Anti-War Song Banned On Facebook

Video of 1980’s Post-Punk Act Featuring the Words “Take The Profit Out Of War” Goes Against Community Standards

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In 1984, Hull-based post-punk band The Red Guitars released a single entitled Fact. It has a memorable chorus featuring chiming discordant guitars and the words “Take the profit out of war. We don’t need it anymore.”

The music was described at the time of its release as “powerful and sinister, fitted with the big beat as well as guitars which shrieked and squirmed,” in The Melody Maker, and as “one of the best guitar records since the demise of Television” in The Guardian.

While the song was written about the threat of nuclear annihilation, which loomed large in the 1980s, the plaintive demand of the chorus — inspired by the anti-war journalism of feminist writer Winifred Holtby — rings true now more than ever. The response of late Radio 1 DJ John Peel to the words “Take the profit out of war, we don’t need it anymore,” was simply “Well, that’s difficult to argue with.”

The track came to mind as I considered the role of arms manufacturers in the USA, Germany and the UK who are currently profiting from sales of weapons to Israel that will be used to slaughter…