With all the hostile rhetoric against Donald Trump going around these days, it’s not surprising that people in the entertainment industry have made the Republican president one of their favorite targets.
The most recent example of this trend was an animated video released by a musician called “Moby” -- though his real name is Richard Melville Hall -- who did his part to boost The Resistance by depicting President Trump as “a Nazi-esque leader” who dies in an explosion while in the form of a swastika and then a dollar sign.
The album contained music from a group called Moby & the Void Pacific Choir under the title of More Fast Songs About the Apocalypse and features a video about a song entitled “In This Cold Place.”
According to an article written by Todd Van Luling, a senior staff writer of the Huffington Post website, Moby believed it is “obvious” that “the world is ending" due to such problems as “antibiotic resistance and climate change,” and ‘nobody cares to notice.”
The video, Moby explained, presents a cautionary tale of “trusting capitalist marketing through satirical takes on the Care Bears and Mickey Mouse distract Americans while rich people suck all the money out of the economy.”
Early in the video, a group Care Bears grow to hate each other so much that they build a wall to separate themselves.
Moby “throws in images of doom and gloom and greed,” Van Luling stated, before the Care Bears fight back and tear down the wall. Then cartoon heroes He-Man and She-Ra destroy Trump’s “friends” -- Rupert Murdoch, British Prime Minister Theresa May, Trump advisor Steve Bannon and North Korea leader Kim Jong-un.
However, Trump takes over the world with a missile-firing machine. By the end of the video, the Trump machine blows up as the oppressed people of the world rise up against him.
Van Luling noted: “Trump’s rise in the video makes a point about how even though he clearly used a violent and dangerous ‘machine’ to take over the country, he simultaneously tried to present himself as a cuddly old man and safe politician -- such as when he hosted Saturday Night Live or let Jimmy Fallon rumple his hair.”
The musician added:
When it comes to issues, like being a good vegan or animal rights activist, I can’t just scream. You have to strategically present the information in a way that people might be receptive [and] might respond to it.
That’s why I felt like doing it in a cartoonish way in the video would both sort of draw people in and repel them at the same time in equal measure.
The final act of the music video presents a scenario of the proletariat toppling the aristocracy, but all these visuals of destruction are presented as metaphor rather than a direct call to arms. The final scene even suggests that this attack on the ruling regime only takes place in the protagonist’s mind.
“I think that we’ve managed [to] be on the legal side of copyright violation,” said Moby. “Like everything in there looks familiar but nothing is a direct rip-off of existing copyright. Or so I am hoping.”
Earlier this year, Moby was the focus of media attention when he claimed on social media that he had sources who confirmed to him that Trump is being “blackmailed” by the Russian government.
“Intelligence agencies around the world, and here in the U.S., are horrified by the incompetence of the Trump administration and are working to present information that will lead to high-level firings and ultimately, impeachment,” Moby wrote.
He also stated that the Trump administration might try to use a war with Iran as a distraction.
“Although Moby’s claim to have reliable sources seemed questionable at the time, the statement still gained widespread coverage,” Van Luling stated.
“I didn’t want as much attention as I got,” Moby explained before revealing that his source was a “career intelligence person” who asked him to relay this information -- all of which is unconfirmed.
According to Moby, “the straw that really broke the camel’s back” of Trump’s relationship with the intelligence community was his visit to the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters immediately after his inauguration, when Trump “gave a self-promoting speech in front of the wall of fallen heroes.”
“If Trump is impeached or forced to resign, you can kind of trace it back to that moment,” the musician said. “That’s when all the career intelligence officers just decided that Trump is terrible and has to go.”
Meanwhile, reporter Mary Chastain of the Legal Insurrection website quoted Van Luling as describing Moby as “an artist who knows what he’s doing.”
She then responded: “Or maybe it’s just another example of a tone-deaf celebrity!”
