"If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next" as written by James Dean Bradfield, Nicholas Allen Jones and Sean Moore....
The future teaches you to be alone
The present to be afraid and cold
"So if I can shoot rabbits then I can shoot fascists"
Bullets for your brain today
But we'll forget it all again
Monuments put from pen to paper
Turns me into a gutless wonder
And if you tolerate this then your children will be next
And if you tolerate this then your children will be next
Will be next, will be next, will be next
Gravity keeps my head down
Or is it maybe shame
At being so young and being so vain
Holes in your head today
But I'm a pacifist
I've walked La Ramblas but not with real intent
And if you tolerate this then your children will be next
And if you tolerate this then your children will be next
Will be next, will be next, will be next, yeah will be next
And on the street tonight
An old man plays with newspaper cuttings of his glory days
And if you tolerate this then your children will be next
And if you tolerate this then your children will be next
Will be next, will be next, will be next
The present to be afraid and cold
"So if I can shoot rabbits then I can shoot fascists"
Bullets for your brain today
But we'll forget it all again
Monuments put from pen to paper
Turns me into a gutless wonder
And if you tolerate this then your children will be next
And if you tolerate this then your children will be next
Will be next, will be next, will be next
Gravity keeps my head down
Or is it maybe shame
At being so young and being so vain
Holes in your head today
But I'm a pacifist
I've walked La Ramblas but not with real intent
And if you tolerate this then your children will be next
And if you tolerate this then your children will be next
Will be next, will be next, will be next, yeah will be next
And on the street tonight
An old man plays with newspaper cuttings of his glory days
And if you tolerate this then your children will be next
And if you tolerate this then your children will be next
Will be next, will be next, will be next
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The other is a more general message about: "If you don't step up for your ideal's and fight the wrongs in the world you will just pass away and the wrongs will move on to the next generation without change"
So it's about finding the courage to change the world around you to make a beter future
Needless to say, they were fairly naive. Many went to fight the fascists without any concept of how horrible it would be. So you had these left leaning university grad intellectuals (like Austin) who had only fired rifles when hunting, enlisting to be fighters and ambulance drivers in Spain. Hence the
"if I can shoot rabbits
then I can shoot fascists".
Only once they got there did they start to realize that the communists were just as much puppets controlled by Russia as the fascists were controlled by Germany & Italy (in fact maybe even more so).
They were young and vain and thought they could win. The fascists were much better equipped and organized and probably had more local support. Many returned to England and America broken men.
Hence the line
"Gravity keeps my head down
Or is it maybe shame
At being so young and being so vain".
Notice how they had to keep their heads down to avoid being shot.
Many had been pacifists in college, they were idealistic and unprepared. The war wasn't real to them, until they arrived and saw their friends killed.
Hence,
"Holes in your head today
But I'm a pacifist
I've walked La Ramblas
But not with real intent"
The war became a prelude to World War II, in which oddly enough, the victorious Spanish fascists remained neutral.
“Bullets for your brain today
But we'll forget it all again”
Regardless of the songs true meaning, to me it makes me think of trying to do better in my own life in order to protect the next generation (or my children) from experiencing any hardship or undue pain.
Not as deep but still as poignant :-)
They tended to be from strong working class unions, often miners. the line "if I can shoot rabbits I can shoot facists" was origionally from the book Miners Against Fascism.
The facists did not have more local support than the republican/communist/anarchist side, most of franco's troops were nonlocal mercinarys brought in from outside spain and when the facist troops launched their coup it wasnt an organised army that stopped them in their tracks it was ordinary people rising up across spain.
Whilst some people who went to spain thought of themselves as communist, many were socialist, socialdemocratic, anarchist, or just commited to anti-facism and pro working class struggle. The majority of the spainish replublican side at the start of the war were not communists. It was only later that the communists took power over the reblican side (nearly leading to all out streetwarfare between the stalinists and the trotskyist/anarchists in 'La Ramblas' -which has a lot to do with the meaning of that line imo). The reason for there power was due to the fact that whilst hitler and Mussolini aided the facists, the democratic powers in europe refused to aid the rebllicans leaving russia as their only real source of weapons and munitions.
It's fair to say that the revolution in spain was defeated twice, firstly by the stalinist communists and then after by franco's facists.
I think that the message of the song is that everyone looked aside when the war started except for the brigadist. If the majority of people included governments (Britain, France etc.) had helped the Republicans who were elected by the people then it would have been a different story.
There is a special place in hell for those who remain aside as Dante said.
The song is against fascism. Unlike those idealists who went to Spain to fight the evil of fascism despite "only hunting rabbits" without any military experience, many stayed at home thinking fascism will not come to their home and their children will not be next. Hitler and Mussolini came few years later and made british children "the next".
As for "Gravity keeps my head down, Or is it maybe shame", G.Britain was secretly supporting Spanish fascists against "lefties" as a mean of keeping the british business interests in Europe (against rising socialism and communism).
this beautiful song is dedicate to INTERNATIONAL BRIGADISTS, young common people who changed shooting rabbits at the country side for shooting fascists in the battlefields of Spain
You can interpret this any way you life of course, but we used to criticise other countries for imprisoning people without trial. We never thought our own allies would torture people and our government would applaud them.
When you look at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo the phrase "if you tolerate this your children could be next" should inform our response.
When I mentioned this song to an American friend she responded "we have plenty of manic street preachers over here!"
This kinda is shown in the awesome guitar, how the sound gets bigger, then smaller, like someone rising up, but then being crushed maybe.
It's about a farmer joining the International Brigades, which were set up by the Russians and fighting the Nationalists
"so if i can shoot rabbits
then i can shoot facists"
The title is from a Republican poster at the time calling for people from other countries to volunteer to fight Franco and the Nationalists. But in the end the British government secretly helped the Nationalists and turned Spain Facists just to protect buisness interests and to stop the war spreading.
'Bullets for your brain today
But we'll forget it all again
Monuments put from pen to paper
Turns me into a gutless wonder'
This is saying how easily past wars become irrelevant. People in countries all over the world have fought against tyranny in many different forms, but once it's all over, we usually just put up a monument or two as a reminder of the sacrifices made and move on. It's little more than lip service, because few of us today would be willing to make the same sacrifices if it were inconvenient for us.
'Gravity keeps my head down
Or is it maybe shame
At being so young and being so vain'
This is saying how the majority of the younger generations today are far too superficial and materialistic. Maybe it's because we're so privileged now, but things like civil rights, freedom, justice, etc. are really not that high on our agendas anymore.
'Holes in your head today
But I'm a pacifist
I've walked La Ramblas
But not with real intent'
I guess this is saying that even though you're being shot at and having to dodge bullets, the singer does nothing because he claims to be a pacifist. He's walked La Ramblas as a tourist rather than a fighter.
'And on the street tonight an old man plays
With newspaper cuttings of his glory days'
Probably about how the older people who fought in past wars are now taken for granted.
'And if you tolerate this
Then your children will be next
And if you tolerate this
Then your children will be next
Will be next, will be next, will be next'
If we tolerate the bad things that happen around us, which we generally do, our children will be the ones that suffer.
With newspaper cuttings of his glory days'
i love this lyric. these guys are so hopeless.