cry of the banshee wrote:
rio wrote:
cry of the banshee wrote:
Anyone with any knowledge of history will tell you that communism has been responsible for way more death, misery and destruction than NS.
Is communist based metal therefore "dodgy"?
If you are referring to bands I have reviewed here recently e.g. Panopticon, Skagos, Jarost Marksa etc., then no.
All these bands are very explicit about what they believe, and they are all aligned with libertarian communism aka anarchism. The same politics as punk bands like Crass, Conflict, etc. Which, whatever its flaws, cannot begin to compare with "large-C" Communism or Nazism/Fascism in terms of blood on its hands. Let alone the combined efforts of various other forms of national imperialisms.
Even Jarost Marksa in interviews have said that they use Soviet iconography for aesthetic effect. Ideologically, again, they are closer to bands like Crass or Amebix.
So unless we are using an unacceptably broad definition of "communism", not guilty. I have certainly never knowingly reviewed Stalinist bands nor would I without making some mention of it.
Ah. I wasn't really referring to anything you reviewed explicitly, just the ideology in general.
I would imagine, though I could be wrong, that many NSBM bands use the iconography in a similar fashion, since, as far as I know, they are pulling people out of their park benches and beating them senseless, let alone murdering them.
Are there pockets of thigs that do such things? Of course, but there are thugs of all walks of life.
Whatver the motivations, the end result is the same, isn't it? Some say over 100,000,000 dead directly from communist dictators.
That is huge. And many till believe in violent revolution, so I would hazard a guess that it could be considered a far more destructive ideology than NS, which has been relegated to a very small minority.
Well, off the top of my head I can't think of any metal bands actually advocating in any seriousness a pro-Soviet ideology, so the point would seem to be a moot one in that sense. A vanishingly tiny number of people in society as a whole think that's a good idea, anyway. The more relevant wider political issue is whether it is fair or accurate to suggest that there is an inherent link between anti-capitalist/egalitarian ideas and Soviet/Chinese Communism, to the extent that people that advocate the former (not such a small number of people) are seen as accountable for the latter. I think not, but that's a different issue so let's leave it.
Perhaps a lot of NSBM bands are simply using the iconography but the point I gather from EBD who seems to know about these things is that they are serious about expressing ultra-nationalist ideas in their music. I do appreciate what you were saying before about ideas not being inherently destructive in themselves, but the whole continent of Europe has been plunged into total darkness and barbarity on more than one occasion, some in living memory, by the squabbles that competition between different people's nationalism has caused. There is a mentality that allows that to happen and it is the mentality expressed in NSBM. It is emphatically still with us, in my experience round this neck of the woods.
If I were being controversial, I'd say that in his
actions Stalin himself was first and foremost a nationalist, regardless of what he called himself. But that's a whole other discussion so again let us leave it.
(EDIT: and yes, I am breaking my rule about not talking about politics at this site, so this will be absolutely my last post in this thread- cheerio!
)
I think we simply don't see circumstantial evidence in the same light, and with so much unknowable these arguments keep coming up.
