During a recent interview with The Guardian, Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello discussed the treasonous pro-Trump insurrection that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. The guitarist says “we came within a baby’s breath of a fascist coup in this country.”

Morello said the following when asked how he felt about the insurrection:

“We came within a baby’s breath of a fascist coup in this country. Interestingly, one of my dreams has always been to storm the Capitol, but not with a bunch of all-white, rightwing terrorists, you know? The ugliest part about it is how they have co-opted the idea of standing against the Man, at least in the US. There can be no nuanced thinking, like: ‘Yes, big pharma is horrible, but getting a vaccine to save your grandma is good.’ It’s a dumbed-down version of resistance. But I grew up in Trump country [in suburban Illinois], I know people from there. They’re decent people. It’s not their fault for being fucked over by the oligarchy for decades. Now what do we do to find a way to really resist the stuff that is destroying the planet, that’s causing working people’s lives to be worse than their parents’ were? Poverty and hunger kill more people than anything else on the planet and they are human-made problems. Those are the things that we need to be digging into, rather than being sidetracked by this carnival barker bullshit.”

He also added the following when asked about a group of Trump supporters, who sang and danced along to Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing In The Name” during a “Stop The Count” protest in Philadelphia:

“First of all, there’s no accounting for stupidity. There’s a long list of radical left anthems that are misunderstood by bozos who sing them at events like that, from Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land Is Your Land’ to Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’ to John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ – those people have really no idea what the hell they’re singing about. The one thing that I speak to in all of those instances is that there’s a power to the music that casts a wide net, and that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. In that net, there will be the far-right bozos, but there will also be people that have never considered the ideas put forward in those songs and are forced to consider those ideas because the rock’n’roll is great. You can either put a beat to a Noam Chomsky lecture – no one wants that, but there’s going to be no mistaking what the content is – or you can make music that’s compelling.”