The neo-Nazi Richard Spencer is mostly famous for being punched in the face live on TV, but he bought himself to a whole new audience yesterday by declaring, just before being thrown out of the Conservative Political Action conference, that “Depeche Mode are the official band of the alt-right”.

I suspect you can divide most people my age into broadly two tribes. Those of you who might just about remember 80s Radio 1 DJs announcing that De-pesh-ay Mode were near the top of the charts with twee electropop such as New Life and Just Can’t Get Enough, and those of us who spent the late 80s and early 90s dressed in black and hanging on their every word.

There is no way that we are going to let the “alt-right”, a far-right movement in the US, claim Depeche Mode as one of their own.

For a start there’s more than enough evidence in their back catalogue that they used to be rather left-leaning. 1983’s Construction Time Again album is positively Marxist in its outlook, with the track Pipeline envisaging a world where the fruit of labour was “taking from the greedy, giving to the needy”. The Alan Wilder-penned song The Landscape is Changing was a protest song about manmade damage to the environment. And the album was typified by single Everything Counts, a critique of capitalism that bemoaned how “lies and deceit gained a little more power” while “the grabbing hands grab all they can”.



Is there any case at all to be made from Depeche Mode’s lyrics that they could support the far right? Well, they did go through a phase of doing quite a few songs that seemed to be about having sex in Berlin wearing kinky boots, which you imagine might appeal to the neo-Nazi mindset.

At a stretch you could argue that the claim that People Are People was a pre-cursor to the #AllLivesMatter response to the #BlackLivesMatter movement. And the band were always at pains in interviews to suggest that the lyrics of single Master And Servant weren’t about sadomasochistic sex at all, but about domination of all kinds, which sounds a little bit fascist.

Perhaps they even pre-empted our #FakeNews problems when, on the 1990 Violator album, they sang that a policy of telling the truth only causes your problems to multiply. With Sean Spicer’s recent White House press briefings, we are certainly witnessing a policy of post-truth.

Depeche Mode in 1987 - it is possible the leather, chains and studs appeal to the neo-Nazi mindset Photograph: Paul Natkin/WireImage

Though maybe lyrical analysis isn’t the best way to approach Depeche Mode. Love them dearly as I do, chief songwriter Martin Gore did once rhyme houses with trousers.

But seriously, how could any self-respecting white supremacist really claim the support of a group who in 1986 released an entire album called Black Celebration? Or one who had a massive international hit with an anthem dedicated to the practice of no-platforming racists - Enjoy the Silence.

The band themselves were understandably swift to deny any link to the extreme right, with their management issuing a statement saying that: “That is a pretty ridiculous claim. Depeche Mode has no ties to Richard Spencer or the alt-right and does not support the alt-right movement.”

Their latest single, Where’s the Revolution, is one of the band’s most political-sounding for years - and it was in part driven by the band’s concern about where US politics is heading. Singer Dave Gahan, who lives in New York, told Rolling Stone magazine: “As I get older, the things going on in the world affect me more. I think about my kids and what they’re growing up into. My daughter, Rosie, was deeply affected by the US election last year. She just sobbed, and I was like, ‘Wow’.”



In Facebook fan groups, most Depeche Mode fans have reacted in horror to the suggestion they could be the soundtrack to the far right, although there are one or two I’ve seen who think the band shouldn’t have made a statement and embroiled themselves in the debate at all.

‘Those fans on social media already familiar with him have been quick to mock Spencer.’ Photograph: UPI/Barcroft Images

The rise of populist politics is putting artists and fans into a difficult position. What do you do if an odious cause such as white supremacy tries to muscle in on your fandom? Throughout their now-lengthy career, Depeche Mode have seldom made any explicit political statements, but Spencer’s pronouncement forced them to comment. For them not to have distanced themselves from the statement would have been seen in some quarters as endorsing it. But by drawing more attention to what Spencer said, the band have potentially amplified his message, causing fans who had never heard of him before to discover him and his squalid opinions. It’s a tricky conundrum.

Those fans on social media already familiar with him have been quick to mock Spencer. There has rightly been a wider debate about whether a focus on the punching incident glorifies violence rather than using debate to shut down his ideology, but the clip of him being punched was already being set to lots of different music as a viral meme – and it works perfectly alongside Just Can’t Get Enough.

So no, sorry Richard Spencer, us Depeche Mode fans are not going to let far-right extremists define what the band represent. As several other Twitter users have pointed out, it’s pretty easy to indulge in mockery by adapting the words of one of Depeche Mode’s biggest hits, Personal Jesus. With Richard Spencer it’s very much a case of “Reach out, and punch face”.