Video: PWEI – “Ich Bin Ein Auslander”

I don’t usually post music videos on this blog but yesterday’s post on Islamophobia got me thinking.  Once upon a time, I thought it could never happen again.  It was the early 1990s and we’d learned about the Holocaust, Vietnam and Apartheid in school and thought it was all behind us. 

In 1994, Pop Will Eat Itself released “Ich Bin Ein Auslander”.  I thought it was ever so clever and loved the song but I certainly never thought the lyrics would come to actually mean anything.

The Rwanda genocide took place between 6 April and early-July 1994.

The Srebrenica genocide took place in July 1995.

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Pop Will Eat Itself - “Ich Bin Ein Auslander”
Dos Dedos Mis Amigos (1994)

Listen to the victim, abused by the system
The basis is racist, you know that we must face this.
"It can't happen here". Oh yeah?
"Take a look around at the cities and the towns."

See them hunting, creeping, sneaking
Breeding fear and loathing with the lies they're speaking
The knife, the gun, broken bottle, petrol bomb
There is no future when the past soon come.

And when they come to ethnically cleanse me
Will you speak out? Will you defend me?
Or laugh through a glass eye as they rape our lives
Trampled underfoot by the right on the rise

[CHORUS]
"You call us..."....Ich Bin Ein Auslander (x4)

Welcome to a state where the politics of hate
Shout loud in the crowd "Watch them beat us all down"
There's a rising tide in the rivers of blood
But if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence

If they come to ethnically cleanse me
Will you speak out? Will you defend me?
Freedom of expression doesn't make it alright
Trampled underfoot by the rise of the right

[CHORUS]
Ich Bin Ein Auslander. (x8)

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