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Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider Calls Out Republicans’ Misuse of His Pro-Choice Anthem

Leslie Knope holding up a weird little doll and saying "What is that?"

Imagine, if you will, having an artist you think loves your message quote tweet you and just read you for filth. That’s what happened when someone on the Republican side of things decided to use a Twisted Sister song and tagged Dee Snider in their tweet. Truly, the lack of self-awareness continues to be astounding from the political right. You think Dee Snider is going to agree with your viewpoints?! DEE SNIDER?!

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Republicans love to use a song that is calling them out as their “rallying cry.” We’ve seen it happen with Bruce Springsteen songs time and time again. It happened with Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son,” and it continues to be a problem. When these artists speak up in response, conservatives immediately start whining about them becoming “woke,” and it’s a ridiculous cycle of the right refusing to have any sort of media literacy and the rest of us just being frustrated by their inability to deal with the fact that their favorite musicians probably hate their entire worldview and they somehow … missed that.

Recently though, the Republicans have been at it again, this time using the Twisted Sister song “We’re Not Gonna Take It” in a tweet from the “Kari Lake War Room” for Trump-endorsed Kari Lake. The account used the lyrics from the hit song that starts with “We’ve got the right to choose it, there ain’t no way we’ll lose it” and is very clearly not a Republican anthem, and YET frontman and writer Dee Snider had to call them out.

“HEY IDIOTS!” the tweet started and if you know anything about Snider, you probably could hear it in his voice. “READ THE 1ST LINE: ‘We’ve got the right to CHOOSE!’ This is a PRO-CHOICE anthem,” he wrote. He went on to saying that they were co-opting it and that it was “NEVER intended for you fascist morons!”

Use your brains, stop making artists explain their work to you

Snider isn’t the first, and he definitely won’t be the last. It’s an unfortunately common trend. Do you know what TikTok just lives rent free in my head because it’s the most idiotic thing I have ever seen? The man who says that it’s going to piss off liberals that he thinks “American Idiot” by Green Day isn’t a “liberal” song. Truly, the caption reads “Is this a liberal song too?” and in the video he’s putting on a Make America Great Again hat.

Like part of me has to just assume they’re all trolling us and know that these songs/media doesn’t apply to them, but on the other hand, I don’t trust that they think this isn’t the case.

For whatever warped reason, Republicans and Trump fans think that they’re the downtrodden and the ones who need to fight back. I feel like I’m living in some simulation that is testing how long it will take to break me. Luckily, we have artists like Dee Snider who aren’t afraid of saying “f**k that” and calling out those woefully misunderstanding the music they’re using.

(featured image: NBC)

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Author
Rachel Leishman
Rachel Leishman (She/Her) is an Assistant Editor at the Mary Sue. She's been a writer professionally since 2016 but was always obsessed with movies and television and writing about them growing up. A lover of Spider-Man and Wanda Maximoff's biggest defender, she has interests in all things nerdy and a cat named Benjamin Wyatt the cat. If you want to talk classic rock music or all things Harrison Ford, she's your girl but her interests span far and wide. Yes, she knows she looks like Florence Pugh.

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