This song is definitely about the legacy of American slavery, and more generally about the oppression of minorities in current-day America; Dead Prez uses the allegory of George Orwell's Animal Farm to explain how they see themselves as carrying on the cause of self-styled leftist revolution against.......whatever it is they're against...
They re-interpret the farmer as the European colonial powers and the pigs as the continental revolutionaries who defeated the imperial powers. America started out with some humanistic ideals, but really fell short and ended up being just as imperious, so says Dead Prez.
Dead Prez are asserting that they are the animals that are now trying to exact violence on the those whom they perceive as the pigs (read: people who wear suits, police men and women, anyone who is not vegan, people of faith, etc.).
Interestingly enough that plot twist (the animals rising up against the pigs) never happened in Animal Farm. So what I'm guessing is that Dead Prez is saying that that's what needs to happen within the context of American society today.
Funny though, the whole point of animal farm is that peace cannot come about through a bloody insurrection (that's where the pigs in Animal Farm went wrong, so said George Orwell). Yet, Dead Prez seems to think that a just and peaceful society can be brought about by militantism and violence. This is a classic example of a skewed and naïve reading of history that most serious Marxists and leftists abandoned a long ago.
This song is definitely about the legacy of American slavery, and more generally about the oppression of minorities in current-day America; Dead Prez uses the allegory of George Orwell's Animal Farm to explain how they see themselves as carrying on the cause of self-styled leftist revolution against.......whatever it is they're against...
They re-interpret the farmer as the European colonial powers and the pigs as the continental revolutionaries who defeated the imperial powers. America started out with some humanistic ideals, but really fell short and ended up being just as imperious, so says Dead Prez.
Dead Prez are asserting that they are the animals that are now trying to exact violence on the those whom they perceive as the pigs (read: people who wear suits, police men and women, anyone who is not vegan, people of faith, etc.).
Interestingly enough that plot twist (the animals rising up against the pigs) never happened in Animal Farm. So what I'm guessing is that Dead Prez is saying that that's what needs to happen within the context of American society today.
Funny though, the whole point of animal farm is that peace cannot come about through a bloody insurrection (that's where the pigs in Animal Farm went wrong, so said George Orwell). Yet, Dead Prez seems to think that a just and peaceful society can be brought about by militantism and violence. This is a classic example of a skewed and naïve reading of history that most serious Marxists and leftists abandoned a long ago.