These lyrics refer to a speech made by Martin Luther King Jr., which paraphrases part of a well-known Bible verse, "whatever a man sows, this he will also reap" (Galatians 6:7).
In live performances, the band's frontman Zack de la Rocha often makes speeches about current issues in place of the segment where he reads the J. Edgar Hoover memo aloud.
At the 2007 Coachella Festival, de la Rocha used this segment of the song to allege that the United States would start wars in other countries to suit its own purposes, citing a statement by Noam Chomsky regarding the Nuremberg Trials:[3] A good friend of ours said that if the same laws were applied to U.S. presidents as were applied to the Nazis after World War II […] every single one of them, every last rich white one of them from Truman on, would have been hung to death and shot—and this current administration is no exception.
"[7] In response, during the band's performance at the Rock the Bells festival in New York City on July 28, de la Rocha doubled down on his remarks at Coachella, claiming the show had deliberately misrepresented his words: A couple of months ago, those fascist motherfuckers at the Fox News Network attempted to pin this band into a corner by suggesting that we said that the president should be assassinated.
And we don't back away from the position because the real assassinator is Bush and Cheney and the whole administration for the lives they have destroyed here and in Iraq.
Wake up…[8]On other occasions, de la Rocha has used this segment of the song to denounce the United States' handling of Hurricane Katrina, condemn globalism, urge solidarity among the lower classes against the wealthy elite, and express support for protesters in response to the Great Recession.