Armond White Has Feelings About Bruce Springsteen and We Should All Know About It
National Review — Where getting mad at rock stars pays the bills
Armond White’s recent piece in National Review titled “Faithless — Springsteen’s Latest Hysterical Politics” demonstrates exactly what is wrong with contemporary cultural criticism. The article trades in manufactured outrage rather than actual analysis, uses charged language to hide thin arguments, and asks readers to accept emotional manipulation as substantive critique. When you strip away White’s dramatic vocabulary, what remains is a series of claims that do not hold up to scrutiny.
White opens his piece by claiming that Bruce Springsteen’s song “Faithless” “blasphemes America and Christianity.” This is worth examining closely because the word “blaspheme” carries significant religious weight. To blasphemy, in the traditional sense, is to show irreverence toward something held sacred. America is a country, not a deity. It has no sacred status in law or constitutional principle. Citizens are free to criticize their government, their country, and its policies that is not merely protected speech but encouraged in a functioning democracy. White conflates criticism of government action with attacks on national identity, a rhetorical move designed to make his reader feel that Springsteen has committed some sort of sin. He has not.
The actual context matters here. Springsteen recently spoke out against Immigration and Customs Enforcement at a concert in New Jersey, calling their tactics “Gestapo tactics” and dedicating a song to Renee Good, a thirty-seven-year-old woman who was shot and killed by an ICE officer in her car during an operation in Minneapolis on January 7, 2026 (The Guardian, 2026; Pitchfork, 2026). White presents this as evidence of Springsteen’s supposed “anti-American liberalism” and his abandonment of “faith.” But let us consider what this actually represents. A citizen witnessed an event he found disturbing, specifically the death of a person during an enforcement action, and he expressed his opinion about it publicly. This is not blasphemy. It is the exercise of free speech by someone who has platform enough to be heard.
White seems particularly bothered by Springsteen’s criticism of ICE agents, which he frames as “disloyalty” that traces back to the 1982 album Nebraska. The suggestion here is that criticizing law enforcement officers is inherently unpatriotic or even seditious. This argument has a troubling implication that government agents must be defended regardless of their actions, that accountability is betrayal. In the United States, we hold public servants to standards. We investigate when people die in police custody. We ask questions when force is used. That is not sedition. That is citizenship.
The comparison White draws to Scritti Politti’s 1982 song “Faithless” is instructive but not in the way he intends. Scritti Politti, led by Green Gartside, was indeed a post-punk group from Leeds University named to signify “political writing” after the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci (Wikipedia, 2024). Their song “Faithless” appeared on the album Songs to Remember, released in 1982 (AllMusic, 2024). White praises this track as a superior example of political songwriting because it “directly grappled with politics and primal doubt.” Yet his criticism of Springsteen rests on the idea that Springsteen should not grapple with politics at all. The inconsistency is telling. White celebrates political songwriting when he agrees with its direction and condemns it when he does not.
White describes Springsteen’s song as making “literal religious platitudes” and violating “the song’s romantic entreaty” through its political context. This criticism is puzzling on its own terms. Art has always existed in conversation with its cultural moment. Bob Dylan wrote protest songs. The Beatles explored Eastern spirituality. Public Enemy addressed racial inequality. To suggest that a song loses its artistic merit because it engages with contemporary events ignores the entire tradition of politically engaged art in America. White seems to want Springsteen to produce work that exists in a vacuum, untouched by anything happening in the world around him. This is not a serious aesthetic argument. It is a demand that art conform to a political preference.
The piece relies heavily on emotional language designed to provoke rather than persuade. Words like “blasphemes,” “betrayal,” “demagoguery,” and “sedition” are thrown around without being connected to specific claims that can be evaluated. White calls Springsteen’s position “liberal hysteria” without explaining what makes it hysterical. He accuses him of wanting to “keep America divided into partisan camps” without providing evidence of this intent or explaining why opposing ICE tactics is divisive rather than a legitimate political position. Anger is not an argument. It is a tool that White uses to rally his reader rather than to persuade them.
What White does not address, perhaps because he cannot, is the substantive question of whether the actions Springsteen criticized were actually appropriate. The death of Renee Good during an ICE operation is a real event. Someone died. Springsteen found this troubling and said so. White does not defend the action or explain why it should not be questioned. Instead, he attacks the person asking the questions. This is rhetorical misdirection. When you cannot address the substance of a criticism, you attack the critic’s motives, patriotism, or faith.
There is also something worth noting about White’s framing of Springsteen as some kind of convert from authentic patriotism to radical liberalism. Springsteen has been politically engaged throughout his career. His work has addressed labor rights, economic inequality, and veterans’ experiences. The idea that he suddenly abandoned his principles to become a partisan hack ignores decades of evidence to the contrary. What has changed is not Springsteen but the political landscape. Positions that were once mainstream have become controversial. White has adapted his criticism to fit the new environment while pretending that Springsteen is the one who has shifted.
White writes that Springsteen “warps patriotic attitude into ideological deception and manipulation.” But where is the deception? Springsteen said what he believed, publicly, using his own name, at his own concert. That is not deception. It is transparency. If White disagrees with Springsteen’s assessment of ICE tactics, he should explain why. He should point to evidence that the actions in Minneapolis were appropriate or that the criticism was unfair. He should make an argument. Instead, he reaches for the nearest epithet and hopes his reader will not notice the absence of substance.
This is the pattern that makes White’s criticism so unsatisfying. He begins with a conclusion that Springsteen has betrayed something important and then works backward, assembling whatever language supports that conclusion while ignoring everything that contradicts it. The reader is meant to feel outraged on behalf of America and Christianity, to experience righteous anger at Springsteen’s supposed transgressions. But once that anger subsides, there is nothing left. No argument has been made. No position has been defended. Only a series of assertions designed to provoke rather than illuminate.
Bruce Springsteen is a musician, not a public official. He has no power to implement policy. He can only express opinions. In a country that prizes free speech, that is his right. If his views trouble you, you are free to disagree. You are even free to stop buying his records. But calling his political commentary “hysterical” and “demagoguery” does not make it so. Those are words meant to discredit without engaging. They are the tools of a critic who has run out of arguments.
If you want to dive into the kiddie pool of thinking read Armand’s nonsense here: https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/01/faithless-springsteens-latest-hysterical-politics/
References
AllMusic. (2024). *Songs to remember — Scritti Politti*. https://www.allmusic.com/album/songs-to-remember-mw0000464611
The Guardian. (2026, January 19). ‘Gestapo tactics’: Bruce Springsteen condemns Trump’s ICE immigration raids. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/19/bruce-springsteen-trump-ice-concert
Pitchfork. (2026). Springsteen denounces ICE, dedicates song to Renee Good. https://pitchfork.com/news/bruce-springsteen-denounces-ice-dedicates-song-to-renee-good/
Wikipedia. (2024). *Songs to remember*. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_to_Remember
White, A. (2026, January 23). ‘Faithless’ — Springsteen’s latest hysterical politics. *National Review*. https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/01/faithless-springsteens-latest-hysterical-politics/