Morrissey's political beliefs flicker between explicit racism, attention-grabbing shows of soft nationalism, the belief that McDonalds is worse than the slaughter of innocent humans by a white nationalist, and veganism. It's difficult to pin any sort of coherent ideology on the man, though it's fair to say that he is, at the very least, a bit of a dick. Fans tend to stick by him in spite of this knowledge—a lot of great artists are dicks!—but others reached the end of their tether recently when the 57-year-old started selling a T-shirt with James Baldwin's face and the a lyric from The Smiths' "Unbelievable": "I Wear Black On the Outside, 'Cause Black Is How I Feel on the Inside."Yesterday was Record Store Day, for better or worse, and The Smiths released a special edition 7-inch for the occasion, with a demo version of "The Boy With the Thorn in His Side" on one side and an early studio version of "Rubber King" on the other. But was the vinyl itself, not the songs, that caught the eye. As Slicing Up Eyeballs first reported, "Trump Will Kill America" was etched into the record with the artwork credited to Esteban, the Spanish version of Morrissey's first name.So yes, it was probably Morrissey. The same Morrissey who referred to the Chinese as a "subspecies." The same Morrissey who hailed Britain's fearful exit from the European Union as "magnificent" and praised immigrant-basher and inadequately-encased sausage Nigel Farage as a "liberal educator." He hates the royal family, of course, and he's never liked Trump. So you could say that Morrissey contains multitudes. Or you could just say that he's a bit of a dick.Lead photo by Yukiko Nakagawa via Flickr.__Follow Noisey on Twitter.
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