Hipster multimedia review website The A.V. Club accused Wal-Mart of “normalizing” Burzum by stocking Burzum‘s merchandise online through a third party a few days ago. Wal-Mart pulled all of their Burzum merchandise today. The A.V. Club fails to understand that Burzum was a major metal innovator and tabloid fodder, making Varg Vikernes about as well-known as actual black metal will ever get.
Wal-Mart stocks numerous titles from open, card-carrying members of the black supremacist Five-Percent Nation such as Jay-Z, Erykah Badu, Carmello Anthony, Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, and Busta Rhymes.The Five-Percent Nation is a Nation of Islam splinter group who believe that black men are God made flesh and that whites are actual devils to be exterminated in a future race war. Varg Vikernes in contrast, is not a Nazi nor a member of any political or religious organization advocating the extermination of other peoples and cultures. The A.V. Club and Wal-Mart are targeted Vikernes due to his popularity, white skin, and Norwegian heritage. Fans may still purchase Burzum merchandise from mainstream American retailers such as Amazon and Sears.
Tags: burzum, censorship, communists, hypocrisy, merchandise, metalgate, racism, sjws, social justice warrior, the av club, varg vikernes, wal-mart
I was pretty salty with the A.V. Club for posting about this. It’s not like anyone on the writing staff there knows what the hell theyre talking about when it comes to black metal. I’m sure Wal-Mart sells plenty of material online produced by people everybody as suspect as Vikernes. What, they don’t sell any Gibson, Polanski or Victor Salva movies? They don’t sell any music or merch from bands produced by Phil Spector? Or noted spousal abuser and drug enthusiast John Lennon? Not being able to separate art from the artist is a slippery and self deluding slope.
“Pretty salty”
English please.
spouse abuse and sex crimes don’t generate the same sort of neoMcCarthyist moral panic that race stuff does, for whatever reason.
click on the author’s name and all is explained. Hamgoblin with neon red hair.
So Varg has a merch deal with jivemart?
Trve Retaïl.
Does Varg actually get any cut of the revenue? More likely the proceeds go to gay black orphans to promote “healing”.
I hope that the author asked Walmart to comment on this statement – “Then again, this is an Arkansas-based corporation operating in the year 2016, when the quintessentially Burzum-esque pastimes of hate crimes and church burnings are on the rise. Maybe Walmart knows exactly what it’s doing after all.”
when the quintessentially Burzum-esque pastimes of hate crimes and church burnings are on the rise.
Burzum is music. Music cannot commit crimes.
The ‘hate crimes’ link points to a page with examples about street abuse after the US election. That’s completely unrelated to anything Vikernes ever did (to the best of my knowledge). He’s surely a racist (that’s a description, not a judgement). Further, his knowledge of late Roman and early post-Roman European history is sketchy and he has drawn some questionable conclusions from this sketchy knowledge. These he propagates vigoriously. But people with ill-informed political opinions are anything but uncommon.
The ‘church burnings’ link points to a description of somenoe torching the church of a predominantly black congregation and spraying ‘Vote trump’ onto the walls. In 1994, Vikernes was sentenced for torching of some churches in Norway (a different country and 22 years ago) for entirely different reasons (this could be called ‘pagan religious terrorism’). He denies this. Further, his prison sentence is over. He’s an innocent citizen again unless he commits some other crime. None of this is anyhow related to the US event (or events).
Worth reviewing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThJ7k-9Pdqk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjyXiQXe5Ow
Okay I’ll review it:
Demoncy ‘Joined in Darkness’ at quarter speed.
That’s a hot combo!
#shermofantichrist
I’ve been listening to half of the album and it’s not really bad. I’d rather call this death/ doom than black metal, though, as it’s lacking the aggressive/ fast passage black metal tracks (the few I know of at least) typically have and also, because it uses buzzing dissonancy instead of jangling one. This is another one person project (I usually ignore these) and while the drumming is unusually varied for one of these, the overall impression is ‘musical wallpaper’ — it fades into the background quickly. That’s a background I rather like but a background nevertheless.
Be grateful for stuff like this. Try and convince these people that the rest of the big Norwegians were no better. Their opposition is strength.
Also, the focus on “hypocrisy” is kind of silly (and very modern). Who cares about this supposed hypocrisy? It is pretty open ideological warfare. Of course they will prefer what suits them and censure what does not. The cry of hypocrisy assumes that these people share some of your principles. They do not.
I mean, who the hell is really burned that Burzum shirts wont be carried because WAYCIST! while 5 percenter gear is (because WAYCIST AGAINST WHITES!). These people dont even believe in racism against white people. They are enemies of normality, order and function. Appropriating their shrill idiocy doesn’t work. Expose, mock, but dont fall into the same frame and become a controlled opposition.
Pointing out hypocrisy shows that they are not adhering to their stated values. It shows that they are lying. In this case, they aren’t removing Burzum shirts because of some association with recognition of racial differences (“racism”), because if that was the real reason, they would be removing a lot more. So pointing out hypocrisy makes clear that there is a different motive at work here.
But you are right that it isn’t useful for criticising their true motive or ideology, and of course will not make them change their minds.
“Be grateful for stuff like this. Try and convince these people that the rest of the big Norwegians were no better. Their opposition is strength.”
Yes.
Metal should be shunned, excluded, and hated, not accepted. It will only be accepted if it is no longer true metal; ideologically technical-musically.
Sentiments like the one in this article are exactly what people think of metal in a world where all things metal are right.
ideologically and technical-musically*
what did burzum innovate? Even here it’s exclusively associated with Kristian Vikernes and his crimes.
All of the great early black metal bands innovated. All of them are unique compared to each other, and unlike any music that had come before.
It was a wave of great and new music, and Burzum was the greatest of all it.
“Kristian Vikernes crimes” are a thing of the past. Like it or not, the court system is not God and it doesn’t issue eternal condemnations of someone’s soul based on somehow defined ‘moral outrage’. That’s something mobs typically demand and sometimes execute (so-called lynchmob). This is at least morally questionable.
It’s your prerogative to obsess over artist personalities and to ignore art. Other people chose differently.
NB: I’m not convinced of “Burzum is the greatest of them all”. I prefer Mayhem and Darkthrone.
A reasonable notion which I respect, but do not share
Are they going to suspend the sale of their beloved camo products too? That’s even more representative of Varg.
And Trump voters!
They sold Burzum shirts at Walmart?
Quick comment: Thanks. IMHO, there should be more stories about issues like this and less about “designed US vice president visits/ unvisits opera house”.
I feel conflicted. On the one hand, I don’t want normalfags wearing Burzum shirts. On the other hand, forcing Wal-Mart to stop selling these shirts reeks of censorship.
They weren’t forced, they removed the item themselves because they don’t to deal with the controversy. If it bugs you enough, tell walmart you’re boycotting them.
In America, instead of censorship we have busybodies and social media hate mobs pressuring people in the private sector.
This is not censorship, it’s actually something much worse. It’s an attempt to supplant political discussion by (private) warfare: Instead of arguing in favour of your standpoint, try to inflict as much harm on your opponents as you can in order to force them off the field or into submission.
This here is a particularly repellent variant because Vikernes (the guy who’s being harmed here via loss of royalties) isn’t even a political opponent of these people: Their game is US interior politics, as evidenced by the provided examples, and ‘Burzum’ is just used as symbol of something they are opposed to, the usefulness of this symbol based on more-or-less unfounded rumours about Vikernes past and private, political opinion about Europe. While he talks about that, something he’s absolutely entitled too, just like everyone else, he isn’t politically active in any form (as far as I know).
All politics are mere identity politics to them, and his identity is opposed to theirs.
In practice, governing means “distribute taxpayer money to our buddies”, be that by outsourcing prison management or by expanding the administration, IOW, all ‘practical’ policy is “identity politics”.
I’m now going to disagree with something Varg Vikernes is doing: People who enjoy playing with cars should do so in car parks or on motorways or on any other, existing part of the global, asphalt desert. Cars are noisy, poisonous, deadly to almost everything they accidentally hit and their rolling weight destroys the surface below their wheels. Anyone moving through the countryside, especially through forests, is hugely inconvenienced by the water-filled tank tracks these devices leave behind them, up to the point of them creating impassable (or almost impassable) obstacles, and their presence is hugely disturbing. Don’t drive through the woods.
That’s an argument. Trying to get Woldemart to stop selling Burzum records or merchandise because I disagree with … isn’t. That’s a (small scale) crusade against the heathens who have to be extinguished with fire and sword because … can’t you see they’re heathens? And crusader are all the same, no matter on whose side the claim to be fighting today.
Exactly. It’s about the identity, not any physical action to be taken. It’s not about wealth distribution or foreign policy or systems of governing.
It’s about spreading the right culture (identity). He has an incorrect culture (identity), so they try to silence the spread of his memes.
As you said, he is a heathen, and his ideas are blasphemy.
The A.V. Club accused Wal-Mart of “normalizing” Burzum
—
The global media monoculture is a thing isn’t it ? Notice how they’re going on and on these days about how Trump should not be “normalized”. They use almost the exact same word in other languages too. The media is the “occupying army of the mind”, working for the enemy.
https://youtu.be/xFqShpJm_zc
You get a few minutes, this guy explains ‘normalization ‘ pretty well.
JFTR (link checked 2016/11/24 10:24pm UK time):
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Filosofem-Vinyl/34470013
This is not supposed to contradict anything I already wrote: People on a political crusade could kindly restrict themselves to politics instead of interfering (or trying to interfere) with distribution/ sale of perfectly legal (metal-related) products some people might want to buy.
Good. Let the sheep fear true black metal.
Stop the gay appropriation by safe “evil” acts like diva-band Watain.