They know all about glory days on the Kop \u2013 the fabled terrace that is the spiritual home of fans of Liverpool \u2013 England\u2019s Premier League champions. <\/p>\n
But they\u2019re more used to legends like Kenny Dalglish or Mohamed Salah banging in goals than political cries for help. So, it was surreal to watch alongside thousands of middle-aged Brits as Bruce Springsteen bemoaned America\u2019s democracy crisis on hallowed footballing ground. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe America that I love \u2026 a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous\u201d administration, Springsteen said at Anfield Stadium on Wednesday night. <\/p>\n
The Boss\u2019s latest warnings of authoritarianism on his European tour were impassioned and drew large cheers. But they did seem to go over the heads of some fans who don\u2019t live in the whirl of tension constantly rattling America\u2019s national psyche. <\/p>\n
Liverpudlians waited for decades for Springsteen to play the hometown of The Beatles, whose \u201cI Wanna Hold Your Hand\u201d set his life\u2019s course when he heard it on the radio as a youngster in New Jersey. <\/p>\n
Most had a H-H-H-Hungry heart for a party. They got a hell of a show. But also, a lesson on US civics. <\/p>\n
\u201cTonight, we ask all of you who believe in democracy and the best of our American experiment to rise with us, raise your voices, stand with us against authoritarianism and let freedom ring!\u201d Springsteen said. <\/p>\n
His European odyssey is unfolding as Western democracies are being shaken again by right-wing populism. So, his determination to engage with searing commentary therefore raises several questions. <\/p>\n
What is the role of artists in what Springsteen calls \u201cdangerous times?\u201d Can they make a difference, or should stars of entertainment and sports avoid politics and stick to what they know? Fox News polemicist Laura Ingraham once told basketball icon LeBron James, for instance, that he should just \u201cshut up and dribble.\u201d <\/p>\n
Springsteen\u2019s gritty paeans to steel towns and down-on-their-luck cities made him a working-class balladeer. But as blue-collar voters stampede to the right, does he really speak for them now? <\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s this issue that Springsteen emphatically tried to answer in Liverpool this week: Does the rough but noble America he\u2019s been mythologizing for 50 years even exist anymore? <\/p>\n
Trump certainly wants to bring the arts to heel \u2013 given his social media threats to \u201chighly overrated\u201d Springsteen, Taylor Swift and other superstars and his takeover of the Kennedy Center in Washington. Any center of liberal and free thought from pop music to Ivy League universities is vulnerable to authoritarian impulses. <\/p>\n
But it\u2019s also true that celebrities often bore with their trendy political views, especially preaching at Hollywood awards ceremonies. Springsteen, however, has been penning social commentary for decades. And what\u2019s the point of rock \u2019n\u2019 roll if not rebellion? Rockers usually revolt in their wild-haired youth, rather than in their mid-70s, but desperate times call for desperate measures. <\/p>\n
Oddly, given their transatlantic dialogue of recent weeks, Trump and Springsteen mine the same political terrain \u2013 globalization\u2019s economic and spiritual hollowing of industrial heartlands. <\/p>\n
\u201cNow Main Street\u2019s whitewashed windows, And vacant stores, Seems like there ain\u2019t nobody, Wants to come down here no more,\u201d Springsteen sang in 1984 in \u201cMy Hometown\u201d long before Trump set his sights on the Oval Office. <\/p>\n
The White House sometimes hits similar notes, though neither the Boss nor Trump would welcome the comparison. \u201cThe main street in my small town, looks a heck of a lot worse than it probably did decades ago before I was alive,\u201d Trump\u2019s press secretary Karoline Leavitt said rather less poetically in March. <\/p>\n
Political fault lines are also shifting. In the US and Europe, the working class is rejecting the politics of hope and optimism in dark times. <\/p>\n
And the Democratic politicians that Springsteen supported \u2013 like defeated 2004 nominee John Kerry, who borrowed Springsteen\u2019s \u201cNo Surrender\u201d as his campaign anthem, and former President Barack Obama \u2013 failed to mend industrial blight that acted as a catalyst to Trumpism. <\/p>\n
There are warning signs in England too. The Boss\u2019s UK tours often coincided with political hinge moments. In the 1970s he found synergy with the smoky industrial cities of the North. In his \u201cBorn in the USA\u201d period, he sided with miners clashing with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. A new BBC documentary revealed this week he gave $20,000 in the 1980s to a strikers\u2019 support group. <\/p>\n
Liverpool, a soulful, earthy city right out of the Springsteen oeuvre is a longtime Labour Party heartland. But in a recent by-election, Nigel Farage\u2019s populist, pro-Trump, Reform Party overturned a Labour majority of nearly 15,000 in Runcorn, a decayed industrial town, 15 miles upstream from Liverpool on the River Mersey. This stunner showed Labour\u2019s working class \u201cred wall\u201d is in deep peril and could follow US states like Ohio in shifting to the right as workers reject progressives. <\/p>\n
Labour Cabinet Minister Lisa Nandy, whose Wigan constituency is nearby, warned in an interview with the New Statesman magazine this month that political tensions were reaching a breaking point in the North. <\/p>\n
\u201cPeople have watched their town centers falling apart, their life has got harder over the last decade and a half \u2026 I don\u2019t remember a time when people worked this hard and had so little to show for it,\u201d Nandy said, painting a picture that will be familiar to many Americans. <\/p>\n
In another sign of a seismic shift in British politics last week, Reform came a close third in an unprecedented result in a parliamentary by-election in a one-time industrial heartland outside Glasgow. Scotland has so far been immune to the populist wave \u2013 but the times are changing. <\/p>\n
Still, there\u2019s not much evidence Trump or his populist cousins in the UK will meaningfully solve heartland pain. They\u2019ve always been better at exploiting vulnerability than fixing it. And Trump\u2019s \u201cbig, beautiful bill\u201d would hurt the poor by cutting access to Medicaid and nutrition help while handing the wealthy big tax cuts. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen conditions in a country are ripe for a demagogue, you can bet one will show up,\u201d Springsteen told the crowd in Liverpool, introducing \u201cRainmaker\u201d a song about a conman who tells drought-afflicted farmers that \u201cwhite\u2019s black and black is white.\u201d As the E Street Band struck up, Springsteen said: \u201cThis is for America\u2019s dear leader.\u201d <\/p>\n
Springsteen has his \u201cLand of Hope and Dreams.\u201d But Trump has his new \u201cGolden Age.\u201d He claims he can \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d by attacking perceived bastions of liberal power like elite universities and the press, with mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and by challenging due process. <\/p>\n
Springsteen implicitly rejected this as un-American while in Liverpool, infusing extra meaning into the lyrics of \u201cLong Walk Home,\u201d a song that predates Trump\u2019s first election win by a decade: \u201cYour flag flyin\u2019 over the courthouse, Means certain things are set in stone. Who we are, what we\u2019ll do and what we won\u2019t.\u201d <\/p>\n
Sending fans into a cool summer night, the Boss pleaded with them not to give up on his country. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe America I\u2019ve sung to you about for 50 years now is real, and regardless of its many faults, is a great country with a great people and we will survive this moment,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
But his fight with Trump for America\u2019s soul will go on. The contrast would be driven home more sharply to Americans if he tours on US soil at this, the most overtly politicized phase of a half-century-long career. <\/p>\n
Perhaps in America\u2019s 250th birthday year in 2026? <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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