"Clampdown" the Clash

- What is the song about? How do you know?
I thought the song was about the Holocaust. I thought because in the song, the man who doesn't fit in is assumed to be a Jew. Also, the lyrics say "no man born with a living soul can be working for the clampdown." The people working for the clampdown would have been the Nazis and they treated the Jews in a very inhuman manner. It also says "stop wasting your time, there's nothing coming, only a fool would think someone could save you." During the time of the Holocaust, the situation seemed pretty hopeless like the singer mentions.

- What music elements add to your lyrical interpretation?
The beat of the song is very steady and fast making the song seem extremely structured. This can be connected to the Nazis who were very structured and uniformed.

- How does it relate to propaganda, rhetoric, and persuasion?
There's one particular line in the song that struck me as a connection to propaganda. That would be when he says "we train our blue-eyed men to be believers". Instead of saying the blue-eyed men ARE believers, he says that they have to train them to become believers, this makes it seem as if they're forcing them to believe in what they say.