Tom Morello has been politically active since forever. (What machine do think he’s been raging against this whole time?) Regardless, there’s been a strange growing trend of people on social media telling the guitarist to stay away from politics, and as one would expect, Morello had something to say about that.
In a new fan Q&A with Metal Hammer, Morello said, “I have a number of thoughts. One is that you don’t trigger a free speech exemption when you pick up a guitar, that right remains intact. Secondly, people who are offended by my politics on Twitter or Instagram, please know it’s because you weren’t intelligent enough to know what the music that you were listening to all these years was about.”
He added, “For the music, you’re welcome, but if you’re a white supremacist or a proto-fascist, that music isn’t written for you – it’s written against you.”
On a related note, when asked who he could see “carrying Rage’s torch” and other activist-leaning young artists to check out, Morello responded, “There’s a great artist called Grandson, who I recently collaborated with on my recent Atlas Underground record. There’s another artist called K.Flay, who I also worked with; Nandi Bushell the drummer prodigy, who worked with my son Roman on the song ‘The Children Will Rise Up,’ I have to put the pair of them on that list as well. The under-12 age group are really flying the flag!”
