Iraqi Acrassicauda Drummer Criticizes Trump Travel Ban: ‘Who Would Do That?’
Iraqi metal act Acrassicauda have spoken out on Donald Trump’s travel ban. Having emigrated to the U.S. from Iraq nine years ago, drummer Marwan Hussein is feeling “mixed emotions of being disgusted by one man’s action and knowing America is a country for immigrants.”
Protests broke out at airports across the country over the weekend after President Trump signed a temporary travel ban on seven Muslim countries, none of which have had ties to terrorist attacks in the U.S. for at least 40 years. Legal U.S. residents and other travelers were denied entry into the country, while many spoke out again Trump, believing this to be the first step of the new president’s Muslim Ban, which he campaigned on from late 2015.
Hussein has a personal stake in Trump’s policy, as he’s been applying to have his mother, who he hasn’t seen since 2011, brought to the U.S. She has now been denied entry. "Now it's like the whole case stopped, just because of the banning issue," Hussein tells Rolling Stone. "Right now I'm trying to figure out if I can bring her over here, and if I do, what rights she has and if it would be possible to see her. It's all speculation. Nothing is for sure. Everybody is in shock."
He continues, “The whole thing is surreal. I think to myself, ‘Are we being punked in here? Where's the cameras?’ It's ridiculous. It's somebody with the mentality of a 5-year-old bully and just literally doesn't know what the f—k to do. Who would do that? … “The whole slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ never made sense to me. It's kind of ironic because what makes America great again is people being able to stand up to their governments when they're being f—king fascists and telling them to go f—k themselves.”
Acrassicauda landed on metalhead’ radars in the 2007 Vice documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad. Head over to Rolling Stone for the entire interview with Hussein.
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