‘John Wayne Was a Nazi’: the punk band who attacked an American icon
Political activism has always been a key aspect of the punk rock revolution, but so has shock factor. Within the realm of hardcore, bands like MDC were among those who aimed to overlap those two sides of the punk Venn diagram. After all, nothing is more shocking than attacking an apparent American hero.
Going right back to the earliest revolutionary spark of punk, shock has been part and parcel of the scene, whether it manifested itself in the wild performance style of Iggy Pop or in UK punk’s uncomfortable adoption of Nazi armbands during the mid-1970s. During the emergence of hardcore, though, that shock factor was turned up to 11, thanks largely to groups like Dead Kennedys – who caused outrage in virtually every aspect of their existence, including their band name – and, of course, MDC.
An abbreviation of ‘Millions of Dead Cops’, MDC didn’t waste any time in establishing their unapologetic, searing sound when they first emerged back in 1979. Following the example set by the likes of Dead Kennedys’ Jello Biafra, whose Alternative Tentacles label distributed a lot of MDC’s early material, the band’s 1982 debut album is among the most defiant, politically-charged records of the hardcore age.
In addition to criticising the state of Reagan’s America and tackling issues of consumerism, religion, homophobia, and class war, among various other things, MDC also used the tracklisting of that 1982 album to take a well-deserved swipe at one of the United States’ most beloved stars of the silver screen, John Wayne.
Wayne is afforded an unparalleled reputation within American conservatism, both for his legendary filmography, which helped to define the golden age of Hollywood, and for his outspoken, unwavering patriotism. Behind that, though, Wayne was also ultra-conservative, he made a litany of utterly unwatchable films, and he was also – inarguably – a white supremacist.
In a now-infamous interview with Playboy in 1971, Wayne, who spent much of his film career executing Native Americans on-screen, outright stated, “I believe in white supremacy until the Blacks are educated to a point of responsibility,” along with various other heinous quotes, including reducing the cinematic masterpiece Midnight Cowboy to “a story about two fags”.
Nevertheless, simply pointing out that John Wayne harboured horrendously offensive and outdated views is enough to cause outrage in certain aspects of American society, given the fact that he is, even now, still cited as a red-blooded American hero. So, when MDC released the song ‘John Wayne Was a Nazi’, the response was expectedly outrageous.
While the song was never going to infiltrate the pop charts, nor was it aimed to, the MDC track did give conservative critics of punk rock something to cry over. It was, after all, a deliberately provocative song, equating a quintessentially American figure to a Nazi, but behind that shock factor was a genuinely important message against the kind of macho racism that is still normalised in the United States to this day.
What’s more, the song came out decades before most people were widely aware of Wayne’s white supremacist leanings, so MDC also carried out an important public service announcement with the track, leading a generation of punks to wake up to the hypocrisy and abhorrent racism of the actor.
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