Gay rights ober alles! We are living in a dictatorship
Correction: “Ober” should be “Uber”
According to Wikipedia: “California Über Alles” was the first single by the Dead Kennedys.
The title is an allusion to the first stanza of the old (and to this day, most famous) national anthem of Germany, which began with the words “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles.”
The song focuses on Jerry Brown, the Governor of California between 1975 and 1983, and is sung from his perspective. An imaginary Brown outlines a hippie-fascist vision for America, in which his “suede denim secret police” kill un-cool people with “organic poison gas” chambers. The song illustrates lead singer Jello Biafra’s concern with left-wing politicians mandating liberal ideas to the point of authoritarianism or fascism. Other lines, such as “Serpent’s egg already hatched” (a reference to a line from William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar), comment on the corrosive nature of power. The line “Now it is 1984” references the totalitarian regime of George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.