What happened last week in Charlottesville, VA was absolutely vile and disgusting. A 20-year-old white supremacist charged through a crowd of counter protestors and killed 32-year-old Heather Haye and injuring 19 others.
Metal Hammer spoke with Dave Mustaine the day the event happened. They just happened to have an interview scheduled and asked Mustaine his thoughts. While Mustaine had been very outspoken politically in the past, in recent years, he's avoided giving his direct opinion on political matters. But this event went beyond politics. Here is his full response as printed in Metal Hammer:
“I don’t know much about what happened – all I know is what they showed on TV and I didn’t get a chance to really see it.
“I do know that the same way there were bad guys that went to the liberal protests and started fights, there was a guy in the liberal side hit a guy on the right side in the head with a bicycle lock. He wasn’t part of the people that were protesting, he just went there to be an agent provocateur.
“If the guys on the right can go and mess with the guys on the left, the guys on the left can go and mess with the guys on the right. You don’t really know why people do this and why they have so much hate in their heart.
He adds: “The thought of me getting behind the wheel of a car and running somebody down is just incomprehensible. I don’t have any capacity to think with that much hate.”
Later, when Mustaine saw the full news report, he reached out to Luke on Twitter, saying: “I saw the story you asked about in Virginia. It was awful and breaks my heart to see how some people have devolved back into animals.”
If you are looking for a way to help, you can donate to a Go Fund Me to help with the medical costs of the victims in Charlottesville here.