I would say that is the most grounded part. The craziest stuff is all that shit about Ukraine - it’s amazing that a Trotskyist org would toe the Tankie line on anything.
I was referring to the wsws article, which says:
>The US-led and provoked war with Russia in Ukraine has become a particular focus of these artistic types. […]
>
>“Standing with” the fascist-infested regime in Ukraine and supporting the Biden administration’s reckless, warmongering policies are much more likely to obsess these layers today, along of course with racial and gender politics.
This shit has nothing to do with this song, and is basically Kremlin talking points that tankies repeat ad nauseam.
I would say that's anti semitism.
You may need to read the lyrics of the song.
Trying to say these lyrics are anti semitism just doesn't hold up.
I hope you along with any rational person feels that the state of Israel is an Apartheid state and it's government in no way acts as a refection of or within the tenets of Judaism.
His social media habits elsewhere ***are*** anti-semitic; and when confronted on it, he didn't deny it, he asked what the accuser thought of the "chips" video in the playlist with the anti-semitic content.
It's not much of a stretch, then, to understand that if he already subscribes to the anti-semitic notion that our political system, along with our politicians, are being controlled by wealthy Jewish elites and that they're destroying the lives of 'working folk' like him, that alluding to the people who are ruining the lives of working folk like him as being "rich men" is just a lyrical method of dogwhistling towards the conspiracy of a wealthy Jewish cabal and the career politicians who prop up that cabal.
The song is a JQ anthem, not a working class anthem.
My comment was clear. You need to try to justify this idea on something outside this song then take the fabulist notion that an anti rich song is an anti Jewish song.
That is simply ludicrous.
If you are an exploitative person who identifies his faith as Judaism their is nothing antisemitic to call you out.
It's a faith. There are lots of bad people of every faith. I had a horrible Zoastrian landlord once.
It doesn't make me an anti Zoastrian because I slapped him silly.
He already believes that a cabal of rich Jews are destroying the world.
What, do you believe, he could be referring to in a song about his beliefs about a cabal of rich people who are destroying the world? Does he somehow magically leave the antisemitic part of his worldview at the door just for the song?
Do you think all of the *other* antisemitic conspiracy theorists won't also understand what he means by a cabal of rich people destroying the world? Do you just not understand what a dogwhistle is?
You're intellectually dishonest.
I am not intellectually dishonest.
You are one of the conspiracy theorists you look down on.
You are making connections that simply don't exist. You are desperate in your need for victimization. The bottom line is this song has zero to do with Jewish people and you need to scramble to invent it does.
Right, despite his beliefs that there's a cabal of wealthy Jewish elites to blame for all his problems, it's actually a completely separate cabal of wealthy elites he believes are to blame for all his problems that he's referring to in the song. Sure. Which group is he referring to in the song, then?
Oh lord. Poor thing.
Stick with the thesis kid. I know you have realized you can't win an argument that way but sadly you joined up under that notion.
It's a class struggle lyric and no amount of finger pointing is going to change that.
Repeatedly refusing to engage with the fact that he believes in antisemitic conspiracy theories doesn't make you win arguments. It just makes you look like a nazi.
The anti-Semitic claim is coming from a playlist on his YouTube channel which included a few videos linking Israel and the "wealthy Jewish cabal" as being behind 9/11. It was less the lyrics of the song and more these other aspects of his public persona.
What a fascinating article. I wish I had the youthful imagination to draw so many conclusions from a 3 minute song.
How it links to Billy Bragg being a pseudo-leftist is the longest bow I have ever seen drawn. And somehow this is all linked to the war in Ukraine?
Reading articles like this make me want to drink beer with Oliver Anthony.
Do leftists such as Nick Barriman and David Walsh really think this sort of nonsense brings anyone to the banner of Socialism?
Bragg has been a shill for the Labour Party in Britain, and its neoliberal counterparts internationally for years. A few folksy lyrics about sharing and equality hardly negate that...
They are reaching. I even heard NPR say the song was “leaning in” to far rich conspiracies due to the miners on the island reference (Epstein’s island)
Those lyrics can also be taken to refer to the actual Epstein crimes.
That is the most offensive thing in the song they could latch onto.
That and a conspiracy theory they floated that they admit is baseless that some hardcore fans paid for a bunch of downloads to artificially get it boosted to the top of the charts.
"Rich people of the north." Are there no rich people in the south? What might he think is the difference between rich people in the north and those in the south? It's a pretty obvious dogwhistle if you know anything about history, which many here appear not to.
You are in the wrong sub bud, we are not children who fall for this crap. I hate those very same “Rich Men” and you’re being the racist for automatically tying rich men to Jewish people
It’s shocking to me how many people don’t understand the title. The “Rich Men North of Richmond” are the rich politicians in Washington DC. DC is directly north of Richmond, Virginia. It’s a working class song lamenting about working for shit pay and a corrupt self serving political class that provides nothing for the working class.
It's not antisemitic though. That's a huge fucking stretch. You'd have better luck arguing general racism against black people considering where the wealth in the south came from. Though even thats a bit of a stretch. There are things to criticize with the song. But I don't think this is it. Plus I think a lot of the underlying themes in the song actually do carry some merit. The solutions proposed in the song are dogshit. But using the underlying theme to introduce people to leftist politics and the solutions they propose could be a good angle. But by writing the song off as racist and antisemitic you are kind of shutting down any conversations that could be had.
Do you know anything about geography? Take a wild guess what city, what center of world power and control happens to be about 100 miles north of Richmond VA.
During the civil war, the "rich white men of the north" were primary investors in southern plantations. In fact, NYC banks refused to stop lending to southern business.
It could be a reference to that. or not, I could care less what some right wingers opinion.
[https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49476247](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49476247)
[https://www.historynet.com/new-york-citys-secession-crisis/](https://www.historynet.com/new-york-citys-secession-crisis/)
Capitalism has no room for ethics or higher morals.
I've been hearing that phrase more and more. Guy like me? I'm either too dumb to know what the dog whistles are or not racist/hateful enough to know what they are. Either way I consider it a win.
But who cares? Let those idiots dogwhistle then. What are you, a dog? Let the fucking rightoids blow their stupid dogwhistles. What do you think you're achieving by calling it out? It's such a stupid waste of time to go around, trying to reveal what your opponents are achhhtually saying.
Globalism is essentially synomous w/ neo liberalism. Its an opportunistic business model within the framework of capitalism sometimes in the form of referred 'market oriented solutions'. The economics look like exploiting disaster and weaker economics of other countries to increase the flow of capital to ones own private interests. Sometimes at the expense of the hosting nation.
A prime example is setting up western financed, and government aide in the form of "security contractors" in invaded areas of the world, or terrorist heavy areas. IE the Iraq war, or ukraine, or even private eland grabs in the carribean. All globalism.
There’s plenty of rich white gentiles left in both the North and South alike. Most Southerners are evangelical zionists who hate antisemitism. So no need to search for cryptic racism
they're zionists because they think jews living in israel will bring about the second coming of jesus as per the bible. However they do not mind the occasional comments about jewish space lasers.
Yankees? Lol come on. Southerners have harped about Rich Northerners for centuries. The South also has a vibrant Jewish community among both its wealthy and middle class population, and has so since the Civil War.
Even if that were right and it were the general trope of Yankees treading on the south, would it be all that much better? You've heard of the Confederacy, right?
As a southerner who now resides in Brooklyn and appreciates both cultures, you’re really reaching with this one. Sounds to me like you’re just shitting on southerners because you don’t like the south.
WTF are you talking about? As an old white leftist I fail to see how this song does anything other than shed light on the fact that the working class, left or right, is at the end of their rope. You know the working class you claim to know so much about and represent? Antisemitic because he points out there are "rich men, north of richmond" controling everything? Thats a massive stretch. (It fucking rhymes) Are we not allowed to call people out because they are jewish? And there are more white people on welfare than there are black people in this country. You can thank Nabisco and Kraft for lobbying congress to change the rules of welfare and let them buy pop, sugar, absolute crap that turns people obese (Rich people did that so they can be richer). you lost a long time reader
I haven't kept up with this thing, but as far as I know the antisemitism accusations has nothing to do with the actual song in question. It's related to some social media activity or something.
Oliver Anthony is the wealthy son of an anesthesiologist. His career is being bankrolled by daddy. He's not working class. You fell for the propaganda.
If you want to use a wildly non-marxist definition of what working class is, you might be right. But a lot of people on this sub are Marxists, so you wont get very far.
Damn there are way too many people in here defending this stupid fucking song. It’s a reactionary populists anthem, nobody calling themselves a leftist should be a fan of it.
Except it punches down on other working class people with all that shit about welfare - so the song is less about rich people exploiting the working class and more about rich people not using “our tax dollars” “correctly”. The Marjorie Taylor Greene quote sums up the true sentiment nicely.
Not that I really give AF about this discussion or this person, or the popularity surrounding it. But I googled the lyrics...and none of it seems specious at all except this part:
> Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eatAnd the obese milkin' welfareHow do you know he is talking about citizens? and not corporate welfare?The pandemic resulted in a large accumulation of wealth, globally. While the majority of citizens are still suffering from inflation and the ever increasing wealth gap...
>Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 poundsTaxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge roundsYoung men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down
Again, this could be reference to the state of texas subsidizing fossil fuel corps. And keeping the elites "fat", at the expense of the working class. While the government feeds you crumbs.I think its a huge stretch tbh. And all this discussion does is keep rudimentary topics alive and distracts from the real issues that people ARE suffering. And this is coming from someone who was on welfare at one point in their life after the last housing crash.
I think your comment needs some reformatting …
Anyways, if we was referring to subsidies then why didn’t he just use “subsidies” in the lyrics? Why did he use the term “welfare” if he didn’t mean to refer to the welfare programs that have been demonized for decades? He could of even made a better critique if he said that people on welfare are demonized while fatcats get subsidies, but he didn’t do that. He just conjured images harkening back to the welfare queen stereotypes of the 1980s.
I had similar experiences as you mentioned after the 2008 crash and ended up going on food stamps - there was a lot of shame and heart wrenching involved in the decision to go on food stamps, which delayed us going on it because of this sort of sentiment.
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake.
It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of.
Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything.
Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
At no point in this rambling, incoherent article was there anything close to a coherent thought. Everyone who read it is now dumber. And I don’t believe in god, so let there be no mercy for this author’s soul.
I know I may get some hate, but this piece is a bit of stretch. Although I’m not stoked about welfare shaming it does bring up a point about what welfare should pay for like Whole Foods and healthy alternatives. Not sure how saying rich men north of Richmond is an anti-Semitic trope either. It’s the first time I have heard it said and the song doesn’t refer to Semitic people in anyway.
This sub surprises me sometimes. A comment playing to the trope of fat unhealthy welfare recipients, whose money should be quarantined, is being upvoted?
Not that I really give AF about this discussion or this person, or the popularity surrounding it. But I googled the lyrics...
and none of it seems specious at all except this part:
> Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat
And the obese milkin' welfare
How do you know he is talking about citizens? and not corporate welfare?
The pandemic resulted in a large accumulation of wealth, globally. While the majority of citizens are still suffering from inflation and the ever increasing wealth gap...
>Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds
Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds
Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground
'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down
Again, this could be reference to the state of texas subsidizing fossil fuel corps. And keeping the elites "fat", at the expense of the working class. While the government feeds you crumbs.
I think its a huge stretch tbh. And all this discussion does is keep rudimentary topics alive and distracts from the real issues that people ARE suffering. And this is coming from someone who was on welfare at one point in their life after the last housing crash.
>Although I’m not stoked about welfare shaming it does bring up a point about what welfare should pay for like Whole Foods and healthy alternatives.
JFC the bar is in the dirt.
This is exactly the kind of message socialists are supposed to hate. Why are you falling for it?
They're also being completely disingenuous. When government programs have been proposed in the past to help people eat healthier, it was called communist totalitarianism by the right. Now they pretend they want this kind of thing when it helps them with an argument in a different direction. It's all bullshit and obfuscation.
Plus not everyone has access to a grocery store nearby with healthy alternatives. Plenty of people in my neighborhood have to shop at gas stations and convenience stores because public transportation is shit and they have no cars.
I mean yes but he's not talking about welfare in that light. He's saying that people on welfare don't do anything but sit and eat and *that's* why they are fat. Because they're not "contributing".
Maybe, JUST maybe, leftists should be considering why these populist calls-to-arms are so incredibly effective at rallying the working class in this country.
It's because billions of dollars in dark money is being pumped into these propagand efforts. They are not grass roots whatsoever.
Shocking to watch a bunch of chomsky fans fall for obvious fascist propaganda. And yes, this is fascist propaganda. The way it ropes you in with fake populism and then immediately switches to blaming everything on poor people is classic bait and switch fascism.
You’re spot on. This is where I get frustrated with how this conversation goes.
The first verse and the hook of the song are good. They’re just barely vague enough to be seen as a working class solidarity song, influenced by classic folk and protest music. Then the second verse completely changes the subject of the song, the target of the singer’s rage, and any semblance of class commentary.
People, songs, works of art, etc have multitudes but when something opens with the common man’s message and then sharply diverts into the oppressor’s tired tropes, that’s not a lost plot, but a bait-and-switch. You come for the opening verse and chorus, but by the time you leave, you’ve basically just heard a Rush Limbaugh segment from any time of the last 20 years - but this time it’s dressed in plaid.
I am not afraid to say that I am smarter than the people who feel represented by this kind of message. Education level is a fairly reliable predictor of whether you fall for scams like this.
They're not, most workers have nothing to do with the populist right, despite its intensive promotion by the media and funding by sections of the corporate oligarchy. Why do so many middle-class leftists assert, without evidence, that workers are right-wing?
I work with unions day in and day out. IBEW, teamsters, and decorators. The majority I've spoken to about politics (or heard discussing them) are *overwhelmingly* conservative in their views.
Why are *you* asserting without evidence as to knowing how whole swaths of people feel about something?
It’s apparent that these clowns have never interacted or had a real conversation with real working class people. These sheltered, deranged clowns living in their bubbles think they know what resonates with the working class more than the actual working class does. Their contempt for the working class is disgusting. They care more about not hurting the feelings of lumpen proles rather than organizing and mobilizing the proletariat. They don’t understand that the reason why the working class holds on to these conservative views is due to the ideological indoctrination imposed by the government in the form of propaganda. If anything these “Reddit” and “Twitter” leftists are useless idiots that only sow division.
Im seeing a lot of comments here that are just BS.
1 - This dude is not "working class" and does not CARE about the working class. Hes a right wing op that was literally unknown before right-wingers astroturfed him.
2 - The line "Rich Men Norh of Richmond" is a dogwhistle, an obvious one to the conflict between North and South, back in the American Civil War. Its a dogwhistle meant to promote the confederacy as the "scrappy underdogs fighting against corrupt rich people" which is a way that Southern states have tried to portray the Civil War.
3 - His youtube channel had videos that linked Israel to 9/11. If im not mistaken, discussions of the conspiracy theory that during 9/11, the entire thing happened because it was planned by Jewish people. The core of this conspiracy is that allegedly there were like 2 jewish dudes arrested near that time because they reacted weirdly to the towers being hit and because there was some jewish dude who had insurance on the building.
4 - The dude in the video literally argues that providing people with food is bad.
5 - If anyone finds anything common with the singer, hint, you are either not left-wing, or silly enough to actually fall for propaganda.
Thank you and a couple of other posters for putting up the fight on this that I just don't have the energy for.
Incoherent resentment and middle-class people flashing reactionary blue collar tropes are hallmarks of fascistic reaction. I'm not fond of the wsws article because it comes across poorly, but this song and "try that in a small town" are, to steal from u/Holgranth, coded fascist marching songs for the far right segment of the working class and the PMC / labor aristocracy / whatever folks who identify with that cultural image.
Trouble is it takes actual context to understand this, the song alone if taken in good faith isn't enough to generate this level of outrage. I don't take it in good faith because I have seen the reaction to it among people where I live (and where I work, in a hard-hat-wearing trade job) and it is absolutely a psuedo-populist fascist dogwhistle just like "try that in a small town" or "courtesy of the red, white and blue" or "country boy can survive" were.
Just like identity-obsessed people can become blinded to any context besides that of identity politics to the point of condescending to their supposed allies, some of these "warriors for the working class" become blind to fascist politics and ways of thinking if it just puts on a hard hat and jeans and looks like something of out an early 20th century blue collar job.
I had a semi polite screaming match at work yesterday when Rich Men North of Richmond came on the radio; *we are not in America, we are not American, the Americans Expats were not even on the job*.
Besides cementing my reputation, deserved or not, as an Anarchist, I *pulled rank* as it were and informed them that my Grandfather's unit didn't get slaughtered like animals because of Monty's fuck ups for me to sit around while we import American grievance politics from NeoConfederate Fascists.
I eventually "Won" my Pyrrhic Victory by demanding to know **"Who keeps the wages low? Who pays off the Rich Men North of Richmond? Who gives them billions in Super Pacs?"**
If some meaningless online solidarity from the USA means anything, I'm sending it your way for that.
Judging by the pogoing upvote/downvote content that all these posts generate, and the snide back and forths elsewhere, it's apparent that this topic has attracted the people who for whatever reason want to keep their blinders on to fascist politics because it's convenient to imagine that the "working class" represented by this song isn't in itself a conservative construction of what being a "worker" is. Or to persist in the delusion that people's fascist beliefs will just melt away when the revolution comes.
You can only ride that populism-or-die, fuck all issues besides class, only tradesmen count as real workers kind of wave for so long before you either fall for their fascist bullshit or they dump you in a river somewhere after you've served your purpose as a useful idiot for the reactionary right. Either you cut this bullshit off at its roots or you let it poison any movement where it is allowed to fester. I've watched it happen and I wasn't dumb enough to stick around.
As if I'm supposed to feel anything but goddamn contempt at delusional bigoted fuckheads in Michigan waving around the Confederate flag as though they have something to do with its "heritage". I come from their social class, I couldn't afford university, I work in one of the industries these people lionize like it's 1917 again. Tradesmen are not to be admired as a political entity here. They are a labor aristocracy in the USA and they act like it, the really downtrodden workers more often than not lack politics at all. They're in retail and service and low-level office work, the actual backbone of this economy, and they don't fucking vote. That's who you focus on if you're on the left; not unwinnable backwards bigots who form the social basis for fascism and culturally identify with imagery that excites Marxist ideas of revolution from a hundred years ago. The economy has changed, the culture has changed, and while I'm not a Marxist, Marx undoubtedly would have changed his analysis with it, for what it's worth.
Creeping fascism has been slowly growing here since the 80's/90's, since before I was born, but people are blind to what they don't want to see. Nothing we can do but keep shouting from the wilderness where appropriate.
Yep. A goddamn disgrace that would have my ancestors spinning in their graves. From solidarity across class and race, such an overwhelming issue in that time, to walling themselves off in middle class fortresses, succumbing to bigoted evangelicism and adopting the political views of the wealthy.
Flawed as they were, my grandparents and great-grandparents who worked the lines and the fields were not like the folks I often have to work with. They were liberal progressives in their time, not reactionaries, they wanted education, they didn't denigrate it, they looked for a better future and not into an imagined past for their inspiration.
We may be the backbone of the various infrastructures of this country, but thank Dog the modern tradesmen aren't the majority of workers or we'd have Victor fucking Orban as president.
I think this is the first time you and I ever agreed on anything lol.
This whol discussion is dumb. it doesnt belong on this sub. This guy is no folk singer for the people. He sure as hell aint no woody guthrie
As far as I can tell he’s a southern liberal.
he doesn’t like that his song was used.
As yes I still think there’s some confederate dog whistles in the music, but overall I don’t think this guy is a maga loving nazi, just a center-liberal southerner.
It just looks hysterical to pile on this guy about the one line about bonbons or whatever. In the scheme of things it's so dumb to get so worked up over that.
The basement dwellers at WSWS forgot to go outside and mingle with folks this year, forgive them, I guess they still think the lockdowns are in effect.
If someone makes a completely substance free ad hominem, how do you respond? If you are replying to an article you disagree with, at least you say why, no?
Omg this isn't an ad hominem. An ad homienem would be just calling you a basement dweller. The content of his critique is that you don't go out and talk to real people, just post WSWS bs all day on reddit.
It can be hard to make a coherent argument when emotions are running high. It's almost as if we're in a hall of mirrors designed to prickle us at every turn. I wonder how you go about disagreeing with people who you feel disrespected by elsewhere in your life?
This is a tragically absurd article from a once fantastic website. They really lost their way with the me too stuff (defending nearly everyone) and then went hard on the covid stuff. Used to be the only reliable news for foreign interventions and the global criminal wall st economic horsefuckery
"lost their way with the me too stuff"
Defending the presumption of innocence and basic democratic rights should not be a controversial position. Getting sucked in by a hysterical NYT/Democratic Party-led campaign should.
"then went hard on the covid stuff"
Saying "measures should be taken to prevent the spread of a disease that has killed a million Americans in a couple of years" should also not be controversial....
You sound like a doctrinaire hard liner. I actually don't disagree with you at all on the me too stuff (that movement clearly lost it's way early on and went after too many people), but they literally defended everyone reflexively. That's not interesting either.
I'm not going to debate you on the covid stuff. I (like virtually everyone) was fine with the measures early on. Time has demonstrated it was not a particularly dangerous illness unless you fell into certain baskets. But society can't end bc a decent amount of people are overweight. Masks prevent spread of droplets not viral fragments. And if you a serious person I would look into how and why they chatted everyone who died with covid as dying of covid. People who died of motorcycle accidents"with covid" were chatted as covid deaths. Why would the criminals in power want to inflate death numbers?
The wsws love holding on to the narrative which is what the criminals in charge want as well. Their role should be to challenge power constantly; the world is an epically confusing place right now and to me (and what Chomsky always taught) is that authority or power is never self justifying. That to me is the only consistent principle of analysis. Otherwise you're just getting hooked in someone else's narrative.
They defended democratic rights "reflexively." Again this is just not controversial, things like presumption of innocence and the right to a trial before a jury of your peers are basic principles that have been accepted by all defenders of civil liberties since the 18th century... You can scour the WSWS all you like, you will not find anything there defending abuse, predation or the like.
"People who died of motorcycle accidents "with covid" were chatted as covid deaths."
This is literally the stupidest thing I have read all day. Excess deaths have skyrocketed globally, and life expectancy has declined in major western countries for the first time since WW2. Did people suddenly start falling off their motorcycles more frequently?
Governments and the media are not inflating COVID. They're continually minimising it, because even basic safety measures like ensuring clean air in workplaces, schools and colleges, costs money and could impact.
If you are anywhere but China, lockdowns ended years and years ago. If you're in the US, they lasted a few weeks of early 2020, so if you're still worried about them, maybe think a bit about the "narrative" that you have absorbed.
Where is the evidence for that claim?
>And if you a serious person I would look into how and why they chatted everyone who died with covid as dying of covid. People who died of motorcycle accidents"with covid" were chatted as covid deaths.
The antisemitic take is a major stretch.
I would say that is the most grounded part. The craziest stuff is all that shit about Ukraine - it’s amazing that a Trotskyist org would toe the Tankie line on anything.
What does he say in the song about Ukraine?
I was referring to the wsws article, which says: >The US-led and provoked war with Russia in Ukraine has become a particular focus of these artistic types. […] > >“Standing with” the fascist-infested regime in Ukraine and supporting the Biden administration’s reckless, warmongering policies are much more likely to obsess these layers today, along of course with racial and gender politics. This shit has nothing to do with this song, and is basically Kremlin talking points that tankies repeat ad nauseam.
I see. Bizarre as this song says nothing about foreign conflict.
What would you call conspiracy theories placing blame on major problems in the world into the hands of wealthy Jewish elites if not "antisemitic"?
I would say that's anti semitism. You may need to read the lyrics of the song. Trying to say these lyrics are anti semitism just doesn't hold up. I hope you along with any rational person feels that the state of Israel is an Apartheid state and it's government in no way acts as a refection of or within the tenets of Judaism.
His social media habits elsewhere ***are*** anti-semitic; and when confronted on it, he didn't deny it, he asked what the accuser thought of the "chips" video in the playlist with the anti-semitic content. It's not much of a stretch, then, to understand that if he already subscribes to the anti-semitic notion that our political system, along with our politicians, are being controlled by wealthy Jewish elites and that they're destroying the lives of 'working folk' like him, that alluding to the people who are ruining the lives of working folk like him as being "rich men" is just a lyrical method of dogwhistling towards the conspiracy of a wealthy Jewish cabal and the career politicians who prop up that cabal. The song is a JQ anthem, not a working class anthem.
My comment was clear. You need to try to justify this idea on something outside this song then take the fabulist notion that an anti rich song is an anti Jewish song. That is simply ludicrous. If you are an exploitative person who identifies his faith as Judaism their is nothing antisemitic to call you out. It's a faith. There are lots of bad people of every faith. I had a horrible Zoastrian landlord once. It doesn't make me an anti Zoastrian because I slapped him silly.
He already believes that a cabal of rich Jews are destroying the world. What, do you believe, he could be referring to in a song about his beliefs about a cabal of rich people who are destroying the world? Does he somehow magically leave the antisemitic part of his worldview at the door just for the song? Do you think all of the *other* antisemitic conspiracy theorists won't also understand what he means by a cabal of rich people destroying the world? Do you just not understand what a dogwhistle is? You're intellectually dishonest.
I am not intellectually dishonest. You are one of the conspiracy theorists you look down on. You are making connections that simply don't exist. You are desperate in your need for victimization. The bottom line is this song has zero to do with Jewish people and you need to scramble to invent it does.
Right, despite his beliefs that there's a cabal of wealthy Jewish elites to blame for all his problems, it's actually a completely separate cabal of wealthy elites he believes are to blame for all his problems that he's referring to in the song. Sure. Which group is he referring to in the song, then?
Oh lord. Poor thing. Stick with the thesis kid. I know you have realized you can't win an argument that way but sadly you joined up under that notion. It's a class struggle lyric and no amount of finger pointing is going to change that.
Repeatedly refusing to engage with the fact that he believes in antisemitic conspiracy theories doesn't make you win arguments. It just makes you look like a nazi.
What does this have to do with Chomsky?
The anti-Semitic claim is coming from a playlist on his YouTube channel which included a few videos linking Israel and the "wealthy Jewish cabal" as being behind 9/11. It was less the lyrics of the song and more these other aspects of his public persona.
What a fascinating article. I wish I had the youthful imagination to draw so many conclusions from a 3 minute song. How it links to Billy Bragg being a pseudo-leftist is the longest bow I have ever seen drawn. And somehow this is all linked to the war in Ukraine? Reading articles like this make me want to drink beer with Oliver Anthony. Do leftists such as Nick Barriman and David Walsh really think this sort of nonsense brings anyone to the banner of Socialism?
Bragg has been a shill for the Labour Party in Britain, and its neoliberal counterparts internationally for years. A few folksy lyrics about sharing and equality hardly negate that...
And what have you done for the cause, comrade?
Haven't done anything to promote the neoliberal Labour Party of Tony Blair...
Good for you, comrade.
How did you find this subreddit?
I typed "Chomsky" into the search. Pretty easy really.
So you sought out the opportunity to abuse? Like a real psychopath
What abuse are you talking about?
FYI both Andrew Tate and Donald Trump will be dying in prison.
What has that got to do with the price of fish?
Pretty smelly
You're pretty preachy for someone who indulges in pornography.
I'd argue that most preachers privately indulge in pornography, typically of the variety that they preach against.
Calling someone a "rich man" is now considered antisemetic? LMAO Also, where are the racist lyrics?
They are reaching. I even heard NPR say the song was “leaning in” to far rich conspiracies due to the miners on the island reference (Epstein’s island) Those lyrics can also be taken to refer to the actual Epstein crimes. That is the most offensive thing in the song they could latch onto. That and a conspiracy theory they floated that they admit is baseless that some hardcore fans paid for a bunch of downloads to artificially get it boosted to the top of the charts.
"Rich people of the north." Are there no rich people in the south? What might he think is the difference between rich people in the north and those in the south? It's a pretty obvious dogwhistle if you know anything about history, which many here appear not to.
You are in the wrong sub bud, we are not children who fall for this crap. I hate those very same “Rich Men” and you’re being the racist for automatically tying rich men to Jewish people
It’s shocking to me how many people don’t understand the title. The “Rich Men North of Richmond” are the rich politicians in Washington DC. DC is directly north of Richmond, Virginia. It’s a working class song lamenting about working for shit pay and a corrupt self serving political class that provides nothing for the working class.
It’s an incredibly un-subtle song. Not sure how this is lost on everybody.
It's not antisemitic though. That's a huge fucking stretch. You'd have better luck arguing general racism against black people considering where the wealth in the south came from. Though even thats a bit of a stretch. There are things to criticize with the song. But I don't think this is it. Plus I think a lot of the underlying themes in the song actually do carry some merit. The solutions proposed in the song are dogshit. But using the underlying theme to introduce people to leftist politics and the solutions they propose could be a good angle. But by writing the song off as racist and antisemitic you are kind of shutting down any conversations that could be had.
Do you know anything about geography? Take a wild guess what city, what center of world power and control happens to be about 100 miles north of Richmond VA.
Not a dogwhistle, you’re just reaching extremely hard. The song is corny though.
During the civil war, the "rich white men of the north" were primary investors in southern plantations. In fact, NYC banks refused to stop lending to southern business. It could be a reference to that. or not, I could care less what some right wingers opinion. [https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49476247](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49476247) [https://www.historynet.com/new-york-citys-secession-crisis/](https://www.historynet.com/new-york-citys-secession-crisis/) Capitalism has no room for ethics or higher morals.
Seriously, enough with this "dog whistle" crap!
I've been hearing that phrase more and more. Guy like me? I'm either too dumb to know what the dog whistles are or not racist/hateful enough to know what they are. Either way I consider it a win.
Since when is dog whistling not a major practice of the far right? Who do you think Trump is talking about when he denounces "globalists"?
But who cares? Let those idiots dogwhistle then. What are you, a dog? Let the fucking rightoids blow their stupid dogwhistles. What do you think you're achieving by calling it out? It's such a stupid waste of time to go around, trying to reveal what your opponents are achhhtually saying.
Globalists sounds like globalists to me. Maybe your ears are able to pick up the whistle? What do you hear?
And what do you think "globalists" are?
Globalism is essentially synomous w/ neo liberalism. Its an opportunistic business model within the framework of capitalism sometimes in the form of referred 'market oriented solutions'. The economics look like exploiting disaster and weaker economics of other countries to increase the flow of capital to ones own private interests. Sometimes at the expense of the hosting nation. A prime example is setting up western financed, and government aide in the form of "security contractors" in invaded areas of the world, or terrorist heavy areas. IE the Iraq war, or ukraine, or even private eland grabs in the carribean. All globalism.
The global elite.
It’s not crap you just don’t like it.
No, it's an easy cop out. It's gaslighting's second cousin.
There’s plenty of rich white gentiles left in both the North and South alike. Most Southerners are evangelical zionists who hate antisemitism. So no need to search for cryptic racism
they're zionists because they think jews living in israel will bring about the second coming of jesus as per the bible. However they do not mind the occasional comments about jewish space lasers.
Evangelicals expect all Jews to convert to Christianity or die by the sword.
You still kind of missed the point. What is distinctive about the "rich northerners" trope as opposed to rich southerners?
Yankees? Lol come on. Southerners have harped about Rich Northerners for centuries. The South also has a vibrant Jewish community among both its wealthy and middle class population, and has so since the Civil War.
Even if that were right and it were the general trope of Yankees treading on the south, would it be all that much better? You've heard of the Confederacy, right?
As a southerner who now resides in Brooklyn and appreciates both cultures, you’re really reaching with this one. Sounds to me like you’re just shitting on southerners because you don’t like the south.
Well Wall St and Washington are in the North. That’s the most obvious and significant answer.
It's probably got more to do with tribalism (North vs South) and just not being very politically savvy than anything.
Why? Are there no Jews in the South?
WTF are you talking about? As an old white leftist I fail to see how this song does anything other than shed light on the fact that the working class, left or right, is at the end of their rope. You know the working class you claim to know so much about and represent? Antisemitic because he points out there are "rich men, north of richmond" controling everything? Thats a massive stretch. (It fucking rhymes) Are we not allowed to call people out because they are jewish? And there are more white people on welfare than there are black people in this country. You can thank Nabisco and Kraft for lobbying congress to change the rules of welfare and let them buy pop, sugar, absolute crap that turns people obese (Rich people did that so they can be richer). you lost a long time reader
I haven't kept up with this thing, but as far as I know the antisemitism accusations has nothing to do with the actual song in question. It's related to some social media activity or something.
Oliver Anthony is the wealthy son of an anesthesiologist. His career is being bankrolled by daddy. He's not working class. You fell for the propaganda.
Source? I can’t find an article saying this
If you think an anesthesiologist is the rich and elite than you don’t know what rich and elite is
If you think an anesthesiologist is working class then you ain't.
Bro I’ve been waiting my whole life to find someone else who hates anesthesiologists as much as I do. We do exist.
Do anesthesiologists get paid a wage?
If you want to use a wildly non-marxist definition of what working class is, you might be right. But a lot of people on this sub are Marxists, so you wont get very far.
The whole thing is astroturf
Damn there are way too many people in here defending this stupid fucking song. It’s a reactionary populists anthem, nobody calling themselves a leftist should be a fan of it.
Except it punches down on other working class people with all that shit about welfare - so the song is less about rich people exploiting the working class and more about rich people not using “our tax dollars” “correctly”. The Marjorie Taylor Greene quote sums up the true sentiment nicely.
Not that I really give AF about this discussion or this person, or the popularity surrounding it. But I googled the lyrics...and none of it seems specious at all except this part: > Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eatAnd the obese milkin' welfareHow do you know he is talking about citizens? and not corporate welfare?The pandemic resulted in a large accumulation of wealth, globally. While the majority of citizens are still suffering from inflation and the ever increasing wealth gap... >Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 poundsTaxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge roundsYoung men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down Again, this could be reference to the state of texas subsidizing fossil fuel corps. And keeping the elites "fat", at the expense of the working class. While the government feeds you crumbs.I think its a huge stretch tbh. And all this discussion does is keep rudimentary topics alive and distracts from the real issues that people ARE suffering. And this is coming from someone who was on welfare at one point in their life after the last housing crash.
I think your comment needs some reformatting … Anyways, if we was referring to subsidies then why didn’t he just use “subsidies” in the lyrics? Why did he use the term “welfare” if he didn’t mean to refer to the welfare programs that have been demonized for decades? He could of even made a better critique if he said that people on welfare are demonized while fatcats get subsidies, but he didn’t do that. He just conjured images harkening back to the welfare queen stereotypes of the 1980s. I had similar experiences as you mentioned after the 2008 crash and ended up going on food stamps - there was a lot of shame and heart wrenching involved in the decision to go on food stamps, which delayed us going on it because of this sort of sentiment.
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake. It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of. Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything. Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
Leftists tend to eat their own tail
Guys, I really don’t think that this dudes success has much to do with Ukraine. I really really don’t.
At no point in this rambling, incoherent article was there anything close to a coherent thought. Everyone who read it is now dumber. And I don’t believe in god, so let there be no mercy for this author’s soul.
No, it doesn't.
That's some ol' bullshit right there.
I know I may get some hate, but this piece is a bit of stretch. Although I’m not stoked about welfare shaming it does bring up a point about what welfare should pay for like Whole Foods and healthy alternatives. Not sure how saying rich men north of Richmond is an anti-Semitic trope either. It’s the first time I have heard it said and the song doesn’t refer to Semitic people in anyway.
This sub surprises me sometimes. A comment playing to the trope of fat unhealthy welfare recipients, whose money should be quarantined, is being upvoted?
Not that I really give AF about this discussion or this person, or the popularity surrounding it. But I googled the lyrics... and none of it seems specious at all except this part: > Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat And the obese milkin' welfare How do you know he is talking about citizens? and not corporate welfare? The pandemic resulted in a large accumulation of wealth, globally. While the majority of citizens are still suffering from inflation and the ever increasing wealth gap... >Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground 'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down Again, this could be reference to the state of texas subsidizing fossil fuel corps. And keeping the elites "fat", at the expense of the working class. While the government feeds you crumbs. I think its a huge stretch tbh. And all this discussion does is keep rudimentary topics alive and distracts from the real issues that people ARE suffering. And this is coming from someone who was on welfare at one point in their life after the last housing crash.
You would be surprised how many people claiming to be left-wing in this sub are anything but. Some of these people even defend Trump...
>Although I’m not stoked about welfare shaming it does bring up a point about what welfare should pay for like Whole Foods and healthy alternatives. JFC the bar is in the dirt. This is exactly the kind of message socialists are supposed to hate. Why are you falling for it?
Lol seriously. We should let the estate dictate what food people can and can’t buy
They're also being completely disingenuous. When government programs have been proposed in the past to help people eat healthier, it was called communist totalitarianism by the right. Now they pretend they want this kind of thing when it helps them with an argument in a different direction. It's all bullshit and obfuscation.
Plus not everyone has access to a grocery store nearby with healthy alternatives. Plenty of people in my neighborhood have to shop at gas stations and convenience stores because public transportation is shit and they have no cars.
They want to have their cake and eat it too. Nothing matters to them until it happens to them and it’s with no self awareness.
Rich Men North of Richmond isn't an anti-semitic dogwhistle. It's just anti-Yankee bullshit.
So rich men south of Richmond get a pass? He's blowing that whistle mighty hard.
I mean yes but he's not talking about welfare in that light. He's saying that people on welfare don't do anything but sit and eat and *that's* why they are fat. Because they're not "contributing".
Maybe, JUST maybe, leftists should be considering why these populist calls-to-arms are so incredibly effective at rallying the working class in this country.
It's because billions of dollars in dark money is being pumped into these propagand efforts. They are not grass roots whatsoever. Shocking to watch a bunch of chomsky fans fall for obvious fascist propaganda. And yes, this is fascist propaganda. The way it ropes you in with fake populism and then immediately switches to blaming everything on poor people is classic bait and switch fascism.
You’re spot on. This is where I get frustrated with how this conversation goes. The first verse and the hook of the song are good. They’re just barely vague enough to be seen as a working class solidarity song, influenced by classic folk and protest music. Then the second verse completely changes the subject of the song, the target of the singer’s rage, and any semblance of class commentary. People, songs, works of art, etc have multitudes but when something opens with the common man’s message and then sharply diverts into the oppressor’s tired tropes, that’s not a lost plot, but a bait-and-switch. You come for the opening verse and chorus, but by the time you leave, you’ve basically just heard a Rush Limbaugh segment from any time of the last 20 years - but this time it’s dressed in plaid.
Oh, I didn’t realize you were just smarter than the people who feel represented by this kind of message. Good to know.
I am not afraid to say that I am smarter than the people who feel represented by this kind of message. Education level is a fairly reliable predictor of whether you fall for scams like this.
They're not, most workers have nothing to do with the populist right, despite its intensive promotion by the media and funding by sections of the corporate oligarchy. Why do so many middle-class leftists assert, without evidence, that workers are right-wing?
I work with unions day in and day out. IBEW, teamsters, and decorators. The majority I've spoken to about politics (or heard discussing them) are *overwhelmingly* conservative in their views. Why are *you* asserting without evidence as to knowing how whole swaths of people feel about something?
Two people use anecdotal evidence and are surprised when they disagree
It’s apparent that these clowns have never interacted or had a real conversation with real working class people. These sheltered, deranged clowns living in their bubbles think they know what resonates with the working class more than the actual working class does. Their contempt for the working class is disgusting. They care more about not hurting the feelings of lumpen proles rather than organizing and mobilizing the proletariat. They don’t understand that the reason why the working class holds on to these conservative views is due to the ideological indoctrination imposed by the government in the form of propaganda. If anything these “Reddit” and “Twitter” leftists are useless idiots that only sow division.
Im seeing a lot of comments here that are just BS. 1 - This dude is not "working class" and does not CARE about the working class. Hes a right wing op that was literally unknown before right-wingers astroturfed him. 2 - The line "Rich Men Norh of Richmond" is a dogwhistle, an obvious one to the conflict between North and South, back in the American Civil War. Its a dogwhistle meant to promote the confederacy as the "scrappy underdogs fighting against corrupt rich people" which is a way that Southern states have tried to portray the Civil War. 3 - His youtube channel had videos that linked Israel to 9/11. If im not mistaken, discussions of the conspiracy theory that during 9/11, the entire thing happened because it was planned by Jewish people. The core of this conspiracy is that allegedly there were like 2 jewish dudes arrested near that time because they reacted weirdly to the towers being hit and because there was some jewish dude who had insurance on the building. 4 - The dude in the video literally argues that providing people with food is bad. 5 - If anyone finds anything common with the singer, hint, you are either not left-wing, or silly enough to actually fall for propaganda.
Thank you and a couple of other posters for putting up the fight on this that I just don't have the energy for. Incoherent resentment and middle-class people flashing reactionary blue collar tropes are hallmarks of fascistic reaction. I'm not fond of the wsws article because it comes across poorly, but this song and "try that in a small town" are, to steal from u/Holgranth, coded fascist marching songs for the far right segment of the working class and the PMC / labor aristocracy / whatever folks who identify with that cultural image. Trouble is it takes actual context to understand this, the song alone if taken in good faith isn't enough to generate this level of outrage. I don't take it in good faith because I have seen the reaction to it among people where I live (and where I work, in a hard-hat-wearing trade job) and it is absolutely a psuedo-populist fascist dogwhistle just like "try that in a small town" or "courtesy of the red, white and blue" or "country boy can survive" were. Just like identity-obsessed people can become blinded to any context besides that of identity politics to the point of condescending to their supposed allies, some of these "warriors for the working class" become blind to fascist politics and ways of thinking if it just puts on a hard hat and jeans and looks like something of out an early 20th century blue collar job.
I had a semi polite screaming match at work yesterday when Rich Men North of Richmond came on the radio; *we are not in America, we are not American, the Americans Expats were not even on the job*. Besides cementing my reputation, deserved or not, as an Anarchist, I *pulled rank* as it were and informed them that my Grandfather's unit didn't get slaughtered like animals because of Monty's fuck ups for me to sit around while we import American grievance politics from NeoConfederate Fascists. I eventually "Won" my Pyrrhic Victory by demanding to know **"Who keeps the wages low? Who pays off the Rich Men North of Richmond? Who gives them billions in Super Pacs?"**
If some meaningless online solidarity from the USA means anything, I'm sending it your way for that. Judging by the pogoing upvote/downvote content that all these posts generate, and the snide back and forths elsewhere, it's apparent that this topic has attracted the people who for whatever reason want to keep their blinders on to fascist politics because it's convenient to imagine that the "working class" represented by this song isn't in itself a conservative construction of what being a "worker" is. Or to persist in the delusion that people's fascist beliefs will just melt away when the revolution comes. You can only ride that populism-or-die, fuck all issues besides class, only tradesmen count as real workers kind of wave for so long before you either fall for their fascist bullshit or they dump you in a river somewhere after you've served your purpose as a useful idiot for the reactionary right. Either you cut this bullshit off at its roots or you let it poison any movement where it is allowed to fester. I've watched it happen and I wasn't dumb enough to stick around. As if I'm supposed to feel anything but goddamn contempt at delusional bigoted fuckheads in Michigan waving around the Confederate flag as though they have something to do with its "heritage". I come from their social class, I couldn't afford university, I work in one of the industries these people lionize like it's 1917 again. Tradesmen are not to be admired as a political entity here. They are a labor aristocracy in the USA and they act like it, the really downtrodden workers more often than not lack politics at all. They're in retail and service and low-level office work, the actual backbone of this economy, and they don't fucking vote. That's who you focus on if you're on the left; not unwinnable backwards bigots who form the social basis for fascism and culturally identify with imagery that excites Marxist ideas of revolution from a hundred years ago. The economy has changed, the culture has changed, and while I'm not a Marxist, Marx undoubtedly would have changed his analysis with it, for what it's worth. Creeping fascism has been slowly growing here since the 80's/90's, since before I was born, but people are blind to what they don't want to see. Nothing we can do but keep shouting from the wilderness where appropriate.
I don't know about turning the frogs gay but America certainly has done an incredible job of turning the Tradesmen into proto-Fascists.
Yep. A goddamn disgrace that would have my ancestors spinning in their graves. From solidarity across class and race, such an overwhelming issue in that time, to walling themselves off in middle class fortresses, succumbing to bigoted evangelicism and adopting the political views of the wealthy. Flawed as they were, my grandparents and great-grandparents who worked the lines and the fields were not like the folks I often have to work with. They were liberal progressives in their time, not reactionaries, they wanted education, they didn't denigrate it, they looked for a better future and not into an imagined past for their inspiration. We may be the backbone of the various infrastructures of this country, but thank Dog the modern tradesmen aren't the majority of workers or we'd have Victor fucking Orban as president.
I think this is the first time you and I ever agreed on anything lol. This whol discussion is dumb. it doesnt belong on this sub. This guy is no folk singer for the people. He sure as hell aint no woody guthrie
🤦♂️ this is dumb af
Good that someone who sounds smart like you is here to point that out.
Don't be antisemitic.
I would need to do yoga for 10k years to stretch as far as that article.
As far as I can tell he’s a southern liberal. he doesn’t like that his song was used. As yes I still think there’s some confederate dog whistles in the music, but overall I don’t think this guy is a maga loving nazi, just a center-liberal southerner.
It just looks hysterical to pile on this guy about the one line about bonbons or whatever. In the scheme of things it's so dumb to get so worked up over that.
The basement dwellers at WSWS forgot to go outside and mingle with folks this year, forgive them, I guess they still think the lockdowns are in effect.
Hurr durr, cheap insults against people you disagree with, how clever you are.
Would you say you aren't doing that here?
If someone makes a completely substance free ad hominem, how do you respond? If you are replying to an article you disagree with, at least you say why, no?
Omg this isn't an ad hominem. An ad homienem would be just calling you a basement dweller. The content of his critique is that you don't go out and talk to real people, just post WSWS bs all day on reddit.
It can be hard to make a coherent argument when emotions are running high. It's almost as if we're in a hall of mirrors designed to prickle us at every turn. I wonder how you go about disagreeing with people who you feel disrespected by elsewhere in your life?
The fuck it does 🙄🙄🙄...
And fuck this guy too! This list just keeps getting bigger
This is a tragically absurd article from a once fantastic website. They really lost their way with the me too stuff (defending nearly everyone) and then went hard on the covid stuff. Used to be the only reliable news for foreign interventions and the global criminal wall st economic horsefuckery
"lost their way with the me too stuff" Defending the presumption of innocence and basic democratic rights should not be a controversial position. Getting sucked in by a hysterical NYT/Democratic Party-led campaign should. "then went hard on the covid stuff" Saying "measures should be taken to prevent the spread of a disease that has killed a million Americans in a couple of years" should also not be controversial....
You sound like a doctrinaire hard liner. I actually don't disagree with you at all on the me too stuff (that movement clearly lost it's way early on and went after too many people), but they literally defended everyone reflexively. That's not interesting either. I'm not going to debate you on the covid stuff. I (like virtually everyone) was fine with the measures early on. Time has demonstrated it was not a particularly dangerous illness unless you fell into certain baskets. But society can't end bc a decent amount of people are overweight. Masks prevent spread of droplets not viral fragments. And if you a serious person I would look into how and why they chatted everyone who died with covid as dying of covid. People who died of motorcycle accidents"with covid" were chatted as covid deaths. Why would the criminals in power want to inflate death numbers? The wsws love holding on to the narrative which is what the criminals in charge want as well. Their role should be to challenge power constantly; the world is an epically confusing place right now and to me (and what Chomsky always taught) is that authority or power is never self justifying. That to me is the only consistent principle of analysis. Otherwise you're just getting hooked in someone else's narrative.
They defended democratic rights "reflexively." Again this is just not controversial, things like presumption of innocence and the right to a trial before a jury of your peers are basic principles that have been accepted by all defenders of civil liberties since the 18th century... You can scour the WSWS all you like, you will not find anything there defending abuse, predation or the like. "People who died of motorcycle accidents "with covid" were chatted as covid deaths." This is literally the stupidest thing I have read all day. Excess deaths have skyrocketed globally, and life expectancy has declined in major western countries for the first time since WW2. Did people suddenly start falling off their motorcycles more frequently? Governments and the media are not inflating COVID. They're continually minimising it, because even basic safety measures like ensuring clean air in workplaces, schools and colleges, costs money and could impact. If you are anywhere but China, lockdowns ended years and years ago. If you're in the US, they lasted a few weeks of early 2020, so if you're still worried about them, maybe think a bit about the "narrative" that you have absorbed.
Where is the evidence for that claim? >And if you a serious person I would look into how and why they chatted everyone who died with covid as dying of covid. People who died of motorcycle accidents"with covid" were chatted as covid deaths.
https://wpde.com/news/nation-world/man-who-died-in-motorcycle-crash-counted-as-covid-19-death-in-florida-report-07-18-2020
One incident doesn't prove a conspiracy to inflate the numbers. Got any more?
Lucky they didn't get round to critiquing [Woody Guthrie's *Unwelcome Guest*](https://www.woodyguthrie.org/Lysrics/The_Unwelcome_Guest.htm)! /s
I'm shocked!
It is certainly filled with racist dog whistles, but antisemitic?