Tom Morello, Rage against the Machine: “We would now like to play a song for you.”
BBC: “Let’s get Christmassy.”
– BBC Radio 5
Each Christmas, the Brits attempt to feel good about themselves by sending a really stupid, warm fuzzy song to the top of their pop charts. But this year, as the result of a successful campaign organized via Facebook, the UK Christmas Number 1 got hijacked by Rage Against the Machine’s classic 1992 fuck-you song, “Killing in the Name”.
The song was given some extra publicity when BBC Radio 5 prematurely cut short a live performance of the song, but not before the band delivered four “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me”s over the BBC’s prissy pommy airwaves. The BBC doesn’t get upset when the Brits completely fuck over Afghanistan, Iraq, immigrants, workers, etc – but utter the word “fuck”, and that really is rather objectionable and unseemly and should be stopped immediately, please. After all, the main intent of the UK Christmas Number 1 lies in providing the anaesthesia to allow the Brits to forget about their endless military invasions and economic violence (all safely hidden and out of the way, thank you very much). Instead, this year, the anaesthesia got converted into a giant motherfucking molotov cocktail.
“Make no mistake about it, this was a political act! This was an entire nation delivering a stinging slap of rejection to the whole notion of pre-fabricated pop ruling the charts.”
– Tom Morello, Rage Against the Machine
“Whether it’s in a small manner, like who’s at the top of the charts, or bigger matters like war and peace, and economic inequality, when people band together and make their voices heard, they can completely overturn the system as it is.”
– Tom Morello, Rage Against the Machine
Finally, some Christmas music worth playing on Christmas Day.
The Dunedin School 
“Instead, this year, the anaesthesia got converted into a giant motherfucking molotov cocktail.”
No it didn’t. It turned into a massive sales boost for Sony, who own the (c) on Killing in the name and the tv talent show cover of the Miley Cyrus song it was competing against.
“Make no mistake about it, this was a political act! This was an entire nation delivering a stinging slap of rejection to the whole notion of pre-fabricated pop ruling the charts.”
No it wasn’t. This was the same sort of “political act” as joining a Facebook group opposing bad things happening to penguins. Morello should listen to his band’s track from the Godzilla soundtack. “… make you believe that buying is rebelling.”
Ibs,
Nice. The only real political purchase is to never purchase anything at all. One of the genius gestures of the Bush administration post 11 September was the transformation of buying into a political/patriotic act in the eyes of the wider public, though the idea long predates this, of course.
Getting the public to do what they’re told on Facebook is a nice little irony here.
I’ve always been a bit suspicious of Rage, given they are on Epic Records, a subdivision of Sony, about as big a machine as you could choose to find, but damn if they’re still not one of tightest bands I’ve ever seen live.
The fact that someone chose to ape the Obama ‘Hope’ poster adds another layer to the ironies here, given that Obama is doing a particularly fine job of showing just how impossible it is to offer any real protest in the current political economy. He’s also showing just how easy it is to fool people into thinking that one is doing something different when one is in fact doing the same old thing all over again.
To all those readers out there (both of you) who don’t know it, the song is about racist cops, by the way, not about rebellion in general.
Still, its nice to see some real Christmas spirit out there for once.
Eric