With polls showing the 2024 presidential election tightening as it entered the final two weeks of campaigning, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are looking for votes everywhere. But as The Daily Show reported in a segment this week, one underserved potential voting block may be spoken for after Insane Clown Posse‘s frontman Violent J seemingly endorsed the VP while being interviewed for a parody segment.
Violent J, whose real name is Joseph Frank Bruce, is perhaps the most influential figure in the community of Juggalos — the loosely associated fans of rap-rock group ICP and the other bands on their record label, Psychopathic Records, and acts in the horrorcore genre. Largely midwestern and rural, Juggalos have developed their own set of traditions and modes of expression, including face painting, drinking the affordable soft drink Faygo and a tongue-in-cheek obsession with murder.
Their annual festival, The Gathering of the Juggalos, is a must-attend event for everyone in this community and The Daily Show’s Troy Awata was there in Thornville, Ohio, to talk politics with several Juggalos and have an audience with Violent J, where he learned some surprises facts about his politics. Early in the segment, Awata is interviewing some young women Juggalos about who they are planning to vote for on Nov. 5 but learns, in what turns out to be a trend in the community, that the young women have no intention of going to the polls — this year or ever.
“You’re voting for two people who pretty much don’t care about your existence,” one unidentified female Juggalo tells him. “Like, there’s nothing that’s been improving for us, low-income people. It’s been shit.”
The Juggalo ethos includes an embracing of one’s poverty and “scrubbiness” — as Bruce said in his book, Floobs — or as he adds there, turning “scrubbiness into something [they] could be proud of.”
Interviewed by Awata, one Juggalo at the Gathering told him that “drugs, trans rights, being pro-choice, women’s rights,” were all issues of importance in the scene. “I think our ethos is based upon whoever you want to be…if you want to be a killer clown, if you want to be a trans killer clown, by all means.”
This suggests that the community may lean more Democrat, and Awata learns this is the case in a sit-down with Bruce, who espouses some left-leaning ideas and commentary, as well as a strong distaste for Trump and the border wall he spoke about frequently at rallies but never managed to complete.
“So now I remember why I hated Trump, that wall shit,” he said while being questioned by Awata, who then asked about women’s rights. “They have the right to be the shit!”
Bruce, who said he’d never accept a nomination for the presidency, expressed some liberal opinions on environmental conservation. “We think we’re the superior animal on this planet, right? Let me tell you what the superior animal is: a whale,” he says, to which Awata notes, It’s the “biggest animal.”
After viewing photos of the candidates in ICP-style make-up, Bruce is asked about his 2024 presidential endorsement.
“I’m absolutely opinionless. OK…I want her to win because she’s a Democrat, and I love my mom,” Bruce says. He then learns the correct pronunciation of the vice president’s name: Ka-ma-la. Like Kamal-a, he’s told.
“That’s fresh,” he says, just before notifying Atawa that the psychedelic mushrooms he ingested before their interview began have begun to kick in.
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