“Music is sometimes a good way to kick the front door open,” says Ken Casey, the co-lead singer and bassist for the Celtic punk band Dropkick Murphys.

On Friday, the 81st anniversary of D-Day, Casey and his band took to the stage on the National Mall, the headline act as several politicians and activists rallied thousands of veterans in a march on Washington D.C.

Ostensibly, the rally — organized by an array of veterans groups and backed by labor unions, such as the AFL-CIO — was a non-partisan protest against proposed cuts to veterans benefits and to the federal workforce, including at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

In reality, it was an expression of rage against President Donald Trump and his MAGA agenda.

“I think there’s a lot of people in America that think this is a fight between the far right and the far left. And it’s not,” Casey tells Rolling Stone. 

It is impossible to make substantial cuts to the government without disproportionately impacting veterans, who make up nearly 25 percent of the federal workforce, but only five percent of employed Americans as a whole. The VA alone is facing losses of nearly 83,000 jobs, as proposed by the department’s secretary, Doug Collins — about 18 percent of its total workforce.

“When we join the military, we take an oath to this country. And they, in turn, promise certain benefits if we serve,” says Everett Kelley, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, or AFGE, which represents about 750,000 government workers across the country. “If you start attacking those workers that provide the services to the veteran then you are attacking, indirectly, the veteran.”

Kelley says his members are keenly watching as lawsuits contesting job cuts make their way through the courts: “They’re saying that they want us to continue to stay in this fight. They are very relieved that the courts are seeing that these decisions are not rational, and that they are not in accordance with our Constitution.”

“We are winning some of these battles, but that’s not where we want to be. We want to be winning the war,” he says.

As the rally warmed up, Rolling Stone caught up with Casey.

“The facts are that the Trump presidency and all those involved are disrespecting the vets. And that’s my opinion. And we’re going to sing about it,” Casey tells Rolling Stone. His gentle voice purrs with an unmistakable Boston accent as he sits on a shady bench in the sweltering heat. “We all know what’s caused us to be here.”

“People are slowly waking up to it. I do think that the Trump plan of just throwing so much shit at the wall does work. It makes people just want to put their head in the sand,” he says.

A young woman nearby, who this reporter later learns also hails from Boston but encountered the protest by accident, curiously eyes the 56-year-old punk rocker — with his old-school sailor tats, dapper black outfit, and neatly trimmed crewcut — and his interlocutor. She strains to listen in without being rude — it’s not every day a founding member of one of your hometown’s iconic bands plops down beside you to talk politics with a reporter, after all.

“I think that that’s part of what keeps the moderates away, and part of it is that ‘It’s not affecting me personally right now,’ and that’s why that famous old statement from, I forget who said it: ‘First they came for the trade unionists, and then they came for me,’” Casey says, summarizing a confessional-turned-poem by Martin Niemöller, a Lutheran pastor imprisoned by the Nazis, of which there are many versions.

It’s not the first time on this day that Rolling Stone hears a direct reference to the Nazis, or the rise of totalitarian political ideologies in the 1920s and 30s — fascism on the right, and communism on the left. The organizers of the rally, a recently established non-profit called the Unite for Veterans Coalition, likens their movement to the “Bonus Army” of 1932 — a group of World War I veterans who took to the streets amid the Great Depression to get cash payments that had been promised to them — and talk admiringly about Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, a legendary U.S. Marine who was instrumental in crushing a clumsy fascist coup attempt against President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933.

Here, now, in Washington D.C. on the anniversary of Operation Overlord, many veterans consciously sought to evoke that past — summoning the days when America had offered the lives of its citizenry to defeat a dictator.

“Dad Fought Fascism in Europe,” one man’s sign says. “We Will Fight it Here.” A woman holds another: “My Grandpa Fought Nazis.”

Two men carry flags with three downward pointing arrows, one saying “American Iron Front” on it. This reporter asks Kris, the Navy veteran holding it, what the flag represents. He says that he is part of a local anti-fascist chapter, formed during the first Trump administration.

He is aware that the Iron Front was a political paramilitary that fought the Nazis, among other forms of totalitarianism: The three downward pointing arrows are generally considered to represent opposition to Nazism, Communism, and Monarchism.

One of the lessons of that era is that political extremism, fueled by proliferating violence and a masculinity crisis among young men, can create the conditions for the failure of a democracy.

It forms part of the rationale for why the veterans who organized the rally say they are focused on cultivating a non-partisan, moderate movement. The fight to claim the political allegiance of veterans is, after all, a proxy battle in the war for the future of the American Republic — and both sides get a vote when it comes to war.

Veterans largely voted in favor of Trump during the 2024 election, perhaps 60 percent to 40 percent. While Trump and his supporters may be ceding some of that ground by cutting veterans benefits, others are waiting to build movements around the political legitimacy supposedly conferred by veteran status.

Far-right extremists have been omnipresent throughout modern American history, and veterans are a natural target for cultivation by ideologues. Right-wing paramilitary groups like the Three Percenters are explicitly aimed at veterans and law enforcement, while groups like the Proud Boys or Patriot Front adopt the language, dress, and symbolism of the War on Terror-era military. What is common to all of them is the implied threat of violence against dissent, and a willingness to take to the streets.

Political violence is nothing new, and a number of the veterans who spoke to Rolling Stone fear that civil unrest will be used as a pretext for a government crackdown on liberties, perhaps even used in an attempt to justify martial law.

Other vets were at the rally to protest job cuts inflicted by Trump and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. A thirtysomething former Marine mortarman who asked to be identified only as Andrew says that he lost his job at the Veterans Administration due to the DOGE cuts. He traveled from Michigan to show up at the protest.

“I wasn’t really political before,” Andrew says. “Like, everyone knows when you’re the one liberal in an infantry battalion, but back then I didn’t give politics much thought.”

“Now, I’m fucking furious. I’ll show up for anything,” he says.

Damian Bonvouloir graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1978, and served in the Navy until 1986. He describes generations of family that had served in the military or in federal jobs, proudly counting them on his fingers as he shouts their relationship and role, while the Dropkick Murphys take to the stage. Bonvouloir carries a sign with a shamrock and the words: “Who’ll stand with us?”

That is a reference to “Who Will Stand with Us,” a new single which in the band’s promotional material is described as “an urgent call to action to stand up against division and inequality.”

“So here we are on D-Day today, and it’s like everything that so many of our grandparents fought for — you’re willing to just walk away from that, because you feel like the world’s too ‘woke?’ What? How did you do the math there? Like, what do you care if someone else wants to be woke?” Casey says. “Was it really worth it to surrender the democracy of the country, just so you could feel a little more like you had your guy win? It just doesn’t add up.”

Casey tries to put his money where his mouth is. Last month, he traveled to Ukraine as part of a mission to deliver desperately needed ambulances and medical aid. He sees the conflict there as part of the same fight that brought the veterans to the National Mall. “People over there are defending democracy, and people over here are defending democracy,” he tells Rolling Stone.

The Dropkick Murphys new album, For the People, comes out on July 4 on the band’s own label. There’s a lot of energy and anger, and much of it is clearly political. But Casey is hesitant to describe it as a protest album: “Not every song is directly in relation to what’s going on. But I think even when you’re writing music that doesn’t directly relate, the times shape that music.”

“There’s a song on that album about the day my father died when I was a kid, that I never thought I’d write,” he says. “And I’m just saying… maybe you get to the point where you don’t take for granted that you’ll be making music in the future, and maybe the times just make you feel an urgency for everything in your life.”

At the rally, one of the biggest responses from the crowd was for a punk cover of the bluegrass song “Dig a Hole in the Meadow,” an anti-fascist anthem from 1927, popularized by Woody Guthrie and others:

“Dig a hole, dig a hole in the meadow. Dig a hole in the cold, cold ground. Dig a hole, dig a hole in the meadow. We’re gonna lay you fascists down.”

Clearly a band whose eleventh album was titled This Machine Still Kills Fascists, is unapologetic about both its politics and its embrace of America’s early anti-fascist traditions.

“I just feel when people say now, like, ‘Shut up and sing!’ — whatever. I feel OK. We’ve been going for 30 years with the same message,” Casey says. “Listen, if you’re a punk band and you can’t write good angry music in these times… Then something ain’t working, you know what I mean?”