Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten to Americans: Support Trump “Or You Will Destroy the Country”

Spin ^ | 3/31/17 | Taylor Berman

[ifinnegan]

Yesterday, Johnny Rotten (née John Lydon) defended Donald Trump, calling him, among other things, a “joy to behold” and a “possible friend.” The Sex Pistols frontman also said the media was “trying to smear the bloke as a racist, and that’s completely not true.” Today, in an interview with Virgin Radio, Rotten doubled down on those comments.

“I didn’t expect to be misunderstood, I think I speak very clearly,” he said, according to NME. “America now has a new President and whether you like him or not you have to support him or you will destroy the country. You got to make things work.”

He went on to describe some criticisms of Trump as “stupid and wrong.”

“He’s got some serious money issues and business concerns that deeply fascinate all of us but to be smearing him as a racist, this isn’t right, there’s no evidence or proof to that and until there is, I’ll stand up and say that I think that’s wrong,” he said.

Rotten also said he’d been called a racist—unfairly, he claims, though Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke likely disagrees. “In my past I’ve had that accusation thrown at me willy nilly and it’s a damn hard one to have to listen to and endure – make sure it’s right,” he said. “There’s a terrible attitude in left-wing politics – they just feel they have the pomposity and right to just throw these accusations out without any evidence – well don’t because my world requires facts.”

In 2008, Okereke released a statement saying that at a Barcelona festival Rotten’s entourage launched into a “racist tirade” against him, which included the statement: “Your problem is your black attitude.”

“Someone as respected and as intelligent as Lydon should know better than to bring race into the equation, or socialise with and encourage those who hold such narrow-minded attitudes,” Okereke said at the time. “I am disappointed that someone I held with such high regard turns out to be such a bigot.”

Rotten, for his part, seemed at least somewhat self-aware about what he’d done by bringing up the credible accusations of racism leveled against him nine years ago.

“For the next week and a half the rag-and-bone trade that we call the media is going to be calling me a racist, that’s the tomfoolery of it all,” he said. “That’s going to be damn upsetting all over again to my grandkids, isn’t it?”

[ifinnegan]

This is a follow-up by Rotten. He didn't back down. He doubled-down.

What he says is very direct, succinct and correct.

"my world requires facts" is a good line.

[babble-on]

politics makes reallllly strange bedfellows

[brucedickinson]

Well, if anyone is going to support Trump, now would be a good time. This is like a balloon deflating.

[GrandJediMasterYoda]

A lot of the REAL punk rockers, unlike the frauds of Green day, lean toward the right, Johnny Ramone probably being the most conservative of them all. He's gone now but I would have loved to have heard what he would say about all this Trump bashing. I actually met him once in 1990 near Washington square park helping someone lift a piano through a window, just like a cartoon, very bizarre. He was standing on the sidewalk holding the rope while these people were trying to get it through a window.

[Future Snake Eater]

And The Ramones put on a great show for Mr. Burns' birthday.

[WashingtonFire]

Unfortunately that's just it - the end game of the globalist IS the destruction of the Republic.

Trump is fighting an internal enemy who will go to any extreme to thwart him. They will risk nuclear war of that is what it takes. Trump is fighting for the concept of national sovereignty and respect for the constitution

[bigbob]

My my, hey hey!

[bigbob]

Yet the Stones live!

[sushiman]

Here is what he said : October 2016 :

” He ( Trump ) deeply concerns me. It reminds me of when I was very young. The Cuban Missile Crisis, how tense that was. And if this maniac gets in we will be there all over again in a flying fart’s second. He is not a deep thinker. What he is, he’s a businessman, which means greedy and selfish. So he is only interested in considering his own point of view – which in his case is only his ego. And that makes him very, very irresponsible to the rest of us. “ ( John Lydon ) Wonder what changed his mind about Trump ?

[AnotherUnixGeek]

I bought “Never Mind The Bollocks” when it came out - still a good philosophy for life, not to mention a great LP. And I followed up with the Public Image stuff, too. I’m kind of surprised Lydon is taking this stance, but it’s a pleasant surprise.

[babble-on]

His job is making people annoyed with him. He thought that disliking Trump would annoy people more, and then realized that LIKING Trump would be far more annoying to far more people. He’s not Edmund Burke.

[Pravious]

So claiming blacks have an attitude is now evidence of racism?

[Pravious]

Whatever positive you think Johnny’s going to get out of “making people annoyed with him” is NOTHING compared to the shit-storm of hate he’s going to get from the left for opting out of the hate Trump movement.

[babble-on]

generating shit-storms of hate are his business model for 40 years now.

[Dagnabitt]

With the rise of Trump, there’s a buzz in the “punk community” - with some aging punkers believing they can recapture some of their “relevance” from Punk’s glory years under Reagan and Thatcher.

Unfortunately, for them, punk rock these days is about as edgy as My Little Pony. All of the bands spout the same left-wing platitudes and toe the line on LGBTQxyz issues, “corporate greed” (despite their merch deals), etc, etc. None will say boo about Islam. A bunch of old dudes called “Bad Religion” will use an anti-Christian logo, a Christian cross with a circle and diagonal line through it. They would never dare however to include a Muslim crescent in their logo.

Other bands will drone on about right wing intolerance but when a hundred rock fans at a fricken concert in Paris get blown away by Muslim sadists - nothing. Not a peep. Not one angry song about what happened at the Bataclan nightclub.

[sushiman]

Exactly ! Well said ! You nailed it !

[Rome2000]

Not a good place to be, I once worked for a crew of construction imbeciles on a job in Harlem who decided they would attach a rope to a heavy iron bathtub and lower it slowly down from the fifth floor to the ground.

What could go wrong, there were 5 guys holding the rope, so push the sucker over the parapet and guess what, GRAVITY won!

But back to “Punk Rock”, and I saw Joey Ramone step on dog crap and slip and fall in 1989.

Most punks have always been anarchists or leftists but there are exceptions.

Hardcore is right wing.

But whether you are listening to Skrewdriver or MDC, the hell with politics and focus on the MUSIC.

[raccoonradio]

Johnny Ramone right wing, Joey probably left (”Bonzo Goes To Bittburg”, “The KKK Took My Baby Away”—though the KKK was started by Southern Dems)

One punk band covered Charlie Daniels “In America”

Alternative zany Mojo Nixon, though: “Dan Quayle can’t get no tail, Bushy Bushy Bushy can’t get no pussy” (”Put a Sex Mo-Sheen In the White House”); “Donald Trump Can Suck My D-—”
One group, Pearl Jam maybe, burned W effigies on stage. There were “Rock Against Reagan” concerts and “Rock Against Bush” CD compilations.

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http://www.weeklystandard.com/was-punk-rock-right-wing/article/8474
But was it all put-on? Johnny Ramone described his politics as “ ultraconservative” in an interview with a college newspaper in Oregon in 1985, long after it could have been considered fashionably outre. “I like Ronnie,” he said of Reagan. “Except he’s a little liberal.” Punk, for its part, even attacked the Clash, then England’s biggest (and most dogmatically left- wing) band. “They started with ‘I’m So Bored with the U.S.A,’” a highschool student named Jolly wrote in a concert review. “I didn’t like it as a song to start with, because it’s anti-America and they’re playing in America, so if they don’t like it then why did they come?”
...
Strummer was soon to find out what the f— a socialist millionaire is. He became one. Alone among the first generation of British punk bands, the Clash ultimately made it very big in America. Their diatribes against American consumer culture and paeans to Castro and the Sandinistas endeared them to America’s leftish rock critical establishment, which gave them a free ride long after they had grown musically insipid.