Icon: enlarge
Photo: Jo Hale / Redferns / Getty Images
SPIEGEL:
Kim Gordon, do you feel exhausted after this US election?
Kim Gordon:
Yeah, I feel exhausted.
We expected it to be exactly the same, and yet we keep wondering why it is so difficult for us to count a choice quickly.
And it doesn't seem to be getting any better: Now come the challenges and the demands for recounts.
But Joe Biden won the race.
This is a start, though maybe not a New Deal.
SPIEGEL:
Will Trump accept the defeat at some point?
Gordon:
I don't know.
He lives in delusions, in a fantasy world, he seems removed.
SPIEGEL:
It is said that only his daughter can speak to him ...
Gordon:
I think now is the Republican hour to bring Trump back to reality and tell him, it's time to go, Mr. President.
To person
Kim Gordon,
67, is one of the most influential musicians on the US independent scene.
She played bass with the New York band Sonic Youth for around 30 years.
SPIEGEL:
What will the future look like without Trump?
Gordon:
Without Trump?
You probably mean: How much Trump will comment on every step of Joe Biden in the media from now on!
I'm afraid we won't see Trump a minute less airtime in the next four years.
He will continue to get on our nerves every day thanks to the media he controls.
SPIEGEL:
As the voice of your generation, do you have a message for Mr. Trump?
Gordon:
He loves twitter and hashtags.
How about: #youarealoser - that's my message to him.
Maybe he actually reads it.
Precisely because we know that his attention span is so low that it can hardly be put into words.
SPIEGEL:
Is there anything positive about his presidency?
Gordon:
To be honest, yes.
It made us painfully aware of how vulnerable our democratic constitution is.
If you make them more defensive now, you might one day be grateful to Trump.
His promise not to represent the political elite in Washington, but the people of America, was essentially understandable to me.
It is unacceptable for politicians to ignore the needs of the people they represent.
However, his promises have turned out to be empty words.
In the end, he was just a narcissist.
SPIEGEL:
And what do you most accuse him of?
Gordon:
That he deliberately stirred up the division and hatred in the population.
He has also behaved corruptly and has refilled ministries not based on competence but on loyalty.
Worst of all, he has reassigned the Supreme Court with right-wing judges.
It will haunt us like a nightmare for years.
He claims to be a worker man who wants to build factories, but what really matters to him is quick, virtual media success.
We call that
instant gratification
in America
- and it has nothing to do with working class values.
SPIEGEL:
You supported Bernie Sanders, you even baked a cake for him on Instagram when he was still in the running.
Would he have been the better candidate?
Gordon:
He might have been the better president.
But he made the mistake of letting himself be rhetorically pushed into the socialist corner.
Once you've pinned on the label "socialist" in the US, it's hard to get rid of it.
He would have been much more credible than Biden for the urgently needed New Deal.
SPIEGEL:
In the last issue of Spiegel, the 89-year-old Jac Holzman, founder of the Elektra record company, complained that the American counterculture had failed dramatically.
Hardly any musician, including Bob Dylan, openly opposed Trump.
Gordon:
I can't leave it like that.
There were many in the music scene who positioned themselves.
I'm thinking of the rapper Killer Mike or the entire Downtown for Democracy movement.
But it must also be said very clearly that protest songs no longer have any effect today - unlike in the 1960s, when a Dylan song against the establishment was still newsworthy.
So you cannot naively demand that musicians have to articulate themselves as they did in the past in order to be accepted as critical voices.
SPIEGEL:
Now that Joe Biden becomes the next president of the USA, are you confident or even optimistic about the future of your country?
Gordon:
Of course I'm optimistic - because Trump is gone.
Or at least he should be gone by now.
Let's not kid ourselves: the really important crises are still ahead of us.
I am thinking primarily of climate change.
Trump's presence in the highest office in the United States alone has not only slowed down the bare-bones of the steps, but also undermined the efforts of his predecessor Obama.
And the fact that Joe Biden announced in his first speech that the United States would rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement shows that all hope is not lost.
Icon: The mirror