Music

Fear Factory guitarist attacked by racists for criticizing Donald Trump

by Richard Howard

March 14, 2016

The California-born metal legend had his Mexican heritage attacked after criticizing 'Donald Drumpf.'

As a founding member of Fear Factory, Divine Heresy and the supergroup Brujeria, Dino Cazares is a legend in the metal community. He’s also of Mexican descent, so unsurprisingly, he shares the popular opinion that Donald Trump is a racist and divisive douche-rocket. Cazares recently expressed his feelings about the presidential candidate in an interview with Australia’s Sticks for Stones:

“We have a kook running for president, Donald Drumpf. If Donald Drumpf actually gets elected I’m moving to Australia. If he’s elected president we are going to have a lot of issues in America. Who knows what going to happen? He doesn’t like Muslims, he doesn’t like Mexicans, and he doesn’t like the foreigners. It’s just going to cause a war, it’s going to cause a lot of tension between Americans and other parts of the country.”

Now, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but a number of Trump supporters seem to possess intellects considerably lower than your average Mensa candidate. So it’s pretty likely many Fear Factory fans that have latched onto the Drumpf rhetoric were completely unaware of the fact Cazares is Mexican-American. According to Cazares, since the interview his social media has been lit up by racist attacks and the ever popular suggestion to ‘go back where he came from’ (ignoring the fact that ‘where he came from’ is the American state of California).

“I was extremely surprised at how many racist comments I was reading because I’m of Mexican descent. You know, I’m an American, I was born in the United States, I pay taxes just like everybody else and a lot of people were saying, ‘Leave, Donald Drumpf is gonna build a wall so your people won’t come into America.’ A lot of people were saying, ‘Get the f— out of here, beaner.’ Racism really seems to be coming out of the woodwork now, and you have people like Donald Drumpf who are provoking that. I’m not saying that he is saying it straight up, but he is, pretty much, provoking it.”

We can only hope that common sense prevails and higher-profile condemnations such as this help ensure Trump doesn’t land in the White House. Also, let’s keep our fingers crossed that majority of celebrity Drumpf endorsements remain laughable individuals like Aaron Carter (whose fans are hopefully too young to vote) and highly unstable folk such as Mike Tyson, which will make anyone casting a vote for The Donald question their own sanity.