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Finn, I literally cannot tell you how coincidental this is, I love these guys so much I wrote two essays on them! Then I wake up two days after finishing them and I see this, God what a blessing this is!
So crazy to me that you associate yourself so strongly with punk but you have managed to totally miss the ethos entirely and sound like some self-congratulatory capitalist-happy douche. The fact that you equate communism with only one type of communism (state communism) and completely discount anti-authoritarian strains of communism EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVE LISTENED TO A SHITLOAD OF PUNK is fucking a shame and its on you, man. Your ignorance is pretty inexcusable because its not like you haven't been exposed to those ideas. Weak ass analysis of Rage btw. Also, you caused the first argument of quarantine with my husband bc I was yelling at you while you were spewing your nonsense. So: Blech.
I saw them at the Reading festival here in the U.K. in 93 & the drummer Brad played the show with his back to the crowd. So cool. Never seen that before or since. Great stuff. I wish I was 17 again.
Bring Back KP, Animated Obviously /CrisisOnFire1977 Oh for sure, there are a ton of well done rap/rock combos both then and now. Linkin Park was one of them. I’m just poking fun at how much less corny the overall 90s rock and hip hop mash ups now seem compared to a lot of what came later.
To your point about people not understanding the lyrics, my brother (who’s probably around your age) told me in high school he’d always run into people who were like “yeah, Rage man!” And he would be like “what are you doing after high school?” “Joining the military, bro!”
My older cousin (who was in the Army) bought me Rage's first album for Xmas when I was 10. I find it hilarious he no longer talks to me because of political differences. Like,"You're the one who got me here, dude!"
Imagine being open to do both, right? I'd argue that somebody willing to explore multiple challenging angles of their worldview and hold multiple challenging angles of view close to their heart is somebody that's in more of a position to actually hold those views because they've put in the work to actually explore what these conflicts means to them. The US has had a history of veteran-activism in basically every pivotal period of its existence. Wouldn't you potentially value an expression of experience from the person that's done their time boots on the ground in the streets at home and boots on the ground in the streets afar? Being one doesn't have to exclude you from being "eligible" to also be the other, and even RATM is guilty of exclusion/labels. Fuck labels from other people telling you what you can and can't do.
Trepanation21 I never said you couldn’t... it’s just an ironic story I wanted to share that had to do with a topic he mentioned. Nice job trying to bait me though 👍
@@anthonycianfrano8931 Imagine having your head so up your ass that you think that dude was trying to bait you. He presented a well done argument and you dismiss it because it goes against what you believe.
Tom Morello's guitar playing is "not too technical"? Bro have you heard the solo on "Take The Power Back." it is by far one of the most technical solos he's ever created. The dude is by far one of the most underrated shredders, but people only know him for making weird sounds with a whammy pedal. (Not to undermine that either because a majority of people thought the whammy pedal was trash until he came along.)
SPECTRE he can be, I’ve seen clips of he just chooses not to I think. His earliest influences were Yngwie and Randy Rhoads and then he decided that there was enough of the shredding going on that he decided to shift his focus towards hip hop. I believe he explains it in the metal evolution documentary about nu metal.
@@spencercoles1800 tom morello's guitar playing isn't technical. That's not bashing him at all, he has a very distinct sound and creativity. Some of the first songs I learned on guitar were rage. Catchy and easy to learn
@@shawnr8438 Yeah his riffs and chord progressions aren't super technical but a hook of a song imo shouldn't be overtly complicated to play. But there are songs especially off the first RATM album that have really intricate solos in them.
last time I heard NBC is now a left leaning news. What a weird world we're living in. I personally have no trust with any news sites anymore. Everything seems to be too biased now. :(
I remember during Occupy Wall street, somebody asked Tom Morello what the hell he thought he was doing there among the protesters and I'll never forget his answer: "When you pick up a guitar, you don't put down your First Amendment rights. I don't think that you have to be a Harvard graduate in political science to comment on political matters, but I am a Harvard graduate in political science." This was always fascinating to me because there's a lot to explore about the backgrounds of political pundits and "who gets to say what". It is a point about the importance of knowledge but also the fact that politics isnt simply a nebulous conflict of ideology, its about the quality of our day to day lives, and everyone needs to have a say in that.
@@DinsdalePiranha67 As we're finding out currently across the nation. Funny thing though, why is it that leftists like Morello will blabber about not needing this degree or that degree to have a say in politics. But the millisecond someone doesnt agree 1000% with what leftists believe they get labeled as "uneducated" or "ignorant hicks" by.. leftists like Tom Morello.
@@jmill3147 Even funnier is when the right sees someone with a platform, like a the ones musicians, actors, sports stars, or any other form of entertainer has, the right absolutely looses their minds. They attack that person, and like to yell that that person isn't paid to be a politician and should stick to the entertainment industry.
@@eskimogioia9848 I've never lost my mind over someone having an opinion that is different from my own. That is called FREEDOM! Doesnt Zach yell and squeal about freedom in a certain RATM song? Yes, yes he does. But 20 years down the road we now see that Zach doesnt want everyone to have freedom.. he only wants people who ascribe to the beliefs of himself and the rest of his commie band and other elitists.
@@jmill3147 Your initial comment literally attacked Morello for having an opinion and now are calling the members of Rage elitist. Kind of funny how you don't see that you are doing exactly what you claim they do.
312vandal You mad? lol It was a good comparison and point. I don’t think I’ve heard a single RATM song with complex lyrics. Like he said, strong points but simple lyrics. That doesn’t mean lil pump is good in any sense lmao
Ok big boys and girls. Finn compared one thing that they both do well. He never compared them on anything besides making simple lyrics people can remember.
One time I got chastised by his team of dick riders, himself included, in his Facebook group all because I criticize Lil Pump. I guess This is what happens when you mess with a groupies' crush. Dear Finn, Sorry that I'm not a basic bitch, can't relate.
Sweet video Finn, appreciate the nuances and deep dives. One thing though: When you talk about Tom’s background, I think it’s really important to underline that his father was a Kenyan diplomat who took part in the Mau-Mau uprising and wider struggle for Kenyan independence. He grew up in close proximity to the Kenyan independence movement and initial governments, and the idea of Communism or radical Socialism was (often still is) closely attached to anti-colonialism in a lot of places.
I think the other thing that should have been mentioned is that Finns example of communism is not even close to what Tom believes in. Throughout history every nation that's governed under "communism" have just been glorified dictatorships or extreme socialism. They only used that word to help with their rise of power. USSR, Cuba, Vietnam, China etc; none are/were true communist countries.True communism has yet to be implemented to this date and a lot of people tend to ignore that.
...Or maybe you could just accept that *this* is the actual true Communism, that it killed millions of people through Stalin, Mao, Castro, NK dictators and a list of others and their successors, and that "true Communism" as it's envisioned does not exist.
@@TheZeroDozer Gunsand42 agrees with you about how it "doesn't exist" - they said that actual communism hasn't been achieved anywhere. Are you saying those authoritarian states are the "true communists" because they used the word? So the People's Republic of China is a republic instead of an authoritarian state because they put it in their name?
@@HessianHunter Didn't you know Steve? Communism is when you kill 200 million people and if you repeat it enough it'll become true, also the Nazis weren't nationalist but having socialist in your name does make you a socialist (it's just copy paste Prager U bullshit hahaha). Those movements did mobilize parts of the population through the idea of communism but at one point they all took different directions, the socioeconomic context at the time, the power struggles, yadda yadda, Bakunin was right, the State does this or that etc, but the main problem is that the people saying "Communism did exactly what it was supposed to and killed 4000 million people" are the same people saying "real Capitalism hasn't been tried yet, socialism is when the government does stuff"
It's funny how neoliberal reprobates will try to criticize anarcho-communists by pointing out to confirmed CIA misinformation about Marx-Leninist states.
@@douglasboylan3477 maybe try reading about it and you would understand that communism and anarchism and are not opposed to each other. if youre interested read the conquest of bread by peter kropotkin its not that long or hard to read
@@douglasboylan3477 The "anarcho" side of it refers to a federal government. There wouldn't be a single State, but a series of communities without things like private ownership of businesses or monopolized utilities. Instead you'd have worker control of businesses and factories in a smaller scale, so you'd avoid the horrorshow of authoritarian communism. Anarchism gets a bad rap, it isn't advocating a lawless free-for-all, it's more about abolishing a federal government in favor of more local governmental bodies.
RATM did SO much more than the average fan or casual observer ever knew about. The amount of money they raised for the defense of both Mumia and Leonard Peltier (not to mention the amount of people who were introduced to these causes via ratm). At the time I was skeptical of their methods of fighting the system from within the system.... Until I was able to speak with activist organizers and understand the impact rage had not only spreading the message but also the amount of financial support ratm provided.
I'd go into a depression if I was even half way what I was trying to preach. I didn't know the rage guys were in that cypress hill song. Although they seemed a little b4 my time too. My sheltered bubble tho. I really had to ponder what shells even meant, while trying my hardest to figure out context still frontin... bc I wasn't gonna ask any1 else.. imagine being around bikers like how the hell do u not know black label society when zack walks in. My younger head: dude idk. Just thought he was part of your cheesey but also really scary... biker crew 🤔🤷🏻♀️. Prob the entire rock community: 🤦🏼♂️🤦🏻♀️🤦♂️🤦♀️🤦🏽♂️🤦🏽♀️🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♀️🤦🏿♀️🤦🏿♂️& it surprised me Tom did that song w/ g.son. although maybe all that stuff ends up in my feed for a reason. I thought I was the few who stumbled on him. - I'm not mean. I'm just stand offish... now I feel like I gotta go revisit songs
I think this like criticizing leftists for making money thing is really dumb....like we're kinda stuck in this place where if we're not successful we just hate capitalism because we're poor and never tried hard enough or whatever...but if you're Rage you're one of the biggest bands in the world and making money so you can't criticize capitalism either because you're making money off it. It's a silly criticism it's basically the "you wanna improve society yet you participate in society" meme... I have some criticisms of Rage here and there I think their lyrics are a little bit too preachy(and I'm saying that as someone who basically 100% agrees with them) but this like "you're successful under capitalism so you don't get to complain" is one that I've heard a lot and I think it's just so fucking ridiculous.
You cease to rage against the machine when you become part of the machine. You need to build an audience to spread your message, yes, but when you become successful decrying the very mechanism that made you successful, you better keep your ass on that tightrope. Nothing says "anti-capitalist" quite like licensing your image for Guitar Hero.
Morello basically said that the system itself is capitalist and they exist within that system and use that system to spread their message. I call BS. Once they made it big, why not just give away the albums? Why continue to sell? Why continue to sell their liknesses. Why sell the merch? They have the money, why not move somewhere that is ALREADY communist? Just sayin
they suck anyways so it doesnt matter. hed pe is a political band that stands their ground and they are actually good. they realized that the corporate rock world sucked and went independent. the opposite of ratm.
Another thing that made them great, is they blew up when the grunge scene was all over the place. It's not an easy feat to do somthing out of the box, and be super successful. Especially when it comes to music.
True. But were the two genres in opposition? More like a Venn diagram with a lot of overlap. Let's not ignore Nirvana and those similar blew up in face of the entire glam/hair metal genre. I really disliked bands such a Poison, Ratt, Motley Crue, and Cinderella, and these bands had years of dominance and saturation. The arrival of Nirvana was a thank-the-Lord departure from all that. RATM really wasn't much of a step away from grunge. And grunge was in the mainstream for only about a year or two. A mile wide and two inches deep at the time.
That's a brain dead take. They literally hate those things. That was the purpose of their music. Why do brain dead conservative hogs think socialism is being poor and stupid...thats right wingers
@@ms.bunniesarecute2287 Wrong. RATM is against democracy/capitalism. They are openly communist and the fact that you are defending them says all we need to know about you and your wrong opinions.
@@ms.bunniesarecute2287 so Tom morello, who has a net worth of 30 million, should sell his Los Angeles home and buy something a little more modest right? I mean, a socialist (whose slogan seems to be “tax the rich”) shouldn’t be rich then right? Socialists aren’t stupid people. But when you got people like Bernie who has 3 vacation homes, Tom morello who is richer than Bernie, and even the “ok boomer” girl in her 2 million dollar penthouse, preaching to us about taxing the rich while being rich, we just don’t want to hear it. And I’ve never met a person who came from a socialist country that wants that bs in America. From this point forward, if your a socialist, and the evils of capitalism are so grotesque, then I will expect you to donate your money to those who are less fortunate than you (there’s ALWAYS someone who is in more need than you or me), don’t EVER buy s laptop, shoes, clothes, iPhone or Android, a car, bicycle, skateboard, don’t go grocery shopping, etc….don’t do anything that involves exchanging money for goods. Do it yourself. Make your own clothes. Make your own food. Take a sabbatical from technology. You want socialism? I want to see AOC, ok boomer girl, Bernie, and the entirety of RATM, be the first ones to give up 90% of their riches and love the life that they think the rest of us should live in. INCLUDING eating out of these breadlines that Bernie speaks of. And the whole “real socialism just hasn’t been done yet” argument is terrible. Every country that has tried it has become a heaping pile of shit. You’ll never get it here in America my friend. So no, your not stupid. But I will say your ok with theft if you think it’s ok to take something that’s not yours and distribute it to the masses of people that didn’t earn it. He who takes the risk traps the benefits. Period.
They exist within a capitalist framework, so they had to work from within the system. Can a reasonable person make an argument that they are posers? Perhaps. But they did more for their respective causes than most of us, so on what basis can we make our criticism? They were a great band and they had integrity. That's what matters.
Except they did not only opperate withim capitalism. It was thanks to capitalism that they were sucesfull to begin with. It is because of the market that created the music industry that they were even able to record their songs. As always, leftists are obnoxious... or just straight up liars.
They are indeed all siblings beget of the very same dangerously flawed parental ideology.. one who attempts to ignore the similarities or downplay the dangers of such might benefit from a journey through "The Gulag Archipelago " by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
@@jacobprince5137 there are many flavors to a political ideology, for example anarcho communists cant be authoritarian or totalitarian because they want to get rid of the government
I always liked Rage Against The Machine, they’re the only rap metal band that ever worked for me. It’s pretty silly how people treat leftists as hypocrites and inauthentic unless they’re literally overthrowing capitalism every waking moment. I mean Martin Luther King Jr espoused some pretty hard left views but you don’t hear anyone calling him a hypocrite for selling books and making money from them. I’d love to see a video of how Joy Division got so big. A band that was pretty small when it was active is now huge among people who weren’t even born when they existed, myself included. It’s pretty unusual
Yeah, but in case of Rage Against the Machine, it didn't age well. The essence of the whole project was to be "anti-system", no matter what. Some years later, after a few bands rejoined and started touring together to have some revenue, Rage Against the Machine joining the bandwagon just goes against what they constantly preached back in the day. And since Chris Cornell killed himself, Tom Morello, Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk needed the income, and decided to "revive" the project that was mainly anti-capitalism. This is basically them surrender to the $$$, essencially. They don't care for the message nowadays, and are taking advantage of the band's name.
@@sharkuel if you haven't already...I highly recommend fugazi if you want guys to never go back on their word. Their politics still hold up wonderfully today. Their tickets were always 10$ or less, no advertising, no merch, all ages shows, and charity events where all the money goes to the various causes they support. Oh and their music is 1000 times better than Rage.
All people who are vocal about their political views (left or right or somewhere in between) are hypocritical to some degree. I include myself. It's impossible not to be.
I mean, it's pretty bad when an openly communist ancap band charges $500 for standing room tickets to their concerts. Not only did they sell out, but in an explosively hypocritical fashion. I'd also like to point out that Tom Morello is by far, one of the most over rated guitarists in history.
RATM has been in my top 3 bands ever for more than 20 years. I've always found the "I hate capitalism while making millions through capitalism" contradiction uncomfortable, but still something I can deal with. I'm a man from a third world country in South America. Money here has always been a problem so that's a topic that will always make you some unpleasant noise in your head, you know. But as I said, I can deal with it, and more important: My father was a communist on his youth, and he was kidnapped in 1978 by the US/CIA backed fascist dictatorship of fucking Augusto Pinochet, and he was tortured, his family threatened and his friends murdered. That's basically the trauma my family has been living with since then. And you can understand how these really powerful angry lyrics and music can help an angry teenage guy like I was to deal with a world that I could barely understand. And I'm still trying to figure it out haha! Thank you for another awesome video! As a normal human full of contradictions (just as RATM) and as a music lover too, I really love everything in your channel, from death, thrash, black metal and grindcore to the more pop punk stuff. From Anal Cunt to RATM. You even mentioned here Alanis Morissette, which I really like! Didn't know my favorite RATM album (Evil Empire) broke the reign of Jagged Little Pill on the Billboard!
The way I see it, they set out with a message that they wanted to spread. But at the end of the day, you have to pay bills just like anyone else. They got their message out and they were able to pay their bills. I also do agree that they wanted to get famous. And they did. Which only helps them spread their message
How Alexisonfire got big would be a great episode, Sure they were never big in the states, but they were huge in Canada and were a band that prominently featured screaming that got played alongside much more traditional pop and rock acts on MuchMusic, that definitely wouldn’t happen today
@Unpopular Politics Agreed, I’m just pissed Off that they weren’t big here in the states, I know I’m biased because of part of my username and profile pic but Crisis and Watch Out! are 2 of the best albums of the 2000s imo
@Unpopular Politics Yeah, I’m sure that they had a significant niche following in some parts of the United States, but they had legitimate mainstream success in Canada
They opened for Gwar in toronto almost 20 years ago. I didnt know how to read the name, i was wondering why Alex was on fire. Surprised me when they got popular. Wouldnt have guessed.
i really would like to see a How Did Linkin Park Get So Big, even though i believe that i am somewhat self aware how they made it i’d like to watch your philosophy about it. they’re always gonna be one of my favorite bands of all time and i think they need to be in this series. keep up the work!
@Guillaume Oh yeah, that’s why they were originally called Xero and then Hybrid Theory (went through three different names) all with self produced bedroom demos that you can still dig up and listen to to this day which have early versions of songs from the debut LP full length. yep that sure is “artificially made”, only something a fuckin idiot such as yourself would say. I’m sure you’re one of those dumbshits that say Slipknot were never actually from Iowa and we’re just a bunch of recruited LA musicians and the Iowa thing was just a made up marketing thing. 😂 Jesus you people are stupid.
I sorta wish you had done some more research into their lives before the band. These guys are all children of huge political subverts. These guys aren’t faking anything. I agree that just because they are rebellious doesn’t mean they don’t also want to be successful. And it’s hard to see that as anything other than hypocrisy, especially if you’re from the hardcore DIY movement, but it’s human to want to have enough money to live comfortably. But the fact that these guys are still part of the movement long after they have broken up shows it was never a gimmick to sell records. They go in the Bernie camp. Not perfect, but doing more than most of us
Nice to see Downset getting some love! When I hear people waxing lyrical about RATM I like to mention Downset as a band who are at least as good, usually to blank looks!! Great video!
meh. this is like comparing some random SoundCloud rapper to Young Thug. Downset might have had some better songs but theres intangibles. They were pretty unimportant over all
Great video! RATM is the band that opened the flood gates for me. Through them I got into At the Drive In, Refused, Bad Brains, Dead Kennedys, and a slew of underground rappers. As I got older the Communist stuff didn't sit well with me, but the other subject matters really shaped me. I think it's fair how you pointed out their relationship with Corporate America, very fair and Balanced. As an American of Pakistani descent, where you are too Brown for White people and too White for Brown people hardcore/metal was a genre that made perfect sense and RATM was the perfect gateway drug.
About the Rage/Downset beef, Downset were actually around before with their previous band "Social Justice" and played with Inside Out many times. Downset's singer often wore Inside Out shirts and Rage too I think. They changed the lyrics for the album version of the song too.
Some of the sentiment toward the end here reminds me of the drunk frat bros singing Kendrick Lamar’s Swimming Pools. Great music sometimes transcends context which is a double edged sword: a broad reach but also potentially a lack of true understanding or the meaning.
I love downset, I think they're underrated and kids who like rotting out or stray from the path now would be really into them. Too bad they're not around anymore
Great video dude. However, I would like to talk about what I receive as a simplistic approach to criticizing communism. You picked the example of Vietnam (which is quite a sensitive topic) and on top of that of your father-in-law who was imprisoned in during the war. We are talking about a country that France stopped exploiting after WW2 and almost immediately after, the US practically invaded (as is now a common strategy in order to install "freedom"). People have a right to oppose to non-democratic authoritarianism (let alone from an external force like the US) and that being said I would not be too quick to judge the effect of communism based on that example. Did many innocent people pay a price they shouldn't? That goes without saying. But this is a reality that is common in today's society too (more than ever). Communism is not opposed to being rich, but to exploitation, social inequalities and social injustice.I would say that RATM were an amazing exception to mainstream culture. That comes from a huge fan of theirs, who however is not going to pay the money they ask to see them perform.
That’s classic whataboutism my man. Of course it’s complicated and colonialism/interventionism play a role, doesn’t change the facts that communist governments did a lot of bad things (and so did many others, who should also be held accountable). It’s just not intellectually honest to say otherwise.
The Punk Rock MBA I hear the term “whataboutism” thrown around a lot lately, and I think you missed the mark on his comment man. I don’t think he was conflating, rather, contrasting the subject. Now, everyone in 2020 is equating socialism with communism which both are just labels. Deep down, you know people who want socialist norms isn’t about the strong arming of dictators and concentration camps (like China) - today it’s all about allowing everyone the opportunity to not be fucking hungry or rack up thousands of dollars in medical debt for needing an MRI to find a tumor. That’s what capitalism does, it puts people in debt both in a financial and mental health front. China has a “social credit” system while we have a “fiduciary credit” system. Very different things and just because terms were thrown around in past to mean one thing, doesn’t mean it means the same thing now.
I still like your videos and I’m not personally attacking you btw, I know your heart is in the right place and you have a lot of really good takes. One last thing I would say about Morello is that he would wear clothes that say shit like “commie” to just piss off the old white men in power, not because he wants to start a communist regime based on Russia or China.
Poetically the footage when you are talking about Limp Bizkit and how Rage apoligized for inspiring them etc. is from Limp Bizkit's Woodstock 99 set. Rage Against the Machine played right after them on the same stage (right before Metallica). So... yeah :D
It's worth noting that the definition of "communism" Tom Morello adheres to is an older and broader definition of the term which encompasses any leftist movement which operates under the principle that we should aim to abolish not only capitalism but ultimately money itself in favour of collectively taking care of community needs. Specifically, I think Tom is an anarcho-communist, which is *very* different from the big-C Marxist-Leninist variety. That said, I do think that the band's hard-left anti-colonialist stance occasionally led them to endorse groups and individuals who were less than deserving of such shine; for instance, while I'm not particularly perturbed by their endorsements of the Zapatistas or Mumia Abu-Jamal, Morello's comments regarding the Shining Path in Peru at the time were troublingly naïve, and he has thankfully since walked them back.
100 million people dead and you guys keep trying to make excuses for a genocidal movement that was created for the purpose of world domination. It's not an accident that it always ends in tyranny. That's how it's designed to operate. The anarcho-communist fantasy is the carrot they dangle in front of the weak-minded to get them to promote the movement that will ultimately enslave or genocide them.
Cliche Guevara That's what they call themselves. I prefer just to call them Leninists or, in the case of the ones who stick up for dictators and other deranged horseshit, tankies, but I was making a technical point here.
Sid Black By that logic, anyone who supports capitalism and free trade in principle must also be complicit in the excesses of every far-right dictatorship in Latin America, every brutal foreign intervention by the United States on behalf of moneyed interests, and every European imperial power which profited from violent colonial labour exploitation. That seems like an unfair standard, particularly when a lot of people tend to espouse forms of more regulated, ethical capitalism which explicitly intends to avoid such severe structural and physical violence. But many capitalists seem to fail to give socialists, small-c communists and other anti-capitalists that same benefit of a doubt. You read Chomsky and Bookchin and people think you're down with Stalin and Mao, when no sane person would say that reading Smith or Hayek or Thomas Friedman makes you an automatic apologist for Pinochet or Salazar. It is also worth noting that authoritarian big-C Communists have a pretty long and ugly history of rounding up and slaughtering libertarian small-c communists because they consider their beliefs in general and their anti-authoritarianism in particular a challenge to their narrow, "my way or the highway" view of "revolution," as well as a potential danger to their absolute power and obsession with unity of belief. The Russian anarcho-communist leader Pyotr Kropotkin was well-respected even by many of the Bolsheviks, and his funeral brought out thousands of mourners from every part of the Russian left, but once the great man (a pacifist, to whit) was buried, what did the Bolsheviks do? Start arresting anarchists left and right and transporting or killing those who were found too ornery. Those who speak truth to power are *always* the first against the wall. P.S. Most of the researchers cited in the Black Book of Communism from which you derive your figures said after its publication that their numbers were wildly misinterpreted or actively misrepresented. Totalitarian regimes, left or right, tend to kill a lot of people for roughly the same reasons entirely independent of their ostensible ideologies. Mao killed tens of millions because he followed dated Soviet psuedoscience and refused aid from better informed sources out of paranoid megalomania, resulting in environmental catastrophe on an unprecedented scale. That's not so much political as a mad king starving his people through messianic delusion. "Communism" is the set dressing.
@@ConvincingPeople I am unsure who the “they” in your comment is. Anyway my point was when it comes to variants of communism Leninism and Marxism are different. Your original comment seem to imply they were the same.
Two things: Bulls on Parade is on the Mount Rushmore of greatest rock/metal songs, change my mind And I think Zach and Tom is the best vocalist guitarist duo ever. They’re the MJ/Pippen of rock/metal
When I first heard their music I was in 2nd year of high school and listening to Nirvana and I never heard anything like Rage against the Machine before. The energy and the funk combined on their self titled album is amazing and extremely recognizable, an instant classic album. I have never been interested in or even knew the politics of the bandmembers and back then and I saw a lot of lyrics as critique and standing up to totalitarian control, war and power structures, and it instantly connected to the teenage emotions I had. I think a lot of kids wearing RATM shirts with Guevara on it at the time also didn't have any idea who he was. Not sure if shooting defectors is very different from the things they were preaching against but what do I know? :P
This video is a phenomenal example of why I love PRMBA. Objective. Respectful. Informed. Insightful. Discerning. Also experienced. Finn you are really damn good at what you do. I’m officially joining your patreon.
Finn is always pushing this shitty mumble rap in every video. And like ThePyroKnight said that comparison wasn't even good. Killing In The Name is an exception to Zach's lyrics, most of their other songs aren't like that at all.
Everyone gets older and has to feed the kids......I disagree with an awful lot of what they say but never doubted they took the hard path to be fair to them.
What I got from Rage’s music is to form my own opinions about everything that happens around me. Being extreme about any given aspect of life is what Makes this world such a harsh place. Fans were never supposed to just follow the band blindly either. I really like your video because it’s balanced.
Someone who NEVER sold out, and in that way is more 'punk' than anyone, is FRANK ZAPPA ! An absolute Genius !!! (Very political, very topical, very controversial, etc...)
Interesting you made no mention of Renegades, their fourth album? I think actually it's a really underrated album and by doing all covers it shows Rage were musically more interesting and diverse than their rather stale third album let'd on.
After thinking more about this what makes me laugh at communists and bands like this is that they can only exist in non-communist societies. Do you think a band with messages like this would be allowed in the Soviet Union, North Korea and China? These guys would all be thrown into the gulag and forced to work until the dropped dead for daring to voice there unhappiness about anything.
They’re insane ticket prices really Suck. They are one of my favorite bands of all time and I don’t really feel like supporting them for $300 a ticket. Ridiculous
Oh shit, is the clip of the vietnamese guy actually your father in law or was that just a random clip? Because if that us your father in law he was a badass to become a south vietnamese Marines Corps. Those guys were considered elite troops because they had to get selected from the other branches to become a Marines.
I used to feel RATM was trying to balance their radical communist views with trying to be successful band while getting a message they believed. I respected it, especially with how talented they were. Of course they are going to make money. However, after seeing their recent average ticket prices being over 200 dollars, it is hard to not see them like some Che Guerva shirt made by some corporation using sweat shop labor. In high school, I didn't really look too deapl into their lyrics. To me, they just sounded like alternative band that pushed against the political establishment. However, when I realized who was Mumbia and they wanted to allow a cop killer out of prison, I couldn't really get into their music anymore. Makes you realize they probably don't look to deep into these subjects. They basically read Norm Chomsky and now just make lyrics out of his badly researched books...
15:00 Yes. If they were SO sincere in their messages as they claim, they simply wouldn't have that personal worth. Tom Morello is worth $30 million and throwing "don't you know who I am?" fits in Seattle coffeeshops. They're no different to me than KISS, Duran Duran, Van Halen, etc and other artists trapped in the image they created for themselves.
Definitely not. Like Finn said, they used their music and fame to promote their message. The money they ended up earning had nothing to do with them message. They didnt choose to be worth $30 million.
My top 11 Rage against the machine songs: 11. The ghost of Tom Joah 10. Maggie's Farm 9. Know Your Enemy 8. How I could Just Kill A man 7. Bullet in the Head 6. Guerilla Radio 5. Bulls on parade 4. Bombtrack 3. Bombtrack 2. People of the Sun 1. Killling in the name
The thing with rage that gets me, is the hypocritical self-righteousness and inability to be self-aware enough to differentiate a perceived “revolutionary” or “dissident” view, and an actual one. I listened to this growing up and thought wow man, these guys are talking about all this crazy stuff, I read Marx and Chomsky in high school, and this was during the Bush years...I thought they were really this counter-revolutionary thing. In hind sight, I make it to college and every literature class is rooted in critical theory and deconstruction, post-colonialism, Marxism, etc. The power structure they rallied against and were so sure of themselves in regards to their thought, turned out to adopt the message they spouted. Woke capital, survellience capitalism, etc. I had to sit in classes and deal with all of these nonsense ideas that were so ingrained in academia, where there was no ability to differentiate from them or express anything outside of those thoughts without causing a perpetual outcry of “reeeeeeing” from everyone around you. Tom Morello still carries himself like the dissident figure, yet nothing is further from the truth. Like Che rocking his Rolex submariner in the jungles of Bolivia, at least then the action was authentic, even with the capitalist superficialities. With Rage, the irony is heavy that SNL is a-light with wokeness, and are every other major corporation and media entity. The New York Times is an outlet of leftist views, which align more so with Rage’s whole ethos, than do anything pertaining to actual workers rights or class issues, as they’re unwilling to stand up for those suffering due to their ethnic/racial makeup and their ideology proclaiming them to be “oppressors” and the arbiters of as Bell Hooks put it, of “the white supremacist patriarchal power structure.” Nothing is more annoying then someone who proclaims themselves to be a Marxist ultra-left globalist, who is “fighting” the same power structure that currently holds his same beliefs. I would have a lot more respect for them as a band if they didn’t maintain that “it’s still 1992 man” attitude and grew up and adjusted to the realities of what their ideology, and the 60’s ideology onward has actually brought us. Those individuals in that band have a lot more to own up to and acknowledge than just influencing genres of music, as they put out a message rooted in things that can manifest in a real dangerous way societally.
@@legalaidmatt Good job refuting and addressing my argument, it seems coherent and well thought out from my perspective, maybe you can address an inconsistency or contradictory aspect there friend?
@@legalaidmatt Again, it's concise and addresses the same point throughout...I wouldn't expect someone with an anti-fascist logo on their youtube page to agree and counter-signal a communist band...but the least you can do is actually engage with the subject matter instead of trying to dismiss it outright in an ad hominem fashion. It's cowardly there chief. Leftists love to deconstruct other's points, but never actually contribute...they always just nitpick and criticize
Ratm lyrics were very VERY adult content. They talked about empires usurping resources through wars and manipulation. People who were used to beef and mundane life lyrics never knew what ratm was talking about and equated it with anti-capitalism and anti-west.
6:31 why are their concert tickets $300?! And I’m with you brother. Their politics got way too off the rails even though their hypocrisy came very visible in the recent last 2 years. Also. I wish Tom Morello would decide where the fuck he’s from.
I hated how Paul Ryan got shit for liking Rage and I don’t even like Paul Ryan. The reasons why people like things are complicated and difficult to explain; some art you just vibe with. It is impossible to only enjoy art from artists you politically agree with, and political opinions shouldn’t mean so much that we have to carve people and things out of our lives because they don’t politically align with us. Everyone is free to enjoy Rage, and nobody should catch shit for it.
I don't know if anyone said this and I'm kinda late, but from what I understand RATM wanted the flags upside down on the amps and SNL said no then just before they were about to play RATM put them back on and in a split second after, the crew quickly took it off before the curtains rolled back. Then after they played their first song they were told to leave so they couldn't play their second song and apparently because of that stint they weren't in the end credits after show where everyone is shaking hands and what not
I just love their “Anti-War Crime” message while also littering their stage with images of Che who committed countless war crimes as Castro’s personal executioner.
Idk how comparing Che executing Batista's crooked cops who had been murdering Cuban civilians for years is comparable to the war crimes that RATM talk about, like US soldiers murdering civilians and CIA backed coups overthrowing democratically elected socialist governments in latin america... But go off???
@@OpIvyUnity Che murdered a lot of people without proper trial. Even people who fought alongside him didn't like the guy. Heck, even Fidel Castro got rid of him after a while. That's how unstable and violent he was.
It’s not a matter of being power hungry, Che was the chief executioner as early as the Sierra Maestra days, and a lot of the earlier executions were his own people for things like cowardice. A revolutionary is by definition a criminal until they overthrow an existing regime, so it’s pointless saying he was a criminal, they all were. But what one must question is, his motives behind the killings or over zealous revolutionary zeal. I don’t think Che is sadistic, he is a pessimist who is ruthlessly paranoid.
Yeah but Bodycount isn't really rap. It's a band with a lead singer who happens to be a rapper. Bodycount is no more rap than Slayer is, if you consider all fast singing to be rap.
Incinerate I mean, Tom and Serj came together to form Axis of Justice, which came out of the hopes of shutting down racism and white supremacy after witnessing a lot of promotion of racist bands at Ozzfest, so...
is it? you make it sound like Zack is some hermit living in a cave. that's far from the case, he's still active as a musician. I've never been a huge fan of RATM or rap rock or nu-metal, and as someone very firmly on the socialist end of the spectrum, let me tell you: we don't have evidence to make that call. the most we can say is they have different ideas about how to use their platforms insofar as that intersects with their politics. that's literally all it comes down to. I happen to disagree with both their strategies in terms how to effectively fuse art and politics but that's a whole other discussion.
I would politely like to point out the irony of criticizing RATM for selling out to capitalism whilst promoting some crappy robot game at the start of the video.
However unlike RATM, Finn never built himself up as an anarcho-communist revolutionary preacher. To the contrary, his videos often revolve around branding, advertising and business models in the music industry.
Man, 311 never gets their just due for being right there at the same time, influencing all those rap metal and nu metal bands. Korn even opened for them early in their career.
Yeah but your 16 year old self is also likely to think that things like showering and not being an abrasive shithead also constitutes selling out sooo maybe you don't have to listen to that silly brat all the time. S/he is smelly and annoying.
“The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” by Lenin essentially summarises the approach of why RATM signed to a major label. It is also consistent with your quote earlier in your video from Tom. Its a logical, far reaching platform to expose a number of alternative ideologies to a lot of people. Admittedly, I read stuff by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, as well as Peter Kropotkin (main theorist of anarcho-communism which is who RATM more closely aligned with) in high school because of RATM. I wouldn't say that a lot of those principles resonate with my personally, but if it wasn't for RATM, I probably wouldn't have been so openly exposed to them.
For their reunion tour why not book large outdoor venues with massive general admission capacity instead of limited seat arenas? I understand the benefits of booking arenas, but when your capacity to draw a crowd is large enough and you're ethically anti-capitalist why even entertain the risk of price gouging? Do I think their statement about ticket prices and their reunion tour is bullshit? Absolutely. Did I spend $400 on upper bowl tickets for their show? Sure did.
@@masonfisher6227 I was going to UK to watch their show at Reading Festival. Tickets cost me 89 GB pound. If i can travel 10,000 kilometres to see them, stop whining about a measly 400 bucks.
Marxism is a murderous ideology. Free market capitalism is the best system out there. Big government causes nothing but problems, that's the reason why healthcare and tuition cost so much, because of government subsidies. Rand Paul is the man.
I'd say what made their rap/rock hybrid so successful was that it permeated through every aspect of their sound. While most prior attempts had been either rock bands with rap vocals or rappers using rock samples, in the case of RATM we got a band that were as good at playing live hip-hop (something almost unheard of at the time) as they were at playing metal/hardcore. Their influence on nu-metal is undeniable but the same can be said for many standout acts from that era since it was a time of transition away from the styles that had come to dominate the 80s. Some of their revolutionary politics may be questionable in hindsight but they existed in a pre-internet, pre-SJW time when media narratives differed significantly, the means by which their ideas and views could be voiced and challenged were far more limited than they are now.
@@sleeperz0 Right?!? I actually didn't notice how much funk inspired ROTM until I put them back on for the heck of it late last year. It's really quite interesting.
Same too. Then I started a career and realized how great capitalism is. I make jokes about them at work saying their name should have been rage against the machine and replace it with a bigger machine lol. 25 million and their music wasn't that revolutionary 😂.
I guess you don’t have TikTok where a guy will make any song sound like a RATM song where he then proceeds to record all instrument parts and sound just like Tom Morello lol. His style is very unique but can be recreated. Maybe people just don’t want to copy him and have the obvious said about them.
Their audience wasn’t as clueless as you think….I saw them open up for Cypress Hill at UNH when their album came out….and everyone was already introduced to these ideas by Public Enemy and BDP…but RATM took it to the next level
I don’t know enough about Tom but I’d reckon when he says he’s a commie he means it in a “workers own the means of production” academic socialism sense not the “authoritarian communism” sense that has been seen historically. Your anecdote about how “communist authoritarianism can actually be bad” is obviously true but I’m not sure particularly relevant to his views.
I mean they dont endorse communist regimes like the vietcong, they supported the zapatistas because they were libertarian socialists, not marxist leninists
@@glitchhhhhhhh it's sad with our internet not completely controlled a troll on TH-cam can just throw out ignorance and we have to accept the tradgety of his ignorance. Many people in america wont come to understand definitions although they could learn almost instantly from their phone.
Hi Finn. I really love your videos and you were actually the first channel I ever felt the need to subscribe to. While I disagree with your personal politics (support of capitalism, passive income sources, military) I generally don't mind because you're your own person and it wouldn't stop me from watching. Though as someone who identifies as a communist I really disagree with your take in this video. The implication that RATM are hypocrites because they make money from their art is one I can't get behind. We, as westerners, are all born into the framework of capitalism and we don't have a choice in that. By and large, western leftists are anti-capitalist BECAUSE we are forced to participate in the system, not in spite of it. Saying that Tom probably thinks branding the band with communist ideology is just to shock people and be edgy is really ignorant dude. He has a degree in political science from Harvard, it should be taken for granted that he knows what he's talking about and has strong genuine beliefs. You didn't comment on the Zapatistas because you're not well informed about it, so why would you feel the need to include such a personal, polarising denigration of the bands ideological stance?
I don't think he was trying to imply that they are hypocrites, he stated that they are human and wanted their message to reach a larger audience. He also mentioned that they didn't tone down their politics as they got bigger Also, he didn't mention anything about RATM's endorsement of the Zapatistas in a negative way, but hopefully he learns a bit more about them and understands their ideology fully. For someone that doesn't fully agree with the bands politics, I think he handled it in the best possible way, and this is coming from a Communist as well
I think it's just weird to spend 90% of a video saying "This video isn't a referendum on the band's politics" and "Now I don't know enough about the Zapatistas to comment, again, this isnt' about the band's politics", then all of a sudden at the end to accuse Morello (who is, if nothing else, educated on the topic he's discussing) of just edgelording with his politics, and go into this whole "communism = violence against POWs" rant at the end. Like... did RATM hit a sore spot, dude? If you want to do a politics video, that's fine (I love those). But maybe if you're going to go that route then "do your research". And I don't mean that as "you're wrong", I mean, maybe do enough research that you don't have to say things like "I don't know enough to comment", then comment like a madman anyway.
Yep, not to mention the way that Tom Morello verbally bitch-slapped him, saying that Paul Ryan embodied the very machine that they were raging against.
well guess what. Music is totally non political, music is a series of notes being played in rythmic patterns and within a series of scales, it's a form of art, not an ideology
Well the “machine” is progressive socialism nowadays so it’s not a stretch for Paul Ryan to like them. Plus, Tom is a twat, regardless of his skills, he just betrayed a fan for an ideology.
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Finn, I literally cannot tell you how coincidental this is, I love these guys so much I wrote two essays on them! Then I wake up two days after finishing them and I see this, God what a blessing this is!
Check out, Dropout Kings if you haven't heard them already. I only cared for two singles , but they are one of the Nu-metal revisionists.
So crazy to me that you associate yourself so strongly with punk but you have managed to totally miss the ethos entirely and sound like some self-congratulatory capitalist-happy douche. The fact that you equate communism with only one type of communism (state communism) and completely discount anti-authoritarian strains of communism EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVE LISTENED TO A SHITLOAD OF PUNK is fucking a shame and its on you, man. Your ignorance is pretty inexcusable because its not like you haven't been exposed to those ideas. Weak ass analysis of Rage btw. Also, you caused the first argument of quarantine with my husband bc I was yelling at you while you were spewing your nonsense. So: Blech.
I saw them at the Reading festival here in the U.K. in 93 & the drummer Brad played the show with his back to the crowd. So cool. Never seen that before or since. Great stuff. I wish I was 17 again.
You should hit up Primus, they be striding always
“Rap and rock had already been flirting for a while...honestly I thought they were all pretty corny.”
2000s rap rock: Hold my beer...
At least, Linkin Park’s first 2 albums were fantastic though
Bro country to 2000s rap rock: hold my beer
Bring Back KP, Animated Obviously /CrisisOnFire1977 Oh for sure, there are a ton of well done rap/rock combos both then and now. Linkin Park was one of them. I’m just poking fun at how much less corny the overall 90s rock and hip hop mash ups now seem compared to a lot of what came later.
Lol
Anthrax and public enemy were great tho
To your point about people not understanding the lyrics, my brother (who’s probably around your age) told me in high school he’d always run into people who were like “yeah, Rage man!” And he would be like “what are you doing after high school?” “Joining the military, bro!”
My older cousin (who was in the Army) bought me Rage's first album for Xmas when I was 10. I find it hilarious he no longer talks to me because of political differences. Like,"You're the one who got me here, dude!"
Imagine being open to do both, right?
I'd argue that somebody willing to explore multiple challenging angles of their worldview and hold multiple challenging angles of view close to their heart is somebody that's in more of a position to actually hold those views because they've put in the work to actually explore what these conflicts means to them. The US has had a history of veteran-activism in basically every pivotal period of its existence.
Wouldn't you potentially value an expression of experience from the person that's done their time boots on the ground in the streets at home and boots on the ground in the streets afar?
Being one doesn't have to exclude you from being "eligible" to also be the other, and even RATM is guilty of exclusion/labels. Fuck labels from other people telling you what you can and can't do.
Trepanation21 I never said you couldn’t... it’s just an ironic story I wanted to share that had to do with a topic he mentioned. Nice job trying to bait me though 👍
@@anthonycianfrano8931 Imagine having your head so up your ass that you think that dude was trying to bait you. He presented a well done argument and you dismiss it because it goes against what you believe.
@@Trepanation21 How in the fuck is joining the MIlitary-Industrial complex just being "willing to explore multiple challenging angles" lol
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How is that relevant? That would only apply if Rage Against the Machine put this video out but they didn't. So what is your point?
Let Me Think About It No point. Huge fan of Finn Mckenty. Just a lighthearted joke. Don’t stress trying to analyze it.
"brought to you by raid: shadow legends"
Lmfao, dudes gotta make a living though.
chuckle...
But that’s consistent with Finn’s emphasis on marketing and branding. It would not be for supposed pinkos like RATM.
heavy ✅
not too technical ✅
relatable lyrics ✅
ANGERY ✅
Tom Morello's guitar playing is "not too technical"? Bro have you heard the solo on "Take The Power Back." it is by far one of the most technical solos he's ever created. The dude is by far one of the most underrated shredders, but people only know him for making weird sounds with a whammy pedal. (Not to undermine that either because a majority of people thought the whammy pedal was trash until he came along.)
Somebody gotta try doing it technical. Internet! Bear witness to this!
SPECTRE he can be, I’ve seen clips of he just chooses not to I think. His earliest influences were Yngwie and Randy Rhoads and then he decided that there was enough of the shredding going on that he decided to shift his focus towards hip hop. I believe he explains it in the metal evolution documentary about nu metal.
@@spencercoles1800 tom morello's guitar playing isn't technical. That's not bashing him at all, he has a very distinct sound and creativity. Some of the first songs I learned on guitar were rage. Catchy and easy to learn
@@shawnr8438 Yeah his riffs and chord progressions aren't super technical but a hook of a song imo shouldn't be overtly complicated to play. But there are songs especially off the first RATM album that have really intricate solos in them.
Yeah, they stuck it to NBC. By giving NBC exactly what they wanted.
last time I heard NBC is now a left leaning news. What a weird world we're living in. I personally have no trust with any news sites anymore. Everything seems to be too biased now. :(
@Vlad the Inhaler if you’re a toker , that nicknames’ a stoker 😁🍄
They went into enemy territory and spread their message. I think that's the most badass thing you can do
@@TheChadPad That's a pretty good point actually
@@TheChadPad so making money for your enemy is a good thing bahahaha
I remember during Occupy Wall street, somebody asked Tom Morello what the hell he thought he was doing there among the protesters and I'll never forget his answer:
"When you pick up a guitar, you don't put down your First Amendment rights. I don't think that you have to be a Harvard graduate in political science to comment on political matters, but I am a Harvard graduate in political science."
This was always fascinating to me because there's a lot to explore about the backgrounds of political pundits and "who gets to say what". It is a point about the importance of knowledge but also the fact that politics isnt simply a nebulous conflict of ideology, its about the quality of our day to day lives, and everyone needs to have a say in that.
Just because you have no interest in politics, don't think politics has no interest in you.
@@DinsdalePiranha67 As we're finding out currently across the nation.
Funny thing though, why is it that leftists like Morello will blabber about not needing this degree or that degree to have a say in politics. But the millisecond someone doesnt agree 1000% with what leftists believe they get labeled as "uneducated" or "ignorant hicks" by.. leftists like Tom Morello.
@@jmill3147 Even funnier is when the right sees someone with a platform, like a the ones musicians, actors, sports stars, or any other form of entertainer has, the right absolutely looses their minds. They attack that person, and like to yell that that person isn't paid to be a politician and should stick to the entertainment industry.
@@eskimogioia9848 I've never lost my mind over someone having an opinion that is different from my own. That is called FREEDOM! Doesnt Zach yell and squeal about freedom in a certain RATM song? Yes, yes he does. But 20 years down the road we now see that Zach doesnt want everyone to have freedom.. he only wants people who ascribe to the beliefs of himself and the rest of his commie band and other elitists.
@@jmill3147 Your initial comment literally attacked Morello for having an opinion and now are calling the members of Rage elitist. Kind of funny how you don't see that you are doing exactly what you claim they do.
No one:
Finn: Rage Against the Machine is Lil Pump
Best compliment Lil Pump has ever recieved.
312vandal You mad? lol It was a good comparison and point. I don’t think I’ve heard a single RATM song with complex lyrics. Like he said, strong points but simple lyrics. That doesn’t mean lil pump is good in any sense lmao
BigL 90sFunk Im thinking his comment was just sarcasm? Lmfao
Ok big boys and girls. Finn compared one thing that they both do well. He never compared them on anything besides making simple lyrics people can remember.
One time I got chastised by his team of dick riders, himself included, in his Facebook group all because I criticize Lil Pump. I guess This is what happens when you mess with a groupies' crush. Dear Finn, Sorry that I'm not a basic bitch, can't relate.
Sweet video Finn, appreciate the nuances and deep dives. One thing though: When you talk about Tom’s background, I think it’s really important to underline that his father was a Kenyan diplomat who took part in the Mau-Mau uprising and wider struggle for Kenyan independence. He grew up in close proximity to the Kenyan independence movement and initial governments, and the idea of Communism or radical Socialism was (often still is) closely attached to anti-colonialism in a lot of places.
I think the other thing that should have been mentioned is that Finns example of communism is not even close to what Tom believes in. Throughout history every nation that's governed under "communism" have just been glorified dictatorships or extreme socialism. They only used that word to help with their rise of power. USSR, Cuba, Vietnam, China etc; none are/were true communist countries.True communism has yet to be implemented to this date and a lot of people tend to ignore that.
...Or maybe you could just accept that *this* is the actual true Communism, that it killed millions of people through Stalin, Mao, Castro, NK dictators and a list of others and their successors, and that "true Communism" as it's envisioned does not exist.
@@TheZeroDozer Gunsand42 agrees with you about how it "doesn't exist" - they said that actual communism hasn't been achieved anywhere. Are you saying those authoritarian states are the "true communists" because they used the word? So the People's Republic of China is a republic instead of an authoritarian state because they put it in their name?
@@Gunsand42Google "No True Scotsman."
@@HessianHunter Didn't you know Steve? Communism is when you kill 200 million people and if you repeat it enough it'll become true, also the Nazis weren't nationalist but having socialist in your name does make you a socialist (it's just copy paste Prager U bullshit hahaha). Those movements did mobilize parts of the population through the idea of communism but at one point they all took different directions, the socioeconomic context at the time, the power struggles, yadda yadda, Bakunin was right, the State does this or that etc, but the main problem is that the people saying "Communism did exactly what it was supposed to and killed 4000 million people" are the same people saying "real Capitalism hasn't been tried yet, socialism is when the government does stuff"
They were Anarcho-Communists, so the they didn’t find the anti-authority aspect out of sync
It's funny how neoliberal reprobates will try to criticize anarcho-communists by pointing out to confirmed CIA misinformation about Marx-Leninist states.
Zimx02 🙄
Not trying to start an argument, but I legitimately don't understand "anarcho-communism". Those two systems couldn't be further opposite.
@@douglasboylan3477 maybe try reading about it and you would understand that communism and anarchism and are not opposed to each other. if youre interested read the conquest of bread by peter kropotkin its not that long or hard to read
@@douglasboylan3477 The "anarcho" side of it refers to a federal government. There wouldn't be a single State, but a series of communities without things like private ownership of businesses or monopolized utilities. Instead you'd have worker control of businesses and factories in a smaller scale, so you'd avoid the horrorshow of authoritarian communism.
Anarchism gets a bad rap, it isn't advocating a lawless free-for-all, it's more about abolishing a federal government in favor of more local governmental bodies.
RATM did SO much more than the average fan or casual observer ever knew about. The amount of money they raised for the defense of both Mumia and Leonard Peltier (not to mention the amount of people who were introduced to these causes via ratm). At the time I was skeptical of their methods of fighting the system from within the system.... Until I was able to speak with activist organizers and understand the impact rage had not only spreading the message but also the amount of financial support ratm provided.
I'd go into a depression if I was even half way what I was trying to preach. I didn't know the rage guys were in that cypress hill song. Although they seemed a little b4 my time too. My sheltered bubble tho. I really had to ponder what shells even meant, while trying my hardest to figure out context still frontin... bc I wasn't gonna ask any1 else.. imagine being around bikers like how the hell do u not know black label society when zack walks in. My younger head: dude idk. Just thought he was part of your cheesey but also really scary... biker crew 🤔🤷🏻♀️. Prob the entire rock community: 🤦🏼♂️🤦🏻♀️🤦♂️🤦♀️🤦🏽♂️🤦🏽♀️🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♀️🤦🏿♀️🤦🏿♂️& it surprised me Tom did that song w/ g.son. although maybe all that stuff ends up in my feed for a reason. I thought I was the few who stumbled on him. - I'm not mean. I'm just stand offish... now I feel like I gotta go revisit songs
🔥🔥🔥RAGE STILL KICKS A** !!!!!💉💉💉💉💉💉💉🚫🚫
I think this like criticizing leftists for making money thing is really dumb....like we're kinda stuck in this place where if we're not successful we just hate capitalism because we're poor and never tried hard enough or whatever...but if you're Rage you're one of the biggest bands in the world and making money so you can't criticize capitalism either because you're making money off it. It's a silly criticism it's basically the "you wanna improve society yet you participate in society" meme...
I have some criticisms of Rage here and there I think their lyrics are a little bit too preachy(and I'm saying that as someone who basically 100% agrees with them) but this like "you're successful under capitalism so you don't get to complain" is one that I've heard a lot and I think it's just so fucking ridiculous.
You cease to rage against the machine when you become part of the machine. You need to build an audience to spread your message, yes, but when you become successful decrying the very mechanism that made you successful, you better keep your ass on that tightrope.
Nothing says "anti-capitalist" quite like licensing your image for Guitar Hero.
Morello basically said that the system itself is capitalist and they exist within that system and use that system to spread their message. I call BS. Once they made it big, why not just give away the albums? Why continue to sell? Why continue to sell their liknesses. Why sell the merch? They have the money, why not move somewhere that is ALREADY communist? Just sayin
they suck anyways so it doesnt matter. hed pe is a political band that stands their ground and they are actually good. they realized that the corporate rock world sucked and went independent. the opposite of ratm.
this is real shit brother
@@mariokarter13 today i learned that making successful music is "being a part of the machine"
Thanks, Finn, for introducing me to Downset. I bought their self-titled first album last week, and it’s sweet!
Peep out "Check your people " one of my favorites!
Another thing that made them great, is they blew up when the grunge scene was all over the place. It's not an easy feat to do somthing out of the box, and be super successful. Especially when it comes to music.
True. But were the two genres in opposition? More like a Venn diagram with a lot of overlap.
Let's not ignore Nirvana and those similar blew up in face of the entire glam/hair metal genre. I really disliked bands such a Poison, Ratt, Motley Crue, and Cinderella, and these bands had years of dominance and saturation. The arrival of Nirvana was a thank-the-Lord departure from all that. RATM really wasn't much of a step away from grunge. And grunge was in the mainstream for only about a year or two. A mile wide and two inches deep at the time.
there where seen as part of grunge/alternative music for sure.
It's hard to claim you haven't sold out when your political motives align with big government and tech billionaires.
As Tim Pool puts it, "Rage On Behalf Of The Machine"
That's a brain dead take. They literally hate those things. That was the purpose of their music. Why do brain dead conservative hogs think socialism is being poor and stupid...thats right wingers
@@ms.bunniesarecute2287 Wrong. RATM is against democracy/capitalism. They are openly communist and the fact that you are defending them says all we need to know about you and your wrong opinions.
@@ms.bunniesarecute2287 so Tom morello, who has a net worth of 30 million, should sell his Los Angeles home and buy something a little more modest right? I mean, a socialist (whose slogan seems to be “tax the rich”) shouldn’t be rich then right? Socialists aren’t stupid people. But when you got people like Bernie who has 3 vacation homes, Tom morello who is richer than Bernie, and even the “ok boomer” girl in her 2 million dollar penthouse, preaching to us about taxing the rich while being rich, we just don’t want to hear it. And I’ve never met a person who came from a socialist country that wants that bs in America. From this point forward, if your a socialist, and the evils of capitalism are so grotesque, then I will expect you to donate your money to those who are less fortunate than you (there’s ALWAYS someone who is in more need than you or me), don’t EVER buy s laptop, shoes, clothes, iPhone or Android, a car, bicycle, skateboard, don’t go grocery shopping, etc….don’t do anything that involves exchanging money for goods. Do it yourself. Make your own clothes. Make your own food. Take a sabbatical from technology. You want socialism? I want to see AOC, ok boomer girl, Bernie, and the entirety of RATM, be the first ones to give up 90% of their riches and love the life that they think the rest of us should live in. INCLUDING eating out of these breadlines that Bernie speaks of. And the whole “real socialism just hasn’t been done yet” argument is terrible. Every country that has tried it has become a heaping pile of shit. You’ll never get it here in America my friend. So no, your not stupid. But I will say your ok with theft if you think it’s ok to take something that’s not yours and distribute it to the masses of people that didn’t earn it. He who takes the risk traps the benefits. Period.
@@jamessuraciart Imagine listening to tim pool
They exist within a capitalist framework, so they had to work from within the system. Can a reasonable person make an argument that they are posers? Perhaps. But they did more for their respective causes than most of us, so on what basis can we make our criticism? They were a great band and they had integrity. That's what matters.
Arm the homeless. Tom has millions of dollars. Think of how many guns he could buy to do such a thing.
That’s a joke, right?
Just goes to show they don’t practice what they preach though. One of many reasons not to take the bands politics seriously.
A M I could ask you the same question. If you’re not going to address the bands questionable politics and hypocrisy this is a pointless conversation.
Except they did not only opperate withim capitalism. It was thanks to capitalism that they were sucesfull to begin with. It is because of the market that created the music industry that they were even able to record their songs.
As always, leftists are obnoxious... or just straight up liars.
Rage in perfect harmony with the machine.
lololol
People seem too ready to conflate 'communist' with 'totalitarian' or 'authoritarian'.
yea maybe the dude should look more into the Zapatistas like he said he didnt in the video lol.
They are indeed all siblings beget of the very same dangerously flawed parental ideology.. one who attempts to ignore the similarities or downplay the dangers of such might benefit from a journey through "The Gulag Archipelago " by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
@@jacobprince5137 there are many flavors to a political ideology, for example anarcho communists cant be authoritarian or totalitarian because they want to get rid of the government
Jacob Prince meanwhile back at the ranch.... neoliberalism is destroying the planet
totally agree...calls them a communist paramilitary group lol
A lot of Korn's sound comes from Mr Bungle.
Early Slipknot's sound too!
I always liked Rage Against The Machine, they’re the only rap metal band that ever worked for me. It’s pretty silly how people treat leftists as hypocrites and inauthentic unless they’re literally overthrowing capitalism every waking moment. I mean Martin Luther King Jr espoused some pretty hard left views but you don’t hear anyone calling him a hypocrite for selling books and making money from them.
I’d love to see a video of how Joy Division got so big. A band that was pretty small when it was active is now huge among people who weren’t even born when they existed, myself included. It’s pretty unusual
Yeah, but in case of Rage Against the Machine, it didn't age well. The essence of the whole project was to be "anti-system", no matter what. Some years later, after a few bands rejoined and started touring together to have some revenue, Rage Against the Machine joining the bandwagon just goes against what they constantly preached back in the day. And since Chris Cornell killed himself, Tom Morello, Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk needed the income, and decided to "revive" the project that was mainly anti-capitalism. This is basically them surrender to the $$$, essencially. They don't care for the message nowadays, and are taking advantage of the band's name.
*insert clever reference to that one Matt Bors comic*
Only if you believe all the misinformation thats being spread.
@@sharkuel if you haven't already...I highly recommend fugazi if you want guys to never go back on their word. Their politics still hold up wonderfully today. Their tickets were always 10$ or less, no advertising, no merch, all ages shows, and charity events where all the money goes to the various causes they support. Oh and their music is 1000 times better than Rage.
All people who are vocal about their political views (left or right or somewhere in between) are hypocritical to some degree. I include myself. It's impossible not to be.
I mean, it's pretty bad when an openly communist ancap band charges $500 for standing room tickets to their concerts. Not only did they sell out, but in an explosively hypocritical fashion. I'd also like to point out that Tom Morello is by far, one of the most over rated guitarists in history.
Typical Marxist for you.🤷
Agree he is not a great guitarist take away that pedalboard and see what hes got.
RATM has been in my top 3 bands ever for more than 20 years. I've always found the "I hate capitalism while making millions through capitalism" contradiction uncomfortable, but still something I can deal with. I'm a man from a third world country in South America. Money here has always been a problem so that's a topic that will always make you some unpleasant noise in your head, you know. But as I said, I can deal with it, and more important: My father was a communist on his youth, and he was kidnapped in 1978 by the US/CIA backed fascist dictatorship of fucking Augusto Pinochet, and he was tortured, his family threatened and his friends murdered. That's basically the trauma my family has been living with since then. And you can understand how these really powerful angry lyrics and music can help an angry teenage guy like I was to deal with a world that I could barely understand. And I'm still trying to figure it out haha!
Thank you for another awesome video! As a normal human full of contradictions (just as RATM) and as a music lover too, I really love everything in your channel, from death, thrash, black metal and grindcore to the more pop punk stuff. From Anal Cunt to RATM. You even mentioned here Alanis Morissette, which I really like! Didn't know my favorite RATM album (Evil Empire) broke the reign of Jagged Little Pill on the Billboard!
That's a crazy and sad story. Glad RATM was a band you looked up to, especially since what they are singing is pretty relevant to your father's story.
At least RATM deserved their money, they earned it fair and square, unlike some people.
chile is third world country, only a chileno would say that XD saludos compa
@John Drake did you even read or comprehend what this comment just said
@@copyb594 he probably just saw the word "communist" and started frothing at the mouth and shaking in his chair
The way I see it, they set out with a message that they wanted to spread. But at the end of the day, you have to pay bills just like anyone else. They got their message out and they were able to pay their bills. I also do agree that they wanted to get famous. And they did. Which only helps them spread their message
How Alexisonfire got big would be a great episode, Sure they were never big in the states, but they were huge in Canada and were a band that prominently featured screaming that got played alongside much more traditional pop and rock acts on MuchMusic, that definitely wouldn’t happen today
@Unpopular Politics Agreed, I’m just pissed Off that they weren’t big here in the states, I know I’m biased because of part of my username and profile pic but Crisis and Watch Out! are 2 of the best albums of the 2000s imo
Totally agree. Canada kind of has its own microcosm of music where a punk act can be promoted on the CBC next to folk music.
@Unpopular Politics Yeah, I’m sure that they had a significant niche following in some parts of the United States, but they had legitimate mainstream success in Canada
I LOVE them I think they were criminally underrated
They opened for Gwar in toronto almost 20 years ago. I didnt know how to read the name, i was wondering why Alex was on fire. Surprised me when they got popular. Wouldnt have guessed.
i really would like to see a How Did Linkin Park Get So Big, even though i believe that i am somewhat self aware how they made it i’d like to watch your philosophy about it. they’re always gonna be one of my favorite bands of all time and i think they need to be in this series. keep up the work!
It's a boys band, artificially made.
@Guillaume Oh yeah, that’s why they were originally called Xero and then Hybrid Theory (went through three different names) all with self produced bedroom demos that you can still dig up and listen to to this day which have early versions of songs from the debut LP full length. yep that sure is “artificially made”, only something a fuckin idiot such as yourself would say. I’m sure you’re one of those dumbshits that say Slipknot were never actually from Iowa and we’re just a bunch of recruited LA musicians and the Iowa thing was just a made up marketing thing. 😂 Jesus you people are stupid.
They got big by being a really talented, hip band from hollywood that got tons of major label money dumped into them. Nothing complicated there
Linkin Park don't get the recognition they deserve. Now that I am older, I understand LP so much more than I did. RIP Chester.
@@fatefatefate You murdered him 😂
Hey man, this is one of the most thorough and adept exposé you've done. RATM was a game changer for 90s teenage me. Thank you
Thank you!
I sorta wish you had done some more research into their lives before the band. These guys are all children of huge political subverts. These guys aren’t faking anything. I agree that just because they are rebellious doesn’t mean they don’t also want to be successful. And it’s hard to see that as anything other than hypocrisy, especially if you’re from the hardcore DIY movement, but it’s human to want to have enough money to live comfortably. But the fact that these guys are still part of the movement long after they have broken up shows it was never a gimmick to sell records. They go in the Bernie camp. Not perfect, but doing more than most of us
Nobody plays like Tom because its gimmicky unless he's doing it.
I hate hate hate tom’s solos. It’s “okay” only because it’s his thing. If anyone else did it, it’d be cringe tho.
@@BosworthMcG Tosin Abasi & Javier Reyes have innovated guitar playing more than anyone in decades.
@@LabGoats Animals as Leaders fuck yeah \m/ I have The Joy of Motion on CD and I blast it in my car all the time
Nice to see Downset getting some love! When I hear people waxing lyrical about RATM I like to mention Downset as a band who are at least as good, usually to blank looks!! Great video!
For real I love their song Anger
meh. this is like comparing some random SoundCloud rapper to Young Thug. Downset might have had some better songs but theres intangibles. They were pretty unimportant over all
RATM was trying to beat the system from the “inside out”
Great video! RATM is the band that opened the flood gates for me. Through them I got into At the Drive In, Refused, Bad Brains, Dead Kennedys, and a slew of underground rappers. As I got older the Communist stuff didn't sit well with me, but the other subject matters really shaped me. I think it's fair how you pointed out their relationship with Corporate America, very fair and Balanced. As an American of Pakistani descent, where you are too Brown for White people and too White for Brown people hardcore/metal was a genre that made perfect sense and RATM was the perfect gateway drug.
It's sad that you get treated like that. 😢😢😢😢
@@jessiehermit9503 It's OK. I am glad I went through that.
@J C I guess?
About the Rage/Downset beef, Downset were actually around before with their previous band "Social Justice" and played with Inside Out many times. Downset's singer often wore Inside Out shirts and Rage too I think. They changed the lyrics for the album version of the song too.
Visiting the EZLN Oventik caracol in Chiapas is one of my best memories. Got my zapatista t shirt in that trip, one of my GOAT t shirts.
thats awesome! really want to visit someday :D
Y’all gonna gloss over the fact he compared Zach De La Rocha to Lil Pump? 😂🤣😂🤣
Some of the sentiment toward the end here reminds me of the drunk frat bros singing Kendrick Lamar’s Swimming Pools. Great music sometimes transcends context which is a double edged sword: a broad reach but also potentially a lack of true understanding or the meaning.
Can you do how Nine Inch Nails got big??
I love downset, I think they're underrated and kids who like rotting out or stray from the path now would be really into them. Too bad they're not around anymore
Great video dude.
However, I would like to talk about what I receive as a simplistic approach to criticizing communism. You picked the example of Vietnam (which is quite a sensitive topic) and on top of that of your father-in-law who was imprisoned in during the war. We are talking about a country that France stopped exploiting after WW2 and almost immediately after, the US practically invaded (as is now a common strategy in order to install "freedom"). People have a right to oppose to non-democratic authoritarianism (let alone from an external force like the US) and that being said I would not be too quick to judge the effect of communism based on that example. Did many innocent people pay a price they shouldn't? That goes without saying. But this is a reality that is common in today's society too (more than ever).
Communism is not opposed to being rich, but to exploitation, social inequalities and social injustice.I would say that RATM were an amazing exception to mainstream culture. That comes from a huge fan of theirs, who however is not going to pay the money they ask to see them perform.
That’s classic whataboutism my man. Of course it’s complicated and colonialism/interventionism play a role, doesn’t change the facts that communist governments did a lot of bad things (and so did many others, who should also be held accountable). It’s just not intellectually honest to say otherwise.
@Johnny Pitman there is literally no example of communism in our current world. Not in 2020.
The Punk Rock MBA I hear the term “whataboutism” thrown around a lot lately, and I think you missed the mark on his comment man. I don’t think he was conflating, rather, contrasting the subject. Now, everyone in 2020 is equating socialism with communism which both are just labels. Deep down, you know people who want socialist norms isn’t about the strong arming of dictators and concentration camps (like China) - today it’s all about allowing everyone the opportunity to not be fucking hungry or rack up thousands of dollars in medical debt for needing an MRI to find a tumor. That’s what capitalism does, it puts people in debt both in a financial and mental health front. China has a “social credit” system while we have a “fiduciary credit” system. Very different things and just because terms were thrown around in past to mean one thing, doesn’t mean it means the same thing now.
I still like your videos and I’m not personally attacking you btw, I know your heart is in the right place and you have a lot of really good takes. One last thing I would say about Morello is that he would wear clothes that say shit like “commie” to just piss off the old white men in power, not because he wants to start a communist regime based on Russia or China.
Plenty of cases against Communism but Vietnam isn't one. Also Communism is opposed to basic human dignity, just like its bastard child, Fascism.
Poetically the footage when you are talking about Limp Bizkit and how Rage apoligized for inspiring them etc. is from Limp Bizkit's Woodstock 99 set. Rage Against the Machine played right after them on the same stage (right before Metallica). So... yeah :D
And now we're currently living in one of their songs. Interesting.
no they are not
6:19 The real question is: Why do they have light beer in the US?
We have fake ones too.
It's worth noting that the definition of "communism" Tom Morello adheres to is an older and broader definition of the term which encompasses any leftist movement which operates under the principle that we should aim to abolish not only capitalism but ultimately money itself in favour of collectively taking care of community needs. Specifically, I think Tom is an anarcho-communist, which is *very* different from the big-C Marxist-Leninist variety. That said, I do think that the band's hard-left anti-colonialist stance occasionally led them to endorse groups and individuals who were less than deserving of such shine; for instance, while I'm not particularly perturbed by their endorsements of the Zapatistas or Mumia Abu-Jamal, Morello's comments regarding the Shining Path in Peru at the time were troublingly naïve, and he has thankfully since walked them back.
Marx and Lenin weren’t contemporaries, Lenin was like 13 when Marx died and while Lenin was influenced by Marx, Marxism and Leninism differed greatly.
100 million people dead and you guys keep trying to make excuses for a genocidal movement that was created for the purpose of world domination. It's not an accident that it always ends in tyranny. That's how it's designed to operate. The anarcho-communist fantasy is the carrot they dangle in front of the weak-minded to get them to promote the movement that will ultimately enslave or genocide them.
Cliche Guevara That's what they call themselves. I prefer just to call them Leninists or, in the case of the ones who stick up for dictators and other deranged horseshit, tankies, but I was making a technical point here.
Sid Black By that logic, anyone who supports capitalism and free trade in principle must also be complicit in the excesses of every far-right dictatorship in Latin America, every brutal foreign intervention by the United States on behalf of moneyed interests, and every European imperial power which profited from violent colonial labour exploitation. That seems like an unfair standard, particularly when a lot of people tend to espouse forms of more regulated, ethical capitalism which explicitly intends to avoid such severe structural and physical violence. But many capitalists seem to fail to give socialists, small-c communists and other anti-capitalists that same benefit of a doubt. You read Chomsky and Bookchin and people think you're down with Stalin and Mao, when no sane person would say that reading Smith or Hayek or Thomas Friedman makes you an automatic apologist for Pinochet or Salazar.
It is also worth noting that authoritarian big-C Communists have a pretty long and ugly history of rounding up and slaughtering libertarian small-c communists because they consider their beliefs in general and their anti-authoritarianism in particular a challenge to their narrow, "my way or the highway" view of "revolution," as well as a potential danger to their absolute power and obsession with unity of belief. The Russian anarcho-communist leader Pyotr Kropotkin was well-respected even by many of the Bolsheviks, and his funeral brought out thousands of mourners from every part of the Russian left, but once the great man (a pacifist, to whit) was buried, what did the Bolsheviks do? Start arresting anarchists left and right and transporting or killing those who were found too ornery. Those who speak truth to power are *always* the first against the wall.
P.S. Most of the researchers cited in the Black Book of Communism from which you derive your figures said after its publication that their numbers were wildly misinterpreted or actively misrepresented. Totalitarian regimes, left or right, tend to kill a lot of people for roughly the same reasons entirely independent of their ostensible ideologies. Mao killed tens of millions because he followed dated Soviet psuedoscience and refused aid from better informed sources out of paranoid megalomania, resulting in environmental catastrophe on an unprecedented scale. That's not so much political as a mad king starving his people through messianic delusion. "Communism" is the set dressing.
@@ConvincingPeople I am unsure who the “they” in your comment is. Anyway my point was when it comes to variants of communism Leninism and Marxism are different. Your original comment seem to imply they were the same.
Rammstein next? Im still not getting why my german home boys are so popular around the world and especially in the US.
That would indeed be a good entry to this "How did they get so big" series.
I was a little shocked that they were doing a US stadium tour, or at least were supposed too. Didn’t think they could draw that many people
um because they are a good band.
Two things:
Bulls on Parade is on the Mount Rushmore of greatest rock/metal songs, change my mind
And I think Zach and Tom is the best vocalist guitarist duo ever. They’re the MJ/Pippen of rock/metal
When I first heard their music I was in 2nd year of high school and listening to Nirvana and I never heard anything like Rage against the Machine before. The energy and the funk combined on their self titled album is amazing and extremely recognizable, an instant classic album. I have never been interested in or even knew the politics of the bandmembers and back then and I saw a lot of lyrics as critique and standing up to totalitarian control, war and power structures, and it instantly connected to the teenage emotions I had. I think a lot of kids wearing RATM shirts with Guevara on it at the time also didn't have any idea who he was. Not sure if shooting defectors is very different from the things they were preaching against but what do I know? :P
This video is a phenomenal example of why I love PRMBA. Objective. Respectful. Informed. Insightful. Discerning. Also experienced. Finn you are really damn good at what you do. I’m officially joining your patreon.
Thank you!
12:37 "Ball Tongue" would be a better example
Legit can't get over you comparing a band to lil pump.
Lil pump had his beats and flows written for him. Admittedly.
Are you serious finn.
I feel like the only people who would make that comparison is someone who only heard Killing In The Name. Cause Zach has complex flows and lyrics.
Finn is always pushing this shitty mumble rap in every video. And like ThePyroKnight said that comparison wasn't even good. Killing In The Name is an exception to Zach's lyrics, most of their other songs aren't like that at all.
Everyone gets older and has to feed the kids......I disagree with an awful lot of what they say but never doubted they took the hard path to be fair to them.
What I got from Rage’s music is to form my own opinions about everything that happens around me. Being extreme about any given aspect of life is what Makes this world such a harsh place. Fans were never supposed to just follow the band blindly either. I really like your video because it’s balanced.
I remember referring to those bands as “Korn Against the Downset” because they all kind of sounded the same.
Someone who NEVER sold out, and in that way is more 'punk' than anyone, is FRANK ZAPPA ! An absolute Genius !!! (Very political, very topical, very controversial, etc...)
@Jean D I strongly disagree ! Like he once said, there is no accounting for taste !
@ThePunkRockMBA, can you elaborate on "war crimes?"
Interesting you made no mention of Renegades, their fourth album? I think actually it's a really underrated album and by doing all covers it shows Rage were musically more interesting and diverse than their rather stale third album let'd on.
They’ve genuinely turned into ‘Rage With the Machine’ now…
> early in career writes song about media manipulation
> later in career supports regimes and a political party that utilizes media manipulation
Rage were never anti-establishment..Tom Morello’s uncle was the President of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta.
Yeah he got his job because of his Daddy!!
After thinking more about this what makes me laugh at communists and bands like this is that they can only exist in non-communist societies. Do you think a band with messages like this would be allowed in the Soviet Union, North Korea and China? These guys would all be thrown into the gulag and forced to work until the dropped dead for daring to voice there unhappiness about anything.
They’re insane ticket prices really Suck. They are one of my favorite bands of all time and I don’t really feel like supporting them for $300 a ticket. Ridiculous
About the SNL thing, Tom Morello said that there was a fight between stagehands and they were physically stopped from playing Bullet in the Head
Oh shit, is the clip of the vietnamese guy actually your father in law or was that just a random clip? Because if that us your father in law he was a badass to become a south vietnamese Marines Corps. Those guys were considered elite troops because they had to get selected from the other branches to become a Marines.
My father in law was a south vietnamese ranger who did recon/scouting (also pretty high level but army rather than navy)
I used to feel RATM was trying to balance their radical communist views with trying to be successful band while getting a message they believed. I respected it, especially with how talented they were. Of course they are going to make money. However, after seeing their recent average ticket prices being over 200 dollars, it is hard to not see them like some Che Guerva shirt made by some corporation using sweat shop labor.
In high school, I didn't really look too deapl into their lyrics. To me, they just sounded like alternative band that pushed against the political establishment. However, when I realized who was Mumbia and they wanted to allow a cop killer out of prison, I couldn't really get into their music anymore. Makes you realize they probably don't look to deep into these subjects. They basically read Norm Chomsky and now just make lyrics out of his badly researched books...
Have you actually looked into Mumia’s case? It sounds like you don’t “look too deep” into these topics.
15:00 Yes. If they were SO sincere in their messages as they claim, they simply wouldn't have that personal worth. Tom Morello is worth $30 million and throwing "don't you know who I am?" fits in Seattle coffeeshops. They're no different to me than KISS, Duran Duran, Van Halen, etc and other artists trapped in the image they created for themselves.
Definitely not. Like Finn said, they used their music and fame to promote their message. The money they ended up earning had nothing to do with them message. They didnt choose to be worth $30 million.
Zach de la Rocha kinda looks like Adam Sandler
My top 11 Rage against the machine songs: 11. The ghost of Tom Joah 10. Maggie's Farm 9. Know Your Enemy 8. How I could Just Kill A man 7. Bullet in the Head 6. Guerilla Radio 5. Bulls on parade 4. Bombtrack 3. Bombtrack 2. People of the Sun 1. Killling in the name
The thing with rage that gets me, is the hypocritical self-righteousness and inability to be self-aware enough to differentiate a perceived “revolutionary” or “dissident” view, and an actual one. I listened to this growing up and thought wow man, these guys are talking about all this crazy stuff, I read Marx and Chomsky in high school, and this was during the Bush years...I thought they were really this counter-revolutionary thing. In hind sight, I make it to college and every literature class is rooted in critical theory and deconstruction, post-colonialism, Marxism, etc.
The power structure they rallied against and were so sure of themselves in regards to their thought, turned out to adopt the message they spouted. Woke capital, survellience capitalism, etc. I had to sit in classes and deal with all of these nonsense ideas that were so ingrained in academia, where there was no ability to differentiate from them or express anything outside of those thoughts without causing a perpetual outcry of “reeeeeeing” from everyone around you. Tom Morello still carries himself like the dissident figure, yet nothing is further from the truth. Like Che rocking his Rolex submariner in the jungles of Bolivia, at least then the action was authentic, even with the capitalist superficialities. With Rage, the irony is heavy that SNL is a-light with wokeness, and are every other major corporation and media entity. The New York Times is an outlet of leftist views, which align more so with Rage’s whole ethos, than do anything pertaining to actual workers rights or class issues, as they’re unwilling to stand up for those suffering due to their ethnic/racial makeup and their ideology proclaiming them to be “oppressors” and the arbiters of as Bell Hooks put it, of “the white supremacist patriarchal power structure.” Nothing is more annoying then someone who proclaims themselves to be a Marxist ultra-left globalist, who is “fighting” the same power structure that currently holds his same beliefs. I would have a lot more respect for them as a band if they didn’t maintain that “it’s still 1992 man” attitude and grew up and adjusted to the realities of what their ideology, and the 60’s ideology onward has actually brought us. Those individuals in that band have a lot more to own up to and acknowledge than just influencing genres of music, as they put out a message rooted in things that can manifest in a real dangerous way societally.
this is a mess
@@legalaidmatt Good job refuting and addressing my argument, it seems coherent and well thought out from my perspective, maybe you can address an inconsistency or contradictory aspect there friend?
@@DiamorphineDeath you didn't make an argument. You made a thesis statement, then followed it up with word soup.
@@legalaidmatt Again, it's concise and addresses the same point throughout...I wouldn't expect someone with an anti-fascist logo on their youtube page to agree and counter-signal a communist band...but the least you can do is actually engage with the subject matter instead of trying to dismiss it outright in an ad hominem fashion. It's cowardly there chief. Leftists love to deconstruct other's points, but never actually contribute...they always just nitpick and criticize
Ratm lyrics were very VERY adult content.
They talked about empires usurping resources through wars and manipulation. People who were used to beef and mundane life lyrics never knew what ratm was talking about and equated it with anti-capitalism and anti-west.
6:31 why are their concert tickets $300?! And I’m with you brother. Their politics got way too off the rails even though their hypocrisy came very visible in the recent last 2 years. Also. I wish Tom Morello would decide where the fuck he’s from.
One of your best videos bro... pretty cool work.. greetings from Costa Rica
8:00 in L.A. downset for life!!
RATM still influences my bass playing and Tim was the main inspiration for me picking up the bass in the first place
I hated how Paul Ryan got shit for liking Rage and I don’t even like Paul Ryan. The reasons why people like things are complicated and difficult to explain; some art you just vibe with. It is impossible to only enjoy art from artists you politically agree with, and political opinions shouldn’t mean so much that we have to carve people and things out of our lives because they don’t politically align with us. Everyone is free to enjoy Rage, and nobody should catch shit for it.
I don't know if anyone said this and I'm kinda late, but from what I understand RATM wanted the flags upside down on the amps and SNL said no then just before they were about to play RATM put them back on and in a split second after, the crew quickly took it off before the curtains rolled back. Then after they played their first song they were told to leave so they couldn't play their second song and apparently because of that stint they weren't in the end credits after show where everyone is shaking hands and what not
I don't know enough to have an informed opinion.
I wish that was a more common phrase these days.
Same
A well informed individual, being necessary to the security of a free state.
And we don't always need an expert to tell us things. We'll still listen.
@@christianr1240 People who need to trust "experts" will only trust the ones who confirm their own biases anyway
Then why did you say rage supported authoritarianism and push all that propaganda at the end. lol
I just love their “Anti-War Crime” message while also littering their stage with images of Che who committed countless war crimes as Castro’s personal executioner.
Che is the biggest fraud in latin american history.
Idk how comparing Che executing Batista's crooked cops who had been murdering Cuban civilians for years is comparable to the war crimes that RATM talk about, like US soldiers murdering civilians and CIA backed coups overthrowing democratically elected socialist governments in latin america... But go off???
@@OpIvyUnity Che murdered a lot of people without proper trial. Even people who fought alongside him didn't like the guy. Heck, even Fidel Castro got rid of him after a while. That's how unstable and violent he was.
@@OpIvyUnity plus stop repeating random Cuban propaganda. You really have no clue what you are typing.
It’s not a matter of being power hungry, Che was the chief executioner as early as the Sierra Maestra days, and a lot of the earlier executions were his own people for things like cowardice. A revolutionary is by definition a criminal until they overthrow an existing regime, so it’s pointless saying he was a criminal, they all were. But what one must question is, his motives behind the killings or over zealous revolutionary zeal. I don’t think Che is sadistic, he is a pessimist who is ruthlessly paranoid.
As Billy Corgan once said "despite all my rage i'm still just a rat in a cage"
@arctic king thinking their is a “system” is the problem.
Finn: *mentions rap-rock*
Ice-T: *cough*BodyCount*cough*
nice
Yeah but Bodycount isn't really rap. It's a band with a lead singer who happens to be a rapper. Bodycount is no more rap than Slayer is, if you consider all fast singing to be rap.
The only real logical band to do after Rage is another four lettered, political motivated, influential band: System of a Down.
hes already said he wont do a SoaD video
Last I checked SoaD prefers to go neutral in their lyrics rather than taking sides like Zack and Tom do. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Monarch Simma of a downnow...
Incinerate I mean, Tom and Serj came together to form Axis of Justice, which came out of the hopes of shutting down racism and white supremacy after witnessing a lot of promotion of racist bands at Ozzfest, so...
@@TheZeroDozer soad were 100% on the left side just not as overt as ratm
This dude seems so nice that I bet he doesn’t even say the cuss words he bleeps.
#wholesome
He does look like tom morello
How in the hell do you mention I'm the Man and not when Anthrax got together with Public Enemy and did Bring The Noise?
I know! It' damn near sacrilegious.
I think he doesn’t think of it as ‘corny’, that’s why there’s no mention of it.
I think Zack’s avoidance of the limelight and Tom’s continuation to commercialize his “brand” is all you need to know.
is it? you make it sound like Zack is some hermit living in a cave. that's far from the case, he's still active as a musician. I've never been a huge fan of RATM or rap rock or nu-metal, and as someone very firmly on the socialist end of the spectrum, let me tell you: we don't have evidence to make that call.
the most we can say is they have different ideas about how to use their platforms insofar as that intersects with their politics. that's literally all it comes down to. I happen to disagree with both their strategies in terms how to effectively fuse art and politics but that's a whole other discussion.
This...Mike Muir if they are on Sony record label....
DUDE THIS FUCKING COMMENT. FOR REAL DUDE. DAMNNNNNNNNNN. I would not listen to this band without Zack!
@@janosmarothy5409 he's been participating in a lot of activism in Mexico and South America but ok
@@synesthesia.aesthetic not relevant to what I wrote but ok
I would politely like to point out the irony of criticizing RATM for selling out to capitalism whilst promoting some crappy robot game at the start of the video.
Lol, this did cross my mind
We are all hypocrite under the self righteous me cacophony, Whether we like it not.
@@ThePunkRockMBA lol
However unlike RATM, Finn never built himself up as an anarcho-communist revolutionary preacher. To the contrary, his videos often revolve around branding, advertising and business models in the music industry.
Mans gotta eat
Man, 311 never gets their just due for being right there at the same time, influencing all those rap metal and nu metal bands. Korn even opened for them early in their career.
311+69=420
@@MrKylederp the big difference is that 311 are corny white dudes rapping about energy and shit.
@@MrKylederp 3 K's, K is the eleventh letter of the Alphabet. 😁
@@nicholasromig5506 Nah, just mostly about weed
Nicholas Romig go listen to Nickelback and stay on the porch. Clearly ya can’t run with the big dogs. 311’s freakin amazing.
Every time Finn rattles off a promo for a sponsor, you can literally hear his soul leave his body.
Can you, though? Isn't that like his whole shtick? Market yourself blah blah.
@@lizabright8940 That's his cope. He's still a punk at heart
@@lizabright8940 he's gotta make money, but you can tell 16 year old him is screaming sell out.
Yeah but your 16 year old self is also likely to think that things like showering and not being an abrasive shithead also constitutes selling out sooo maybe you don't have to listen to that silly brat all the time. S/he is smelly and annoying.
@@Bran_Flakesx7 no man being clean is SElliNg oUt
(Yes that was the joke, 16 year olds are typically weird and standoffish about strange things)
Great video man👍🏼 really enjoyed it! I would love to see a “How did Linkin Park get so big”🙃🤘🏼
Absolutely. They skyrocketed quickly!
YES
It was meteoric for sure
I second that.
Yesss I’ve been waiting for Finn to talk about my favorite band for the longest time
had an ad promoting the "masterclass" course of Tom Morello before this video lol
“I didn’t trust teachers, and also I’m a teacher”
Edit - I do like Tom morello ngl
“The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.” by Lenin essentially summarises the approach of why RATM signed to a major label. It is also consistent with your quote earlier in your video from Tom. Its a logical, far reaching platform to expose a number of alternative ideologies to a lot of people. Admittedly, I read stuff by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, as well as Peter Kropotkin (main theorist of anarcho-communism which is who RATM more closely aligned with) in high school because of RATM. I wouldn't say that a lot of those principles resonate with my personally, but if it wasn't for RATM, I probably wouldn't have been so openly exposed to them.
For their reunion tour why not book large outdoor venues with massive general admission capacity instead of limited seat arenas? I understand the benefits of booking arenas, but when your capacity to draw a crowd is large enough and you're ethically anti-capitalist why even entertain the risk of price gouging? Do I think their statement about ticket prices and their reunion tour is bullshit? Absolutely. Did I spend $400 on upper bowl tickets for their show? Sure did.
@@masonfisher6227 Capitalist put Lenin and other disney commie characters in some t-shirts and sell it to the public.
@@masonfisher6227 I was going to UK to watch their show at Reading Festival. Tickets cost me 89 GB pound. If i can travel 10,000 kilometres to see them, stop whining about a measly 400 bucks.
More of a Bakunin guy, myself. lol
Marxism is a murderous ideology. Free market capitalism is the best system out there. Big government causes nothing but problems, that's the reason why healthcare and tuition cost so much, because of government subsidies. Rand Paul is the man.
I'd say what made their rap/rock hybrid so successful was that it permeated through every aspect of their sound. While most prior attempts had been either rock bands with rap vocals or rappers using rock samples, in the case of RATM we got a band that were as good at playing live hip-hop (something almost unheard of at the time) as they were at playing metal/hardcore. Their influence on nu-metal is undeniable but the same can be said for many standout acts from that era since it was a time of transition away from the styles that had come to dominate the 80s. Some of their revolutionary politics may be questionable in hindsight but they existed in a pre-internet, pre-SJW time when media narratives differed significantly, the means by which their ideas and views could be voiced and challenged were far more limited than they are now.
@@sleeperz0 Right?!? I actually didn't notice how much funk inspired ROTM until I put them back on for the heck of it late last year. It's really quite interesting.
Bro wtf, sjw?
Hip hop rock you mean?
I remember hearing gorilla radio on Tony Hawk's pro skater as a kid and it blew my mind! Not from lyrics but from just how damn cool that song is.
Turn that shit up.
Didn't know you had a TH-cam channel man!!. Hit that subscription button real fast. Guerilla radio kicks major ass.
Yeah. Same. My first encounter with Rage was through THPS2. Guerrilla Radio's intro was just damn catchy.
its guerrilla
Same too. Then I started a career and realized how great capitalism is. I make jokes about them at work saying their name should have been rage against the machine and replace it with a bigger machine lol. 25 million and their music wasn't that revolutionary 😂.
Tom Morello's guitar playing, no one has been able to recreate it.
Buckethead - Hold my chicken
lmao amazing
i was thinking the same! this dude dont know as much rock as he wants to appear.
I guess you don’t have TikTok where a guy will make any song sound like a RATM song where he then proceeds to record all instrument parts and sound just like Tom Morello lol. His style is very unique but can be recreated. Maybe people just don’t want to copy him and have the obvious said about them.
Their audience wasn’t as clueless as you think….I saw them open up for Cypress Hill at UNH when their album came out….and everyone was already introduced to these ideas by Public Enemy and BDP…but RATM took it to the next level
chickens are his family
I don’t know enough about Tom but I’d reckon when he says he’s a commie he means it in a “workers own the means of production” academic socialism sense not the “authoritarian communism” sense that has been seen historically.
Your anecdote about how “communist authoritarianism can actually be bad” is obviously true but I’m not sure particularly relevant to his views.
I mean they dont endorse communist regimes like the vietcong, they supported the zapatistas because they were libertarian socialists, not marxist leninists
^
Po-tay-to. Po-tah-to. It’s all the same shit at the end of the day.
@@TheJohnGalt1945 They're literal opposites, but it's okay, you're prob. american, you won't understand this stuff without calling me a terrorist lol
@@glitchhhhhhhh it's sad with our internet not completely controlled a troll on TH-cam can just throw out ignorance and we have to accept the tradgety of his ignorance. Many people in america wont come to understand definitions although they could learn almost instantly from their phone.
Yeah, sure, but Tom wore CCCP hats too. The Soviets were certainly Marxists.
Now that you mentioned you look like light skinned Tom Morello I can't unsee it
Rage Against The Machine is just Limp Bizkit for communists
I rlly like this "how they got so big" series, and your input seems honest. Keep up the good work.
Pd: not all metal fans are ranting neckbeards
I would like to see how did rise against get so big.
Are they still big? It was such a pain to see a beloved band slowly water itself down to obscurity
They're really not that big. Not on the level of the other bands he's covered so far.
They'd be good
Rob Mitchell oh they're definitely bigger than some of the bands he's covered
no you wouldn't
Hi Finn.
I really love your videos and you were actually the first channel I ever felt the need to subscribe to.
While I disagree with your personal politics (support of capitalism, passive income sources, military) I generally don't mind because you're your own person and it wouldn't stop me from watching. Though as someone who identifies as a communist I really disagree with your take in this video.
The implication that RATM are hypocrites because they make money from their art is one I can't get behind. We, as westerners, are all born into the framework of capitalism and we don't have a choice in that.
By and large, western leftists are anti-capitalist BECAUSE we are forced to participate in the system, not in spite of it.
Saying that Tom probably thinks branding the band with communist ideology is just to shock people and be edgy is really ignorant dude. He has a degree in political science from Harvard, it should be taken for granted that he knows what he's talking about and has strong genuine beliefs.
You didn't comment on the Zapatistas because you're not well informed about it, so why would you feel the need to include such a personal, polarising denigration of the bands ideological stance?
I don't think he was trying to imply that they are hypocrites, he stated that they are human and wanted their message to reach a larger audience. He also mentioned that they didn't tone down their politics as they got bigger
Also, he didn't mention anything about RATM's endorsement of the Zapatistas in a negative way, but hopefully he learns a bit more about them and understands their ideology fully.
For someone that doesn't fully agree with the bands politics, I think he handled it in the best possible way, and this is coming from a Communist as well
I think it's just weird to spend 90% of a video saying "This video isn't a referendum on the band's politics" and "Now I don't know enough about the Zapatistas to comment, again, this isnt' about the band's politics", then all of a sudden at the end to accuse Morello (who is, if nothing else, educated on the topic he's discussing) of just edgelording with his politics, and go into this whole "communism = violence against POWs" rant at the end. Like... did RATM hit a sore spot, dude?
If you want to do a politics video, that's fine (I love those). But maybe if you're going to go that route then "do your research". And I don't mean that as "you're wrong", I mean, maybe do enough research that you don't have to say things like "I don't know enough to comment", then comment like a madman anyway.
I think I found them from The Crow soundtrack - which is still to this day one of the best soundtracks ever.
Yep! Darkness. Originally an Inside Out song called Darkness of Greed that was retooled for the soundtrack
@@synesthesia.aesthetic Im gonna check that out right now, thanks!
@@zackschilling4376 for sure
@@synesthesia.aesthetic one of their best tracks
brad wilks from rage and abe Cunningham from deftones are two of the most underrated drummers of the 90s
Abe especially. He has the sickest, coolest grooves of all of these 90's metal bands
John stanier from helmet is criminally underrated as well
I remember when mainstream Republican Paul Ryan said they are his favorite band, and then walked it back when RATM's politics were brought up.
Its ok to like music and not support the message
Yep, not to mention the way that Tom Morello verbally bitch-slapped him, saying that Paul Ryan embodied the very machine that they were raging against.
@@jasondqd While that is very true, it seems kind of weird to support something that contradicts your own personal viewpoint though.
well guess what. Music is totally non political, music is a series of notes being played in rythmic patterns and within a series of scales, it's a form of art, not an ideology
Well the “machine” is progressive socialism nowadays so it’s not a stretch for Paul Ryan to like them. Plus, Tom is a twat, regardless of his skills, he just betrayed a fan for an ideology.