Tom Morello is still raging against the machine.
As president Trump mobilises hundreds of Marines who could be deployed to the streets of Los Angeles, escalating an already chaotic situation, Morello adds his voice to the protests.
Protests have carried on in Tinseltown since Friday, when the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) executed immigration raids at several workplaces in the Los Angeles area, including the city of Paramount in south L.A. County. There, federal agents deployed non-lethal munitions, including firing rubber bullets and tear gas.
Morello, like thousands of others, including Nine News US correspondent Lauren Tomasi, has put himself in the firing line. The Rage Against The Machine guitarist shared a post from downtown, in which he’s holding aloft a sign that reads “Defend LA” with his right fist in the air, and flanked by fellow activists.
“Made some friends in Boyle Heights and DTLA yesterday,” he writes, adding the hastags #DefendLA and #WhatBetterPlaceThanHereWhatBetterTimeThanNow
Morello is seen wearing a baseball helmet and a black t-shirt emblazoned with the message, “Destroy American Fascism”.
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Speaking with Rolling Stone AU/NZ earlier this year, ahead of his performance at Bluesfest 2025, Morello talked at some length of the dangerous situation America, not just Los Angeles, finds itself in.
“You can only imagine what it’s like here with the impending shadow of American fascism,” he remarked. “We’re staring down the barrel of it. The almost ethnic cleansing of discourse is a very significant warning sign, where anybody who wants to apply for a grant, or if you used words like ‘inclusion’ or ‘gender’, or ‘African-American’, you’re going to be red flagged. It’s pretty serious and significant.”
Instead of using the Insurrection Act, Trump invoked Title 10 of the U.S. Code on Armed Services, which grants the president authority to deploy members of the National Guard into federal service in certain situations, including during “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”
Taking it to the streets is in Morello’s DNA.
“Now that we’re at Trump version two, the better question is not so much just lament and wring our hands on a daily basis, but how do we confront it?” he told RS earlier in the year. “And at least in our country, the answer is not the Democratic Party. Both the mainstream parties have so dicked around the American working class that it provided a fertile field for this little dictator.”
The politically-charged RATM sold millions during their ’90s heyday and in 2023, were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The American six-string star came in at No. 18 on Rolling Stone’s Best Guitarists of All Time list, recognition for his six-year stint with Bruce Springsteen’s E-Street Band, his work up front with the “supergroup” Prophets of Rage, and, of course, as a founding member of RAGM, which was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in 2023.
