Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello has released a short video in which he urges people to “stand up against” the “frat house rapist” Donald Trump.
In the video, Morello calls Donald Trump a war-mongering racist with sexist policy proposals.
“When it comes to race relations, he’s like an old-school segregationist,” Morello says. “When it comes to foreign policy, he’s like an old-school napalmist. When it comes to women’s issues, he’s like a frat-house rapist.”
“So, let’s not elect that guy.” Morello concludes.
Morello’s harshly-worded 30-second video was part of an intro to musician Ryan Harvey’s updated version of the song “Old Man Trump” — which was inspired by folk singer Woody Guthrie’s unrecorded 1950s song of the same name, that assails Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump, as a racist.
The lyrics for Harvey’s version, on which Morello is featured, of “Old Man Trump” were originally written by Guthrie, and recently discovered by professor of American literature and culture at the University of Central Lancashire in Britain Will Kaufman.
According to Kaufman, Guthrie had signed a two-year lease in an apartment in Brooklyn run by Fred C. Trump, Donald Trump’s father. It was then and there that Guthrie wrote the “Old Man Trump” song lyrics.
Kaufman said he discovered Guthrie’s writings about Fred Trump during his research at the Woody Guthrie Center’s archives in Oklahoma.
“Only a year into his Beach Haven residency, Guthrie – himself a veteran – was already lamenting the bigotry that pervaded his new, lily-white neighborhood, which he’d taken to calling ‘Bitch Havens,'” Kaufman wrote in an article for news website The Conversation.
“For Guthrie, Fred Trump came to personify all the viciousness of the racist codes that continued to put decent housing – both public and private – out of reach for so many of his fellow citizens,” Kaufman wrote.
Below are the lyrics for Guthrie’s song, “Old Man Trump:”
I suppose
Old Man Trump knows
Just how much
Racial Hate
he stirred up
In the bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed
That color line
Here at his
Eighteen hundred family project
As for Morello, his anti-Donald Trump rap-rock supergroup — Prophets of Rage, consisting of members of Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy and Cypress Hill — will kick off their nationwide tour on July 19 and have threatened to “cause a ruckus” in July at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
“Prophets of Rage combines the sonic power of Rage, Public Enemy and Cypress Hill. It’s my contention that we can no longer stand on the sidelines of history. Dangerous times demand dangerous songs,” Morello said in a recent interview with Rolling Stone. “Both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are both constantly referred to in the media as raging against the machine. We’ve come back to remind everyone what raging against the machine really means.”
Morello is also set to headline a cross-country roadshow to raise awareness of and marshal opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @jeromeehudson
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