Ich Bin Ein Auslander

The song is about solidarity with minorities targeted by right wing racists and fascists in the UK. At the time, and sadly still now, there was a number of racist groups violently targeting minorities.

The core of the song is encouraging people to speak out against it, but without violent conflict. It also forwards the idea that if you tolerate violence against minorities, then next it will be the misfits and weirdos (outsiders) like us. When the Nazis targeted Jews, they also went after homosexuals, free thinkers and well basically anybody that didn't fit their idea of how the world should be.

In that regards its sentiment is similar to the Manic Street Preachers "If you tolerate this, then your children will be next". Although that song was about the Spanish Civil War, fighting the fascist General Franco.

Aaaah...this is the song that made me love Pop Will Eat Itself.

It's definitely "You owe us". On every other iteration of the phrase in each chorus, the full phrase is "you owe us everything."

Actually, it's "(You call us) Ich bin ein Auslander."

this one is about hostile British attitudes toward foreigners--the song title translates to "I Am An Outsider". PWEI were involved in the anti-Nazi movement in the early 90s.

The British National Party had recently caused an uproar in Tower Hamlets by winning a council seat, and it looked possible that the UK would see a revival in far right politics. It's a collaboration with Asian group Fun-Da-Mental, the song was scathing attack on the far right and the apathy that seemed to greet its resurgence.

The song was inspired by the BNP's Tower Hamlet's election victory, as kmk_natasha explains, and it's chock full of historical references about fascism.

"It Can't Happen Here" is Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel, which was written as a warning to complacent Americans that fascism wasn't just Europe's problem. The point of the book is the same as the point of this song: that it can happen anywhere if people are apathetic to the danger of the right.

The second verse is about neo-Nazi skinhead gangs. The BNP had supposedly cut all ties with neo-Nazis, but the volunteers handing out their pamphlets in the day were the same people throwing petrol bombs through Pakistanis' windows at night.

"When they come to ethnically cleanse me" is a reference to Martin Niemöller's 1946 speech criticizing anti-Nazi German intellectuals—including himself—for not standing up. It's more familiar in the poetic translation you find on the wall at the Holocaust Museum. Niemöller (a conservative theologian) did nothing to defend the handicapped, the communists, the socialists, and the Jews, so there was nobody left to defend him when they came to purge the Lutheran churches and put him in Dachau.

Of course "ethnically cleanse" was the Serbs' euphemism for their attempted genocide of the Bosnians. At first everyone was angry with them for trying to dodge responsibility, but soon world leaders like Clinton and Major were using it. Which meant anyone who ever wanted to commit genocide in the future (including the Croats and Bosnians in the same way) could get away with claiming they weren't committing genocide, only ethnic cleansing.

I can't remember what "through a glass eye" is a reference to, but it's definitely something. V for Vendetta? Repent, Harlequin?

"Politics of Hate" was the 1968 front-page editorial in the Times calling for the Tories to expel Enoch Powell for his "Rivers of Blood" speech, the speech that basically created the far-right wing of the Tory party overnight (although they'd have to wait a few decades for Boris Johnson).

"Freedom of expression doesn't make it alright" refers to the BNP's claim that their real issue was freedom of expression, not racism. The BBC asked a BNP candidate not to use words like "Paki" and "darky" on air; when he refused, they didn't put him on broadcast, and the BNP cried censorship, which ended up giving them much more, and better, press than a blatant racist on telly speaking for them ever would have.

I thought it was 'you owe us'... thats what it sounds like... but ah well.

awesome song. Pretty straightforward... ww2, anyone? and why the hell aren't people commenting? hiss.

after the voice says "you call us", half of the time that voice says something else that overlaps the singer. i'm pretty sure it's "monsters", which makes sense.

by the way, i can't decide whether this song is horrible or fantastic.

I believe what's actually being said in the sample, is "you call us...." for one of the lines, then, "you call us, nazis"...