Depeche Mode's Dave Gahan on Richard Spencer: "He's a Cunt"

BY Brock ThiessenPublished Mar 14, 2017

In case you've been living under a rock, alt-right extremist Richard Spencer isn't exactly the most beloved person in the world right now. Among his many detractors, you can now officially count Depeche Mode, whose frontman Dave Gahan has now straight up called Spencer a "cunt."

Of course, Depeche Mode were recently tied to Spencer across countless headlines after the latter "jokingly" labelled them "the official band of the alt-right." Addressing that whole debacle, Gahan now had this to say to Billboard [via Pitchfork]: "What's dangerous about someone like Richard Spencer is, first of all, he's a cunt — and he's a very educated cunt, and that's the scariest kind of all."

Gahan then went on to say this:

I think over the years there's been a number of times when things of ours have been misinterpreted — either our imagery, or something where people are not quite reading between the lines.

If anything, there's a way more sort of socialist — working class, if you like — industrial-sounding aesthetic to what we do. That's where we come from. We come from the council estates of Essex, which is a really shitty place, just 30 minutes east of London, where they stuck everybody when London was getting too overpopulated in the late '60s. So I don't quite get what he was [saying].

I think it was one of those things he threw out there for whatever. But he's not that type of guy — not like the other guy, the Milo [Yiannopoulos], an attention seeker, a bit crazy obviously. I saw [Milo] on Bill Maher and I was just like, "Wow, he really is a nut job." Those people to me aren't so dangerous, but this guy's [Spencer] got some weight behind him. I don't like that, and certainly he had absolutely no right to...  [Pauses.] well, he has every right. He lives in a free country, and he can say what he likes. But at the same time, it was a bit disturbing. I haven't had as many phone calls or texts from people over something like that — friends here and in the city, and other artists who were kind of shocked and like, "What's this?"


This isn't the first time Gahan has recently addressed the whole Spencer controversy, with him also bringing it up in some other recently published interviews. He even told the New York Post, "I saw the video of him getting punched [during protests at the inauguration of President Trump]; he deserved it."

However, nothing quite sums up your utter distaste for another like dropping the C-bomb on them.

Of course, this all comes as Depeche Mode get set to release their new album Spirit on Friday (March 17) via Columbia. They also have a massive North American tour coming up as well.

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