"We hate those in power in Washington D.C. and anything bad that happens to them is good for us"
About this Quote
Metzger’s line isn’t really about Washington. It’s about permission.
By framing “those in power” as a single, hated bloc, the quote collapses the messy reality of governance into a cartoon villain, the kind that can absorb any grievance without needing evidence. “Anything bad that happens to them is good for us” is the crucial pivot: it replaces policy with spite, citizenship with scorekeeping. The emotional offer is simple and potent - you don’t have to win, build, or persuade; you just have to watch the right people suffer and call it progress.
The subtext is eliminative, not reformist. It doesn’t imagine taking power to do something; it imagines power as illegitimate by definition and then treats harm as a moral good. That’s a classic radicalization move: redefine “us” as a permanent victim class, redefine “them” as an enemy class, then convert cruelty into self-defense. It also inoculates the speaker against accountability. If “anything bad” is “good,” there’s no boundary to police, no tactic too dirty, no consequence too extreme.
Context matters because Metzger is not merely a “celebrity” in the pop-culture sense; he’s widely known for white supremacist organizing. In that light, the quote reads less like populist venting and more like a recruitment slogan: a blunt little engine designed to turn alienation into approval for political violence, or at minimum, into a nihilistic politics where demolition is the only program.
By framing “those in power” as a single, hated bloc, the quote collapses the messy reality of governance into a cartoon villain, the kind that can absorb any grievance without needing evidence. “Anything bad that happens to them is good for us” is the crucial pivot: it replaces policy with spite, citizenship with scorekeeping. The emotional offer is simple and potent - you don’t have to win, build, or persuade; you just have to watch the right people suffer and call it progress.
The subtext is eliminative, not reformist. It doesn’t imagine taking power to do something; it imagines power as illegitimate by definition and then treats harm as a moral good. That’s a classic radicalization move: redefine “us” as a permanent victim class, redefine “them” as an enemy class, then convert cruelty into self-defense. It also inoculates the speaker against accountability. If “anything bad” is “good,” there’s no boundary to police, no tactic too dirty, no consequence too extreme.
Context matters because Metzger is not merely a “celebrity” in the pop-culture sense; he’s widely known for white supremacist organizing. In that light, the quote reads less like populist venting and more like a recruitment slogan: a blunt little engine designed to turn alienation into approval for political violence, or at minimum, into a nihilistic politics where demolition is the only program.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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