In times of hammering, things that are self-evident need to be made clear again.
Hand on heart: How much do you care about the Super Bowl halftime show? So personally, very much. I allow myself this luxury – with a somewhat guilty conscience, because in our era of total global social media hammering, this mega-crazy event is of course of immense pop-cultural significance, totally exciting! Only this time it will probably be TOO exciting.
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Briefly described: After the fascist (project phase) Trump regime recently effectively forced the US football teams, which are largely made up of people of color, to kneel and hold a minute’s memorial for the murdered racist “influencer” Charlie Kirk, the NFL now has – probably in order to retain a bit of dignity – the “absolute megastar” (um … I’m not familiar with the hit) and “anti-Trump” (“Spiegel”) Bad Bunny from Puerto Rico committed.
As usual, the Trumpists reacted excessively and announced, among other things, that they would be organizing an “alternative” halftime show at the same time, at which, among other things, pure “worship” pop would be heard – you know, this is the music where even the Lord himself says in all his long-suffering: “People: I died for somebody’s sins, but not for this shitty music!” We know from Frank Zappa that The Good Lord speaks German when things get tough.
“Freedom of expression cannot be shot – RIP”
Charlie Kirk was shot by a boy from a “MAGA family” who had been indoctrinated with “Christian” right-wing ideology since early childhood and trained to use weapons – the very clientele that demagogues like him have been systematically whipping into a madness of hate and delusion for years. As a political actor in this country, you could find warning, moderating words that this social cancer should not be allowed to spread here too.
Exactly. Or you are already so high on your own culture-fighting fury that you adopt the propaganda of the Trump regime, which is killing people every day, and jazz up the hate preacher Kirk as a martyr for freedom of speech. “Freedom of expression cannot be shot – RIP,” the Junge Union condoled, and apart from the fact that most of what Charlie Kirk spread was inhumane hate speech and lies – which the prominent German journalist who praised Kirk as an “idealist” and “smart representative of the common man on the street” should also know – this highly poetic sentence is also semantically stupid.
No, McFly, freedom of expression is an abstract concept and cannot in fact be shot. Like, by the way, stupidity, malice, bigotry, hatred, opportunism – there is probably no way to combat them. But a different abstraction or the attitude behind it is now suspected of terrorism in the USA, and here too there are efforts to demonize Antifa, i.e. antifascism – of all things. You should be suspicious and perhaps say it out loud again (or for the first time?). post: Yes, I am Antifa! What else?
This column first appeared in Musikexpress issue 12/2025.