Neil Young: Social Media Is ‘Crippling Our Belief System’

Neil Young has responded to the violent assault on the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., with an impassioned essay that blames President Trump, social media, and the partisan press for the tragedy. He also says the situation would have played out very differently had the rioters been black.

“I was devastated to see the double standard,” he wrote on the Neil Young Archives. “The way people were treated in the Black Lives Matter demonstrations compared to the other day. There is no place here for white supremacy. People need each other to be truly free. Hatred will never find freedom.”

“I was shocked to see the Confederate flag being waved inside the chamber; the destruction and disrespect,” he added. “But mostly I felt bad for the people. With social media, issues are turned into psychological weapons and used to gather hatred in support of one side or the other. This is what Donald J. Trump has as his legacy.”

Young has railed against Facebook for years and recently removed Facebook and Google logins from the Neil Young Archives. “Social media, at the hands of powerful people — influencers, amplifying lies, and untruths — is crippling our belief system, turning us against one another,” he wrote. “We are not enemies. We must find a way home.”

Days before the Capitol assault, Young wrote another essay expressing his evidence-free belief that Trump and Vladimir Putin conspired to rig election machines in November, but failed to change the end result due to the widespread use of mail-in voting.