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Green Day is not a part of the MAGA agenda
Over the past few days, I’ve seen a lot of faux outrage over Billie Joe Armstrong holding up a Trump mask at the Green Day concert in Washington D.C. earlier this week, a concert I attended with my daughter. The Daily Mail ran the headline “Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong is slammed for holding up Donald Trump HEAD mask during DC concert.” The article compares Armstrong holding up the mask, which had the word “idiot” inscribed on the forehead, to Kathy Lee Griffin’s 2017 video holding up a “severed head” of Trump. The article calls upon Armstrong to apologize because they argue it was in poor taste a little over two weeks following an attempted assassination of Trunp. The article goes on to highlight online reactions to the event. One response, from Rep. Tim Burchett, the Tennessee representative who called Kamala Harris a “DEI hire,” simply read “Green Day used to be anti-establishment now they are the establishment” in quote Tweet from Jack Poso who included a picture of Armstrong with the mask.
What the article doesn’t mention is that Armstrong didn’t have the mask on hand and ready to pull put as he sang part of “Jesus of Suburbia,” an anti-war and establishment song that speaks to the disillusionment of subrbia during the early 2000s, especially following September 11 and the War on Terror. In fact, the entire concert was a celebration of the 30th anniversary of their breakthrough album Dookie and the 20th anniversary of their anti-war, anti-establishment album American Idiot, the latter of which contains “Jesus of Suburbia.” None of the articles or tweets I’ve seen mention this, nor do they mention that a fan in the crowd brought the mask and threw it on stage. The eponymous opening song starts with this theme as Armstrong sings,
Don’t wanna be an American idiot.
Don’t want a nation under new media.
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mindfuck America.
While embraced as a seminal album and band, Green Day has experienced backlash over the past year, specifically, due to their outspoke resistance to rising authoritarianism and fascism. During their New Year’s Eve performance on ABC, they changed “I’m not part of your redneck agenda” to “I’m not part of the MAGA agenda.” This move caused Fox News to publish an article talking about Armstrong’s disdain from Trump and…
