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At the risk of upsetting a vast swath of our Warped Tour-going audience, we’re sorry to report that The Dropkick Murphys were not banned from X for criticizing the President or Elon Musk. Though they’ve experienced increased visibility due to their displeasure of seeing MAGA hats at their shows, the long-running Beantown punkers aren’t on Twitter by choice. As hard as it is to imagine not seeing Kanye West’s latest posts in which he calls Beyoncé’s kids the R-word and himself “Yedolf,” the Dropkick Murphys will press on because they’ve been off the site since 2022.
News of the Murphys’ banning made the rounds on Bluesky last night, with users assuming that the group’s criticism of the administration was the reason. Always on the forefront of a new trend, whether writing the theme song to The Departed or leaving a toxic website, the Dropkick Murphys were way ahead of us. Apparently, thanks to X’s very effective moderation tools, a person stole the @dropkickmurphys handle, forcing the band to file a complaint and get it suspended.
“We broke up with him first. We quit Twitter in 2022 when he was only half a Nazi,” says singer Ken Casey told Variety. “Then someone else took our handle, pretending to be our official account, so we filed a legal complaint to put a stop to that—which is why @dropkickmurphys shows as suspended. Look, we pulled our account because we didn’t want to be part of that guy’s empire. But if we were still on there, I’m sure he would have suspended us by now.”
Over the last month, videos of the Dropkick Murphys getting concertgoers to lose the MAGA gear have been putting a new spotlight on the band. Hours before people noticed the banning, the liberal viral video maker MidasTouch shared a video from the group’s sold-out St. Patrick’s Day celebration. In the video, Casey criticizes concertgoers wearing Trump hats, calling Elon Musk’s dark gothic MAGA hat the “Elon Musk True Nazi edition” and pointing to one fan’s white hat.
“If you’re in a room full of people and you want to know who’s in a cult, how do you know?” Casey asked the crowd. “They’ve been holding up a fucking hat the whole night to represent a president.”
“This is America. There are no kings here,” he said to applause. “Anyway, sir, We’re gonna play a song about our grandparents and people who fought Nazis in the war and shit. So if you could just shut the fuck up for five minutes.”
None of this is new for the band. Since forming in 1996, they’ve rocked Against Bush and told Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, “we literally hate you,” after Walker used “I’m Shipping Up To Boston” at a campaign event. They later allowed President Biden to use the song, giving Biden the biggest pop and one of the best videos of his presidency.
