The Boss sang them to Donald Trump. Again. Having arrived in Washington yesterday for a concert, Bruce Springsteen returned to harshly attacking the president of the United States during a three-hour show in the city’s baseball stadium. Always a harsh critic of Trump, Springsteen called him “racist, incompetent and a traitor” as he introduced the first song of the evening, a cover of Edwin Starr’s “War.”
Springsteen against Trump
The legendary American singer, 76, has returned to the center of political debate in recent months after writing and recording a protest song, “Streets of Minneapolis”, shortly after Alex Pretti, a nurse, was killed in that Minnesota city by federal agents on January 24. Introducing the song in Washington, Springsteen said federal agents had “brought death and terror to Minneapolis, but they picked the wrong city.”
It is not the first episode of the “war” between the two. Last year, on the first date of his “Land of Hope and Dreams” European tour, Springsteen said from the stage in Manchester: “My homeland, the America that I love, the America that I wrote about, and which has been a beacon of hope and freedom for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and traitorous administration.” Almost the same three adjectives used yesterday.
Trump didn’t take it very well, replying with an avalanche of insults on his social network Truth: “I see that the highly overrated Bruce Springsteen is going to a foreign country to speak badly of the president of the United States. I never liked him, I never liked his music, nor his radical left-wing politics and, above all, he is not a talented man, he is just an invasive and hateful asshole, who fervently supported the scammer Joe Biden, a mentally incompetent idiot and our worst president ever, who almost destroyed our country.”
De Gregori and the political commitment of artists
Springsteen’s new attack comes a few hours after Francesco De Gregori’s words on the political commitment of some artists. Last May 26, presenting his next projects at the Out Off theater in Milan, De Gregori gave his point of view on personalities like Springsteen who are taking an increasingly clear political position. And he said without half measures: “I always feel embarrassed when an entertainer wants to take sides so clearly on international war issues. The world around us must be analyzed with extreme care and the proclamation thrown off the stage, even written in an appeal, leaves me quite indifferent”.
And again: “Is it necessary for Springsteen to say that he is against a Trump administration? I don’t think so. It’s a role that I don’t feel like sharing. To quote Dylan, or rather Whitman, ‘I contain multitudes’: I don’t want to give or take lessons from anyone, much less from a showman. What qualifications does he have to do so?”.
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Capovilla’s outburst in Venice
On a smaller scale but still on topic, in Italy in recent days the words of Pierpaolo Capovilla, former frontman of One Dimensional Man and Teatro degli Orrori, historical face of Italian alternative rock, furious with his fellow citizens after the victory of the centre-right candidate Simone Venturini in the municipal elections of Venice, have caused discussion.
After the debacle of Andrea Martella, the centre-left candidate, Capovilla vented thus: “Mystification wins, that part of the country that does not care about the future of the historic city wins. The enemies of the historic city win. I will sell my apartment and go to live somewhere else. Venice is dead. It is useless to insist on the corpse. Venice is murdered by the workers, who vote for their exploiters. Venice dies at the hands of a despoiled working class of its values, of its conscience. indoctrinated working class, unaware of its own destiny”.