Billie Joe Armstrong didn’t mince his words as Green Day performed “American Idiot” in Johannesburg, South Africa over the weekend. While visiting Elon Musk‘s home country on Sunday, the band switched the lyrics of their classic song to take aim at the Tesla and X CEO.
“I’m not a part of the Elon agenda,” Armstrong sang, switching the original lyric: “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda.”
Armstrong has been known to switch up the lyrics to the song, originally written about George W. Bush’s presidential administration, to criticize political figures. During New Year’s Rockin’ Eve this year, Green Day sang, “not a part of the MAGA agenda.” And Musk got big mad.
He tweeted, “Green Day goes from raging against the machine to milquetoastedly raging for it.”
On Sunday, Green Day was headlining Calabash 2025, the South African festival at FNB Stadium just the night before Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, which the tech mogul attended.
Musk made a spectacle during the Trump celebrations as he flaunted a gesture that resembled a Roman salute while addressing the crowd at the Capitol One Arena in D.C.
“This is what victory feels like,” Musk told the arena crowd. “This was no ordinary victory, this was a fork in the road of human civilization… I just want to say thank you for making it happen.”
Standing behind a podium with the presidential seal, Musk banged his chest, pursed his lips, and stretched his stiff right arm toward the crowd with his palm down. He later repeated the gesture. “My heart goes out to you,” he said. Whether or not Musk intended the salute as a “Sieg Heil” salute like Adolf Hitler’s in World War II, as some online commentators suggested, it was eagerly received that way by extremists online.
Back in November, now-President Trump named Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as the leaders of his newly created “Department of Government Efficiency,” a newly concocted organization allegedly meant “to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.”
