#metalgate came about as a reaction to the growing intrusion of social justice dogma into heavy metal through journalists, bloggers and indie-metal bands. All of them share the same basic ideology, which is a demasculinization of society and forced conformity to political correctness. This is not merely 1990s style political correctness but a rigid ideology which goes in search of victims to defend, which gives power to those who follow this ideology.
At this point, the situation has passed into comedy. Noted mincingly PC blog Boing Boingposted a picture of a kitty that makes a gentle iteration on a well-known joke, which is that if we are choosing our identities and denying the obvious physical reality, why not choose anything? Satire includes the helisexual, the A-10 Thunderbolt and was even satirized in left-of-PravdaThe New York Times.
Let’s face it: people think it is ridiculous, and therefore both funny and provocative in that “neighbor playing ‘Who Let the Dogs Out’ on repeat at 4am” way, that people “identify” as something which they are physically just… well, there’s no gentle way to say this… not.
This however provokes ire from the SJWs, who see the idea that you cannot arbitrarily choose your sex as being an attack on the idea of transsexualism. While it may be indirectly so, it seems more that what is being attacked is the idea of arbitrary identity of all forms, and the attackers are laying into the method of transsexuals asserting themselves, while not making a comment on transsexualism itself (neither attacking nor approving).
The blog in question backed down, cowered and apologized in response to this blatant Mau-Mauing. What else could they do? They have done it to others for almost a decade, so turnabout is fair play. Their statement:
We’re sorry for this offensive tweet. Its transphobia was unintentional, but the hurt it caused is our responsibility
Perhaps represents a high-water mark for SJW intrusion into Western culture. When you cannot use a kitty to make fun of a stupid method that some people are using to force you to validate their life choices, without necessarily commenting on those life choices, the days of the legalized witch-hunt are here.
The second edition of the #metalgate podcast has arrived! This one features a more acrimonious look at the split between those who want a single moral right way for all of us to behave, and those who want a more chaotic and naturalistic “do your own” thing. Is there a middle ground? Will there ever be understanding between the two? Only you can decide! Tune in for metalgate podcast issue two below.
In Glasgow, Scotland, UK a Satanic Warmaster show is under assault from local SJWs who are complaining about political content to Satanic Warmaster’s music or image. The promoter issued the following statement:
It has came to our attention that already after 3 hours of announcing the show people have been emailing us and the venue about the band being racist & to why is the show happening etc.
Let me get this straight for you. The band are not racist. They have stated it SO many times over the years and many of you still put them in that category, the band also posted a chart of their Lyrical Content which found not to have any Racism involved. This is a BLACK METAL show. Not a political protest. If you want to debate over racist nonsense please see yourself down to Westminster and debate with Nigel Farage or Britains First.
If anyone has any issues please email me. Just don’t ruin the show for folk who want to see the band.
There are many more reasons for boycotting a Satanic Warmaster show, but half-baked notions of what is politically acceptable to say serve as an instrument not only of totalitarianism, but opposition to truth. You wouldn’t boycott them if what they were saying was totally and obviously wrong, so your boycott says that they are at least partially correct. The comedy of media and hipsters trying to censor metal continues.
The anti-censorship movement known as #metalgate has become a permanent and ongoing event. Like the social justice worker (SJW) antics it combats, it is both activism and activity for those looking to have fun and bash back the insanity of a dying civilization.
If it has a Command and Coordination HQ, it is arguably Scott Vogler’s MetalGate Band group on Facebook. Here, the latest idiocy of SJWs and lapdog media are listed and mocked, with quality arguments against them arising almost instantly and spreading to the far corners of the internet.
We were lucky enough to get a few minutes of Mr. Vogler’s time as he was poring over transcripts of the Judas Priest backward masking trial at the Library of Congress…
What is metalgate and why is it important?
#Metalgate was inspired by the events which sparked #GamerGate. Metalgate serves both musicians and fans alike by standing up for both of their rights to express themselves as they see fit. Like GamerGate, Metalgate seeks to be a watchdog for the press and point out flaws, corruption, and calls for censorship. Metalgate does not exist to silence anyone; on the contrary, it exist to give voice to both sides of any given debate on the topic of heavy metal whether it be a social justice warrior, Heavy Metal Enthusiast, Religious Fundamentalist, Heavy Metal Musicians, or anyone else who has something to say.
You started a group, “MetalGate Band,” on Facebook that now seems like a command and control nexus for metalgate activities. What do you do with this group?
MetalGate Band is meant to attract metal heads, gamers, musicians, artist, and anyone else who would stand up to would be censors. It’s also open for those who disagree with the premise of #metalgate. This is not meant to be a hugbox of any sort.
I would like to live in a world where no one bans anything no matter how offensive it is.
The group appears to be the only lively community representing the hash tag and we are nearing 300 members. Which as of now is a small but passionate group who for the most part are totally on board with the idea of standing up to the censors who in this case are labeled social justice warriors. There are other areas of concern as well and we address a multitude of topics every day. It’s actually been really educational for me personally.
I want to use this group to create the idea that art itself should never be censored. If you have a favorite form of entertainment or art you should preemptively stand up for it along with anyone else who would stand with you. This is not freedom of speech without scrutiny as I leave the door wide open for debate, challenges, and other perspectives.
What would you hope the average person would learn from metalgate?
I would want them to learn some history about Heavy Metal and the challenges the genre has faced over the years. I would want them to see how often Heavy Metal has faced down and defeated the censors over ridiculous things like sexual lyrics, satanic messages, violent themes, and other contrary philosophies expressed through the lens of Heavy Metal.
Most of all I would hope they would learn that their feelings do not trump the individual’s right to express themselves how ever they see fit.
Why should your average metalhead care about metalgate, or anything beyond their own purchasing? Do ideas have consequences?
To answer the first part of the question let’s go back to 1985 and look at the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) hearings where a group lead by Tipper Gore challenged the entire music industry by introducing plans to outright censor artists and musicians from creating material deemed too offensive for the general population. If it weren’t for Dee Snider, Frank Zappa, and John Denver we might very well be living in a world where all of your favorite bands might not exist.
To answer the second half of the question I would hope a simple “yes” would suffice, but I know it won’t so I’ll share an event that happened recently. Just a little over a month ago a group of radical feminists demanded that a band named “Black Pussy” be exiled from playing music. Their belief in feminism led them to threaten a venue with vandalism and violence if it allowed Black Pussy to play there which in turn caused Black Pussy to cancel the show. Black Pussy stood up for their freedom of expression by pointing out how foolishly misguided this group of radfems (“radical feminists”) are, got the name of their band out there, recruited more fans, and have earned the support of MetalGate even though they aren’t a metal band. Good for Black Pussy. Bad for Radical Feminism.
So I hope you see that on both sides there are consequences. Depending on how you interact with society those can be good or bad consequences. So keep that in mind whether or not you decide to join the metalgate community.
When you talked to Shayne Mathis for his hipster podcast, he seemed to be trying to make the point that racially exclusive language can be coercive, while you were pointing out that socially exclusive language like the term “racist” can be coercive. Did you find middle ground on that part of the debate?
(Shayne, if you’re reading this I just want you to realize that I don’t hate you, nor do I totally disagree with you. I don’t think you’re a complete moron or a waste of people’s time or anything like that. To answer the question though I would have to tell you that I don’t feel like we really reached a middle ground.)
It was a good conversation. I agree with Shayne that racial slurs can be extremely ignorant and are coercive attempts to silence people, but want to point out that “anti-racist” shaming is also a coercive attempt to silence people.
We should resist coercive attempts to silence people; this falls under free speech. I don’t agree with being a racist at all but I think it’s worth actually listening to racists in order to know why they feel the way they feel. The idea that we should just avoid it at all cost seems rather dangerous to me. I think the biggest reason Shayne and I disagree on the topic is that he doesn’t feel anyone other than white people can be racist where as I feel the term itself can be applied to anyone from any part of the world or racial background.
I think it’s a dangerous precedent to set that only a certain group of people can be criticized for their racism while others get a free pass to be as racist as they want to be. The middle ground is pretty far away because of this disagreement and I would hope we could bridge that gap as all of this continues.
Do you think racism exists, and does the term “racist” have any meaning, or is it yet another politically manipulative term for someone who has noticed what our leaders would prefer they do not notice? (And if so, what is being noticed?)
Yes, I think racism exists and yes the term “racist” has a meaning but it also serves as a politically manipulative term, just as any word can take on that role over time.
Honestly, who knows what they’re really hiding? Maybe just the fact that they themselves have their own issues with bigotry and are projecting it on to others. Maybe there are more insidious things and skeletons people hide with that word and use it to shoo away those who know better but in that extreme it probably wouldn’t be quite so easy to stop someone from exposing you if they had real evidence. I think the term or any term for that matter can be used to socially condition a general response out of the masses.
We’ve seen this happen before through marketing, government propaganda, movies, songs, etc. I don’t think the lesson here is whether or not people use “name calling” to hide something and dismiss other perspectives. The lesson here is how you deal with such a turn of events. When someone calls you a really mean name for obvious political reasons don’t let the power of that word frighten you from standing for your principles. What they really want is for you to sit down, shut up, and capitulate. It’s a last ditch effort to silence an already pretty silent majority from pursuing any kind of “justice” that would come swiftly as a result of a big enough information leak.
Can you tell us a bit of your own background in metal? Are you also involved in gaming?
I recall hearing Metallica quite a lot in my early years I finally became a fan of heavy music (not heavy metal) the very first time I saw Tool’s video for their song “Sober.” It wasn’t until #metalgate though that I really took a dive into heavy metal and the history lesson that comes with it. It’s such a vast genre of music and have had to cram it all in by using Spotify and listen to as much as possible to and from work every day.
In just a matter of months I went from a progrock/progmetal/desertrock kind of guy to a mad man trying to listen to as much heavy metal as humanly possible spanning all the subgenres, generations, and styles of metal and I’m still not even close to having a good grip on reality when it comes to “Heavy Metal” but it’s been well worth it to me and will continue to learn because I just fucking enjoy it!
As far as gaming goes my earliest memory is Super Mario Bros, Kid Nikki, Zelda, Final Fantasy, and others on NES. That was on my sister’s console however so I can’t really say I was into it as much as I would be later. My very first console was a Super SNES with Super Mario World, Starfox, Chrono Trigger, Zelda 3: A Link to the Past, Final Fantasy, etc, etc.
I currently still mostly play retro games; if not I turn on my Xbox 360. I am disappointed with the direction of the video games industry. For multiple reasons, one of which sparked #Gamergate and in turn #metalgate, but other reasons as well. I don’t like to feel like I’m just playing a movie. So many games today are just that. While it looks impressive it doesn’t feel anything like a “video game” to me. I fully support #GamerGate for these reasons. I hope it sparks developers to start being more innovative and play to the strengths of their audience rather than for mass appeal.
I guess this is a question I wish someone would answer, because no one addresses it. If we have many different groups in our society, of different types (religion, race, sexual orientation, etc), and each group is offended by at least one things usually where it disagrees with another group how do we unite these groups into a society?
I would like to live in a world where no one bans anything no matter how offensive it is. I think we’re seeing the beginnings of a movement in this direction unfold over the last six months or so with things like #gamergate, #metalgate, and #comicsgate. It is not a conscious ideology so much as people just getting fed up with not being able to express themselves without some lunatic jumping down their throat with histrionic tirades. It has become a type of hobby to keep a watchful eye on the press, government, and radical groups and calling out bullshit as we see it hit the news. So for me right now the plan is to provide a platform for both sides of this argument to express their points.
I see this kind of attitude growing in light of the #gates spurring on people to stand up for the art and entertainment they love. I want to hear both sides but I am definitely in the camp that feel it’s important to take a firm stance against anyone demanding special rights, privileges, censorship, or other harmful precedents they propose. People do tend to selfsegregate but it’s not something I find to be particularly harmful. If people want to be left alone they can create that situation for themselves. People of all stripes should live the way they see fit and if that means staying in a community of people who are like you then by all means go for it.
On the other hand we’re free to criticize any community or group of people we see fit and they should be willing to stand up for themselves in light of that. This whole idea of “safe spaces” and “censorship” to me is a thousand times more harmful than any harsh criticism, ignorant slurs, or bigotry that might come out. So while I support the right to remain silent I also see that it’s important to speak up at times and not run away from criticism.
What is an “SJW,” how do I recognize one, and what is the purpose of SJW’s?
A “Social Justice Warrior” (aka SJW) is someone who concerns themselves in meddling with the affairs of different groups. It is someone who has taken on an extremely left wing world view point and will often be just as over the top with their beliefs as a fundamentalist Christian or Muslim. You can recognize them by their most obvious attribute, histrionics. If you dare mention a word about something they take personally you will see a display unlike any other. I would go so far as to say they do even crazier things than religious people do because SJWs claim to be all about science, atheism, facts, and logic but act out in such ways that contradict this precept.
You can find SJW’s hanging out at the mall, coffee shops, book stores, open mic nights, and on the internet (especially Tumblr). If you still haven’t a clue on where to look for an SJW go look at the #Gamergate hashtag on Twitter. The people who are antigamergate are almost exclusively SJWs. Also visit Tumblr and just search the term Social Justice Warrior. There you will find them waxing dramatically about how oppressive everything is. I see SJWs as, for the most part, cattle for more intelligent people to take advantage of. I believe that the more prominent SJW figureheads are not as stupid as they appear and realize just how easily lead astray people are.
I would love to see [#metalgate] leave…a reinvigoration of the kind of unfettered desire to express oneself without apology or compromise.
To ask their purpose depends on which kind of SJW you’re talking about. Some of them exploit others, while others truly believe in their nonsense. Over all I think their purpose is to get away with as much of the same things they complain about all the time. They will criticize one person while running away from criticism themselves. This is a hallmark of social justice warriors. They want to manipulate society into guilt and shame and reap the rewards by coercing more and more power, influence, and money out of society all while having a free pass to be as bigoted as they want to be because they’re special.
David Draiman (vocalist of numetal band Disturbed) raised an interesting point the other day. He was disturbed that GamerGate opposes censorship, but hadn’t spoken out against antiSemitism. Some said that gameragate should support free speech entirely, while others thought it should be against any “bad” speech like racism or antiSemitism if it was legitimately so. What’s your take?
David brings up a good point. If you’re going to stand against “bad language” then you have to be willing to stand against all of it. I would say however that there should be unfettered free speech. This goes back to what I said about conflict avoidance and how it’s actually more detrimental than the initial slur. You can be against the slur without being for censorship of any kind.
No one ever has all the answers and groups like Gamergate have a huge and diverse crowd who seem, to me at least, to support this notion of unfettered free speech and a willingness to address these kinds of concerns in a logical way without demanding silence from detractors. To me this is a step in the right direction. The opposite view would be to either ignore the bigots and never address the issue, or try to censor them without considering what they are trying to say. I think that’s the wrong way to look at it.
What’s next for metalgate? Do you hope it will leave lasting change, stay active as an ongoing concern, or get bigger, and lead to an ultimate showdown between SJWs and metalheads?
It’s truly difficult to say what’s next for #metalgate. I plan on continuing on with this by creating new content on YouTube, creating a WordPress site specifically for metalgate, and constantly signal boosting content creators on the Facebook page. Right now it’s all about cultivating a healthy, driven, and passionate community.
I would love to see it leave a lasting change in the landscape of heavy metal. I see that change not so much as a “change” but a reinvigoration of the kind of unfettered desire to express oneself without apology or compromise. I think the reason metalgate continues despite a slow growth and only a handful of passionate metal heads is because it represents something that’s always been a part of Metal: the desire to express yourself how ever you see fit and encouraging others to do the same even if you flat out disagree with them.
If we’re talking about real wishes, someday I’d like to put on a music festival. At this giant three-day event, there would be a showdown between the different forces competing for control of metal. The two biggest contenders would be mainstream metal and underground metal, SJWs and Metalheads if you will. I would invite all of the mainstream metal bands, underground metal bands, Christian bands and others to try to outperform one another. Imagine the lengths at which some artists would go to in order to leave the impression that what they are playing is METAL and what others are playing is merely rock and roll. That is the sort of attitude and competition that made early British bands, thrash bands, and black metal bands famous. The will to push the envelope of society in order to be the heaviest, most brutal, most technically gifted, most worshiped metal acts in the world.
I believe this has the potential to reinvigorate heavy metal if the right voices are lent to it and the right minds come together to make this leave a lasting impression on the history of heavy metal. Until then, I will just continue managing the Facebook group and welcome all comers to throw their name in the hat. Finally, I’m just an average guy on the internet with a full time job and starting out a family. If you are in the metal industry and you feel the way I and others do about this please give your voice, resources, and talent to it and shake things up. You could be the one to take this from an internet argument to the headlines as you make waves in the music industry by redefining heavy metal.
Thank you, Scott, for taking the time to do this somewhat prolonged and specific interview.
Scott and Jim “Kamikaze” Thompson have started a talk radio style podcast-ish video series in which they analyze the issues of the day according to #metalgate and #gamergate. Session One begins below.
#metalgate is about something that politicians call freedom, but I think of instead through the hacker principle: information wants to be free.
Metalheads want to write and enjoy music about topics that don’t fit in the hugbox of modern society. In the 1960s it was “peace, love and freedom” and in the 2010s it is “social justice” and commercial rock pretending to be underground.
But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950’s technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?
I am a hacker, enter my world…
Mine is a world that begins with school… I’m smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me…
Damn underachiever. They’re all alike.
I’m in junior high or high school. I’ve listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. “No, Ms. Smith, I didn’t show my work. I did it in my head…”
Damn kid. Probably copied it. They’re all alike.
I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it’s because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn’t like me…
Or feels threatened by me…
Or thinks I’m a smart ass…
Or doesn’t like teaching and shouldn’t be here…
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They’re all alike.
And then it happened… a door opened to a world… rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict’s veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought… a board is found.
“This is it… this is where I belong…”
I know everyone here… even if I’ve never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again… I know you all…
Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They’re all alike…
You bet your ass we’re all alike… we’ve been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak… the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We’ve been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.
This is what it means when we say information wants to be free. Society is interested in controlling information; those of us who want to escape society want to know how things actually work. That places us beyond their little plans and the positive-sounding terms they use as carrots and the scary-sounding terms they use as a stick. Their game is social coercion: be with the good people in the hugbox, or you’re not included. You’re bad.
All groups go out this way. Once they get established, their game becomes to maximize the power they have. This leads them to control people with language, which then causes outsiders to become the only tellers of the full truth. At this point, anyone alert becomes an outsider, and instead of working on its own internal problems, the group scapegoats them and tries to destroy them. Scapegoating provides that feeling of “unity” that witch-hunts and mob rule use to hold together a group.
In a press release praising the FBI and the NYPD for their work on the case, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California said the following:
I am particularly struck that the alleged bombers made use of online bombmaking guides like the Anarchist Cookbook and Inspire Magazine. These documents are not, in my view, protected by the First Amendment and should be removed from the Internet.
As the decline of Western civilization accelerates, our leaders are focused on their fear that we might have implements of power. Yes, these will also be used by bad people. But the thought of those in power is that if we edit out — censor — bad methods, we can remove awareness of our failure. Focus on the methods, not the reality.
Ms. Feinstein identifies two documents, Inspire magazine published by al-Qaeda, and The Anarchist Cookbook written by William Powell. These are inferior to the definitive hacker anarchy files resource compiled over the 1980s by people who actually did this stuff (and society did not fall apart). But now they are under fire for telling you how to do things which might allow you to defend yourself against this society and its crazy, rent-seeking elites.
To that end, Death Metal Underground presents these files in a handy “First Amendment Pack” for easy download, containing both the most recent issue of Inspire and The Anarchist Cookbook:
Like life itself, these instructions can kill you. There are known errors in The Anarchist Cookbook and likely errors in the other files. You can also get almost all of this information from your local library if you research books on this topic, including chemistry texts and military manuals. But we are not here to control information. We are here to liberate it.
SJWs tried to deny #metalgate at first. “There’s no censorship. You’re writing about a non-issue.”
Then at some point, the articles kept piling up. In them, SJWs — who seem to share membership in music journalism and record labels to a disproportionate degree relative to bands and fans — continually attempt to coerce metal fans into thinking the right way… the SJW way.
Then SJWs tried another tactic: go on the offensive. No one mentioned that when you shift your position from “it doesn’t exist” to “it’s the worst thing ever” as they did, you have admitted that your first position was dishonest.
Throughout this interview, Mathis repeats himself many times, but does not seem to understand his own argument. There are lengthy pauses as he gropes to understand an idea outside the few memorized tropes he knows. Finally he gives up — several times — and backtracks by saying the argument is going nowhere.
Owned. OWNED.
Vogler does not even attempt to go on the offensive. He simply explains his point of view and is consistent. Mathis contorts, in his high-pitched and wordy rambling speech, trying to make his argument fit the circumstances.
What is interesting is that both parties are using the same argument: social coercion through fear of ostracism is a form of control as powerful as a law.
Mathis says that he is not censoring anyone because he is only shaming them for using racial or homosexual slurs. Vogler points out that this is a form of threat if slurs themselves are a threat. Same principle.
Mathis stumbles and fumbles, tries deflections and redefinitions, but the fact is that his argument is nonsense because it defeats itself. Like all SJWs, he argues from a civil rights perspective but seems to not understand how he resembles the people he sees as oppressors. When the discussion finally returns to #metalgate, Mathis has fallen back on the “agree to disagree” trope. It’s as if he has only a few memorized mini-speeches, and anything else is beyond his understanding.
This is typical of SJWs: they do not actually understand their subject matter. Mathis denies that SJW coercion — doxxing, calling labels and trying to censor bands, harassing venues until they cancel shows, and the journalist conspiracy to exclude anyone who does not agree with them — even exists. When he is called on the threat of social ostracism wielded by the power of media and the presumed moral good of the SJW perspective, he waffles and backtracks.
#gamergate happened because SJWs infiltrated video game journalism and formed a conspiracy of silence to exclude those who did not agree with their ideology. Not those who offend them, but those who merely do not agree. In the same way, in #metalgate SJWs decided to exclude those who did not follow the hipster indie-metal mold and systematically ignored and denied the actual underground in order to replace it with relatively mainstream music. They then used the power of shame and the threat of ostracism to try to exclude non-SJW ideology from metal.
Mathis denies this. Vogler calls him on it. Victory is had, but not by the SJW here.
What SJWs do not understand is that they are not outsiders. They are insiders. Government, media and big corporations all agree: SJW ideology is the best. They want it. They endorse it and write it into law, and defend it with billions of dollars of media time and public appearances.
Metalheads are the true outcasts and outsiders. We do not follow the zombie conformist obedience train of society. We understand that if society endorses something, it is probably a lie. If something is popular, it is probably a lie. We realize that “ideology” itself is a distraction from the real issues in life, and that SJWs don’t actually care about black people or gay power. This is just SJWs using ideology as a justification to seize power.
In metal, that translates into replacing metal with rock. The goal is the obliteration of metal because it does not conform to social forces like SJW ideology.
This parallels the tendency of industry to induce metal bands to “sell out.” Selling out is no different than the assimilation offered by SJW ideology: do what is popular instead of what is right. Accept what society tells you is true, not what you know is true.
People do take the freedom of the internet to say things that they would probably not say to someone’s face, and as a writer, I would never want to step on someone’s freedom of speech. This is about a very real issue in society, and more specifically, in the metal community.
…Metal, and all of its subgenres, are composed of a culture of outsiders. So why are we so insistent on casting out fellow outcasts?
…So until Veil of Maya release a song about how great a guy’s abs are, calling them gay and faggy is out. Don’t do it. Actually, you should probably just take variations of “fag” out of your vocabulary. Just…stop.
Just do you see what’s missing here? An argument. He never says why it’s important to obey the speech codes here, only uses the magical term “homophobia” and assumes everyone will fall down and bow before the religious symbol of political correctness.
This is typical of the SJW movement.
What scares SJWs is that when they are revealed, people stop supporting them. Most people assume that the world is a simplistic place. Homophobia is bad, racism is bad, and if we can cure those, everything is fine. Except that the real problems of our society lie elsewhere and these surface window-dressings are just distractions from what most people experience. Racial discrimination has been illegal for fifty years and government, media and business — those evil capitalists — have thrown their full weight behind eliminating it. The days of oppression are long gone.
When people realize that SJWs are not the side of good, but self-interested people repeating the same ideas that our government wants them to believe, they stop listening to the SJWs. This is what they fear in #metalgate and #gamergate: once revealed as merely self-interested people, they lose their magic get out of jail free card.
For SJWs, their ideology gives them superpowers. All they need to do is find something that is plausibly racist, sexist, or anti-homosexual and they get immediate media attention. Labels and video game studios bow down to them, the mainstream media hangs on their every word, and people get out of their way and hand control over to them through social deference. Your average SJW is not an exceptional person but an unexceptional one, but being presumed to be ideologically correct makes him powerful.
And he lusts for that power, having none by nature. His indie-metal bands are boring. His blogs are screechy and banal. His academic “research” tends to be circular and contentless. The SJW is a failure at life who wants to become a success by toadying up to the “right” ideas.
The change in our society since the 1960s has flipped the script. No longer is The Establishment composed of old, rich, Christian white heterosexual men; in fact, it’s the opposite. Government supports all which is not that former establishment, and has made a new Establishment of liberals, minorities, homosexuals, transgenders and other groups for which SJWs claim to speak. This apparently conservative source explains it well:
This anti-establishment and anti-authority bent is what made heavy metal clash with traditional values Christians in the 80’s. I have never been a fan of metal, even in its heyday, even though I had some friends who liked it. I didn’t find it pleasant to listen too. It’s not the type of music you can listen to and chill. It hypes you up. That is its purpose. I’ve never wanted to be hyped up after a hard days work. I want to relax, but that’s just me. And I also think that its Christian critics were correct in that it was deliberately subversive of Christianity. And while I don’t doubt that a lot of that was more show than real, I still think there were a lot of stupid and vulnerable kids who got sucked up by all of it.
But while Christianity was a reigning authority to be anti-ed in the 80s with its buzz kill message of no drugs and no sex before marriage, Christianity is in cultural retreat these days so heavy metal finds itself at odds with the even more militantly puritanical enforcers of rightthink.
Christianity and WASP-dominance are no longer in effect in America.
Diversity and acceptance of transgenderism and homosexuality is the new normal. It is what our leaders and the power structure approve of.
It is the new version of The Establishment.
When the nu-Establishment accuses you of being “closed minded” or hateful, bigoted, racist, etc. it’s important to realize that they are doing so for their convenience.
In the same way, SJWs are acting as they do for their own interests only. It allows mediocre minds like Mathis to become important for their opinions, even if they can’t think.
It allows women to feel powerful by demanding that men accept these viewpoints, which puts those men in a position of inferiority.
In their view, SJWs are reversing the order of nature by putting the powerful on the bottom and the weaker on top.
Enjoy some satire:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cairsWxBUqQ
Metal is a threat to SJWs because it points out that SJWs are mainstream conformists pretending to be underground hipsters.
It doesn’t mean to do this, but when someone chooses not to follow the crowd, it makes everyone in the crowd question their own membership in that group. It shows that there is another way.
In one video he may tell schoolchildren to defy their teachers in order to immunize themselves against toxic brainwashing, while in another he’ll spread urban legend bullshit about Egyptians. It’s a rich grab bag of narcissism, ethnocentrism, the Dunning-Kruger effect and utter tedium.
You may be shocked to find out that he is against feminism, literally claiming it will end humanity, and that he’s a LARPer, but as the man is nearing a thousand videos, and clearly doesn’t have a job, he has thrown out any attempt at quality control, even if it’s a scientifically-unsound rant next to a big bag of fun-sized Twix.
The SJWs of today are the nagging censors of yesteryear. “No one believes that! You are wrong! And you’re morally bad!” they say. This is the same whether they are angry Christians defending their society against Satanists or angry SJWs demanding that everyone agrees with their binary point of view.
The ongoing rebellion against censorship in the name of social justice #metalgate continued this week when metal fought back against commercial assimilation. Commercial assimilation and social justice censorship have the same root, which is a desire to make metal “safe” so it can be sold to more people. This requires metal denying its inherently apocalyptic realist nature.
In the most recent case, doofus retailer H&M got trolled when it offered a new line of clothing with fake metal band logos on it, trying to assimilate metal’s subcultural style of dress so conformist herdsters can look like weekend rebels. A member of a goofy metal band thwarted the effort by inventing bands and histories that satirized the clothing line and tied it to nationalist black metal:
Henri Sorvali of Finnish metal bands Moonsorrow and Finntroll admitted to Billboard and Noisey that he is part of Strong Scene Productions, the “art collective” that set metal blogs buzzing by creating fake histories to go along with the imaginary metal band logos attached to some pieces of H&M clothing.
Sorvali says he and a group of people whom he declined to name launched the joke because they were angry at H&M’s campaign — which includes items like a bomber jacket and pants with patches styled to look like metal logos — because it was “selling people fake, imaginary stuff from a subculture that is based on honesty and being true,” he says.
…”There is so much controversial stuff which is definitely not suitable for mass marketing, and we wanted to bring the ugly side of metal to their campaign, to show that we as metalheads are more aware of the content you are selling people that you are as sellers,” Sorvali explained during a phone call from Finland. “There are so many things wrong with commercializing metal without knowing what they are selling that we felt that somebody has to make a statement about it.”
This counter-troll showed great ingenuity and has retailer H&M backing away in denial. The truth is that society fears heavy metal on two levels: conservatives fear it is eroding social standards, despite those standards having been obliterated in the 1960s and 1990s. Liberals fear that it is introducing unwelcome realism that clashes with their spectrum of belief, all of which is based in the Enlightenment idea of individual human reason being superior to natural order, including logic itself.
We shouldn’t forget that censorship of metal bands for being outrageous was common back in the day:
Politicians caught wind of Eat The Turnbuckle’s European tour before it made its way into Glasgow earlier this week.
Audiences get to listen to their ear-spitting death metal sounds while the members of ETT attack each other with an array of weapons including fluorescent light tubes and baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire.
But despite playing show in Edinburgh, they arrived at Glasgow’s Audio venue only to be turned away over concerns that the police would halt the gig, reports the Daily Record.
While Eat the Turdbuckle seems like a joke band designed to sell records for a gimmick, the fact is that metal’s focus on extremism, or a refusal to ignore the vicious and terrifying sides of life, has made it a target since its inception. Normal people dislike anything which makes them feel as if they are not totally in control of their own lives. Lyrics and imagery of disease, war, apocalypse and evil will disrupt the happy oblivion in which the normal person exists, which was the intent behind heavy metal’s founding: Black Sabbath wanted to interrupt the “peace, love and happiness” apologism for the daily oblivion of humanity, and to inject some “heavy” realism instead. Since that time, metal has continued doing the same when it is at its best, and when it is not so great, has managed at least parodic obscenity that ruffles the feathers of conservatives and makes liberals turn into nagging victim-baiters.
This pattern plays out in more areas than heavy metal. Canadian site Best Gore was censored for its publication of images that revealed both the dark side of life and, by showing that Canada isn’t the paradise under the control of a strong benevolent guiding hand that its leaders want you to think it is, revealing government ineptitude:
Mark was charged with “corrupting morals” under section 163 (1) (a) of the criminal code, for being the first in the world to publish a report on the gruesome murder of Chinese student Jun Lin, by alleged cannibal Luka Magnotta, also known as the 1 Lunatic 1 Ice Pick video.
You can see the video below. If you have not figured out that this video might contain disturbing imagery, you have mental health problems. If you require special tags, warning signs and me to make a statement about how I don’t condone this and think it was a horrible tragedy and all the other fake altruistic boiler-plate salesmanship that political figures normally use, you’re a potato and should go somewhere else.
Update: Google has threatened to remove ads from our site because we hosted this video. If you do not believe that monopolistic corporations are as much a threat to civil liberties as government, you are not paying attention.
What most people refuse to accept is that censorship is the norm.
People do not like feeling out of control, and they only feel in control when in denial of all the scary things they can’t control like… death, disease, war, apocalypse, evil, and everything else in heavy metal lyrics.
Consider the case of Girls and Corpses magazine, which has not only been banned several times from Facebook, but had censorship issues in other areas:
We’ve had some problems. We did a Religion Is Dead issue and Ingram, I believe, is in Tennessee. They made us bag the magazine, because we did a religion issue. They said it was because of nudity, but there has never been any nudity in the magazine. They didn’t like that we took on religion. We went after all religions and it was comedic. We had Jim Caviezel in the issue. I did an interview with him. We made fun of all religions. Have a sense of humor. The only one we really tiptoed around was Muslims. We love Muhammad. We didn’t tread there.
The editors of Girls and Corpses had this to say about the Facebook censorship:
Sorry I haven’t posed in a day corpses. I was ‘put on notice’ by Facebook after I posted a fully clothed photo of a female, that offended some loony chic who had her Bible Belt cinched too tight. This “community standards” thing at Facebook is censorship pure and simple. Mostly, the offended party is someone jealous of the freedoms that come with G&C Magazine or are simply a humorless twit. If you don’t like something at Girls and Corpses, feel free to just leave. Don’t go whining to Facebook that we have offended you with our images. If you are too sensitive and have no sense of humor why did you friend us in the first place? Girls and Corpses is an intelligence test. The smart ones get the gag and the dumb ones should just get out… preferably at high altitude.
They make an important point, which is that those who call for this censorship are fundamentally not ideological, but seeking a sense of power. They don’t understand it, or it conflicts with their vision of themselves, so they demand it be removed. Facebook, like any other business, does what it can to provide a safe environment for its customers, which means removing things that make people feel unsafe, like nudity, violence, gore, racial comments, sexual innuendo, etc. These things are not the offense that people actually have, which is fear of the bad things that happen which are associated with these ideas. They see the symbol and, like the superstitious simians that humans are, they figure if they can remove the symbol and by doing so remove the awareness in their own minds of what it stands for, they can be in control and feel “safe.” All of that is nonsense on a realist level, but it’s how most customers an voters react.
What this means for #metalgate is that we should not take SJWs seriously. They are no different than the church ladies and feminists who were complaining about Girls and Corpses or the outraged government servants who wanted the Luke Magnotta video removed. They see it as a threat to their personal power. They need a “reason” why it should be taken down, and so they fall back on using social conventions we cannot criticize, like “do it for the children” or “respect the victim’s family” or ideologies which claim to defend the pitied and helpless, like feminism, anti-racism, sexual equality and the like. We make a mistake when we think SJWs believe any of this stuff. In reality, they are using it the same way commercials use sex to sell beer or tough guy images to sell pickup trucks: they want to create a pleasant image, or at least one we cannot imagine criticizing, in our minds and then use it to sell us the product. In this case, it’s their power and importance, because without their outrage they would have nothing and merely be a group of weird-looking socially-dysfunctional mental defectives.
“EAT THE TURNBUCKLE VS NECRO BUTCHER at GWARBQ” Youtube video censored by Google, who own Youtube.
For those who are not so narcissistic that they are oblivious to the fact that Western civilization is in full downfall — and only a few hundred years after we fixed everything with the Enlightenment and the French Revolution — the events in politics and the news seem like frosting on a cake. We know everything is in dysfunction, and that our leaders were elected for being entertaining, and that the end is rushing up to meet us. Death metal knew this thirty years ago and black metal formalized it.
The question of “why?” is too big for this article, but it is worth mentioning that some think it is genetic decline. All of the weird stuff in your shampoo, chemicals in the air from strange factories, preservatives in your junk food, toxic carcinogenic truck exhaust, and your genome getting hammered by bad TV and other brain-busters… maybe it all adds up. Perhaps technology is a one-way ticket to doom for all societies, and we’re not the first to invent it, and we’ll die out like the rest.
In support of this theory, I present a series of SJWs. They seem to be cut from the same cloth:
It is not just the glasses, the body weight or weird puffiness of the flesh, or even the fixed zombie stare that comes of repeating the same non-solutions in the face of your society coming apart at the hinges. No, it’s as if they share some kind of genetic similarity, a mutation like Down’s syndrome or Mongoloidism. Is it a virus? Or simply broken-down DNA?
They don’t help by dressing in the most ugly unisex fashion that retains its ugliness on both sexes, or by doing their best to look intently like both victims and V.I. Lenin in that famous “forward into the future poster” at the same time, both assertive and hurt. But beneath all of that, it’s like they are an alien species among us.
The fanaticism is obvious, that’s certain. But so is a kind of doubt, as if saying “I’m beautiful” doesn’t actually make it so. The sort of doubt that comes when reality peeks in around the edges of ideology and says, “Peek-a-boo! All the stuff you’re saying… it won’t fix anything. And you’re miserable and drink yourself to sleep five nights a week, after pigging out on TV dinners and individually-wrapped bon-bons.”
In these faces there is something horrifying. They are not happy. They are not even content, or halfway joyful about life. They are hurt, angry and resentful. They are on a mission to destroy. The world has injured them and they are chronically unhappy, grasping for power as if it will fill the void in their souls (that, alas, eating 412 pies did not fill). These people are a joke. They are miserable angry vandals screaming like monkeys in a desperate attempt to both avoid the obvious, and make themselves feel better about their utter insignificance in the face of it.
Smile for the camera! Smile big and show us what’s inside! Oh wait, nothing but worms and bitterness. Well, then do your best to look like some kind of squash. People like squash. You want people to like you, don’t you? No, you want them to serve you. To bow at your every whim, and bring you pies and bon-bons when the inner weeping gets so bad that a gallon of box wine can’t put it to rest.
Despite efforts by nearly all parties to deny it, the underlying tension in metal that created #metalgate continues: the “new fans” who want music more like indie rock or punk versus the metal fans who want metal for metal’s sake. The metal fans realize that to be metal is to be an outsider to society and all of its rationalization for its own failure, including “reforms” and “revolutions,” while the punk/indie fans want metal to endorse some of those rationalizations.
The most recent victim may have been Pantera guitarist Darrell Abbot’s grave, which was referenced in an instagram post by the (ex-) vocalist of a crust/black band which embodies the worst of both veins of metal sell-outs, both the sensitive guy indie rocks who like crustcore and the tryhard war metal types who pose as being as hardcore as possible. According to the desecrator:
We paid douchebag darrell a visit, we spit on his grave, stole a pair of cowboy boots, and i wrote “FAG” on his grave… im not a homophobe but i hope all the panturrra fans see this and shit themselves with anger… FUCK DIMEBAG, buncha racist hillbillies
Only forty-eight hours later, the apologies were flowing forth:
The fact of the matter is I feel awful and guilty and this will stick with me forever, just like the Seinfeld guy using the N word… I can not express how sorry I am to Vinnie Paul and the Abbott family for the distress I caused, and the other members of Pantera and other acts Darrell was a part of. I owe everyone an apology for my actions because they were uncalled for, and horrible, despicable, and I went way too far. Some jokes are NOT funny and this is one of them. I took a joke way too far with a piece of paper and some hurtful words and as I’ve expressed, I don’t expect any sort of acceptance or sympathy…I hope at least someone will accept this and I hope for a better future for everyone…
What is shared between both of these sentiments? They are SJW ideas. He attacks Darrell because he thinks Pantera fans are a “buncha racist hillbillies” and excuses using the word FAG because he’s not a “homophobe.” This is SJW language here, first being concerned about policing whether or not other people approve of homosexuality and second in justifying violence or worse against those who are not pro-diversity, a.k.a. “racists.” When he apologizes, he uses the term “hurtful words” and compares his actions to “the Seinfeld guy using the N word” and then states he hopes for “a better future for everyone.” His motivation as a sensitive guy with social justice ideals is revealed in both of his statements.
I will not use his real name in this article, for the record, because public shaming can cause repercussions in this person’s real life, including career and social ostracization. No honest and decent person tries to do that because it is a passive but effective way at destroying the life of another. Nor will I name or link to his band, which has been utterly forgettable and forgotten from lack of any originality as well as blatant bandwagon-riding, because this like the sucker punch at Danzig is simply a publicity stunt that generated more notoriety than was expected. Let the media trick fail on its own.
But this leads us to an ugly point: a metalhead may well be divided by this event. It would be hypocritical for metalheads to start complaining about grave desecrations now after several thousand band photos in cemetaries. It is also nonsense to complain about damage to Darrell’s grave because, as noted by a number of sources, as with Jim Morrison’s grave the majority of the damage comes from fans of the artist and not enemies.
At the same time, however, many metalheads do not feel all that great about this desecration. The reason is that the motivation behind it is wrong. Like the rest of the SJW incursion that prompted #metalgate, the desecration of Darrell Abbott’s grave was justified by SJW-logic: Pantera fans are (allegedly) racist hillbillies, and “homophobes,” so it’s not only OK but “good” (like, in the Church sense) to desecrate his grave because he and his fans are bad. This alone makes the desecration stand out as not wrong in a moral sense, but broken. Someone is using society’s logic against metal to justify making metalheads second-class citizens whose graves may be desecrated, at least for reasons other than the usual war/satan/death that make a good grave desecration. Like the metal fans who object to grave desecrations in general, or the metalheads who claimed that Pantera fans are “nationalist Juggalos”, I feel this misses the point. Society hates metal, and it uses terms like “nationalist” and “homophobe” to justify bullying metalheads, much like it used claims of Satanism and murder back in the 80s to do the same. Its goal remains unchanged: destroy metal.
We should also draw some parallels between Pantera and SJWs. Like the SJW incursion, Pantera was an invasion designed to sell-out metal so it could be assimilated by rock music, with profit for all. Metal sells well, but rock music that has the “rebellious” cachet of metal would sell even better, because rock music has been designed from its inception to be the most easily-digested and emotionally simplistic form of music ever created, like music made into baby food. It sells well because it is a compromise, both inoffensive enough that most people will tolerate it, and thoughtless enough that people like to project onto it their own emotions and needs. Rock music is basically 1950s advertising jingles set to guitars, and people buy it to stay “relevant” or to seem hip, when really it has always been and always will be a product from the same people who sell us junk we can barely afford to address problems we do not have in order to achieve an image we do not need.
The reason many of us detest Pantera is purely musical: it is part of the great Dumbing Down of heavy metal, trying to make it closer to rock/blues so that all the people in sports bars, hair salons, show-off gyms and cube farms can tap their feet to the beat just like they did every other form of rock ‘n roll. Pantera is heavy metal made into a lengthy television commercial, and in doing so, it solicited social approval in a way that is decidely against all that metal stands for and lives by. Pantera heard Exodus Impact is Imminent and Exhorder, maybe Prong Beg to Differ and realized they could make a bundle if they combined a tough guy/sensitive guy approach — a lot like what nu-metal did, come to think of it — and made the music sound a lot more like Bruce Springsteen or John Cougar Mellencamp, both of whom sold more albums than God and retired rich. That was the goal in Pantera: metal as product. For that reason, the Pantera guys abandoned their glam/hair metal and hard rock stylings, and went into Metallica style speed metal with Cowboys From Hell, giving it their Southern rock spin, and then upgraded their sound to angry brocore with the following albums before returning to a blues-saturated swamp rock sound. It worked and people bought it.
Metalheads tend to hate Pantera because it brought in the elements of society that we go to metal in order to avoid: the sleeveless shirt angry guys who start fights in cell phone stores, the blockhead rock fans who are faithless toward any ideal but their own gratification right now, and the musical circle of conformity that forms rock music. Pantera is the anti-metal disguised as metal, much like SJW music like the black/punk (lol) band who desecrated Abbott’s grave is. Pantera not just represents, but embodies, all that metal opposes and all that will destroy metal. If we look back on this story from the future, we will see how both Pantera and these grave desecrators came from the same movement, which is an attempt by the mainstream to destroy and then absorb the once-independent genre of heavy metal.
The Carcass guys, who started out as grindcore but mutated into heavy metal disguised as death metal, gave an interview in which the topic of motivations came up. Frontman Jeff Walker argued that perhaps heavy metal has sold out:
I think if you’re going to play music, your reason for doing that should be solely that you want to be creative and enjoy it. You should be realistic…Too many people are creating bands as a career choice. ‘Should I be a football player? Should I be an actor?’ Everyone wants to be famous but I think your motives have to be pure…Once in a while, you’re going to hear some killer new stuff but it’s getting rarer and rarer. I think people’s motivations for wanting to do this are not purely artistic.
He is referring to the process by which bands change their sound for money or musicians target a certain sound expecting it will make money, which is the reverse of the natural artistic method of having a message to communicate and picking the style that best expresses that message.
Metal bands can both “sell out” and “sell in” by preaching to the converted, such as the flood of war metal bands making essentially soundalike material because they know people will buy it in order to appear “diehard” underground. These people are known by the name of tryhard and they cluster around certain three-letter internet forums.
On the other hand, metal bands can “sell out” by appealing to the pretense in people as well, such as Opeth which has always marketed itself as both “open-minded” and musically difficult, both of which are tempting labels for a low self-confidence fan to slap on himself. The rest of us are closed-minded and simplistic, but with the help of his Opeth-product, he is open-minded and deep.
In the same way, many bands turn toward “social consciousness” lyrics because people recognize these as a signal that the band is deep, even though every band goes into a social consciousness lyrics phase when it runs out of other things to write about. This also is a sell-out because the band knows in advance that the audience will reward more of the same, even if that form of same re-brands itself as “different,” despite almost every band doing it.
Walker may have a point. Over the past twenty years, metal has gone from an outsider to society which speaks unutterable truths in metaphor, to an insider accepted by every level of media. Now the concern is how to use heavy metal as a brand for being “edgy,” and how to use that brand to sell products whose owners hope the audience will buy them in order to be “edgy,” from alcohol to motorcycles to clothing and beyond.
Will heavy metal exist in twenty years, or will it be only a “flavor” applied when in a commercial the edgy product is on screen, like triumphant horns for bargains and girls singing Beatles songs for self-care products? Metal may make itself into a product after all, and selling out while making its musicians superstars will destroy the underlying community by corrupting its ideas.
