{"id":28871,"date":"2025-04-01T00:11:32","date_gmt":"2025-04-01T07:11:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/?p=28871"},"modified":"2025-03-24T13:52:53","modified_gmt":"2025-03-24T20:52:53","slug":"this-machine-kills-fascists-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/this-machine-kills-fascists-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"This Machine Kills Fascists, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Woody Guthrie.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a need to explain that title to Troubadour<\/em> readers, but just in case you wandered over to this online roots music publication after living under a rock, this was a phrase Woody Guthrie regularly displayed on his guitar as he and his contemporaries contributed to the great American Songbook with anti-racist, pro-union commie bangers such as \u201cTear the Fascists Down,\u201d \u201cAll You Fascists Bound to Lose,\u201d<\/a> and many, many more ditties that raised a musical middle finger to the man.<\/p>\n

I wanted to have a chat with y\u2019all about that famous phrase, liberation-minded music, and the people who make it. Lately I\u2019ve been mulling over this question: How much of what we are experiencing in this administration\u2014despite the chaotic flurry of fuckery delivered with the energy of a cocaine-addled used car salesman\u2014is actually new, and how much of it is the same as it ever was, only increasingly impossible for a larger demographic of white conservatives and<\/em> liberals (or otherwise privileged folks) to ignore?<\/p>\n

If we utilize history as the wonderful resource it is, all logic and reasoning points to the latter. In fact, all the dictatory, greed-fueled, power-obsessed, delusional race and religious supremacy bullshit that\u2019s happening now is pretty much a carbon copy performance of what\u2019s come before, not just globally, but here in the states\u2014land of genocide, home of enslavement, of residential schools, of internment camps, of Jim Crow policies, of trickle-down economics. You get the idea.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t want to crack open a textbook? (Better hurry, before they burn them all!) Here, I\u2019m making you a playlist<\/a> to prove that while yes, we are in the throes of something quite sinister, we\u2019ve been \u201cthroed\u201d around by the powers that be since this country\u2019s racist, genocidal inception, and we will continue to be until we collectively decide to do something drastically different about it.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s just start in the \u201930s since sound recordings are a little bit easier to come by (for now!).<\/p>\n

1939: “Strange Fruit,” recorded by Billie Holiday, written by Abel Meeropol<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lyric Excerpt:<\/strong>
\nPastoral scene of the gallant south<\/em>
\nThe bulging eyes and the twisted mouth<\/em>
\nScent of magnolias, sweet and fresh<\/em>
\nThen the sudden smell of burning flesh<\/em><\/p>\n

Billie Holiday\u2019s rendition of \u201cStrange Fruit\u201d told a creepy-ass tale of evil-ass white folks who took joy in lynching Black folks. Have lynchings stopped? No, they have not.<\/a> To quote Jill Collen Jefferson \u201cThe evil bastards just stopped taking photographs and passing them around like baseball cards.\u201d And while I\u2019m overjoyed to see a growing number of pissed off white people at the Tesla dealerships and town halls, I\u2019m thinking we maybe wouldn\u2019t be where we are now if more of them would have unleashed that righteous anger to stop this tragically popular American pastime in its tracks. Moral of the story? Get your neck on the line even when you don\u2019t know what the noose feels like.<\/p>\n