By now we’re well used to celebrities making comparisons between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler. After all, Louis CK and Sarah Silverman have been saying little else for the past few months.
But now some veteran celebrities are speaking out as they never have before. Take Dave Gahan, frontman of British synth-rockers Depeche Mode who have been making hit music for 35 years.
Although the ‘Mode’ have not strayed away from political themes, such as in their mid-1980s songs such as “Everything Counts” and “People Are People”, the band has been careful in the past not to reveal their views on specific politicians such as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.
Until now. Donald Trump is different. Promoting their new single “Wheres the Revolution?”, lead singer Gahan compared Trump to Adolf Hitler.
When asked about Trump, Gahan told Italian journalist Matteo Cruccu of Corriere della Sera in a video interview: “The things that he’s saying sound very similar to what someone was saying in 1935. That didn’t work out very well! The things that he’s saying are cruel and heartless and promoting fear.”
Depeche Mode’s new album Spirit is out next month and while the band is denying it’s a political album, Gahan told Rolling Stone, “it’s definitely about humanity, and our place in that.”
Meantime the band is also turning its mind to last year’s Brexit vote in the UK. Gahan said: “Most people that did vote didn’t really understand what that meant. They were not well-informed.”
Martin Gore, Depeche Mode’s chief songwriter and guitarist and keyboardist, said in the same interview: “We’re all really depressed by the outcome of the referendum. I think it was a really stupid idea to leave something so important to the people.”
Well, as the Mode once sang People are People!
