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Everybody knows there's a lot of fucking KMFDM albums. They've been at it since Reagan told us that ketchup was a vegetable. And everybody also knows that KMFDM is at least slightly political. If not purposefully so, they were at least thrust into cultural politics by the whole Columbine fiasco. Because here at ReGen we're about connecting the dots among message, messenger and fans, we wanted to have a seat with Kap'n K to chat almost exclusively about politics. Coming to you from a bunker deep within the commie gay hippie pinko city of San Francisco is a somewhat political interview with KMFDM...

What was your first political response in a song?

Konietzko: I think all the lyrics that I've written over the years are somewhat political, just 'cause that?s what I'm all about. Not political in the sense of supporting this or that political party but I'm the sort of open minded, critical person that reflects constantly on my surroundings. And I guess every line in that light can be seen as political, without being overtly political.

Did the current events in the ?80s or ?90s, i.e. Gulf War, have a direct impact on your lyrics?

Konietzko: Yeah, of course it did. The first Gulf War provided a great source for all kinds of sad things and inspirations. The whole idiocy of it was like a found feast. And we feasted on it.

Did September 11, 2001 have a lot of play into the album Attak?

Konietzko: No, the album was written and pretty much completed at the time the attack happened. It was actually at a stage where we were supposed to start mixing it, I think on 9/13, but since there was no air traffic other than the bin Laden family leaving for another country, our engineer couldn't make it from Chicago and the record was put on the backburner for a month or two.

So was there a major influence into the record, a reason why you called it Attak?

Konietzko: There was a reason for it, but it wasn't like I was anticipating the attack on the United States by the Saudi Arabian elite military commandos or something.

Maybe a Republican attack?

Konietzko: The attack on the foundations of American democracy was one of the reasons. I think another was Bush, a political figure with a long tradition of clearly pro-fascist and clandestine CIA family ties. That to me already constituted an attack on something. A second reason to call it Attak was KMFDM'?s reformation. I think that's two good reasons for calling it Attak.

In the past you've used a lot of slogans, for instance, ?Rip The System? and ?No Rights Without Responsibilities.? What do you mean by that?

Konietzko: Well, just exactly what it says. There is definitely a need to rebel against an ever-tightening net of regulations, oppression, surveillance, invasion and intrusion into people?s private lives. I think ?Rip the System? had a great resonance in the United States, much more so than the German. Europeans in general, and Germans in particular, are much more politicized than Americans. This whole ?Rip the System? thing is really a rather abstract slogan. I really found some sort of fertile soil in writing for KMFDM fans in the United States.

And I've seen stickers and various other things still to this day.

Konietzko: ?Rip the System? was just the slogan that started things when we were designing KMFDM t-shirts. There was artwork on the front, and I figured the T-shirts should have something on the back. It's kind of lame to just have a front, so we would take one punch-line out of a song and make that the slogan for the shirt. So ?Rip the System? came from the song. One of the lines of the song is, 'Heed the revolution to rip the system.' So ?Rip the System? was thrown on the shirt and that became the first item of merchandising we had in the United States. It fucking paid off. I couldn't figure it out, people just really got into it. We were greeted with, ?Rip the system!? It started to have a life of its own. ?No Rights Without Responsibilities? was the same thing. Taken out of context, it's a little abstract, but the slogan here really caught on and it became a sort of a trademark. It?s the idea of ?If it works so why fuck with it??

So, what do you believe Germany's reason was for not supporting the war in Iraq?

Konietzko: First of all, there was no war in Iraq, other than the war that was unleashed upon them. It was an invasion of a sovereign country. There was hardly any sort of war action. They [USA] just overran the free forces that were there and wrecked it. They made sure the Ministry of Oil didn't get hurt, but they didn't do anything to protect the four, five, six thousand year old remains of one of the most elaborate cultures in world?s history. Had the German government supported the U.S. government in this invasion, there would have been a bloodbath in the streets of Germany. It was very clear to everyone over there that this was not going to lead to anything good and that's why they didn't support it. It is absolutely illegal by all international law. People like Bush and Vice President Cheney should be in front of a war crime tribunal.

A lot of people have said that one of the reasons for Germany not supporting the invasion was that Saddam gave parcels of oil to European countries, like Russia, France, and Germany, and by not supporting the invasion they would have access to Iraq.

Konietzko: It?s very possible that there's a bit of trading oil for stuff, but don't forget that the embargo after the first Gulf War, when Iraq was absolutely helpless. People had no Penicillin and children would die from the most banal infections. Problems that you and I would go to the doctor and get a box of Amoxicillin, and five days later we?d forget about it. People were dying from everything. There was no medication and United States wouldn't let anything in or out of Iraq. It went from bad to worse. I guess the dependency of oil is as clear to Europeans as it is to Americans, but the Europeans don't get their oil exclusively from Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The whole thing with Europe is that since the '70s, and first big oil crisis, a lot of money has been spent to develop alternative sources of energy. So there isn't that much fear about not being able to drive SUV?s tomorrow. Our cars are smaller and use hardly any gasoline. If we allow one country to invade another country without any repercussions, then there's something wrong. There must be some sort of global understanding of what is possible and what is not. Where does it stop?

Why do you think Tony Blair went along for the ride, as a European?

Konietzko: Because Tony's a fucking cunt. He's the biggest idiot. That's actually a question you should ask the English members of KMFDM. They have a lot to say about that. Tony is a house slave. He?s fucking pathetic. A couple of days ago in London, 100,000 people protested against Bush, including the Mayor of London. That was fucking good!

Why do people commit political suicide like that?

Maybe he actually believed in the weapons of mass destruction bullcrap.

Elections are coming up this year. Is your time frame on staying in America dependent on who wins this year's elections?

Konietzko: Very largely so, yeah.

Were there any candidates, Independent or Democratic, that you find appealing?

Konietzko: Not in the group of people that were running, no. I think they're all full of shit. I was hoping for someone like Hillary Clinton to step in. She would have the clout to actually make it possible. Wesley Clark, nice guy, at least he?s simpatico. I think they all have false agendas at this point. Miracles have happened before, though.

I think someone like Dennis Kucinich was really in it because he believed in it, but he had absolutely no draw.

Konietzko: Right, that's the problem. I mean you need someone to step in who has clout. But so far, none in sight. I guess even if Al Gore would run, I would be OK with him. It would at least be someone that knows the game. In a utopia it would be great to subdivide the United States into a couple of large countries. But of course, that?s unthinkable. It?s not like the Constitution hasn?t already been mutilated.

Political pundits have said it recently that Karl Rove might have what they're suspiciously calling this year's September surprise, like, Bin Laden on a chain to the Republican convention. Do you think that's totally possible?

Konietzko: It will never happen, no. You make the connections and I?ll just tell you things that I?ve found out. Bush?s great-grandfather Prescott and his father-in-law ran Union Bank, and started to support the German Nazi party in 1926. Union Bank was confiscated by the Feds in 1942 under the Working for the Enemy Act, and that was that. Now Prescott's son, George senior, was CIA Director, and so was Prescott. The biggest supporters of Arnold [Schwarzenegger] are Karl Rove and George W. Bush. So we have a bit of a Nazi past. Arnold listed Adolf Hitler when asked who some of his idols were in 1988. I mean, he could have named anyone, but he named Hitler.

He went to Kurt Waldheim's wedding too.

Konietzko: Yes. He was an SS guy. Another interesting tidbit is that after the 9/11 attack, had 15 of the 19 hijackers been North Korean, the headlines would have read, ?North Korea attacks United States.? The fact that 15 of them were Saudi?s never found its reflection on any headlines. It never said, ?Saudi Arabia attacks United States.? They were just global terrorists, right.

The Bin Laden family are pretty much all Saudi Arabians too.

Konietzko: Exactly. We're always made to believe by the U.S. media, that all these countries are bad and full of extremists, except Saudi Arabia. That place is neatly run by the nice royal family who are completely in bed with the Bin Laden family. They also make us believe that the Bin Laden family is really cool, except there's one bad guy, the black sheep. What's also interesting is in the days following 9/11, there was a no-fly rule. I mean nothing flew other than military jets, except a couple of planes that collected the Bin Laden family members, 124 of them, and brought them to a secret compound in Texas. From there, via the Caribbean, they flew them out. Another thing, they make us believe is that these pilots that flew the planes into the towers were trained at some dip-shit flying schools in Florida. There's no way you can fly a fucking 767 at 550 miles an hour into a really, really small target like the Twin Towers unless you had extensive flight training. Training like you would have in the military, maybe the Saudi Arabian military. You don't learn how to fly a fucking jet into a small tower on a computer simulation. No fucking way.

You want to talk about the New American Century a little bit?

Konietzko: It's a paper that was written in June of 1994, which lays out the views our people will need in order for American governance to secure the world for the next hundred years. And look at who signed it: Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Perl, Wolfowitz and some other interesting characters like Newt Gingrich. It?s all laid out. The invasion of all Asian countries. It's just one step in the whole plan. I'm not a fan of conspiracy theory at all, but on the other hand, I could easily imagine that the conspiracy theory shit is fueled by certain people just to make the impossible possible. It's very strange living in modern times.