picture: The Guardian
As part of a new European tour Bruce Springsteen has played Manchester and robustly attacked Donald Trump’s administration. He made the speech below before playing City of Ruins. Given the authoritarian drift of the Trump regime one wonders if Springsteen is considering applying for asylum. If so he best hope that Keir Starmer is not familiar with his 1971 song Like a Stranger
There’s some very weird, strange and dangerous shit going on out there right now. In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now.
In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now.
In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers.
They’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just and plural society.
They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They are defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands.
They are removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centres and prisons. This is all happening now.
A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government. They have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American.
The America l’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real and regardless of its faults is a great country with a great people. So we’ll survive this moment. Now, I have hope, because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said, ‘In this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough.’ Let’s pray.
Guardian 15th May 2025
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