Alt-right thought leader and righteous-punch receptacle Richard Spencer claimed that Depeche Mode were the official band of his gussied-up brand of neo-nazi rhetoric. Naturally, this didn’t sit well with the band. They have repeatedly denounced the movement since then, but now frontman Dave Gahan has taken them on in the clearest language possible.
In an interview with Billboard, Gahan made sure that Spencer would never get his feelings about the alt-right twisted, “Mazi Punks F*ck Off” style.
“What’s dangerous about someone like Richard Spencer is, first of all, he’s a c*nt — and he’s a very educated c*nt, and that’s the scariest kind of all,” he said.
“I think over the years there’s been a number of times when things of ours have been misinterpreted — either our imagery, or something where people are not quite reading between the lines,” he added, before saying that the public housing-bred band considered their politics to be socialist and working-class and not the divisive, conservative ideas spread by the alt-right.
In spite of all his worrying, however, Gahan doesn’t think that this current political situation is the craziest he’s ever dealt with.
“It was just as crazy when I was a teenager and [Margaret] Thatcher came into power,” he said. “That was the time when to me, music was way more poignant to me, and was way more important than anything I was hearing in school. It was why I walked out when I was 15 and started following The Clash and The Damned around the country.”
Check out the rest of the interview over at Billboard and watch Richard Spencer catch a few haymakers to Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough” below.
