Green Day and the Elon agenda
Punk superstars find it hard to say good riddance to X
Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’ pulled no punches calling out “a redneck agenda” when it was released as the title track from their politically-charged, million-selling 2004 album.
Written in the post-9/11 “age of paranoia”, the song’s original target was widely presumed to be George W Bush - even though it’s the album’s ‘Holiday’ that singer/guitarist Bille-Joe Armstrong later characterised as an outspoken "fuck you" to the former Republican president.
Nevertheless, ‘American Idiot’ is the more direct - and snappily-titled - attack on the right-wing, with its malleable lyrics being trained on the “MAGA agenda” in 2024, and then just last month the “Elon agenda”. Laudable targets for anyone’s ire.
Except Green Day, in common with many punk rock superstars, are still very much part of the Elon agenda with their ongoing use of X.
Ever since the world’s richest man Electric Space Nazi bought Twitter in 2022 and changed its name to X, use of Elon Musk’s social media platform has been… problematic.
That’s accelerated in recent months, with his Nazi salutes, praise for right-wing European politicians and work to reshape the US government.
Having their cake and eating it
In such a climate what are punk rock’s superstars to do?
If you’re Green Day then you get to grab easy headlines by changing the lyrics to ‘American Idiot’, but also remaining on X, where the band has 4.6 million followers.
And, no, ‘punk rock superstar’ is not an oxymoron. That ship sailed long ago. Today Green Day has 16 songs - including ‘American Idiot’, ‘Holiday’ and ‘Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)’ - that have been streamed over 100 million times on Spotify.
It’s a club that sees them rub shoulders with rock giants like Queen and AC/DC. Fellow members also include punk rock* bands such as The Offspring, Rise Against, AFI, Fall Out Boy and Jimmy Eat World - all of who also tacitly support the Elon agenda with their continued active** use of X.
Perhaps bands at that level should be pointed in the direction of an article the BBC published recently on why leaving X can be a tricky decision for brands.
Punk rock’s X-odus
But not everyone’s worried about their brand, with Brian Baker (Minor Threat/Bad Religion) one of those happy to join what we might term the X-odus.
Meanwhile, Bad Religion singer Greg Graffin, whose last post on X was in December 2022, exemplifies the quiet quitting also followed by Bob Mould (last post August 2023) and Dinosaur Jr.’s J Mascis (last post August 2024).
Bands that have similarly dropped off the social network include Rage Against The Machine (last post 2022), NOFX (last post 2023) and - at least so far - Rancid, Blink-182 and Panic At The Disco (last posts October-December 2024).
All of which prove that, whatever your ‘brand’, you can still walk away from tens of thousands to millions of followers (or bots) on X.
Alt rock and indie music starts getting vocal about quitting
More recently it’s not the Green Days of this world but major alt rock/indie bands that are raising their voices about leaving X and Elon Musk behind.
R.E.M. stopped updating their page on X in November - as did The Last Dinner Party. But it seems like it’s easier for individuals than bands to leave. The Cure remain, but frontman and creative force Robert Smith decided earlier this month it was “time to go”. Meanwhile, earlier departees from X include Nine Inch Nails‘ Trent Reznor, Jack White, Moby, Liz Phair and Neil Young.
Welcome to a new kind of tension
Much like many of the early tech pioneers, today’s punk superstars started in the proverbial garage and now stride a global stage.
We might like to pretend otherwise, but they’ve undoubtedly negotiated all sorts of compromises, whether major or minor, to get there and their choice of social media or technology platforms is just the latest.
Nevertheless, as punk rock’s superstars continue to find it hard to quit X, Green Day - and many others - are having their cake and eating it.
Sure, at this moment in time we’re probably all compromised to some extent by our use of technology. I’m typing this on a Google Doc (whose owners recently caved into Donald Trump’s executive order to change ‘Gulf of Mexico’ to ‘Gulf of America’ on its maps)
I’m also listening to Neil Young on iTunes, and Apple CEO Tim Cook personally donated $1 million to President Trump's inaugural committee, and Substack itself isn’t blameless.
Then, of course, I logged back into my dormant X account to research this article.
But in the spirit of throwing stones from inside glass houses - and asking “Who's punk? What's the score?”, maybe abandoning a social media channel run by a rightwing billionaire is the kind thing a punk rock band - especially a superstar one - should be doing.
* Argue among yourselves if that’s the right term for them
** That is to say they’ve posted on X in 2025
I stopped liking Greenday after Dookie, I deleted my twitter account, and I recognize Elon to be a fascist. However no one is tacitly supporting the Elon agenda by continuing to use X. There is no such thing as conscientious consumerism, every purchase is compromised.
If we were to deny the working class the use of every social media app with “problematic owners” taken to the logical conclusion we would have to deny them all. A consumer boycott of X could help, but it could only ever play a limited role. A better way to hit him is by raising the class consciousness of his employees, to convince them to strike, that would really hurt him.
I think it is better to subvert extremists of capital by using these networks and technologies against them, by educating each other and using them to organize. The difficulty of this endeavor is no counter argument against its necessity.
Marx explained the irony of capitalism providing the means of its defeat, and I think that insight is as valuable today as when he made it.
Good piece! I think the difference between acts like Green Day, AFI, Offspring, etc. and some of the other acts you mentioned is that they're still making most of their money playing shows, so they can't afford to piss off any portion of their audience (the majority of which likely skews older and a bit more conservative than the average punk fan.) Reznor makes his money via soundtrack work these days, nobody's checking for new Neil Young releases, and they've already made fortunes on catalogs that still make up the majority of the stuff that gets listened to. Quitting and turning your back on a portion of your audience is a luxury.
Plus, this outrage seems selective considering what we know about Zuckerberg and all the insidious experiments Meta has run on its users and the effects Instagram has had on kids. No major social media platform is ethical.