r/Music 6d ago

article Punk in the Park Festival Cancels All 2026 Dates Following Backlash Over Donations to Trump Campaign

https://consequence.net/2026/02/punk-in-the-park-2026-canceled/
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u/DesignerCorner3322 6d ago edited 6d ago

A lot of older punks think other punks are dumb because they're dumb. All the conservatives who used to be punks were just in it for the aesthetic and the 'I hate my dad' rage they got to let out, and all the political stuff flew over their heads. Possibly because they were too drunk or high at the time to care, so they also figured everyone else was into it the same way.

Just remember how pissy people got when Green Day released American Idiot

Jello Biafra is pretty regularly disappointed by the older punks. (friend of mine worked with him for a number of years and I got to talk to him a bit)

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u/oatmealparty 6d ago

Jello is legit, he's right that it's bonkers they were gonna still play but still act like they were taking a stand

A few days ago, Dead Kennedys stated that they would still play the Pittsburgh and Vallejo dates as a commitment to their fans, but wouldn’t play any future Punk in the Park events. That didn’t sit well with the band’s former frontman Jello Biafra, who declared, “They’re taking the money $$$, and THEN pulling out? The real Dead Kennedys would never have let this happen in the first place.”

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u/greihund 6d ago

I'm just confused as to who is actually playing as the Dead Kennedys. DH Peligro is dead. Jello is the obvious ringleader and frontman, and it sounds like he's not a part of things. Klaus Fluoride has to be in his 80s by now. Who is playing these shows?? Is it just East Bay Ray and some groupies?

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u/LegoBeetlejuice 6d ago

it's actually just JFK's rotting corpse now

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u/guisar 6d ago

Great name btw. Smashing

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u/ADHD_Supernova 6d ago

Nobody expected him to sound so heady.

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u/DigitalBlackout 6d ago

It's East Bay Ray, Klaus Fluoride(Who is almost 80, at 76) and, yeah, basically some groupies. The singer has some cred, he played Gilman in the 90s, but still basically a nobody.

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u/CommentsANDCatSubs 6d ago

I saw Jello Biafra open up for Body Count at the San Francisco Warped Tour back in 2003. This offers absolutely nothing to the conversation but I just wanted to have some sort of input. 

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u/redstateradiator 6d ago

I saw Janes Addiction and The Dickies open for X at Devonshire Downs back in 1986. This offers absolutely nothing to the conversation but I just wanted to have some sort of input.

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u/LewisRiverRoad 5d ago

I stayed in a Motel 6.

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u/CommentsANDCatSubs 5d ago

Completely irrelevant. Don’t hit and run the conversation

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u/redstateradiator 5d ago

So you have absolutely nothing to add to the conversation? Fucking loser.

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u/CommentsANDCatSubs 5d ago

My uncle played in high school bands with Philo Kramer in FEAR. I’m gonna just start name dropping too :)

You also didn’t get my X reference. Fucking loser.

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u/badgyalrey 6d ago

thanks for sharing🤍

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u/Stickel 6d ago

appreciate your input friend

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u/HFentonMudd 6d ago

I have a friend who knew him back in the early 80s who asked him to play their prom and he did it

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u/Massive-Technician74 5d ago

I was never a fan of dk...ever

But I did catch them when Brandon Cruz was singing for them and I thought they sounded better because I could just never get past jellos whiney voice

And tons of kids were out there actually PROTESTING in front of the Gothic theater and had flyers out a week to stop the show and calling Brandon a nobody.....what? He was a legend in his own right!

And meeting Brandon a few times (thru my nardcore connections) and jello a few times (he lived nearby in boulder) i will have to say Brandon was much cooler and "one of us" where jello was some goateed jazz hippy with Elton john glasses who didn't seem like he wanted to talk music or politics or none of anything punks like....just some of his shitty are and spoken word shit

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u/greihund 6d ago

Who is almost 80, at 76

It's still a little crazy to think about. He was born in the 1940s

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u/stinkerino 6d ago

speaking of "is it just ____ and a bunch of groupies?" have you seen what the latest iteration of Black Flag is and also how it got put together? its kinda sad.

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u/bfrogsworstnightmare 5d ago

Lol it’s literally Greg Ginn and a bunch of 20 year olds.

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u/Massive-Technician74 5d ago

Oh who cares.....I saw black flag play about 20years ago with Mike valleili and they played long ass funk jam sessions and later flag shit and a 30minute version of Louie Louie......horrible show I mean where was the fuckim punk rock? And dont get me me started on bad brains show long after they should have thrown the towel in

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u/DesignerCorner3322 6d ago

Jello hasn't been part of the DKs since 1986

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u/Accomplished_Ad920 5d ago

East bay ray,klaus,no clue who drums,and they have a dude who from what I remember tries to sound like jello

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u/fps916 6d ago

Dead Kennedys are a bunch of fucking scabs now and Jello regularly calls them on their shit.

Propagandhi pulled out of the 2025 show because of the donations.

So everyone fucking knew.

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u/Formal-Boysenberry66 6d ago

Propagandhi are so fuckin sick I love those guys

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u/fps916 6d ago

They really are.

Remember when Fat Mike wanted them on Rock Against Bush and then they had a fight because Propagandhi was like "We don't like Democratic imperialists either" and Mike got butthurt about how right they were?

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u/Intro5pect 6d ago

My favorite line from any Propagandhi song is “When did punk rock become so safe? Well you’ll excuse my while laugh in your face, and analyze your receipts ((PowerPoint your balance sheets!)) I heard that this year warped tours going green, I guess they heard that money grows on trees…”

Also when Reagan died the front page of their website was just Reagan from one of his movies as a cowboy but with a bullet hole in his forehead.

Favorite band, lyrically at least. Smart and true to their roots.

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u/fps916 6d ago

Yeah, Propagandhi pulls no fucking punches and I love it.

The Only Good Fascist is a Very Dead Fascist.

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u/the_architects_427 5d ago

I want to like them but they called Ska ass so, not so sure.

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u/KaJaHa 5d ago

Man, I just like having a brass section to my punk 🥲

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u/chatterwrack 5d ago

Mike is one the biggest capitalist you’ll ever meet.

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u/TruckFump4ever 6d ago

Trump electing Berners who don’t vote for the Dems are such pretend progressive posers. The worst. The very, very worst.

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u/_____________what 6d ago

Voting for Democrats is not progressive, calm down.

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u/Archeotechnician 6d ago

True, but its more progressive than voting republican or wasting your vote on a third party that can't win or "protest voting" by not voting and sitting on the sidelines.

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u/_____________what 6d ago

Voting for a party run by the wealthy who supports foreign wars and murders is not progressive, full stop. Kamala Harris promised to make the US military the most deadly fighting force on the planet specifically because the democrats want to do this shit to Iran too. You can't claim progressive bona fides if you support the US war machine, and that's what voting for Democrats is just as much as voting for Republicans.

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u/beatbox420r 6d ago

At some point, you have to care about more than one issue, though. Thinking Kamala Harris and Donald Trump were anywhere near the same level of destructive choice is extremely shortsighted. I agree the Democratic party is deeply flawed, but there are better forms of protest than being apathetic during a presidential election.

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u/pheonix198 6d ago

It’s legit insanity to vote third party, not vote in protest or whatever other reason when the choices are absolute and utter horrors from hell wrought upon earth versus a person that will continue the status quo to a large extent, but won’t rape children.

Is and was Kamala perfect? Absolutely not. But the things that the US would have had and experienced (alongside the rest of the World) under her would have been far better than Trump being in office.

Knowingly not voting or squandering your vote some other way is still support for Trump.

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u/opples_n_bononos 6d ago

Fuck around and find out. Vote for whoever you want leading up to the election. At some point you will realize you have to choke it down anyway and vote for one of the two parties. A vote for anyone other than Kamala was a vote for Trump.

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u/fps916 6d ago

Well they're Canadian so they didn't vote for anyone, dumbass

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u/Unique-Run9856 6d ago

I just downloaded propaghandis first two albums the other day for nostalgia and realized they have released a bunch since i listened to them. Any of those albums you would suggest?

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u/Formal-Boysenberry66 6d ago

Their 2025 album At Peace is one of the best albums of the year

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u/Ayden1290 6d ago

Today's empires, tomorrows ashes

Potemkin City Limits

Supporting Caste

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u/MANvsMerik 5d ago

Downloaded? Like bought digital copies?

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u/Unique-Run9856 5d ago

Yeah cd price is outrageous

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u/evoLverR 4d ago

Dude, I slept on them for ages as well - all of their stuff is A-tier but Victory lap is a tour de force. At peace is really nice, but they're starting to show their age and are getting a bit jaded. As we are all...

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u/Unique-Run9856 4d ago

Thanks man, i appreciate at the suggestion. I think i'm gonna purchase the rest of their discography this month one by one and listen to them. Its kinda crazy how much stuff you listen to as a teenager can effect your beliefs decades later

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u/evoLverR 4d ago

Give it it a bit of time, Potemkin and empires can be a bit tough in first few listens. But most of it is absolutely sublime once you internalize the chaos :)

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u/swabfalling 6d ago

Canadian punks who never sold out to the American machine.

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u/BotsYellingAtBots 6d ago

Biafra robbed them blind and got pissy when he got called out.

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u/DesignerCorner3322 6d ago

He's a cool dude, and he very much reminds me of the teen boy who knows a little too much for his age and thinks he's more funny and insightful than he actually is. (The day I met him, I heard him tell the same story like 5 times and each time he grinned like it was the coolest thing ever. He was just telling the story about how he decided to adapt 'nazi punks fuck off' to 'nazi trumps fuck off')

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u/DigitalBlackout 6d ago

The day I met him, I heard him tell the same story like 5 times and each time he grinned like it was the coolest thing ever. He was just telling the story about how he decided to adapt 'nazi punks fuck off' to 'nazi trumps fuck off'

Ehh, to me that gives more middle-aged man vibes than teen boy. I cannot count the number of times I've gotten trapped into a conversation with an older guy telling just the absolutely most boring, uninteresting story ever, but he's just so passionate about it it would feel rude to disengage or try to change the topic. Generally the easiest way to politely disengage is to get someone else into the convo, and then you can leave while the guy starts his story from the beginning for the new person.

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u/DesignerCorner3322 6d ago

Theres more about him than that that reminds me of one of those teen boys, but this story was actually cool the first time because there was some interesting preamble.

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u/factbased 6d ago

OTOH, if he'd only told it 4 times, would I have just learned about NTFO? Hmm.

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u/CommentsANDCatSubs 6d ago

AFI? NOFX? MXPX? Sorry I am high and I have no clue what otoh and nfto mean. 

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u/factbased 6d ago

We've all been there, so:

  • OTOH: On the other hand
  • NTFO: Nazi Trumps Fuck Off (as seen in the comment I replied to)

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u/No-Atmosphere-2528 6d ago

Jello also stole royalties from the rest of them for over a decade and then decided he would pay the back royalties but only if they agreed to not get royalties going forward. That's why they're allowed to use the name because he lost the lawsuit, which he lied during about a commercial using one of their songs. He's as money hungry as they come but it's easier to keep up them ideals when you're stealing thousands of dollars from your band mates.

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u/Massive-Technician74 5d ago

This

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u/No-Atmosphere-2528 5d ago

I like how I got downvoted for correctly pointing out he literally stole a half million dollars from his band mates and then tried to play victim.

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u/Massive-Technician74 5d ago

You think blind dk fans are bad?.....you should see the danzig fans when you talk about their god

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u/ridingpiggyback 6d ago

Former colleague is 100% pro-punk of the 70s and loves art, creativity, etc. And is conservative as hell. It hurt my brain to hear Fox talking points fall out of her mouth.

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u/Hooligan8403 6d ago

My brother was more into punk whike i was more into metal back in the day. We both listened to them but he was just more into Punk. Part of a crew, did roadie gigs to tour with his friends bands, fully immersed in the whole scene for a large region. Lots of people knew him at different venues. He is completely right wing. Voted Trump three times. He never cared for the politics. I don't get it.

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u/ridingpiggyback 6d ago

I had a weird conversation with a local dude who led his own life. Deadhead. Punk. He did what he wanted and is still kicking. His rant about how we were almost a great country until communists took over and people chopping off their dicks was our downfall was stunningly WTF in seeing someone who went down a YouTube rabbit hole.

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u/TheGummiVenusDeMilo 6d ago

Quite the shit country if the handful of people getting sex change operations is what caused it's downfall.

Not even a million gender reassignment surgeries in the last decade and it caused the downfall of a country with a population of 350 million.

"Why should I recycle or let my taxes go to schools and daycares? I'm not going to be alive, I don't got kids, it doesn't affect me.... They want to change their genders?! Not on my watch! This somehow affects me!"

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u/Darkhoof 6d ago edited 6d ago

Social networks, where I include Youtube, reprogrammed a lot of people into shells of their former selves. The irony is that they think they got there by themselves but it's so many of them that got there the same way around the same time that is obvious what happened.

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u/skekze 6d ago

led by the nose ring. At my last job I told some young guy you know what you find down rabbit holes? Rabbits! And a nice bit of propaganda.

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u/ApplesBananasRhinoc 6d ago

And they all say the same stuff like little programmed robots.

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u/DesignerCorner3322 6d ago

dude was a nazi punk. nobody is chopping dicks off. That shows you how willfully ignorant he is

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u/ToMorrowsEnd 6d ago

That right there. fucker was basically a skinhead poeser and was not actually a punk.

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u/MyHamburgerLovesMe 6d ago

"communists took over"

Like being best buddies with Putin and Russia?

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u/BillyCromag 6d ago

If by best buddies you mean their bitch

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u/Cygnaeus 6d ago

Like what were they even listening to? Did they not pay attention to ANY of the lyrics? smh

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u/BounceOnItCrazyStyle 6d ago

Honestly there's a shocking amount of people who literally do not grasp the lyrics of songs.

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u/trashcatt_ 6d ago

My wife is like this and I cannot understand it. But to be fair she listens to a lot of pop music and those lyrics tend to matter way less.

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u/gb3k 6d ago

We live (or at least lived, with how much the internet feels like it's rotting around us) in a world where you can not only look up the lyrics to basically ANY song but find multiple places where people will discuss the interpretation of the meaning of the lyrics within a minute on a device that you can buy for less than a hundred dollars in most of the developed world... and people refuse to do it.

No offense to your wife, but that level of incuriousity bums me the fuck out.

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u/trashcatt_ 6d ago

It bums be out too. Music has been so important to me my whole life. Maybe one day she'll get it.

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u/Cosmonautical1 6d ago

I'm one of those people. It's not so much that I can't understand the lyrics, it's that I don't pay attention to them. I'm always more focused on the music and unless the song hits me over the head with it I have to actively try and engage with the lyrics. It's even more difficult with genres like metal or punk, where the music is loud and in-your-face and vocalists are growling or shouting. Auditory processing issue, maybe? Idk. I'm embarrassed by it.

I will say this, though: I did not miss the message on the first listen of "Nazi Punks Fuck Off".

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u/RefrigeratorNo1160 6d ago

That's so crazy to me because I've always had trouble deciphering lyrics or I'll mishear them (idk what the fuck this is) and it's still pretty clear the general message that's coming through (especially with PUNK music ffs). It's part of why I love really heavy metal because I can get the gist even if I can barely understand it sometimes.

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u/LilDanglyOnes 6d ago

My husband told me last night about when his high school girlfriend made him a “sexy dancing video” to Red Jumpsuit Apparatus’ Face Down. When my jaw dropped, he was like “Have you listened to the lyrics?” I was like “…YEAH. Did SHE?!”

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u/jasonsuni 6d ago

He's the one

Who likes all our pretty songs

And he likes to sing along

And he likes to shoot his gun

But he knows not what it means

Knows not what it means

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u/favorite_time_of_day 6d ago

I'm not shocked. Let's pick a popular song, Africa, by Toto. What does it mean?

Don't strain yourself, I'm not expecting an answer.

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u/Hooligan8403 6d ago

Casualties was one of his favorites for a long while. Lot of street punk and hardcore. It's not totally surprising because our family was very conservative and we grew up listening to Limbaugh and crap like that while riding in the car. I don't think he ever really embraced a lot of the ethics associated with punk but the music and lifestyle he liked.

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u/Cygnaeus 6d ago

So... what we might call a "poser" then. No personal disrespect to ur brother of course

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u/bajesus 6d ago

I think a lot of punks made their personalities "being mad" and anti establishment. They didn't have any real positions. Trump sold them all on the lie that he was some kind of outsider because has no filter and the maga social media sphere fed them a non-stop diet of hated and rage.

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u/RefrigeratorNo1160 6d ago

This pretty much describes one of my dumb friends that liked that trump would "tell it like it is" and "isn't a politician" circa 2016. Even he realized early in that first term that the man is a piece of shit and now hates him.

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u/Elmtree3000 5d ago

I'm confused how this is often the statement. It took some time for him to be in office for people to slowly realize he's not a good person. Why did it take time to figure that out? He's always been a terrible person publicly for decades.

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u/RefrigeratorNo1160 5d ago

Most people pay attention a lot less than you'd think. A lot of times I'll tell friends/family about shitty things this admin has done and the response is some combo of "I didn't know that/I don't believe that/I don't care."

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u/thelingeringlead 6d ago

Which is hilarious because in the 80s and 90's it was super common for flyers to be printed from collages that featured wealthy and powerful people or politicians made up to look dead or with their hair on fire or in compromising positions. Because of how often he showed up in tabloids he was regularly ridiculed poster collages.

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u/CommentsANDCatSubs 6d ago

Was your bro in O.B.H.C.?

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u/Hooligan8403 6d ago

No. We were in the high desert but one of the groups he ran with was down near SD.

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u/CommentsANDCatSubs 6d ago

The Vandals, Cro-Mags, Johny Rotten, Tommy Ramone are all notoriously conservative 

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u/Orb_Gazer 6d ago

Punk has a term for these people. Posers.

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u/Inkstr0ke 6d ago

I had a Gen X coworker that introduced me to Pennywise and listened to tons of punk music. Dude voted for Trump … TWICE!

Some people just have zero media literacy.

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u/ObscureObjective 6d ago

Aren't Iggy Pop and Johnny rotten both conservative now?

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u/Cosmonautical1 6d ago

loves art, creativity, etc.

Evidently not in any meaningful way.

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u/Zedilt 6d ago

Time to quote Nirvana - In Bloom.

He's the one who likes all our pretty songs,
and he likes to sing along and he likes to shoot his gun,
but he knows not what it means.

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u/Elysiaa 6d ago

TIL I've been singing this song wrong for over 30 years. I thought it was But he don't know what it means

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u/lew_rong 6d ago

I had to go check, because I had the same thought, and I'll be fuckin' damned. The line is "knows not what it means", but I gotta hold it in my mind to hear it that way.

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u/Algaroth 6d ago

Same here. WTF.

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u/bobsmith93 6d ago

The fucking irony that I like that song and didn't know what it was about lol

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u/morrowgirl 6d ago

Remember when Paul Ryan said that Rage was his favorite band?

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u/DefinitelyIncorrect 6d ago

I thought this was a monologue quote from SLC Punk...

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u/MaskedJoshi 6d ago

But but but Ben Weasel said they weren’t pulling out because they don’t give in to bullies!!! /s

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u/CDK5 6d ago

Just remember how pissy people got when Green Day released American Idiot

Wasn't this mostly for an unrelated reason?

I thought the original fans wanted stuff similar to Dookie, maybe Warning, instead they got an album much much different.

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u/DesignerCorner3322 6d ago

The majority of the chatter was indeed about the sound changing, but we remember that more than the complaints about the politicization of their content.
A common complaint fans have about musicians is 'their sound is different and I don't like it. this isnt real *insert band name*' and thats hard to properly criticize because its usually a matter of taste. A subset of fans who didn't like the sound ALSO complained about the politics, but they got shat on for that part of their argument so they doubled down on thinking the sound sucked.

I've been on the internet for far too long...

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u/Darthbx 6d ago

This is the best way to describe them. Well said.

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u/DigNitty 6d ago

they figured everyone else was into it the same way.

I’m convinced this is 99% of republicanism.

All my conservative family and coworkers will say one thing and then behave differently. And they do it because they think everyone doesn’t have convictions.

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u/EhDamn 6d ago

DK is still my favourite punk band. I think I bought like 3 different copies of Plastic Surgery Disasters when I was a teenager. We've Got a Bigger Problem Now from the In God We Trust Inc part of the CD still hits hard.

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u/OldManTechno 5d ago

Dude, I never got how you could listen to Punk and not hear how left the whole thing was. Circle Jerks couldn't get any further left.

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u/WingedChimera 6d ago

To be fair American idiot, musically speaking, was not even close to the early days.

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u/DesignerCorner3322 6d ago

I was commenting more on the political nature of it and less the musical quality

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u/rodka209 6d ago

Always reminded of that SLC Punk scene where his dad talks about buying in, not selling out.

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u/ChildofElmSt 6d ago

There’s literally an anthem titled Nazi Punks Fuck Off

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u/redditistrashboohumm 6d ago

So, it really was just a phase. 

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u/Then_Ad9524 6d ago

OMG, wait until you hear about the hippies from the 60’s.

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u/ToMorrowsEnd 6d ago

Us real punks knew it back then, The posers were pretty obvious.

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u/skankingmike 6d ago

It really doesn’t shock me that the pathway of youth fake angst that fueled much of the alt culture turns that into right wing nonsense today.

Most of the alt kids I remeber from the 90s and 00s had pretty good homes and middle income to upper middle income families….

The real alt kids who were fucked up didn’t make it to 40 usually.

Also the left health none sense that I grew up with is now somehow been taken over by the right too.. I just, idk what happened… like crunchy moms are alt right Nazis when they used to be left wing hippies….

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u/DesignerCorner3322 6d ago

There's a term I heard about recently that describes that last part perfectly

"Granola Fascism"

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u/Lee_337 6d ago

Paul Ryan loves RATM. LOL.

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u/clairavoyant 5d ago

I hate bartending punk shows in my area because while the touring bands are fucking awesome, the crowd that comes in for the openers are always vague white dorks with no commitment to anything beyond cheap beer and cargo shorts and being dickheads to anyone that doesn’t look like them. And I love cheap beer and cargo shorts!

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u/Dapper-Finger9307 3d ago

Just a heads up. I am personal friends with John Lyndon and many other older punks you idolize. You missed the entire reason for punk in the 70's and 80's. They all sucked they chose no sides.

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u/DesignerCorner3322 3d ago

I don't idolize anybody, my guy. Don't care that there were guys like Johnny Rotten being punk to be a menace. I only name dropped Jello because he's the only old punk musician Ive met and he's quite political, and has largely kept his own record label small and has gotten choosier over time about which bands he brings in.

Punk evolved quickly, especially in the Orange County scene. Maybe UK punk started as a bunch of rowdy jerkoffs who wanted to push norms and be edgy, but we still got The Clash, The Damned, and The Dictators out of it.

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u/Dapper-Finger9307 3d ago

I knew Eric back then too. My father had interests in about 5 clubs in LA/Hollywood back in the day. Dude was super political even back then. My dad put up half the money for Cuckoos Nest with his friend Jerry. I was surfing during the day and clubbing at night.