“Trump is going to make punk rock great again,” Amanda Palmer declared, speaking at an Australian folk festival last month. The sentiment is callous and somewhat clueless—Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar and many others were already making excellent political art, and we didn’t need to elect Trump to inspire them. But Palmer is hardly alone in her nostalgia: the present threat of Trump’s fascism has a lot of folks thinking about the antifascist music of the past. Under our previous vacuous, right-wing celebrity president, hardcore and punk bands blasted out anti-Reagan, adrenaline-vomiting, punch-a-fascist-in-the-face anthems, some of which still resonate today: the Dead Kennedys’ forthright “Nazi Punks Fuck Off,” Circle Jerks’ “Stars and Stripes,” Black Flag’s “Police Story,” the Crucifucks’ more-offensive-than-thou “Hinkley Had a Vision.”
When she repeats the chorus, half-singing and half-moaning in multitracked harmony, the connection to our own time seems almost unbearable. While hardcore punk presents a front of steroidal strength and unified resistance, O’Connor is more attuned to damage and pain, and the ways in which particular groups—black people, the Irish, the young, women—have been and will continue to be singled out. “These are dangerous days / To say what you feel is to dig your own grave.” Ideals and dreams are going to die; children are going to suffer; truth and love are going to be ground underfoot. Vulnerable people will do their best to protect vulnerable people, and it probably won’t be enough. The song makes me cry every time I listen to it.
Young mother down at Smithfield
Five AM, looking for food for her kids
In her arms she holds three cold babies
And the first word that they learned was “please.”
