Bob Dylan's "politics" unfiltered in his own words

These multibillionaires, and there seem to be more of them every day, can create industries right here in the inner cities of America. But no one can tell them what to do. God’s got to lead them.

There’s no black and white, left and right to me anymore; there’s only up and down and down is very close to the ground. And I’m trying to go up without thinking about anything trivial such as politics. They has got nothing to do with it. I’m thinking about the general people and when they get hurt.

TRANSCRIPT OF BOB DYLAN’S REMARKS AT THE BILL OF RIGHTS DINNER at the Americana Hotel on December 13th 1963

I’m not a political songwriter. Joe Hill was a political songwriter; Merle Travis wrote some political songs. “Which Side Are You On?” is a political song. And “Neighborhood Bully,” to me, is not a political song, because if it were, it would fall into a certain political party. If you’re talkin’ about it as an Israeli political song–even if it is an Israeli political song–in Israel alone, there’s maybe twenty political parties. I don’t know where that would fall, what party. But just because somebody feels a certain way, you can’t come around and stick some political-party slogan on it. If you listen closely, it really could be about other things. It’s simple and easy to define it, so you got it pegged, and you can deal with it in that certain kinda way. However, I wouldn’t do that, ‘Cause I don’t know what the politics of Israel is. I just don’t know. What’s going on today isn’t gonna last, you know? The battle of Armageddon is specifically spelled out: where it will be fought and, if you wanna get technical, when it will be fought. And the battle of Armageddon definitely will be fought in the Middle East. I think politics is an instrument of the Devil. Just that clear. I think politics is what kills; it doesn’t bring anything alive. Politics is corrupt; I mean, everybody knows that, right? There is not going to be any peace. No. It’s just gonna be a false peace. You can reload your rifle, and that moment you’re reloading it, that’s peace. It may last for a few years.

My so-called Jewish roots are in Egypt. They went down there with Joseph, and they came back out with Moses, you know, the guy that killed the Egyptian, married an Ethiopian girl and brought the law down from the mountain. The same Moses whose staff turned into a serpent. The same person who killed 3,000 Hebrews for getting down, stripping off their clothes and dancing around a golden calf. These are my roots. Jacob had four wives and 13 children, who fathered an entire people. Those are my roots too. Gideon, with a small army, defeating an army of thousands. Deborah, the prophetess. Esther the queen and many Canaanite women. Reuben slipping into his father’s bed when his father wasn’t there. These are my roots. Delilah tempting Sampson, killing him softly with her song. The mighty King David was an outlaw before he was a king, you know. He had to hide in caves and get his meals at back doors. The wonderful King Saul had a warrant out on him – a “no knock” search warrant. They wanted to cut his head off. John the Baptist could tell you more about it.

Roots man – we’re talking about Jewish roots, you want to know more? Check upon Elijah the prophet. He could make rain. Isaiah the prophet, even Jeremiah, see if their brethren didn’t want to bust their brains for telling it right like it is, yeah -these are my roots, I suppose. Am I looking for them? Well, I don’t know. I ain’t looking for them in synagogues with six pointed Egyptian stars shining down from every window, I can tell you that much. But you know, it’s sleepy time down south.

Some people say they're Jews and they never go to a synagogue or anything. I know some gangsters who say they're Jews. I don't know what that's got to do with anything. Judaism is really the laws of Moses. If you follow the laws of Moses you're automatically a Jew I would think.

It’s very popular nowadays to think of yourself as a “Liberal humanist.” That’s such a bullshit term. It means less than nothing. Who was a better president? Well, you got me. I don’t know what people’s errors are; nobody’s perfect, for sure. But I thought Kennedy–both Kennedys–I just liked them. I mean, the Kennedys were great-looking people, man, they had style, America is not like that anymore. But what happened, happened so fast that people are still trying to figure it out. The tv media wasn't so big then. It's like the only thing people knew was what they knew; then suddenly people were being told what to think, how to behave, there's too much information. And I liked Martin…Martin Luther King. I thought those were people who were blessed and touched, you know?

The fact that they all went out with bullets doesn’t change nothin’. Because the good they do gets planted. And those seeds live on longer than that.

I heard somebody on the radio talkin’ about what’s happenin’ in Haiti, you know? “We must be concerned about what’s happening in Haiti. We’re global people now.” And they’re gettin’ everybody in that frame of mind–like, we’re not just the United States anymore, we’re global. We’re thinkin’ in terms of the whole world because communications come right into your house. Well, that’s what the Book of Revelation is all about. And you can just about know that anybody who comes out for peace is not for peace. Well, you can’t be for peace and be global, It’s just like that song “Man of Peace.” But ‘none of this matters, if you believe in another world. If you believe in this world, you’re stuck; you really don’t have a chance. You’ll go mad, ’cause you won’t see the end of it. You may wanna stick around, but you won’t be able to. On another level, though, you will be able to see this world. You’ll look back and say, “Ah, that’s what it was all about all the time. Wow, why didn’t I get that?”

Now they’re gonna put a space station up there, and it’s gonna cost, what–$600 billion, $700 billion? And who’s gonna benefit from it? Drug companies who are gonna be able to make better drugs. Does that make sense? Is that supposed to be something that a person is supposed to get excited about? Is that progress? I don’t think they’re gonna get better drugs. I think they’re gonna get more expensive drugs.

Everything is computerized now, it’s all computers. I see that as the beginning of the end. You can see everything going global. There’s no nationality anymore, no I’m this or I’m that: “We’re all the same, all workin’ for one peaceful world, blah, blah, blah.”

Somebody’s gonna have to come along and figure out what’s happening with the United States. Is this just an island that’s going to be blown out of the ocean, or does it really figure into things? I really don’t know. At this point right now, it seems that it figures into things. But later on, it will have to be a country that’s self-sufficient, that can make it by itself without that many imports. Right now, it seems like in the States, and most other countries, too, there’s a big push on to make a big global country –one big country –where you can get all the materials from one place and assemble them someplace else and sell ’em in another place, and the whole world is just all one, controlled by the same people, you know? And if it’s not there already, that’s the point it’s tryin’ to get to.

What’s 30 cents a day? He don’t need the 30 cents a day. I mean, people survived for 6,000 years without having to work for slave wages for a person who comes down and…well, actually, it’s just colonization. But see, I saw that stuff firsthand, because where I come from, they really got that deal good, with the ore.

“It’s like politics, I just can’t make it with any organisation. I fell into a trap once – last December – when I agreed to accept the Tom Paine Award from the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee. At the Americana Hotel! In the Grand Ballroom! As soon as I got there, I felt up tight. First of all, the people with me couldn’t get in. They looked even funkier than I did, I guess. They weren’t dressed right, or something. Inside the ballroom, I really got up tight. I began to drink. I looked down from the platform and saw a bunch of people who had nothing to do with my kind of politics. I looked down and I got scared. They were supposed to be on my side, but I didn’t feel any connection with them. Here were these people who’d been all involved with the left in the Thirties, and now they were supporting civil rights drives. That’s groovy, but they also had mink and jewels, and it was like they were giving the money out of guilt. I got up to leave and they followed me and caught me. They told me I had to accept the award. When I got up to make my speech, I couldn’t say anything by that time but what was passing through my mind.

The chairman was kicking my leg under the table, and I told him: ‘Get out of here. ‘ Now, what I was supposed to be was a nice cat. I was supposed to say: ‘I appreciate your award and I’m a great singer and I’m a great believer in liberals, and you buy my records and I’ll support your cause. ‘ But I didn’t, and so I wasn’t accepted that night. That’s the cause of a lot of those chains I was talking about – people wanting to be accepted, people not wanting to be alone. But, after all, what is it to be alone? I’ve been alone sometimes in front of three thousand people. I was alone that night.”

In response to the ‘Tom Paine Award’
Nat Hentoff Interview, New York, June 1964

A lot of people say there is no happiness in this life, and certainly there’s no permanent happiness. But self-sufficiency creates happiness. Happiness is a state of bliss. Just because you’re satisfied one moment — saying yes, it’s a good meal, makes me happy — well, that’s not going to necessarily be true the next hour. Life has its ups and downs, and time has to be your partner, time is your soul mate. Children are happy. But they haven’t really experienced ups and downs yet. I’m not exactly sure what happiness even means, to tell you the truth. I don’t know if I personally could define it. As long as there’s suffering, you can only be so happy. How can a person be happy if he has misfortune? Does money make a person happy? Some wealthy billionaire who can buy 30 cars and maybe buy a sports team, is that guy happy? What then would make him happier? Does it make him happy giving his money away to foreign countries? Is there more contentment in that than giving it here to the inner cities and creating jobs? Nowhere does it say that one of the government’s responsibilities is to create jobs. That is a false premise. But if you like lies, go ahead and believe it.

The government’s not going to create jobs. It doesn’t have to. People have to create jobs, and these big billionaires are the ones who can do it. We don’t see that happening.

“It would be just impossible for me to stand up and be associated with any political party. They’re all crap – every single one of them is crap. They all think they are better than the next one. Huh.”

“It’s OK for someone who wants to be in a political party, but not me. They stand up there trying to tell what is good and what’s bad and what ought to be done.”

“They’ve got a commodity to sell and that commodity is themselves. Politics is just a commercial bandwagon.”

Ray Coleman Interview, London, England, 12 May 1965

We see crime and inner cities exploding, with people who have nothing to do but meander around, turning to drink and drugs, into killers and jailbirds. They could all have work created for them by all these hotshot billionaires. For sure, that would create a lot of happiness. Now, I’m not saying they have to — I’m not talking about communism — but what do they do with their money? Do they use it in virtuous ways? If you have no idea what virtue is all about, look it up in a Greek dictionary. There’s nothing namby-pamby about it.

“Arete as a Goddess and a Virtue”

In ancient Greek, the word arete meant virtue or excellence.

The concept was a complex one that combined status, reputation, and personal achievement. Even the great philosophers of Greece conceded that there was no single way to define or achieve arete.

The word could be applied in some way to describe any type of valor or virtue. Exceptional bravery in war, loyalty to a partner, and dedication to a cause could all be displays of arete.

For an individual to be described as having arete was not so simple, however. A person could display acts of arete but still not be described as a person of arete.

The Greeks believed that virtue was an intrinsic part of who a person was. A person could work toward the ideal, but not everyone would be capable of achieving or maintaining that state.

These big billionaires are the ones who can do it. I think they should, because there are a lot of things that are wrong in America and especially in the inner cities that they could solve. Those are dangerous grounds, and they don’t have to be. There are good people there, but they’ve been oppressed by lack of work. Those people can all be working at something. These multibillionaires, and there seem to be more of them every day, can create industries right here in the inner cities of America. But no one can tell them what to do. God’s got to lead them.

“I have no respect for any group that has a president or a vice-president... for any organisation that has a motto. I stay out of it. I don’t need it. I live in a world that doesn’t exist in politics. I just don’t have those problems.”

Ann Carter Interview, Atlanta, Georgia, 9 October 1965

A lot of these people that are boycotting those shows they got children, they show things on those shows, they don't want their children to see. Television now is at every home, it's not much you can do about it. It's better than outlawing TV-sets. hink about forty years ago, there weren't any TV-sets, so there was nothing to boycott ...

Whenever you think about abortion, pro, con, you know, I think you should be thinking about those things, then they put you away with the bigger things, which you're not thinking about. Well, that is just a diversion, though. So you get everybody thinking about abortion and they turn you back from it ... not to say that abortion is not important! But you can make something so ... you know cast a spell on something and make everybody look that way and then you come at them from another direction ...I don't know ... Now abortion is important, I personally don't believe in it but ..., unless of course somebody needs to have their life saved. Well, everybody *does* have the choice to make about themselves ...

“No, I’m not disillusioned. I’m just not illusioned, either. The civil rights and protest songs, I wrote when nobody else was writing them. Now everyone is. But I’ve found out some things. The groups promoting these things, the movement, would try to get me involved with them, be their singing spokesman – and inside these groups, with all their president vice-president secretary stuff, it’s politics, all politics. Inside their own pettinesses they’re as bad as the hate groups. I won’t even have a fan club because it’d have to have a president, it’d be a group.”

“They think the more people you have behind something the more influence it has. Maybe so, but the more it gets watered down, too. I’m not a believer in doing things by numbers. I believe that the best things get done by individuals.“

Margaret Steen Interview, Toronto, Canada, 15/16 November 1965

I'm not an authority on catholicism. Ritual has really nothing to do with spiritual laws. However, if you do walk according to the law, all of the law, well, you'd be a pretty pure person and on a pretty high level. A person who could no doubt move mountains. if you walk according to the law, and most people can't walk according to the law, because it's so difficult, there are so many laws, that govern absolutely every area of your life.

I grew up, admiring those type of heroes, Robin Hood, Jesse James ... You know the person who always kicked against the oppression and was ... had high moral standards. I don't know if the people I write about have high moral standards, I don't know if Robin Hood did, but you always assumed that they did.

Well you might be in The White House,
carving up the meat
or hoping for a Hand out
or Up on easy street
They may call you Peter, call you Paul
maybe you don’t have a name
they call you nothing at all
November 21, 2021, The Beacon Theatre NYC

God will stay with America as long as America stays with God. A lot of people maybe even the President, maybe a lot of senators, you hear them speak and they'll speak of the attributes of God. But none of them are speaking about being a disciple of Christ

Politics was always one because there were people who were trying to change things. They were involved in the political game because that is how they had to change things. But I have always considered politics just part of the illusion. I don’t get involved much in politics. I don’t know what the system runs on.

For instance, there are people who have definite ideas or who studied all the systems of government. A lot of those people with college-educational backgrounds tended to come in and use up everybody for whatever purposes they had in mind.

November 1977
Ron Rosenbaum, Interview, Burbank, California, November 1977

A saint is a person who gives of himself totally and freely, without strings. He is neither deaf nor blind. And yet he’s both. He’s the master of his own reality, the voice of simplicity. The trick is to stay away from mirror images. The only true mirrors are puddles of water. The image you see in a puddle of water is consumed by depth: An image you see when you look into a piece of glass has no depth or life-flutter movement. Of course, you might want to check your tie. And, of course, you might want to see if the make-up is on straight. That’s all the way. Vanity sells a lot of things, products on the market. Everything from new tires to bars of soap. Need is—need is totally overlooked. Nobody seems to care about people’s needs. They’re all for one purpose. A shallow grave.

I've never really been into politics, mostly I guess because of the world of politics. The people who are into politics as a profession, you know, it's... the art of politics hasn't changed much over the years. Were there politics in Roman times? And are there politics in communist countries? I'm sure there are. I don’t understand the difference between right and left. I can be conservative in one question and then to the left in another. I don't know much change between conservatism or liberalism. I can't see much differences between either of those things.

Politics could be useful if it was used for good purposes. For instance, like feeding the hungry and taking care of the orphans. But it’s not. It’s like the snake with it’s tail in it’s mouth. A merry-go-round of sin. Latin America, for example, this is a political issue. All you hear about are US interests in Latin America. But what are those interests? You can’t find out. Show me an honest politician, and I’ll show you a sanctified whore. You know that old story about the murderer who kills the judge and puts on his robe. But he’s still a murderer. Corruption doesn’t die, men die.

Yeah, well that's what sin is, politics. It just came to me when I was writing that's the way it is... the diplomacy of sin. The way they take sin, and put it in front of people... the way that they say this is good and that's bad, you can do this and you can't do that, the way sin is taken and split up and categorised and put on different levels so it becomes more of a structure of sin, or, "these sins are big ones, these are little ones, these can hurt this person, these can hurt you, this is bad for this reason, and that is bad for another reason." the politics of sin; that's what I think of it.

There’s a lot of different gods that people are subjects of. There’s the god of Mammon. Corporations are gods. Governments? No, Governments don’t have much to do with it anymore, I don’t think. Politics is a hoax. The politicians don’t have any real power. They feed you all this stuff in the newspapers about what’s going on, but that’s not what’s really going on.”

You know the toy manufacturers that make guns and tanks for small children? They are as much to be held responsible for death and destruction of the planet as any important arms manufacturer. They’re just doing it for little people. They’re the ones that start the assembly line of death. They light the match. In the end there’s a supreme judge they’ll have to answer to for this. Don’t matter how expensive their suit is or how big their playhouses are. Of course, they’ll plead ignorance, “Well, I never knew about it,” they’ll say. But they won’t get off so easy, and there won’t be no Nixon to pardon them.

You can turn anything into a religious context. Religion is a dirty word. It doesn’t mean anything. Coca Cola is a religion. Oil and steel are a religion. In the name of religion, people have been raped, killed and defiled. Today’s religion is tomorrow’s bondage.

People don't know who the enemy is. They think the enemy is something they can see, and the reality of the enemy is a spirtual being they can't see, and it influences all they can see and they don't go to the top, the end line of the real enemy - like the enemy who's controlling who you think who's your enemy.

You would think the enemy is someone you could strike at and that would solve the problem, but the real enemy is the devil. That's the real enemy, but he tends to shade himself and hide himself and put it into people's minds that he's really not there and he's really not so bad, and that he's got a lot of good things to offer too. So there's this conflict going, to blind the minds of men. The struggle against oppression and injustice is always going to be there, but the devil himself is the one who creates it. You can come to know yourself, but you need help in doing it.

The only one who can overcome all that is the great creator himself. If you can get his help you can overcome it. To do that you must know something about the nature of the creator. What Jesus does for an ignorant man like myself is to make the qualities and characteristics of God more beliveable to me, cos I can't beat the devil. Only God can. He already has. Satan's working everywhere. You're faced with him constantly. If you can't see him he's inside you making you feel a certain way. He's feeding you envy and jealousy, he's feeding you oppression, hatred...

Of course you can look on the desert and wake up to the sun and the sand and the beauty of the stars and know there is a higher being, and worship that creator.

But being thrown into the cities you're faced more with man than with God. We're dealing here with man, y'know, and in order to know where man's at you have to know what God would do if he was man. I'm trying to explain to you in intellectual mental terms, when it actually is more of a spiritual understanding than something which is open to debate.

Politics have changed. The subject matter has changed. In the ‘60s there was a lot of people coming out of schools who were taught politics by professors who were political thinkers, and those people spilled over into the streets. What politics I ever learned, I learned in the streets, because it was part of the environment. I don’t know where somebody would hear that now. Now everybody wants their own thing. There’s no unity. There’s the Puerto Rican Day parade, Polish Day, German Week, the Mexican parades. You have all these different types of people all waving their own flags, and there’s no unity between all these people. In the ‘60s, there wasn’t any separation. That’s the difference between then and now that I can see. Everybody now is out for their own people and their own selves, and they should be ‘cause they look around and see everything’s unbalanced.

Pacifism. I know I’m not comfortable with those words and I wonder if other people are as comfortable with those broad terminologies like *pacifism*, *rightism*, *leftism*, *militarism*, *republicanism*. In this country a Republican is one thing: you can go to Ireland and say you’re a Republican you’ll get a different reaction. You can use all these words *here*. It’s pretty safe to say anything you want to say. But whether there’s any meaning to it or not, I don’t know. I don’t comprehend those terms simply because I don’t think other people do. They talk about humanism and secularism, everything’s got an *ism*. Not that I’m so stupid that I can’t understand what they mean, but I don’t think anybody else knows what they mean. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think people know what they’re talking about when they use all these words. They have no idea what they’re saying. It’s like saying, "I saw a house yesterday." Oh yeah, I saw one, too. But it probably wasn’t the same one you saw.

People need something to hate, you've got to hate something. As soon as your old enough, people try to make you hate something or somebody. Blacks are a little easier, Communists you can't really see. The early Christians were like Communists. The Roman Empire treated the Early Christians the same way as the Western world treats the Communists.

I don't know if even Masters Of War is a political song. Politics of *what*? If there is such a thing as politics, what is it politics of? Is it spiritual politics? Automotive politics? Governmental politics? What kind of politics? Where does those word come from, politics? Is this a Greek word or what? What does it actually *mean*? I don't know what the fuck it means. Left, right, rebel. Some people are rebels. Let's see, Afghanistan are rebels, but they're OK. Nicaragua's got rebels and they're OK. Their rebels are all right. But in El Salvador the rebels are the bad guys. Nicaragua, the rebels are the good guys. If you listen to that stuff you go crazy. You don't even know who *you* are anymore. It don't make any sense to me. I don't see good guy, bad guy. It's that Dave Mason song "There ain't no good guy, there ain't no bad guy, there's only you and me and we just disagree". True or what?

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Source: Every Mind Polluting Word

Bob Dylan recovering Christian

Interviews 80-89