MAGA Followers Think They’re Punk Rock—but Then Why Are They All Such Cowards?
Trump supporters may think they’re hardcore, but they seem to be afraid of op-eds, books, and history they can’t even bear to read.
I saw Rage Against the Machine in concert at a packed Capitol One arena in Washington, DC, in 2022. Lead singer Zack de la Rocha performed the show in a wheelchair, because he’d shattered his ankle on stage during their last stop. He was incredible, hitting every note from the seated position. Tom Morello was inventing new sounds on his guitar, and on a dark stage under a spotlight, bassist Tim Commerford had a mind-boggling solo.
There was also a middle-aged muscle-head with a red MAGA hat sitting two rows in front of us. I was transfixed. He would jump up and down shouting along with lyrics like, “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!” But when 20,000 people chanted, “Some of those that work forces / are the same that burn crosses,” he got sullen and searched for people to fight. Meanwhile, the woman he was with took out her phone, apparently trying to capture a viral video of him being MAGA-tough. I wondered if he wanted to knock one of us out for the camera like the black-bloc kid did a few years earlier to the neo-Nazi Richard Spencer.
I could see how livid MAGA-man was when Zack shouted out the names, accompanied by a slideshow photo tribute, of the Black people who had been killed by the local police over the last year. This was something Rage had been doing in every city where they had played a show. Then this ball of aggro stuffed into a too-tight T-shirt got really mad when the band took a short medical intermission, so Zack could attend to his leg. (I’m still not sure how Zack managed this show.) During the break, Rage showed a slow-motion film of a police van burning while some young Black kids just slowly rode their bikes around it.
In his own kind of rage, the MAGA guy kept looking for people to fight, but we either ignored him or shouted lyrics in his direction and pointed. This made him angrier, and his face soon matched his stupid red hat. Even worse, his special lady friend wasn’t getting any good content for her Instagram page! When the show ended, he started yelling, “Who threw that at me? I will fuck you up!” (I guess someone threw something at him.) I was fed up and said something to the effect of, “Shut the fuck up. No one threw shit at you. Go home!” He was going to step to me, but then he noticed I was with a large friend who was staring daggers at him, and he did indeed shut up and left the concert seething. He’d had a terrible time with no viral video content to show for it.
This all came back to me with force when I saw a comedic headline that read, “Right-Wing Rage Against the Machine Fan Wishes We Could Go Back to the America That Existed When He Was Too Stupid to Understand the Lyrics.” These assholes like to say things like, “MAGA is the new punk rock,” but there is nothing rebellious about them. They are reactionaries. They are scared of op-eds, speeches, and petitions. They are scared of books. They want to erase history that they can’t bear to read. They are the machine that Zack, Tom, Tim, and drummer Brad Wilk are raging against. As long as their 78-year-old dictator daddy and his autocratic state brutalize the people they want brutalized and silence the people they want silenced, they will be happy no matter the price of eggs. They are as punk rock as Stephen Miller’s spray-on hairline or Kristi Noem’s Rolex that she wears for slave-labor camp photo-ops. They are as punk rock as a recalled Tesla truck.
There is a reason young people, especially young women, are learning to loathe Trump. His support among Zoomers has dropped precipitously in his first 100 days. Young people rightly see a despot who, alongside the richest people on earth, is strip-mining their present and selling off, if not destroying, their future. Trump certainly does rage—but it’s just against the parts of the “machine” that fund efforts to cure cancer, save our National Parks, and deliver programs to survivors of gender violence. But he loves the machine that can ban books, override due process, arrest judges, abduct students, fund El Salvadoran labor camps, and invade Greenland. He loves the part of the machine that delivers violence against the people of his choosing. This, however, is the part of the machine that Rage wants to smash.
I was also reminded that MAGA can’t claim punk rock—or any form of truly rebellious music. Its supporters may pump iron to Tom Morello’s guitar, but, like the snowflakes they are, they can’t accept that Tom has devoted his life trying to dismantle everything they so proudly represent. They may love Zack’s primal scream, but not when they realize he’s screaming at them. Rage Against the Machine stands with Mumia. MAGA quislings stand with Mumia’s tormentors. Rage Against the Machine is ours. And these Planet Fitness fascists can listen to Kid Rock on repeat and shut up.
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