Five Finger Death Punch Release New Music Video Touting Anti-Mask Rhetoric
Five Finger Death Punch released a new music video for their song “Living The Dream,” and there’s a lot going on in it.
The clip opens with the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote, “Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” The next four minutes are filled with symbolism ranging from zombies hoarding toilet paper to referencing mask-wearers as Communists, despite the fact the band sell masks on their website and also host a Mask FAQ, which details information from the CDC.
There are also a few scenes showing men doing manual labor while wearing jumpsuits with “The People’s Republic of America” on the back, which also shows the stars in the United State flag replaced with hammers and sickles.
There’s also a scene in which a woman leader is walking three men as dogs on leashes, and they are wearing clothing similar to the garb attributed to ANTIFA. The “dogs” see a traditional stars-and-stripes U.S. flag on display by an ice cream truck, and the woman sics the “dogs” on the ice cream truck and its worker.
There’s another brief scene showing a newscast with the phrase “The Great Awakening” passing by on repeat on a news-ticker. The phrase is used by believers of the conspiracy theory QAnon to mean “the moment the general public realizes the conspiracy exists.”
In a statement in the video’s description on YouTube, guitarist Zoltan Bathory says, “America is a beautiful idea that draws immigrants like myself from all over the world to the promised land of equality, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This idea is now under siege and certain events are starting to remind me of the things many of us came here to escape… It’s not a ‘left against right’ problem but an evolutionary problem.”
Bathory continues, “The growing pains of a civilization that without the necessary spiritual enlightenment, arrived a bit early to a level of technology where everyone is connected. The good news is that now everyone has a voice. The bad news is that now everyone has a voice.”
Bathory concludes, “So we are living in the manipulators’ paradise, where liars and hypocrites run unscathed, the news are just opinions, politics are a blood sport, and facts are determined by consensus instead of the truth. We as artists, however, have a unique opportunity to portray and ridicule the absurd to prevent it from becoming reality.”
Reactions in the comments of the video are mixed. One person writes, “Goosebumps all over!!!” while another writes, “So, they’re anti-mask? How sad.” Another person said the video is, “Stunning and brave” while another writes, “This video is so terrible. Stop acting like not wearing a mask is brave and patriotic.” Another person took issue with the audio writing, “Dude who mixed this? It sounds like ass.”
If the goal for Bathory and the rest of FFDP was to get people talking about their new video, then “Mission Accomplished.”
