The voice of blue-collar America recently spoke out about corporatist Republicans and Fox News for using his song for their political purposes. However, Oliver Anthony wanted to make it clear that he is no Democrat or a supporter of the Biden administration.
Anthony, a farmer in rural Virginia, offers a unique, authentic perspective on the effects of corporatization on blue-collar Americans. As the American Tribune reported, “he’s the sort of guy that sees how corporatism of the sort that many pre-Trump GOP candidates championed harmed the American worker, with globalism hollowing out the country’s interior and manufacturing base as illegals swarmed across the border to provide cheap labor that made the rich richer and put the hard-working men in the middle out of work.”
When a giant corporate entity like Fox News stepped in to ride the coattail of Anthony’s success, the country singer obviously took issue with it. The artist even pointed out that he wrote the song about these very people who are ironically leeching off of it.
“It was funny seeing my song at that presidential debate because I wrote that song about those people, you know, so for them to have to sit there and listen to that, that cracks me up,” he said. “It’s aggravating seeing people on conservative news try to identify with me like I’m one of them. It’s aggravating seeing certain musicians and politicians act like we’re buddies and act like we’re fighting the same struggle here.”
However, Anthony wanted to clarify that his criticism of the corporate GOP did not entail that he was a liberal. In a Facebook post, the musician specifically called out President Joe Biden, stating he was “most certainly a problem.”
“This will be my last post about politics on social media. I apologize for beating a dead horse, but I just need to address this quote in my video earlier, since it’s been misquoted/misinterpreted this evening. Corporate news (big surprise) is now trying to twist me into being a Biden supporter,” Anthony wrote.
Instead of singling out one side of the political aisle, Anthony is taking aim at the entire political establishment in Washington, D.C. He claims that Joe Biden is just the tip of the iceberg and that you would have to go much deeper to get to the root of the problem.
“‘That song has nothing to do with Joe Biden, it’s a lot bigger than Joe Biden’ is referencing DeSantis’ response to my song. He talks about needing to get Joe Biden out, as if that would automatically solve all the problems. Biden is a big part of the issue, bit it runs much deeper,” he continued.
He concluded his post, by emphasizing how the collective “system” is the core of the issue. Anthony specifically slammed “corporate-owned conservative politicians” who claim to represent the interests of blue-collar Americans such as him.
“Rich Men North of Richmond is about corporate-owned DC politicians on both sides. Though Biden’s most certainly a problem, the lyrics aren’t exclusively knocking Biden, it’s bigger and broader than that. It’s knocking the system collectively. Including the corporate-owned conservative politicians that were on stage that night.”
Note: The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.
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