Fuck this bible thumpin reactionary hillbilly dork.
“But he goes after both sides!”
No, He punches down on poor people. Fuck off with that.
The name of the song itself is a huuuuuggggge dog whistle, imo. Tells me everything I need to know about the target demographic.
Dude is a full blown nazi, his YouTube channel had (possibly still has) a playlist of videos titled something like “videos to make ya think”, including stuff about the dancing Israelis conspiracy theory.
Anybody who uses that phrase is just so unaware of how they sound. To accuse everybody else of not thinking is just so arrogant. Oh look at me, I’m the one who figured it out, all I had to do was start thinking. No one else is thinking
How is that? I’d honestly like to know. It raises my hackles, but i can’t really explain why.
“Rich men north of Richmond”… I’m not american, so maybe that’s why i don’t quite get it
Probably has something to do with the Mason Dixon line (civil war border) and Richmond being the northernmost city of the South.
Richmond was the former capital of the confederacy. The Mason-Dixon line is actually at the Pennsylvania-Maryland/Delaware border.
North of Richmond is referencing Washington DC which has a large, fairly poor Black population and its suburbs, which are very rich and somewhat liberal.
I think its a bit of a stretch that he’s not just talking about Congress/Senate when referring to rich people in DC. That seems to be the most likely scenario.
Standard rightwingery refers to “them politicians in Washington”. When he tosses in a reference to the capitol of the Confederacy, it’s pretty clear who he’s pandering to.
I think you’re probably right due to the target audience of the song and who originally seeded its success, e.g. Matt Walsh. Although I suppose you can just argue that Richmond just sounds good put next to rich men? Though if they weren’t comfortable with it being associated with the confederacy though they just wouldn’t have used it.
If I was to disregard the confederacy association I would say it’s an OK name because if you’re referring to politicians in DC they’re a group that’s worthy of being called out. It would still be stupid though because of course many of their favourite politicians are, you know, politicians and also very rich (like Donald Trump but also many more who were born into great wealth and continued to be wealthy throughout their lives.)
Kinda weird when your song talking shit about politicians contains an explicit reference to the folks you’re talking about being north of the capital of the Confederacy.
Did not know that about Richmond haha
Who tf is this anyway?
Apparently his name is Oliver Anthony.
Thanks friend!
I feel like I should be happy to not recognize this person.
Same
You must not subscribe to Politcal Outrage Weekly
That’s because a lot of Americans are under the impression that poor people are poor because they’re lazy, and not because they’re victims of oppression. They even cling to this absurd belief when they themselves are the victims of similar oppression. Must be lead in the water or something…
I’ve lived in very poor, rural, white American places, and it’s unironically all about skin color.
White and poor? It’s because the Democrats illegally steal your money with taxes, and any welfare is just you getting back less than you deserve.
Black and poor? It’s because you’re bad, and any welfare is the Democrats buying your vote and supporting you destroying the country with your violence.
Can confirm. There is no such thing as a “white welfare queen”.
It is basically a slightly different variations of this
It’s an outcome of puritanical Protestantism in the modern day. It’s nicknamed prosperity theology. Lack of wealth is seen as a moral failure, rather than a societal one. To be wealthy is to be granted abundance by God, and to be poor is to be punished for misdeeds in the eyes of God. It’s a cruel ideal that is deeply embedded into right wing American religious spaces.
Ah, yes. I remember Jesus explaining this in the lecture on the mount.
That sounds like something supply side Jesus would do
Actually it’s “forever chemicals” that they’re drinking https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/08/what-are-pfas-forever-chemicals-what-risk-toxicity
This song does such a good job with communicating the conservaive trinity:
- persecution complex
- mad about things they themselves voted for
- mad that the other is getting something, which is obviously undeserved
In his interviews he claims he is a centrist but takes issues with teachers turning girls into boys and boys into girls.
So he’s a centrist™?
He may have been looking at globe when answering that one.
I’m ootl, what’s the song?
Rich men North of Richmond
Now I’m debating if I want to give him more views…
It’s not exactly a lyrical masterpiece.
Rich Men North of Richmond Lyrics
[Verse 1]
I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
So I can sit out here and waste my life away
Drag back home and drown my troubles away[Pre-Chorus]
It’s a damn shame what the world’s gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is[Chorus]
Livin’ in the new world
With an old soul
These rich men north of Richmond
Lord knows they all just wanna have total control
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
And they don’t think you know, but I know that you do
'Cause your dollar ain’t shit and it’s taxed to no end
'Cause of rich men north of Richmond[Verse 2]
I wish politicians would look out for miners
And not just minors on an island somewhere
Lord, we got folks in the street, ain’t got nothin’ to eat
And the obese milkin’ welfare[Verse 3]
Well, God, if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds
Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds
Young men are puttin’ themselves six feet in the ground
‘Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin’ them down[Pre-Chorus]
Lord, it’s a damn shame what the world’s gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is[Chorus]
Livin’ in the new world
With an old soul
These rich men north of Richmond
Lord knows they all just wanna have total control
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
And they don’t think you know, but I know that you do
'Cause your dollar ain’t shit and it’s taxed to no end
'Cause of rich men north of Richmond[Outro]
I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay“I wish the government would help people.”
Welfare exists.
“No, not like that.”
These lyrics reflect completely legitimate working class anxieties but supports the system that perpetuates them. “Taxed to no end,” the corporate tax rate has been brought down by lobbying for decades. The obese focus is on one hand legit since eating like shit is cheap, but it has blinders on about why that is, since it’s not convenient to their point.
These parts are all completely legit, although the lyrics are pretty bad. The same things have been said by much better voices in much better ways.
I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
So I can sit out here and waste my life away
Drag back home and drown my troubles away
Young men are puttin’ themselves six feet in the ground
‘Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin’ them down
Overall it’s a great example of politics in America right now and how the working class is exploited by the right wing, as well as how liberal media, in the mainstream “dialogue,” fails to address the working class anxieties and instead focuses on the “controversy” of the song. The coverage isn’t really about the lyrics, it’s about the way people are interpreting them politically, and it all favors and perpetuates the exact same system.
Yeah, I totally agree with everything you said. The anxieties felt by people on the far right are real, they’ve just got a skewed perception of the cause of their problems.
So persecuted that a bunch of rich guys put their thumbs on the scale and ascended his music to the charts because they agreed with the message. The Rich Men North of Richmond want total control, no not the ones I agree with, the other ones.
Thank you! I watched it!
I still have no clue what the deal is with it, since it doesn’t seem too different from any other hipster singing similar Country songs as that, but at least now I’ve heard it, so thank you
Rich Men North of Richmond, by Oliver Anthony
He’s a Jewish conspiracy level Nazi.
And unfortunately he’s also a pretty damn good singer.
Like my hackles were up the whole time I was listening to the song because I knew this is some sort of like Republican redneck protest song against the liberals, but at the same time I had to admit the guy can fucking sing and it was a good song.
We really need to step up our protest song game.
You need to get out there and look.
Lots of revolutionary music being made, just not made by industry plants and boosted by bullshit
Tho he is a good singer, the song was basic
AJJ aka Andrew Jackson Jihad has been around making protest songs for awhile.
I love AJJ, they are a mainstay on my playlists. Their songs are good to great in the lyrics department. But musically they’re not super amazing. Their lead singer also has not a great singing voice. I don’t think any of their songs could be called “catchy” - and none of them are going to get the attention this guy’s song did, and a big part of that is their songs aren’t as good - again, simply from a music standpoint.
Yeah that first verse about how we struggle, etc. I was very interested. Then look out for miners, not minors…oook easy dunk, we can all get behind protecting kids. Then the welfare thing. Oh it’s republican talking points not a new uprising of classic country like Cash
Removed by mod
Fit For An Autopsy has been around for a while my dude. Look them up.
Burnin sherman
The song on youtube does seem to have recorded much greater pipes than he actually has live in person.
Check out David Dondero - The Filter Bubble Blues.
Oh that’s absolutely v i l e
And not just the highlighted one
I’m sure you can read between the lines and know exactly what voices he’s been listening to.
Image Transcription:
Picture of Oliver Anthony singing with the caption above: “When the government gives more of your tax money to corporations but you’re mad someone used EBT to buy snacks”
[I am a human, if I’ve made a mistake please message and let me know. Please consider providing alt-text for images for ease of use. Thank you. 💜]
Good job! Thank you for doing that.
deleted by creator
Anyone have the numbers of social welfare spending vs corporate welfare spending for a recent year? Say 2020-2022? I can’t find it.
I’m too lazy to look up the numbers, but I think the premise of this argument is rather weak.
Money spend on social welfare, vastly improves poor people’s lives. When you spend it on corporate welfare, the money tends to go into the pockets of people who are already pretty comfortable.
This is a simplification of a multifaceted issue, but by and large I think this holds a lot more water than just comparing numbers.
Also: There was a pandemic in the time period given, so there might be some selection bias.
Means testing is something that wastes a lot of public welfare funds and is usually a tool utilized by those who want to cut programs as an example of welfares inability to work. If we got rid of means testing then corporate welfare would be shown for how truly useless it is. I’m not arguing with you or anything, just adding some more detail to the topic
It depends on what exactly you consider social welfare and corporate welfare. There’s all sorts of ways to split the data.
Let’s be more specific and find out how much public money was spent on sugarry snacks for fat people, which is his ridiculous complaint. I’ll assume we’re not psychopaths who are generally against a social safety net.
I legit actually like country music. Country music and punk rock. Both of them are just three chords and the truth
And man, when this song started, dude came in hot. I loved it. And then he went flying right off the rails.
Exactly what I thought, the first verse and most of the chorus is legit working class anxiety. The rest is blaming other victims of the system, and while it references “rich men,” it contains no criticism of their wealth, the reference to taxes is more the opposite.
Well it kinda does criticize them, just only if they are located above a certain geographical point
A friend sent it to me, and at first I was hopeful… then I was like ‘hmm… strange choice of wording’ then I was like ‘oh, that was deliberate’ as it started to sound more like propaganda and less like a legitimate statement.
I likes the song when I saw it on Tik Tok. Now I’m getting videos for right wing politics. I just thought it sounded good. Had no idea that it would become a nazi war cry.
Yeah, I get it. It’s like conservatives who use “Born in the USA” at political rallies. Sometimes you gotta listen to the lyrics
I just thought it sounded good
Listen to more music. His voice is mediocre and his message is disgusting.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/t-MX5P1LCuw
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Thanks for recommendation, love finding new music.
I know this guy. I mean, not exactly this guy but pretty much.
deleted by creator
I can’t tell you how many people walked into my store at the height of that shit and said, “Well, I got the wuflu. It ain’t nothin’. Just a dang cold.”
Or, “shew buddy, China bug is about to wipe me out buddy. I ain’t never been so sick in my life. cough cough cough Whatchu wearing’ ‘at democrat rag for? You can still smell a fart cain’t yuh?”
deleted by creator
I was at guitar center shopping for a nylon classical and this kid was singing that Oliver guy’s one song in the acoustic room.
When he finished I told him that song is about me.
He also played wonder wall, no joke, 10 times.
Lmfao
id be willing to wager a $20 he used A.I. software and tweaked it for these lyrics. everyone commenting has been skirting, what i think, to be just a new trend in bait music.
The song is bad yet just cognitive enough to cause a stir.
Don’t forget how infectious stupid can be, especially when under pressure
As it’s relevant, let’s remember the video Hank Green posted on TikTok discussing how “for every word expressing a negative emotion in a headline, that increased the click-through rate to that article by 2.3%” and "if they make us disgusted, outraged, frustrated, scared? Then? Then we start thinking about clicking
It looks to reference this article from Nature:
Robertson, C.E., Pröllochs, N., Schwarzenegger, K. et al. Negativity drives online news consumption. Nat Hum Behav 7, 812–822 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01538-4It’s easier to be a pessimist in a pessimistic situation than to be an optimist I suppose
Throwback to when @destineenstark gave an 8m3s discussion and analysis on TikTok spelling out how DESPITE Jason Williams swearing that all the video from “try that in a ‘small’ town” is all original and genuine, one thing is from Berlin, Germany, another from Plovdiv, Bulgaria, another stock image from somewhere else…
You could be mad at both… why is this a black and white issue? EBT abuse is real.
I have seen people literally sell the milk they get from EBT that was intended to be used for their baby. They bragged about being able to get the new iphone with it. I have seen homeless who buy bottled water on SNAP only to dump and resell the bottles so they could get cash for their addictions. Why would i not be mad at that just as I am at how corporate bailouts didnt help anyone except the top .01% of society?
Edit: so many hexbears. I dont care to respond to Kremlin bots.
Idk man, just seems like small potatoes, and rare. Everyone has to eat and I find it doubtful that the skinny EBT amounts will fund an addict’s lifestyle significantly if the food is resold on the secondary market.
When it comes to government waste? It’s not nothing, but I think you’re right, it is technically small potatoes. But it isn’t rare, I’ve heard 2 very credible firsthand accounts. The result of one I’ve actually witnessed, repeatedly.
So idk exactly how that SNAP/EBT stuff works, but it’s just a certain amount loaded up on a card. I thought it was $200, and $200 went a hell of a lot further in 2017. My friend had a deal worked out with his neighbor, he’d “purchase” that $200 SNAP/EBT card for $100. They’d take that to the store & eat really, really well! 😂
We justified playing into it because if we didn’t buy it, they’d just sell it to somebody else. So why not us? Why shouldn’t we get the food? But yeah those neighbors wanted $100 CASH more than a $200 card to buy food. Is this behavior rare?..probably not as rare as you think. But definitely not common, and small potatoes.
Definitely not defending Oliver Anthony because aside from this song, don’t know donkey about him but take this for what it’s worth as a die hard libertarian in the rural south who has also lived in urban areas.
I get how the song is appealing to actual working class people in the south. “Your dollar ain’t shit,” “overtime hours for bullshit pay,” applies to a lot of living conditions here. Employers want college degrees in these areas for $12-15 an hour. Normal people that haven’t went to trade school or college because they can’t afford it, got pregnant, had to help with bills, etc. have very slim chances of getting one.
There are legitimately people in this area who have always been on top, that now are making 80k+ per year, who still draw food stamps and have medical cards. So yeah, if you’re a normal Joe trying to be honest, it sucks dick. Because you spend 60+ hours of your week preparing to/teaching kids who are taught from birth that school is stupid and will never do anything for them, get paid $30k a year, as a good job, and your take home is less than 2000 a month. Houses start at 200k, milk is $5 a gal, gas $3.50, groceries are at an all time high because of profit margins, I get why it resonates with working class people here. If you aren’t actively gaming the system (the Welfare hating as critics of the song are calling it) the way 40% of the area does, you’re shit out of luck.
Again, don’t know anything about the dude, but know a lot about the rural south, and they’re underpaid, overworked, and the biggest victims of the government in this country because the government actively keeps a majority of them in learned helplessness and the remainder can’t get ahead because with everyone having a medical card or EBT, jobs assume they don’t have to pay shit.
I don’t think there’s a single county in the US where someone making $80k a year qualifies for food stamps. It’s indexed to the poverty rate. Do you mean WIC, maybe? That’s more universal.
Sounds like the rural South sucks ass. As someone with family from the area, I’d agree it does. They should probably stop voting for the people who want to keep them poor, desperate, dumb, and angry.
Am from rural south and this sounds like bullshit. I’m in a state that “thanks God for Mississippi” and if you make $35k+ here you’re not getting much if any in the way of government assistance. But this commenter is a self proclaimed librarian so… Also how is this government victimizing them when they’re essentially shopping at the company store? The rich are the ones gaming the tax system and handing that burden to the folks subject to “middle class welfare”.
self proclaimed librarian
It’s always the fuckin librarians
Idk under $100k in Marin and SF is considered low income.
View: “if you aren’t actively gaming the system” in my post.
People here intentionally adopt or have children, stay with their spouse for 20+ years while never married, all with the intention of getting multi-thousand dollar tax returns and keeping EBT. The wife doesn’t need to work, her husband makes enough to support them. So she has three or more children. Then she’s a single mother with no income, as far as the state is concerned, so she gets EBT/Medical Cards, etc.
I know individuals who make between 50k-80k who draw between 700-1300 in food stamps a month because of these arrangements. It’s everywhere.
That’s idiotic, because it means he can’t claim those kids as dependents and is paying far more in taxes every year than they would filing jointly. I could see people doing that for the medicaid, I guess, which is why we need to eliminate income bars for that program and just universalize it, then allow people to buy private health insurance to supplement.
Yeah, he pays more in taxes than he would if they jointly filed. But the money his wife gets back + 700-1000/mo in EBT more than makes up for it. That’s basically an extra 20 grand not taxed per year.
Since when do people get $700 plus in EBT
Idk how all states do it but in my state if you’re “single” with children you can draw anywhere from 600-1200 depending on what you make.
I’m curious where that 40% number comes from. Do you have a source?
Also, while I agree that the feds don’t do enough, the state and city governments are worse, constantly misusing or outright stealing the money the feds do give them. And to that I say it’s the state/city and voters fault for not educating themselves and voting appropriately. I say all this as someone who currently lives in a rural south town. The people are apathetic and the elected leaders take advantage of that. The corruption is astounding.
What’s the relevance of “obese” and “300 pounds” people specifically eating gov’t fudge when no reference was made to them making $80k or otherwise not being poor?
He is actually just stereotypically misrepresenting the social safety net as being government fudge for fat people. It’s fucking stupid. Don’t let this be the icon of libertarianism.
If you don’t see a problem with:
30-50% of the south being on food stamps and 40% of the south being obese, idk what to tell you man that’s just maths.
There is a large percentage of people on food stamps who are healthy, able bodied adults who actively choose to not work and or abuse the safety net. & those people still end up making enough to be obese making those decisions while making the system bogged down to the point where some actually disabled people, with their legs blown off or who cannot process information on the same level because they are mentally deficit, cannot get their disability or someone to take care of them.
Obesity is not a disability. It’s either a symptom or a decision.
The only problem with people being on food stamps is that their jobs either aren’t paying enough or there aren’t enough jobs. But it’s 100% excellent that food stamps are available.
If he wants to encourage people to eat healthy then that would be a fine song I guess. But he’s talking about restricting snacks for fat people in a song about how rich people are ruining his life. Just admit that it’s fucking stupid. Fat people eating snacks are not ruining his life.
Tl;dw?
