Bono compared the song to Irish rebel songs and claimed that it was a part of “folk music,” lamely adding that it shouldn’t be sung in the wrong context, suggesting that there might be rules about when or when not to sing songs calling for genocide.
Despite these pointless stipulations, Bono’s embrace of genocidal chanting shows a marked departure from the message in U2’s own songs dealing with human conflict. Here, white-flag pacifism is usually called for. For example, in their most famous song dealing with the Irish troubles, “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” Bono sings, “But I won’t heed the battle call / Puts my back up / Puts my back up against the wall.”
But then, both of the communities involved in the Irish troubles are White. It seems that Bono believes that pacifism should extend only to Whites, while violence by non-Whites against Whites is merely “social justice” or charming “folk history.” This is the kind of standard, unthinking anti-White racist bias that is now natural to the international Left.
But this glaring example of Bono’s flawed thinking is not a one-off. The singer has a serious track record of chipping his extremely dented halo with dubious dealings, ranging from morally inconsistent tax avoidance to squandering charity money donated by members of the public.
In 2010, it was revealed that Bono’s “One” charity was only giving around 1 percent of the money raised directly to the intended recipients—hence the charity’s name as I joked at the time! The remaining 99 percent was being spent on admin and throwing fancy shindigs for the leftist glitterati to air their altruism in public. Among the absurdities to arise from this saga was a ludicrous PR campaign in which journalists in New York were sent boxes stuffed with bags of Starbucks coffee, moleskin leather notebooks, $20 water bottles, band-aids, pens and cookies, timed to coincide with President Obama’s push for AIDS funding for Africa!
Another one of Bono’s “grand humanitarian gestures” also revealed the naïve and/or grubby side of the singer, whose personal fortune is estimated at over $750,000,000. In 2005, Bono and his wife set up EDUN, a clothes label that aimed to encourage a kind of pseudo economic independence for African workers by using “fair trade” principles and Western guilt. The idea was to sell clothes produced in Africa at inflated prices to up-market, liberal, leftist Westerners, who are usually suckers for this kind of thing, then split the proceeds with the producers.
When launched in 2005, it was claimed that EDUN would put the couple’s money where their collective mouth was and improve the lives of those in developing nations by making clothing manufacturing more sustainable.
This is the kind of idea that probably sounds great at the elegant soirées held by super-rich champagne socialists, but which hits the hard, cruel, baked earth of Africa like a dead Bonobo. As if on cue, the recent economic crisis kicked in, and it became clear what EDUN’s priorities were. After complaints about poor workmanship, the majority of the production was moved to China with no attempt to train up the sacked Africans to the standards required by the fashionably altruistic set, an interesting fact that suggests that Bono may in fact be a secret race realist.
At the same time, the company also sold a 49 percent stake to luxury goods maker LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton for $7.8million, making Mr. and Mrs. Bono’s collective mouth a surprising capacious orifice.
So, is Bono just stupid or something worse? Not quite sure. But when a rock star with a fortune as bloated as his starts telling people on average wage to make sacrifices so that his charity chums can swill the finest champagne, then tops that off with selective support for genocide, then the likes of former reputed rock “wild men” like Axl Rose, Sid Vicious, and even Keith Moon, seem tame by comparison.
