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Comment by Thlom | Hacker News Reader

They had a tremendous effect on many young peoples politics at the time. At least on my politics. That is much more than most political bands by a wide margin. Anyway, I don’t really think music can have a big effect on politics per se, but music can be important for political movements.

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I do think music's effects are underappreciated.

You can hear about plenty of artists uniting or representing a movement in the USA esp 60s.

The story of Rodriguez is one of my favorites. He literally had no idea he had been the root of music for social change in Apartheid South Africa.

https://www.npr.org/2012/07/28/157478577/rodriguez-forgotten...

"The first white anti-Apartheid movement derived [inspiration] from a few rock bands," Bendjelloul explains. "Rodriguez was the first artist that actually had political content that was anti-establishment that got heard. ... By remote control, Rodriguez was actually changing a society."

> artists uniting or representing a movement in the USA esp 60s.

They sold music to the huge boomer population when they were young, by the 1980s those same Boomers voted for Reagan in considerable numbers and were buying Debbie Gibson and Rod Stewart albums. RATM sold music to pissed off GenXers when they were young, by 2020 they were voting for Biden. It’s not revolution, it’s youthful angst that gives way to responsibility and lower testosterone levels.

I really don't think gen-xers voting for Biden is in any way analysis to boomers voting for Reagan. I think this is the dominant sentiment on Biden: https://youtu.be/KGmXGkIr7w0 He's a stop gap against fascism.

If ever there was a song that truly captured political sentiment, it's that one. I fully support the stop gap against fascism, but it would be nice to have had better options available.

In the spaces I inhabit, people have pretty much given up on national politics as a theory-of-change and focused on state level politics. Hold your nose and vote the D to avoid fascist takeover, and then work on getting important changes where you can actually make a difference. The national level government is pretty broken, due to poor design which has given us gridlock and tyranny of the minority.

> He's a stop gap against fascism

The point is that those pissed off teenage GenXers would be horrified to vote for any Dem candidate for the last 20 years. All of them were/are part of “the machine” but time has had its opportunity to form basically all of them into conventional adults.

I'm sorry, should they have voted for Trump instead? Those where the only real pragmatic choices. I'm not sure if the boomers listening to music with messages about political change are the same boomers who voted for Reagan. Those who want real change are always dwarfed by "moderate" status quo types, who are largely apolitical and uninformed and therefore easily swayed by fascist messages such is the fundamental nature of the average person throughout time. It takes effort and thought to remain progressive.

I remember being in high school and my soccer teammate was having people over for a party. He put on RATM and told me, "This band, you're not going to believe it, they don't sound like anything out there right now. Plus, listen the lyrics dude, they're super heavy!"

That first track Bombtrack and then Killing In The Name and that was it, I was hooked.

Rage Against the Machine is like the Kanye of the left.

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