“This Machine Kills Fascists” An Antifascist Playlist

During the performance of their song “Holiday” at a recent concert in Washington D.C., Green Day’s lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong asked the stage crew to turn out the lights. He stood on stage, with a flashlight pointed out towards the audience, as they held up their cell phone lights, illuminating the entire stadium, and asked, “Do you want democracy?” The crowd responded with a unified, “Yes!” He followed up by asking, “Do you want fascism?” The crowed replied, “No!” He concluded by repeating his first inquiry, “Do you want democracy?” To which the crowd again responded in unison, “Yes!” My daughter and I were in the audience in D.C., and when Armstrong stood on stage, with a single light illuminating towards us, I thought about the role of art and music in protest and in calling out fascism.

I, as well as others, have written extensively on fascism and its current manifestations. You can see my posts on Christian fascism, the links between the United States and Nazi Germany, the ways that fascism appears in our current moment, and more. I don’t want to rehash any of that today; instead, I want to look at some artists who used their work to combat fascism, to be antifascists. Each of these artists, echo Anna Seghers’ dedication to her novel The Seventh Cross which she “dedicated to Germany’s antifascists, living and dead.” While these artists…