#metalgate SJWs blink

by Brett Stevens on December 22, 2014

metalgate_sjws

Last night, the Music, Metal and Politics mailing list had its archives available for the world. Then we ran an article here showing various list members calling for censorship, career destruction and other forms of retribution against me for having published articles critical of SJW antics in #metalgate.

This morning, the list archives are password-protected, as if there were something to hide and a fear of outsiders. In round one of #metalgate, the SJWs struck what they thought was a decisive blow, but in the end, they blinked.

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#metalgate SJWs prove their real purpose: censorship

by Brett Stevens on December 21, 2014

war_metal

Let us quickly get rid of a basic confusion: censorship is using social or governmental pressure to remove from view unpopular ideas that are also plausibly accurate depictions of reality. This separates the act of removing someone spraypainting “death to all metalcore” from a ban on articles about metalcore.

Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) comprise the driving force behind the incursion into metal against which #metalgate is a reaction. Metalheads do not want to be told what to think by a self-appointed cabal determining what is “true” based on their ideological agenda. It does not matter which agenda that is, only that it swallows up truth and metal equally and uses them as means toward its real goal, which is power and control.

Our first #metalgate article pointed out that the agenda of such people is inevitably control. Written by Cory van der Pol, the article detailed how political movements assimilate genres like metal, re-purposing them for the movement’s own needs. He followed this up with an article showing how the methods used by SJWs are bullying. Passive-aggressive bullying perhaps, hiding behind the pretense of morality and “good” politics, but nonetheless bullying. Then he illustrated how SJWs are associated with metalcore and indie-metal and are using it to slowly blot out real metal and replace it with this ersatz and inferior substitute. Finally, he predicted that SJWs would deny and conceal their actual goal, which is to censor — see definition above — any metal that does not fit their ideological needs and by doing so serve as a justification for their employment in media, academia and promotions.

He was 100% correct.

Today SJWs mounted a concerted campaign to remove me from the MetPol mailing list, which discusses metal and politics. As of this evening, apparently I have been removed. Here are some of the highlights:

Can the mods please block Brett Stevens / writing an article like the one natalie linked to is not only repulsive it’s misogynist.

We should take stand against this kind of thing. It’s unacceptable. It’s offensive. Especially to survivors of rape and sexual assault. – Rosie Overell

I would feel immensely safer if he were removed. – Natalie Zina Walschots

I am aiming to give #metalgate and its instigators as little oxygen as possible, but am glad Natalie brought this up here and would support the moderators if they chose to show Brett and his sympathizers the door. This is a place where people strive to broaden the understanding of metal, not narrow it, and while narrow views have a place in the world they’re not in keeping with the mission of this particular list. – Beth Winegarner

As one of the people that this piece of shit screen-shot their FB page and posted on his website, I must add that what astounds me – but doesn’t necessarily surprise me, unfortunately – is the lack of comments from both this thread and my so-called metal ‘friends’ on Facebook and Twitter about racism that surrounds the issue. – Laina Dawes

I will say, however, that I have been dismayed by this situation and I remain in awe of Laina’s courage to speak out despite the harassment and terrorization she has received. – Jeremy Wayne Wallach

This is a public list, with public archives that you can search via Google, Bing or the search engine of your choice. They are open to all and can be read by non-list members without a login or leaving any identifying information. These people are voluntarily posting this data to a public list where they hope it will be read for years to come. With this kind of outcry, it is not surprising the moderators chose to avoid damaging the list with more such drama and to remove me. It was the act of the small group — a dozen members out of a thousand — who chose to demand that I be censored and removed.

I have been a member of this list for the past year, entering in discussion about metal and providing links to resources there, without engaging in a single political opinion. To my mind, #metalgate has never been about politics and whether one side is right or not. It is about the tactics of a certain group who, in Cory’s words, use politics as the mantle behind which they assume power. In other words, they are doing it “in our best interests” and against our wishes are educating, enlightening and improving us to make us good citizens of their ideal society.

I’d like to keep this conversation going without hammering on the idiotic obvious. I appreciate the banning, but I’ll echo Olivia by quoting her: “…banning a single individual is not going to solve the problems of racism and sexism in the metal community. These prejudices are within us and among us, and begin with the complacency purchased by our various privileges.” – Sara Sutler-Cohen

My stance on this issue has always been clear: we stood up to the Christian right, then we stood up to the NSBM people, and now we’re standing up to SJWs. Metal has a unique view of life and a unique viewpoint on how to handle certain things, and it benefits no one to have metal start parroting the points of view of other groups. We should have a diversity of approaches instead of a lock-step uniform viewpoint enforced with guilt and threats of censorship and lack of tenure. My participation in this entire event was as someone opposing censorship, and those who can read will note that none of our articles here targeted the beliefs of SJWs, only their methods and motivations.

During my twenty years of writing about metal, I have sought to avoid both political dogma and commercialization. After initial experiences, I did not trust academia because of its long-standing bias in one trend or another. (And if metal hates anything, it is trends.) From starting the first underground metal site on the net, first as FTP and later as a series of web sites, I have always advocated an open mind and open discussion. This apparently is not the agenda of SJWs and despite their initial denial, they proceeded exactly as their dissenters said they would: with calls for censorship and propaganda.

In the meantime, #metalgate is gaining momentum with new articles in the work on both metal and social commentary websites. The SJWs have defeated themselves by becoming the caricature that their critics said they always were. And if we need to look for a silver lining to this cloud, it is the confirmation of that stereotype.

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#metalgate SJWs fight back

by Brett Stevens on December 20, 2014

natalie_zina_walschots-metalgate

As you, our readers, know we tackle many difficult topics on this blog. Some involve pointing out what metal is trivial and what is not; others tackle “big people issues” like politics, society and moral questions. One of those has been Cory van der Pol’s recent series of articles on #metalgate, a conflict between “Social Justice Warrior” (SJW) journalists and those who feel that politics should not invade metal.

Death Metal Underground has for over two decades committed itself to truth, meaning those ideas which correspond to reality and imagination at the same time. We have broached many difficult issues and disappointed people from all sides of the political, social, sexual and ethnic spectrum, as well as delighting many others of similar orientation. If you like truth and metal, you will like this blog even if it has a somewhat acerbic style.

It is disappointing to see grown men and women behaving in such a way that there is only one word for them: bullies. Like witch hunters, bullies rely on a perception of social support in order to shame, humiliate and ostracize others. It is one of the lowest attributes of humanity to use bullying instead of the original form of getting anything done, which is honest discussion and debate. In fact, bullying is meant to prevent exactly that.

People such as the SJW above do not want a discussion; they want to ensure one does not take place. It is for this reason that we at Death Metal Underground proudly resist them and continue to run controversial articles by controversial writers. Anything else is preaching to the choir and I see no reason why we should waste your time with such a mundane endeavor.

Cory van der Pol may have another article coming on the #metalgate issue, or he may not. Regardless, Death Metal Underground will continue its mission of providing quality metal information no matter who gets offended and decides we are Satan. We will save you the trouble: we are the Satan to your pharisaic interpretation of God that excludes truth in the name of obedience, and we will always oppose you.

metalgate-facebook

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#metalgate calls us to action

by Cory Van der Pol on December 18, 2014

Image by Gunnar von Cowtown.

Image by Gunnar von Cowtown.

By now, the rage over #metalgate has subsided as #shirtgate, #gamergate and #metalgate converge on a single movement that spans many genres: opposition to the censor police who, using political correctness as an excuse, have invaded multiple genres with mediocre options while declaring them enlightened. They have used this indirect invasion to take over media and public discussion, crowding out the better music and games for more propaganda.

The point made in these pages is that the invasion of terrible hybrid-metal bands — simply boring, pointless, pretentious and of no relevance to a normal life — into metal has come about as a result of the SJW journalist invasion that #metalgate spoke of. SJWs, hipsters and scenesters are basically the same thing. They find a new genre, exclaim how unenlightened it is, and then bring into it the same stuff they do everywhere else, making that genre as boring as their origins. These people are lost, without purpose, and desperate for any attempt to draw attention to themselves. When they take over, they all promote each other and talk about each others’ bands, websites and labels until they cloud the skies of that genre and most information about it involves the hipster agenda.

What I suggest today is <slight> action. That means that we do the simplest and least amount of work for the greatest effect. We know who the SJWs are and where they are writing articles. It’s time we exclude these people from the metal scene. That does not mean attack them, but to simply use other news sources, listen to other bands, and avoid their self-promoting circular masturbatory motion. Here’s a short list of sites that have supported SJWs:

These are the invaders who are trying to destroy metal music and turn it into indie/hardcore so it can be “safe.” If you support these with your band, your own reading, or your advertising, you are helping to turn metal into the latest version of hipster indie rock with the “safe” opinions that metal has always rebelled against.

How we shut them out is the same method used to keep Christians and neo-Nazis out of metal: say “that’s a political site/band/label” and imply that you won’t deal with them because of the resulting shady and manipulative associations. Pretend you found out that the Vatican, North Korea, Scientology, Monsanto, al-Qaeda, the Ku Klux Klan or Jesse Jackson were running a website and how you would react to that, and then apply it here.

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#metalgate helps put Hatred back on Steam

by Cory Van der Pol on December 17, 2014

hatred-video_game

You probably don’t yet know this, but it’s ideological warfare out there. “Politics” no longer exists in the realm of voting and reading the Editorial page only. It is now part of every aspect of life, and the movement is only accelerating. This occurs because the people in our society are divided by what type of future society they want to be moving toward creating.

Some say this is accelerated by the collapse of the USA as a superpower and with it, the notion that the “American formula” of capitalism, the welfare state, democracy, consumerism and media power is no longer seen as a universal good. Instead it may be about to join the other failed ideologies — Communism, Nazism, Anarchism, and undoubtedly others — in the dustbin of history. Being on the cusp of such vast change naturally makes most people nervous, and so the masses are forming into mobs and squaring off against one another.

One of the big stories on your talking screen right now is The Interview. Apparently Hollywood — which never colludes with popular opinion in looking for bad guys who will not offend certain traditionally offended groups, like American Indians, the Chinese, and Arab Muslims — made a movie about a plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Il Jung. A group of hackers claiming to be from the DPRK have hacked into Sony studios, revealing in the process that upper leadership is almost entirely white and male, but are also threatening theaters that show this film. Many theaters have out of fear pulled it from their marquees. This is how you get things done in the age of ideological bullying: shut your opponents down, and call them fascists, all while enforcing some “fascism” of your own on their point of view.

Reaction to #metalgate has been mixed. SJWs first tried to deny it, then blamed the gaming community, and finally have fallen back on their try-hard die-hard standard of calling #metalgate supporters “fascists.” But today, #metalgate scored its first victory. The video game Hatred — developed in Poland by a group of metalheads — instigated controversy early on and, thanks to whining by SJWs who called it a “genocide simulator,” was removed from video game clearinghouse (like a cross between Google’s App Store and Amazon) Steam. But today, Hatred is back on Steam thanks to a grass-roots campaign by #gamergate and #metalgate supporters. You can see how this political warfare operates: the goal is to get the sellers to stop carrying certain games and music, which reminds me of the bad old days of the 1980s when Tipper Gore and her crazy friends tried to get heavy metal albums out of stores and barring that, required they have little stickers put on them saying that they had bad lyrics and Satan.

Over at MetalBlast, an article calls out this ideological warfare for the utter hypocrisy that it is:

In the world of Social Justice Warriors, when a white person “twerks” it’s cultural appropriation (because within their infantilizing view of blacks, Africans have a proud tradition of shaking their asses until they clap), while a female African American playing heavy metal is just a good “you go girl!” moment. This is, incredibly, both hilarious and infuriating at the same time, since while nobody has ever said that Derrick Green should leave Sepultura because he’s black, commentators, and even performers, demand whites leave jazz, rap and hip hop alone. Thankfully, those defenseless minorities can count with the Social Justice Warriors carrying the White Man’s Burden.

It would be ironic if “anti-racism” became another form of racism, one that rewards minorities for behaving in the way that their white overlords — er, social justice friends — want them to. But then again, it might not be out of character. After all, Eric Gardner was restrained by NYPD for the crime of selling single cigarettes. New York also made 24-ounce sodas illegal. Once upon a time, they made alcohol illegal, too. The motivation behind the “social justice warriors” of every age is the same: they have found a cause to which you cannot object without appearing to endorse its converse. There is no response to “Are you an anti-Nazi?” or “Are you a witch?” except an enthusiastic Yes! because otherwise you seem to be saying that you think Nazis and witches are just great, fine, peachy-keen. This condition is almost impossible to parody, as the Tyranny of Tradition folks explored with an article that made its points indirectly:

All I want is to not be told what to do by outsiders because they got their feelings hurt a few times growing up. People want me to speak in a way that is politically correct, but what about how I feel? What about who I am? Why do I have to be the one that pretends?

When our world is seen in a literal binary of “good” versus “evil,” we are the ones caught in the middle. We can become pawns for one side or the other, but insanity will win because politics has invaded normal life. The SJWs trying to take over metal have lost their legitimacy because metalheads have called them out on it, and the more they deny, obfuscate and outright lie, the more it becomes clear that we caught the real “fascists” with their hands in the cookie jar. They have lost legitimacy not just for their attempt to control us, but for their frankly boring and pointless imitation of all those old post-hardcore albums in metalized form. Metal deserves better, and seeing these pretentious gits kicked to the curb does us all a world of good.

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“On the right side of history”

by Cory Van der Pol on December 16, 2014

nu-underground

The arrogance of someone proclaiming themselves on the right side of history still takes my breath away. As if after all this time, there are simple solutions to human problems that involve a totalitarian presence, which is control of all that we say and thus what we think. This issue defines #metalgate and explains why it has provoked such panicked reactions from the nu-metal SJWs.

SJWs raise a number of objections to #metalgate. Their first trick is to claim that #metalgate does not in fact exist because there is not a single touchstone event, as there was with #gamergate, which set it off. Since #metalgate was brought on by years of articles (and boring, soulless politically-correct burnt out hardcore bands writing “metal” albums) there was not a touchstone event, but a gradual rising opposition. Their next trick is to claim that metalheads want the ability to behave like louts without consequence. This is an obvious lie, since all we’re asking is to keep the PC thought police out of metal, since PC thought police ruin everything they touch, much like their bad “metal” bands. Finally they insist that metal is dodging these issues entirely, which is not true. Metal simply refuses to adopt the PC framing of these issues, which is designed so that only one conclusion is correct. Their approach is similar to a Republican asking where we stand on allowing al-Qaeda into schools. The only response you can make is “well, of course I oppose that,” or your response is going to look like you are supporting al-Qaeda.

The point of this approach is literally thought control. As Roger Brown wrote in 1976:

The structure of anyone’s native language strongly influences or fully determines the world-view he will acquire as he learns the language.

Language works both forward and backward. It programs our minds to think in certain ways. If that language is changed, it works backward to change how we think about things. This is why people want to change the way you talk, program you to think in terms of issues, and otherwise force you to put your speech into a narrow range of what is defined as acceptable. They want to control how you think.

#metalgate got some interesting support some time ago from an unlikely source:

myrkur

This artist remains controversial because her band was so heavily promoted as being “female-fronted,” which to a metalhead is suspicious because it obstructs from letting the music speak for itself. Like music which insists you appreciate it on the basis of theory, whether musical or gender studies, the sex-based approach demands fans look at the music first in terms of what precious little category it fits into. This is the same thing as requiring that we like a band simply because it is popular and sold a lot of albums. Krieg’s Imperial weighs in on this one:

This might sound a bit mean-spirited, but I don’t think seventy-five percent of people would give any second thought to Myrkur if there wasn’t the campaign of secrecy behind it pre-release, coupled with the fury over the main musician having ovaries and other things people who still live with their parents are confused and frightened by. It speaks a lot to gender politics in music in general with how this scenario played out, and it wasn’t at all helped by shrouding the whole thing in mystery early on; Velvet Cocoon did that ten years ago and much more successfully. Now, it just comes off like the Sex Pistols or American Idol-styled manufacturing, but that’s easier to ignore than the moist masses who, when faced with a woman, can only yell “TITS!” like she’s unaware that she has them. Yes, black metal is a negative expression which isn’t the most inclusive of genres, but recently people have been acting more like they’re on Xbox Live than in a genre which should be held to a higher intellectual standard than most.

This takes a moderate approach to metal which is that most of us are tired of the bad behavior of people on the internet, which is not limited to tidy categories like “sexism” and “racism” but approaches all-around shittiness because angry teenagers either find an outlet for their anger — plant trees, join the Guardian Angels, work in a soup kitchen — or they become hateful little haters who do nothing but hate on all of us. #metalgate isn’t about these people. It’s about a small group of media darlings and their pointless indie rock and hardcore punk bands pretending to be metal so they can enforce thought control over us and make us their bitches.

The sad fact remains that people who talk about “the right side of history” have a control agenda. We see again why metal is always unpopular, which is that it avoids herd opinion on all fronts. Political correctness is herd opinion. It’s not even related to actual leftist theory, but uses that as its cover story to hide the fact that it’s a naked grab for power. Jim Jones, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Tipper Gore and other cult personalities use this approach to build personal armies and take control. They are no different from the bigots who lynched people and who are currently beheading people and blowing up children in the middle east. Metal is just fighting back on its own terms, despite the apathy and isolation of most metalheads, because we don’t want to be part of their weird political jihad. And what’s more metal than that?

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Why metal is better than “social justice”

by Cory Van der Pol on December 15, 2014

hipster_trap

As #metalgate rages on on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Tumblr, the people who are trying to force these views on metal are defending themselves by claiming that #metalgate doesn’t exist or is insignificant. The truth is that this agenda has been advancing for some time and it has a dirty secret.

The dirty secret of the “SJW” agenda in metal is that it is totally unnecessary. Despite my own sympathies with many of the ideas they hope to achieve, like better treatment of human beings, I suspect most of these people are just poseurs. They are adopting certain viewpoints that they think are necessary to get ahead socially. Nothing makes a person feel more powerful than to be able to call someone else ignorant and selfish, while (in their own minds) looking superior, intelligent and altruistic. Especially if you are coming from behind and feeling ashamed about your family origins or stature in life, it can make you feel like a god to have moral right on your side and to look much more advanced than those around you. This is just another shade of the broken social life in the modern world coming home to visit metal and use metal for its own ends.

But even more, these “helpful” demands from SJWs are totally unnecessary. This is metal, where if you can create the music, you can join in the fun. We have always had something better than feminism with women being present and respected in Nuclear Death, Mythic and Bolt Thrower. People of color have always been here in Thin Lizzy, Suffocation, Blasphemy and Mystifier. Metal bands come from all over the world and from every tribe, culture and religion imaginable. We tend not to mark a little box each time someone who is non-heterosexual, non-white and/or non-male joins our ranks, but they are there and always have been. In metal, there is no need for a crusade for equality because we already have it. Even better, we have done so without turning that into a crusade against those who are heterosexual, white and/or male. We just accept people as they are.

When #metalgate upsets people it is because they do not want to face the conflict between outsiders and metal, as is shown in this article on MetalSucks:

But my ultimate problem with #metalgate is that it’s entirely manufactured. No one, or no group, is banding together to try and change metal in any one specific way — the threat is entirely imagined. Certain social values enter the metalsphere simply because those values are spreading throughout society as a whole — this idea that “SJWs” failed with #gamergate so they’re now moving on to a different cause is total bologna. They’re entirely separate people!

Personally, I enjoy what Vince Neilstein writes but don’t read it that often, mainly because I don’t visit sites with ironic names that censor out the word “fuck” for reasons unknown. But while I think he’s normally on point, here he confuses a few things. First “those values are spreading throughout society as a whole” means society outside of metal is adopting these values, and now wants metal to bow down and conform. He’s basically taking a pro-#metalgate point of view there but I’m not sure he intended two. Second, he assumes that the people involved in resisting the SJW incursion are #gamergate people, when actually it’s people like myself in metal who are not from either side of the political spectrum. We hate politics in our music, metal has already addressed this issue, and we don’t want to follow the herd in whatever flavor-of-the-month the iconoclastic hipsters behind the SJW fad think is important.

Metal has never been about doing what everyone else is doing but it has also never been about being “ironic” and trying to be different so hard that we act randomly. Metal is its own law and has its own culture. From outside of that culture, as Neilstein writes, people are trying to push conformist social values on us. The best “activism” for all of us who love metal is to push back against that dominant paradigm and go our own way instead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQBo2Drpx9I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKhFJXYRFYs

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Calling #metalgate what it is

by Brett Stevens on December 13, 2014

nu-metalhead_hipster

We all went to high school. #MetalGate reminds me of those dark days when there were cool kids and un-cool kids, and if you weren’t in the former group you were just nobody.

Growing up with a single Mom who kept our budget tight, I never had the cool clothes. Since I worked after school and then did homework until bedtime, I didn’t know the cool stuff on TV or in movies. Not having been raised around the cool kids, or having a parent with the time or energy to show me how to be “cool,” it never occurred to me to try. And suddenly people were pointing and laughing and then my head was getting bashed into a locker.

When one of these people approached me and started making fun of me, my instinct was to cower away and assume that they knew something I should know which gave them some kind of “authority” in the high school social scene. Over time I realized that this “something” was nothing important, and their real goal was savor the Schadenfreude of making someone else miserable for being who they were. I learned that there is one way to stand up to such people: do not apologize, do not back down, but go straight to the biggest one and hit him as hard as you can. They usually backed down and often apologized after that. I let the matter drop at that point since most of these bullies came from troubled homes: Dad drank too much, Mom ran around with the neighborhood used-car salesman, or there were money troubles. Some of them ended up being lifelong friends, after we settled our differences on the schoolyard.

When I look at #MetalGate, I see a whole industry cowering before these people who want to make metal “socially conscious” and politically correct. We, as metalheads, have refused to call these people what they are, so I will: bullies. They are bullies whose weapon is guilt. In high school, it was guilt for not being “cool.” In the hipster-nerd infested metal scene, it’s guilt for not having the “right” opinions. Haven’t we all matured past this?

Bullies always have a clique. This clique agrees that they are right and everyone else is just not cool enough. They need an excuse that other people will accept for their bullying, so they come up with a reason that sounds good. They do not care if it is true. They just want to rally other people around them who will agree that you deserved getting your head pounded into that locker. Like all cliques, their little group works by every member validating every other. It is the worst aspect of humanity which we saw at the Salem witch trials, at Nuremburg, even in lynch mobs hanging African-Americans. This is the psychology of prejudice, and bullies struggle to conceal their prejudice by arguing that they are defending their ingroup against an outgroup:

What Tajfel discovered is that groups formed on the basis of almost any distinction are prone to ingroup bias. Within minutes of being divided into groups, people tend to see their own group as superior to other groups, and they will frequently seek to maintain an advantage over other groups. – The Psychology of Prejudice, Professor Scott Plous, Wesleyan University

In other words, if you group people together by any arbitrary means they will quickly act like a tribe and enforce their rules on others. This is how bullies operate: they gather together people, offer them entry into an ingroup, but the price for that entry is that they must join in the bullying of the outgroup… and so kids get heads slammed into their lockers for wearing cardigan sweaters (hey, it was a hand-me-down) which is totally uncool.

The #MetalGate people, who I am told call themselves “Social Justice Warriors” or SJWs, are bullies of this type. They will claim they are against prejudice, but really what this means is that they are using that argument to conceal their own prejudice. They just want someone to bully. The reason is probably the same as with the high school bullies, which is that their lives are miserable and they want to take out their frustration and anger on others. This pattern occurs time and again, with the most famous being the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC):

On August 19, 1985, the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee of the United States Senate opened public hearings intended to gather expert testimony on “the content of certain sound recordings and suggestions that recording packages be labeled to provide a warning to prospective purchasers of sexually explicit or other potentially offensive content.” Widely known as “The PMRC Hearings” after the acronym of an independent group—the Parents Music Resource Council—advocating for the “voluntary” adoption of warning stickers on record albums whose lyrics it deemed to be offensive, the hearings did not, in fact, end up leading to any kind of legislative action.

This group also wanted to bully metal because they were looking for a scapegoat for what they saw as a decline in public morality. They figured they could pick on metalheads because we are not the wives of Senators, we may not have education and money, and we are prone to be silent when society bullies us. But metalheads stood up against them, whopped them in the nose, and refused to take it. Another group of bullies back in the 1980s were the Dead Kennedys fans who decided that Slayer was really, really bad for singing (with clear disapproval) about Auschwitz and the horrors of the Holocaust. “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” was their theme song and they used this as an excuse to beat on random fans wearing Slayer tshirts. Punk had just gone through its own #PunkGate at that point, I guess, and the politically correct people came out on top.

There are plenty of groups of bullies in metal today. The pretentious hipsters who think you are unenlightened if you do not “appreciate” Deafheaven are one, and so are the people who think that if you are not a full-on SJW you are a bad person. So are the “tryhards” who insist they support diehard underground music but use that as an excuse to troll anyone who does not exclusively listen to three-chord Blasphemy or Incantation clones. In each group, the solution is the same: tell them where they can shove their pretense and guilt because you know their secret, which is that they are just bullies.

The difference with SJWs is that they act like they are revolutionaries who are re-educating us in important topics. But guess what, guys: you are not disenfranchised anymore. You get positive press and in fact most of you work in the press. The US government agrees with you, as does the UN. Your ideas are not revolutionary because they are the norm. Like most bullies, you are cloaking yourselves in the ideals of the mainstream in order to punish us outliers. This is no different than what happened in the Soviet Union or Nazi regime, where people who “thought differently” got shot at dawn. You are the new Nazis.

Metal should fight back because metal should not become a vehicle for the control agenda of any group. Metal is its own group, and people police this because we know that many other groups would like to assimilate us and use us for their own purposes. It has been tried before, with hard rock in the 1970s, punk in the 1980s, and now post-punk in the 2000s. Like all bullies, they want to stop us from being different and make us more like them, which is to say the bog-standard generic mainstream. Their bands are all second-rate and their ideas warmed over slogans from the 1960s. Metalheads should feel no guilt about acting in our own self-interest, which is to keep our music away from this group of bullies and refuse to let them dominate us.

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#MetalGate

by Cory Van der Pol on December 12, 2014

diverse_burzum_hipster

I had hoped that the busload of squalling drama that was #GamerGate (see here: pro | con) would not come to metal, but #metalgate has arrived courtesy of the same people who intruded into the gaming industry despite a striking lack of actual contributions:

Metal is still dogged by the issues that arise from its deep-seated conservative values, but thanks to an increase in conversations about racism, politics, and feminism, those on the right side of history have gained solid ground. – SPIN

Before we get involved in this partisan squabble, consider that metal is beyond the left-right divide. The left wants individualism through equality, and the right wants individualism through lack of social obligation. Neither recognize that societies, like metal genres, are organic entities where more is required than individualism; we need cooperation.

It is easy to see however why someone might want to — as writers have in the past — call heavy metal conservative. Metal avoids “social issues” and other internal questions of a society and instead looks at the health of a society as a whole, or in other words, how sane it is. We see a world gone insane through a refusal to pay attention to reality. The methods of that are beyond an artistic genre and should be injected into it, but since 2006 at least trying to reform metal has been a pet project of certain groups:

More than three decades after Black Sabbath conjured images of the dark arts, heavy metal is growing up. The genre is increasingly incorporating social and political messages into its dense power chords.

Cattle Decapitation vocalist Travis Ryan said his San Diego band’s mix of charging guitars and an animal rights message is drawing a diverse crowd that includes activists as well as traditional metal fans. – The Washington Post

The grim fact is that metal has split into two groups. When the newer group encountered the older group, they were appalled that it did not share their opinions, not just on politics but how to live. This new group is inherently “social” and they share opinions which make their friends feel warm and fuzzy about them. That is at odds with the older metal tradition of not caring what society thought, telling the hard truth, and being obligated to no one because most people are crazy.

It is only when you get involved in a managerial role with society, like a kindergarten teacher insisting that we all play nice together, that you care at all about making sure that everyone is included. Metal does not. Metal looks at society from the view of history and whether it is healthy or diseased from within. The metalhead view is consistently anti-managerial, since metalheads recognize the deficiencies of people and want to keep most of them at a great distance. It is not that we want to manage them, like political people do, but that we want to be free of them.

For years people have tried to make metal more sociable. They first tried in the mid-1970s when they mixed Black Sabbath with Led Zeppelin and produced hard rock, hoping that they could sell it to more people. “Sociable” sells. Then they tried in the 1980s with rap/rock, funk metal and other abominations. Finally they hit on nu-metal but that turned into an extended conversation about the impact of child molestation. And then, during the early 2000s, they rolled out a metal/hardcore fusion that had sociable lyrics like hardcore punk has for many years.

Notice that none of this was brought on by metalheads. It was created by people who wanted to be metalheads, but felt they could not be metalheads unless the genre agreed with their existing social, political and lifestyle biases. At this point, the metal community has entirely split between those who like the old school and those who want to be “nu-skool.” This is because they are two separate genres. Metal is metal, and the indie-metal/metalcore wave is someone else trying to use us for their agenda. #MetalGate is just the latest salvo in this fight.

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What “we” should do is nothing

by Cory Van der Pol on October 22, 2014

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Currently the gaming world struggles with something called “GamerGate,” which involves two groups of fans. There are those who want gaming to be more socially responsible, and those who want it to be more like 4chan.

Sound familiar? Some thing we should create the same division in metal:

Heavy metal fans have been targets for scorn and derision for decades. The metal community is supposed to be a place where misfits and outcasts can find shelter in the face of that intolerance. When you throw around bigoted slurs, whether you know it or not, you’re eroding the community we’re all supposed to be a part of. More importantly, you’re reinforcing the prejudices of every mouth-breathing homophobe within ear or eye shot, and you’re very possibly harming another human being for no reason. Keep that in mind the next time you’re tempted to call someone a fa* or describe something you don’t like as gay. Hopefully you’ll think twice about the language you use in the future. But if you still don’t care, please do everyone a favor and keep your stupid comments to yourself.

Personally, I wish to fall into neither camps. The first camp wants to offend no one and make sure that humanity all gets along so that heavy metal can be accepted by mainstream society. The second camp wants to keep us as perpetual outsiders, which is fine, but they want to do so by appealing to the lowest denominator among us. I have a problem with that, too, because it seems to me that being the opposite of a wrong thing is often to make a different version of that wrong on the level of method and not goal. Or rather, by removing an actual goal, you create a lack of goal, into which method fills the gap.

That’s a subtle argument. It also takes some subtlety to understand why the offend-no-one argument is wrong. At a gut level, we are metalheads: we do not stand for speech codes, social morality and being nice to people. We specialize in saying thing as we find them and if that offends someone, too bad. We also are some of the last defenders of a way of life outside of society, where you can think what you want and say what you want and not care what other people think you should think. Someone else really nailed the biggest reason for avoiding the Nanny People: they are a lynch mob, witch hunt, high school bully, and nagging aunt all wrapped up into one, and what they do is create destruction and conformity in their wake:

A moral panic doesn’t have any relation to reason. It’s a mob expression of rage against an issue that threatens the social order, usually relating to the violation of some cultural taboo. There exists a long American tradition of moral panics, from Prohibition in the 1920s, to the Red Scare of the 1950s, and most egregiously the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. People were jailed and lives ruined over obviously false accusations made by children trying to please psychiatrists and other adult authority figures.

You can see there is a range of opinion about this. I pitch an unusual idea to you today: do not take a side. Do not join the Louts and do not join the Nannies. Instead, trust nature. There has always been a diversity of opinion within metal ranging from the anarchist to the totalitarian and back again. People are going to have their own opinions and they will not get along. There is no “we.” Metal is a refutation of the idea that we can all get along. Trying to make us all get along will create more problems than it solves and might also foster a nasty backlash that will turn metal into a permanently alienated battleground.

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