More than a year away from the elections, and we are already subjected to the bumbling attempts of candidates trying to be cool and interesting.  In the February 10th edition of The Caucus (political blog for the New York Times), blogger Richard Perez-Pena points out the laughability of former NYC mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s use of The Clash’s “Rudie Can’t Fail” during a campaign appearance in California:  “A punk band that smashed guitars and sang about riots seems like an uncomfortable fit for the law-and-order former mayor,” he points out.

 

Yet while Perez-Pena is right to point out the laughability of Giuliani’s use of the song, he sadly misses the bitter irony.  The Clash were far from thuggish punks as Perez-Pena alludes to.  The group represented a significant turning point in the merger of politics and popular culture in music history, building on a legacy that began with Woody Guthrie and flowed throw Bob Dylan, and Johnny Cash while inspiring Bruce Springsteen, Public Enemy, and U2.  While at first glance comical, this move is in reality painfully hypocritical, as Giuliani, a politician who made a name for himself by turning the New York Police Department into a feared death squad, chose a song from a group that stands in stark contrast to his ideals and policies. 

 

The Clash rose out of 1970s London, caught in the grip of racism, police brutality and joblessness.  As the English government did little while working peoples faced mounting poverty, the Clash’s emotional sound and call for humanist social change motivated a generation of youth to seek something better.  They were central in forming the Rock Against Racism shows to combat Neo-Nazi groups like the National Front, and spoke out in favor of democratic movements in the third world. 

 

Giuliani, on the other hand, does not have so admirable a record.  During his tenure as “America’s mayor,” Giuliani made life even more difficult for the poor by reducing the level of low income housing, creating a horrid welfare-to-work program, and slashing social safety nets for the homeless, indigent, and handicapped.  City schools became the most overcrowded in the country even as Giuliani refused to give teachers a raise.  And his greatest legacy of all might be the overwhelming number of gruesome police brutality cases that occurred under his watch.

 

Yet Giuliani’s use of a popular band such as The Clash is something we’ve seen before.  It is eerily reminiscent of the same action taken by another wolf in populist clothing.  During the 1984 Presidential campaign, Ronald Reagan appropriated Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.” It is still something that haunts Springsteen who recently described the act as “one of the worst things that could have ever happened…the song was about the forgotten vet, low wageworker, the single mother—the forgotten people of this country—specifically forgotten by Reagan” but nevertheless exploited when necessary for political cachet.  

 

Giuliani should take a trip down to what used to be the Lower East Side-a neighborhood where he led the charge to bulldoze community gardens, seize low-income housing and community centers, and suppress artists – to check out two murals dedicated to the late Joe Strummer, former Clash front man.  One mural is titled “Know Your Rights,” another classic protest song that the Clash directed at Reagan and English Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

 

And what exactly do these two “Rudies” have in common?  The Clash’s Rudie was a young man struggling with joblessness and racism.  New York’s Rudy told and angry unemployed woman that her “behavior” was the reason she didn’t have a job.

 

The Clash’s Rudie was a reference to the reggae-listening, anti-racist Rude Boys who fashioned a loose knit counterculture resistance.  New York’s Rudy defended the police officers that murdered Amadou Diallo and tortured Abner Louima.

 

The Clash played benefits for striking firefighters.  Giuliani had firefighters arrested for protesting him at Ground Zero.

 

So, while Giuliani tries to slither his way into the Republican Presidential nomination, the Clash’s music is seeing a resurgence in popularity, at a time when there is a growing global movement against the status quo.  The group’s message of rebellion and social change is resonating with a whole new generation of ordinary people fed up with the policies of poverty, racism and war.  And it’s these people who deserve the inspiration of the Clash’s message, not Giuliani. 

 

Joe Strummer, ever the clever musical rebel, addressed Giuliani directly with a special performance of “Rudie Can’t Fail” while on tour in NYC in 1998.  Strummer changed the famous refrain to “Rudy Giuliani gotta gotta get away!”   

 

 

Antonino D’Ambrosio is the author of Let Fury Have the Hour: The Punk Rock Politics of Joe Strummer and the upcoming Politics in the Drums; A People’s History of Political Popular Culture. Email: [email protected] 

 

Alexander Billet is music journalist.  He maintains the blog Rebel Frequencies (http://rebelfrequencies.blogspot.com), and is the author of the forthcoming The Kids are Shouting Loud: The Music and Politics of The Clash. Email: [email protected]

 

 

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