On September 11 (no, not that September 11), 1996, the leftist political rock band Rage Against the Machine performed at the Spanish Fork, Utah fairgrounds during their Evil Empire tour. Per news reports of the time, local residents freaked right out: the fairgrounds manager frantically insisted the booking was a mistake (according to local lore, he supposedly thought it was for a tractor pull), the citizens begged him to cancel it, and they even held a fundraiser to try and buy the band off, to no avail. On the day of the concert, Spanish Forks residents closed their stores early, hid in their houses, and got their guns ready for the roving bands of rioting teens they were convinced were about to descend upon their peaceful, god-fearing town.^[1]As Rage also sang on Evil Empire‘s “Down Rodeo,” “These people ain’t seen a brown-skinned man since their grandparents bought one.”

Of course nothing of the sort happened. Some Gen Xers with wallet-chains drove down and jumped around, Rage played the hits, then everyone went home. When the Salt Lake alternative-rag CityWeekly did a retrospective on the anniversary of the concert in 2014, it was with obvious bemusement–not only for the people of Spanish Fork, but at the idea that there was ever a time when anyone found Rage Against the Machine all that scary in the first place.

Certainly by the time of their 2000 break-up, it had become clear that the problem with Rage wasn’t that they were trying to start a revolution, but that they were so comically ineffective at doing so; despite their multi-platinum sales, they had sparked no great leftist surge, no grand electoral uprising, and came off about as faux-radical as the Che Guevara shirts they sold at shows. (Indeed, Election 2000–when Rage played defiantly outside the Democratic National Convention–was noted only for its record low turnout.)

Such was why The Onion ribbed on Rage in their 2004 mock-editorial “Where Are You Now, When We Need You Most, Rage Against The Machine?” during the invasion of Iraq. And when Republican VP candidate Paul Ryan–running mate of Mormonism’s own Mitt Romney–said in 2012 that his favorite work-out music was Rage Against the Machine, it was unclear whether the joke was on Ryan for so completely misunderstanding their message, or on Rage for communicating it so poorly in the first place.^[2]Seriously, I knew, like, just so many white kids with the Evil Empire tshirt back in middle school, who nevertheless still grew up to be dutiful Bush and Trump voters.

By the time of that 2014 CityWeekly piece, Rage had long passed into punchline status, such that Spanish Fork’s freakout at their 1996 show had become as endearingly ridiculous as when 1950s America was scandalized by Elvis Presley’s swinging hips.^[3]And the fact that the remaining members of Rage went on to form the largely toothless act Audioslave with Chris Cornell certainly didn’t help their posthumous reputation.

But now 2014 feels like an archaic era as well, and it’s worth noting that many of those same Utah County conservatives who were so scared of a riot in 1996 were the ones that cheered the loudest for the Capitol Riots of January 6, 2021; that those who most feared swear words would be audible from the fairgrounds are who voted most enthusiastically for the vulgarian who liked to “grab ’em by the p*ssy” and “f*** married women;” that those who were so frightened of non-existent acts of terror by Rage fans are who so righteously supported state-sponsored terror against immigrants, refugees, and minorities protesting police brutality.

It is also here worth noting that in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd’s 2020 murder, Rage’s 1992 first album–on the strength of its lead-single “Killing in the Name Of“–returned to the Billboard 200 for the first time in 18 years; for as it became more widely known that police departments were regularly infiltrated by white supremacists–that Derek Chauvin was not an outlier–we collectively realized that “some of those who run forces” really were still very much “the same as burn crosses.” Suddenly Zach de la Rocha’s repetitive lyrics no longer felt simplistic, but prophetic.

I bring this up because among those ’90s kids who did gravitate towards leftist rock, the respectable choices were generally bands like Dead Kennedys and Fugazi–indie heroes who (unlike those poseurs in Rage who signed with Sony) actually practiced what they preached: Fugazi famously turned down $10 million to sign with Atlantic, while Dead Kennedys just as famously performed the anti-music-industry kiss-off “Pull My Strings” before an audience of record execs. Both bands determined that the only way to never become complicit in the exploitations and moral compromises of corporate America was to refuse to participate in the first place.

There was a sort of monastic purity to their decisions^[4]Indeed, I’ve sometimes wondered if, given the Irish and Italian surnames of Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto, if there wasn’t a strain of the Catholic monastery in Fugazi’s withdrawal from … Continue reading that I still greatly respect today. In my own faith tradition, they have reminded me of Ether hiding in the cavity of a rock^[5]Ether 13:13, or John the Baptist living off locusts in the desert^[6]Matt. 3:4, or of Alma retreating to the waters of Mormon^[7]Mosiah 18:8-10.

But it also became abundantly clear post-2016 that such an approach was no longer adequate.

What we now need more than ever are not the court-jester antics of Dead Kennedys nor the monastic withdrawal of Fugazi, but a large-scale mass-movement if we are to confront the much more massive challenges of today. And indeed, the massive demonstrations that immediately followed the 2017 inauguration felt not only cathartic, but necessary–as did the record-breaking voter turnout of election 2020 (pretty much the polar opposite of election 2000). In light of these facts, Rage Against the Machine’s early decision to sign to a major label that could ensure broad radio airplay feels less like a sell-out than a real strategy–a sincere attempt to organize a mass-movement that would not merely mock or protest this wicked world, but transform it from the inside out.

And it is here that I will recall how Joseph Smith said in 1844 that he wished to “lay a foundation that will revolutionize the whole world”^[8]Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, ed. Joseph Fielding Smith, 1976, pg. 366.–such a statement argues not withdrawal from the world but active participation in the same–in which we would be following the example of God himself, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son”^[9]John 3:16. Rage Against the Machine, for all their posturing, also appear interested in the salvation of not a select few, but of as many people as possible–and their righteous anger is perhaps as the Savior’s was when he flipped over the tables of the money-changers in the Temple.

And if their lyrics are at times profane, well, as Joseph Smith said, “I love that man better who swears a stream as long as my arm yet deals justice to his neighbors and mercifully deals his substance to the poor, than the long, smooth-faced hypocrite”^[10]Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, ed. Joseph Fielding Smith, 1976, pg. 303..^[11]And as Run the Jewels rhymed on the 2016 track that Zach de la Rocha guested on, “[They] talk clean and bomb hospitals/So I speak with the foulest mouth possible.” And if their leftist politics and righteous rage seem off-putting to you, well, Joseph Smith also said that “Our Heavenly Father is more liberal in His views, and boundless in His mercies and blessings, than we are ready to believe or receive; and, at the same time, is more terrible to the workers of iniquity^[12]literally: inequality, for “it is not given that one man should possess that which is above another, wherefore the world lieth in sin” (D&C 49:20)., more awful in the executions of His punishments, and more ready to detect every false way, than we are apt to suppose Him to be.”^[13]Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, ed. Joseph Fielding Smith, 1976, pg. 257. And if their insistence on an egalitarian society of neither rich nor poor, bond nor free, seems a little too militant, well, try reading the Book of Mormon sometimes.^[14]4 Nephi 1:3 (cf. Acts 2:44-45), Mosiah 18:27, Alma 31-32, 2 Nephi 26:33, and etc.

No seriously, go read the Book of Mormon, where the resurrected Savior tells the Pre-Columbian Americans of the House of Israel that they shall be “in the midst of them as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep, who, if he go through both treadeth down and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver” (3 Nephi 21:12)–that the only way the gentiles will be spared is “if they will repent and hearken unto my words, and harden not their hearts, I will establish my church among them, and they shall come in unto the covenant and be numbered among this the remnant of Jacob, unto whom I have given this land for their inheritance” (3 Nephi 21:22). That is, they are not the ones who must assimilate to us, but we are the ones who must repent, humble ourselves, cast off our riches, and join them–for “the Lord hath founded Zion, and the poor of his people [not the rich] shall trust in it” (Isaiah 14:32; 2 Nephi 24:32).

That is, recognize the grave promises made to the ancestors of the American House of Israel (of which de la Rocha is a descendant)^[15]Their drummer is Jewish to boot—and their bassist is Irish-American, who have their own unique connections to Latin America—and Tom Morello is simply the man, and then go re-listen to Evil Empire‘s “People of the Sun,” and realize how prophetically Zach de la Rocha means it–more than perhaps even he realizes it–when he belts out, “It’s coming back around again/This is for the people of the sun…”

And if, in the meantime, Rage Against the Machine has ultimately been ineffective in bringing about wide-spread change, well, as we also read in our own Book of Mormon, “Com did fight against [the robbers] much; nevertheless, he did not prevail against them” (Ether 10:34)–but still he did fight. So must we.

Besides, the Book of Mormon says of the prophet Alma that he “[saw] no other way that he might reclaim them save it were in bearing down in pure testimony against them” (Alma 4:19), and if there’s one thing Rage Against the Machine knows for sure how to do, it’s Testify.