Progressive Politics

I think you're right they didn't want to upstage the main act, but there are things to consider as well.

A lot of Liberal america is still just in a state of "uneasy" despite all we're seeing on media. It's only been in the last couple weeks that major network news has even broadcast much of this unrest and ICE murdering people, and it's still sandwiched between weather reports and stories about girl scouts selling the most cookies. People broadly are still very comfortable in the US and millions of people are going to work every day and coming home without seeing any problems, they don't even really watch the news to begin with in many cases.

Green Day likely is accurately gauging how receptive the Super Bowl viewing crowd, America's most mainstream and middle-class demographic, is going to handle too much radicalization right now.

I think there is also something to the fact that this song was written in protest to George Bush Jr. and the anti-islam, pro-war sentiment that was burning like wildfire in the country and led to the deaths of countless thousands of people in Iraq and Afghanistan for close to 2 decades. Maybe a message about repeating history.

Alternatively, our country's "protest music" scene has really gone down the shitter broadly since the 60's and 70's so they might have just been phoning it in.

I dunno, that certainly could be the case. But it also could be that they didn't want to push their luck with ice being there. But it's something I'm sure an interviewer would ask.