Boulevard of Trumpian Nightmares

Green Day Celebrates Martin Luther King Day With an Anti-Trump Video

The band’s outspoken frontman isn’t going for subtlety.
Image may contain Billie Joe Armstrong Musical Instrument Musician Human Person Guitar Leisure Activities and Crowd
By Kevin Winter/Getty Images.

Green Day has continued its anti-Trump crusade with a new video released on Martin Luther King Day. A lyric video for "Troubled Times," from Revolution Radio, the band’s most recent album, borrows images from progressive parts of U.S. history, like King’s March on Washington, and depicts more recent images, tied to the 2016 election and its results, destroying them.

One part of the stop-motion video shows a hand pushing a button labeled “vote” while photos of suffragettes are crumbled into a trashcan. In another image, Trump’s teeth are replaced by K.K.K. hats that are as pointed as the message in the song. “What good is love and peace on earth when it’s exclusive?” the lyrics go. “Where’s the truth in the written word if no one reads it?” The video ends the only way it can: with a video of an atom bomb detonating next to a voting machine.

Billie Joe Armstrong, Green Day’s frontman, has frequently spoken out against the president-elect both interviews and live shows in addition to song lyrics and lyric videos. At the American Music Awards this summer, he called out, “No Trump, no K.K.K., no fascist U.S.A.,” while performing “Bang, Bang” from the new album. Prior to that, at the MTV Europe Music Awards, the band tweaked the line that goes “The subliminal mind-fuck America” to “The subliminal mind-Trump America.”

Speaking to Kerrang!, a U.K.-based rock magazine, this summer, Armstrong compared Trump to Hitler: “The worst problem I see about Trump is who his followers are. I actually feel bad for them, because they’re poor, working-class people who can’t get a leg up. They’re pissed off and he’s preyed on their anger. He just said, ‘You have no options and I’m the only one, and I’m going to take care of it myself.’ I mean, that’s fucking Hitler, man!”