gravel;or a bucket of sand; left hand only as right hand is for food.
Hypothetically there may be some philosophical dividing line between seizing the means of production running it into the ground (socialism), and blowing it up (anarchy nihilism).
But the results are the same. Leftists are simply nihilists in a hurry.
I’m certain Islam has plans for these tools.
Rage Against the Machine, or Al Gore on Global Warming, who is the bigger hypocrite?
Speaking of stupid ragers for the idiot machine, how many useful idiots-who think they’re not useful idiots-just had to see James Cameron’s wildly profitable Hollywood movie about evil capitalism titled “Avatar” just be the eye-candy acid is groovy, man.
No one sticks a gun to the head of the useful idiot who lives to buy Hollywood’s crap.
If you stop buy into the Hollywood idiot machine, then the idiot machine will not have the financial power to kill you.
Pretty obvious why I didn’t bother to watch the Academy Awards, isn’t it?
If anyone can think of a more stereotypically unthinking politically correct group of moronic hypocrites than “Rage Against the Machine” I’d like to hear about it.
“The Carpenters” look radical next to them. RATM should have a 0% interest credit card so one may more easily buy the bands merchandise from their website
In most countries in the world today they’d be deported if they could first escape imprisonment, torture or assassination.
Zach de la Rocha once told a wonderful story in an L.A. Times interview about how slave owners escaping the Civil War unwittingly started the Mexican American war by trying to re-institute slavery while he invoked the name of a President who was dead at the time; mixed up is the friendly version of what to call such an asinine moron.
And, of course, the Mexican American war (1846-48) was over well before the Civil War.
Try telling that to Mr. History. Here’s the quote from the Aug.11, 2008 L.A. Times interview:
“There’s a very close relationship between what happened in Fallujah and what happened at the Alamo.
When settlers fleeing the South after the Civil War came into San Antonio, primarily because they wanted to practice slavery, an altercation took place and James Polk used it as an excuse to invade, to fulfill Manifest Destiny in the Southwest, which is really a misnomer — this is really Northeastern Mexico.
In Fallujah, there were Blackwater mercenaries, and U.S. soldiers taking over schools and using them as a military base in the interest of Exxon Mobil. And the students and their parents reacted by staging a protest. Several students were killed.”
It’s hilarious that he’s upset about something that never took place. One can only conclude that the band’s raison d’etre is the equivalent of being angry at America cuz the Devil was set loose in an episode of “The Twilight Zone” and also that their BMW’s are steam powered.
I’m starting a band called “Rage Against Stupid Morons”. The first song will be titled, “Let’s Drop Zach Into A Class Five Hurricane”.
Yup, he’s a real Nostra-Dumbass! He doesn’t even have 20-20 hindsight!
The best Rage Against the Machine line is “F*** you, I won’t do what you tell me.” And then some rec exec told them to beep the F word if they wanted air play and guess what? They did what some one told them. How revolutionary.
I always found Rage Against the Machine laughable. Middle class spoiled urban (mostly) white boys – screaming about the imagined oppression their teachers and parents told them about. Completely blind to real injustice.
Left wing-ism and Islam-ism are the same in many ways….
Both are laughably self contradictory
Both are easily disputed with simple logic
Both depend on a fantstic disregard for the laws of human nature, science, math, chemistry, finance, etc etc.
Both are impossible to self-sustain without external “Hosts” to subsidize thier failed systems through tax or other conquest of riches, produced by the Host, and confiscated by them.
Both “followers” are simple minded fools who cannot debate facts, or present a meritorious/convincing argument in support of the superiority of their system without immediately resorting to anger, threats, intimidation, violence, and demands for submission because “they said so”
They are perfect together in the insane asylums of San Francisco, Berkley, Harvard, Princeton, etc. because they are both the failed products of diseased minds that produce nothing, while consuming all.
The main reason so few socialists convert to Islam is because they are unwilling to give up alcohol. Cheers to that!
It seems to me that useful idiots are moral idiots first, since they are acting in willful ignorance of the truth. But the people who are driving them are also moral idiots, since they believe what they are doing is in obedience to some higher moral virtue. Only a few will admit, even to themselves, that they worship power for its own sake.
I’ve always referred to them as “Rage Against Some Aspects of the Machine”
…speculating that global warming — not the oppressive policies and corruption of autocratic Arab leaders — sparked food shortages and led to the uprisings across the Middle East.
No speculating needed. What happened was that the large populations of India, China and SE Asia put capitalism to good use and developed economies that raised the living standards of millions on million. The subjects of the ‘autocratic Arab leaders’ didn’t follow suit, and were left behind.
To no one’s surprise, when the crops of 2010 came in below average, the large populations with their newly-developed purchasing power were able to meet the market price of scarce crops, and the subjects of the ‘autocratic Arab leaders’ could not – and their autocratic bazillionaire ‘leaders’ didn’t kick in to make up the difference. The politics of resentment kicked in, and here we are.
Don’t forget to attribute some of the high cost of food to our idiotic idea of using corn, not to feed ourselves and/or our livestock, but to power our automobiles. Not only does it take food away, raising prices, but also costs extra tax money, money better spent on any of a hundred things like paying down our debt. I’m all for clean air but the global warming hoax has cost us a lot more than many realize. I don’t count among them most of the readers here since AGW is not our religion. The useful idiots traded one myth for another not even asking themselves why AGW is real while denying GOD. The reality of AGW is no more real than Islam being the ‘religion of peace’. Islam means SUBMISSION, not peace and AGW means everyone gets to live in a 3rd world economy except the enlightened one and his ilk. No thanks to either.
Aside from being political imbeciles, the musical shtick of Rage Against The Machine gets stale pretty quick. Shamelessly plagiarizing a Becker/Fagen insult, I’d call Tom Morello a guitar-owner, not a guitarist.
Yea, the song ‘Ashes in the Fall light’ has a part where he proudly proclaims the observation that, “Ain’t it funny how the factory doors close ’bout the same time that the school doors close?” Um, real bright observation there genius. You come up with that all by yourself? Jeez, it’s almost like a conspiracy or something. Not that the school has the childens of all the workers at the factory or anything. Nope, we’ve all been duped and led into the prison stalls for the slaughter.
Interesting that the band lives in LA yet supports giving CA back to Mexico. They avocate chaos but I doubt they would survive very well amongst it. Should “the revolution” come that’s so fancied by these folk the rest of us will have one final smirk about the outcome of it for them. THE REVOLUTION (ah, such a sweet, tired old leftism) will get rid us of them all in very short order. They will be gobbled up by it. (Some of us too, but that’s a tale for another time.) Revolutions always ‘eat their own’ in the name of purity. Theirs will be no different.
Tom Morello, you say? Please allow me to cut-and-paste a short excerpt from his Wikipedia entry … and ask yourself if this reminds you of anyone.
I know who this story reminds me of: what’s his name, the son of an arab muslim from Kenya who claims he’s a black American Christian guy, born at one of the Honolulu Hospitals (not sure which one) in Hawaii in August 1961? I forget his arabic name right now, but it’s at the tip of my tongue, come on, you know the Indonesian guy with also an Indonesian name and a Connecticut SSN, and with all those other SSNs? The guy who lifts his chin up – way up, and looks like Mussolini when he does it, com’on, what’s his name?
Wait a minute, I’ve got it, Ronald Reagan II.
Buddy
2 big; 3 little; or a handful of gravel;or a bucket of sand; left hand only as right hand is for food.
Wiping my rear end with a hand full of gravel? Now that would tend to make me angry with the rest of humanity. Not to mention, willing to commit suicide to end it all!
I love the comment, ” It’s all fun and games until someone goes jihad”… my husband and I laughed so hard for so long! Thanks for the giggles