Bolt the door, Varg is loose!

lots of x-posts

tbh, i don't think you can enjoy his music without furthering his agenda. unless, maybe, you steal it and never say anything positive about it to anyone. i believe that where burzum is concerned, ignoring and condemning are the only appropriate responses, even if you do legitimately dig the music.

― contenderizer, Thursday, August 16, 2012 5:26 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I choose not to give Varg Vikernes that kind of power over me. I myself get to decide what his music means to me, don't I?

i would assume 99% of people don't read a burzum shirt as "i endorse white power" but rather as "i endorse extreme hipster metal" so i think it's funny we're bending over backward to inject a level of holier-than-thou moral outrage here

― the late great, Thursday, August 16, 2012 2:31 PM (10 seconds ago)

i don't have the slightest idea where you're coming from here. according to you, my rejection of the popular art of a self-proclaimed and influential "philosopher" who explicitly endorses racist murder - at a time when hate crimes are spiraling out of control in europe - is simply an attempt to "inject a level of holier-than-thou moral outrage" into the conversation. with all due respect, i'm allowed to have and express a moral conscience. i'm allowed to see a direct relationship between varg's words, his music, and violence in the real world. no offense...

I choose not to give Varg Vikernes that kind of power over me. I myself get to decide what his music means to me, don't I?

yeah, sure. i'm just describing my stance.

i don't even listen to or enjoy burzum btw but i will defend your right to listen to burzum the death

I will theoretically defend your legal right to do so; you are, however, an asshole if you gloss over racist garbage in the service of your own pleasure. my Asian son, by the way, as sure a target of Varg's trash as yourself, joins me in a double gasface.

haha by "my own pleasure" i'm assuming you don't mean ME, also i thought "my asian son" was directed at me too

i don't think a dude in brooklyn wearing a burzum shirt causes hate crimes in europe fyi so that's where we agree to disagree on direct relationships

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/consumer/factsheets/butterflies/icons/butterfly.jpg

thats us contendo :-)

lol did you search for a white monarch butterfly or was that happenstance

lool, happenstance (but there is no such thing as coincidence)

also i thought "my asian son" was directed at me too

lol even by my usual standards of arrogance this would be a bridge too far

I admit I read that post and was all "woah aero dial it back- oh phew"

ahhahahaha

nah it would be all good ;)

i think that part of my take on this is that if you have an interest/liking in aggro/heavier/extreme whatever music, you are prob crossing paths with some people with pretty hateful views, and just not knowing it really - i mean theres a lot of industrial culture shit with strong crypto-facist stuff going on, and in fact far greater lyrical problematic moments (boyd rice/non/foetus/a mess of bulgarian weirdos) in the name of character or art terror or whatever. i mean shit, boring old mainstream metallers slayer have angel of death in the catalog, and whatshishead had a signature guitar designed with ss bolt fret markers until the company wised up just before production. shock impulse stuff is going to tread on the dark side of fascist creepy and serial killer fetishizing and all manner of shit that i certainly dont like, so i think that the odds are that if you dig black metal or industrial or hardcore etc you are throwing money into the pockets of some pretty horrible people, you just arent aware of it.

xpost hahaha i was thinking that for a second too

i think the misogyny aspect in that stuff is more offensive than the racism, just barely obv, but fwiw. we could add swans and tg to the list too!

TG is an interesting case of the explicitly antifascist band that also actively gives money to nazi in order to accomplish their, uh, craft

and thats not to say that deciding not to give money to varg is a bad thing, but idk if you get any moral high ground for just avoiding the big flashing neon sign of "oh shit this dude is definitely a racist, brb gotta go order that Arcturus album"

j your point's well taken but the thing is: with Burzum, we have an unambiguous case. we know that if you wear a Burzum shirt, you're wearing a nazi shirt. For sure we know that!

well...theres not a lot of wiggle room for hellhammer either

i think that part of my take on this is that if you have an interest/liking in aggro/heavier/extreme whatever music, you are prob crossing paths with some people with pretty hateful views, and just not knowing it really

fwiw this is one of the reasons why I let you dig into aggro heavy extreme stuff and then tell me about it later, rather than exploring it myself

ah c'mon late great, there's gotta be a part of you that gets at least a little skeeved out knowing this dude you're talking about and a fair chunk of his fans want you dead because of your skin color. just imagine them thinking about people like you, your family, your culture, in giant mass graves of bodies piled up. people who take these ideas too seriously going to churches, mosques, and shooting dozens of people you share a heritage with, all because of horribly misguided ideas that are attached to music. at least you can say, "shit's kinda fucked up." what's to stop a skinhead from blasting you in the back of the head, except chance? the ideas ... are out there.

tbh honest, i object less to some hypothetical band that has actively racist lyrics but little real influence in the world than to burzum/varg. of course it's easy to reject racist sentiment when it expresses itself, but that approach sometimes seems overly personal and self-centered to me. like, the underlying impulse is, "oh gross, i don't want to hear that. i don't want to be associated with that." it's an expression of personal discomfort with the experience.

thing about burzum is that the music itself doesn't provide that comfort-ruffling, "ew, racism!" experience, so it gets a pass. behind that, however, he's at least as effective in using his music to spread dangerous & hateful views as those who are more upfront about their racism. in this case, it seems too easy to blithely isolate the seemingly non-racist music from its racist source, too easy to make your personal aversion to directly racist expression the only important metric.

when it comes to stuff like this, i believe it's better to focus on consequence and intent than to get caught up in how superficially offensive things seem.

like if arapahoe county sheriff had a cool, "non-racist" C&W band, i would not be supporting that, either

i think that part of my take on this is that if you have an interest/liking in aggro/heavier/extreme whatever music, you are prob crossing paths with some people with pretty hateful views, and just not knowing it really

― O_o-O_O-o_O (jjjusten), Thursday, August 16, 2012 2:48 PM (18 minutes ago)

this understanding has done a fair bit to dampen my enthusiasm for hate- & negativity-driven extreme music in recent years

dude i dealt with that shit when some black sailors were throwing bottles at me during gulf ii, some irish and scots dude wanted to fight on 9/11 when i was in fucking encinitas, when the kids on the bus at age 5 were threatening me and the bus driver otto was leading the back to iran USA USA USA chant when the kids boycotted my animal crackers at the christmas party. oh and i got interrogated in israel at the airport and then befriended by every jew i met.

sorry, what did you want to me imagine?

you made my heart pound w that imagery

burzum just sounds like my tea party bros that i play d&d with

i would assume 99% of people don't read a burzum shirt as "i endorse white power" but rather as "i endorse extreme hipster metal" so i think it's funny we're bending over backward to inject a level of holier-than-thou moral outrage here

― the late great, Thursday, August 16, 2012 5:31 PM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I hope when I wear my hitler shirt, everyone recognizes its because I like his paintings, sheesh

no joke man that was PTSD that burzum doesn't make me freel

what about yr hitler warhols

i think about burzum from an equally interested position on moral outrage

also charles lindbergh field is named after a dude that wore a swastika and people wear that iron eagle metalhead shit all the time

"joy division"

whereas noo nazi every enjoyed a note of joy division

i feel like this steps over an imaginary line i don't share since whatever, racists everywhere, but i'm confused why that implies indifference on my part rather than just a difference in understanding (loosely used)

everyone knows when i go to the coffee shop with mein kampf and rise and fall of third reich ...

i think even if you disagree, i'm not sure i deserve to be tagged as incoherent

degrees, right? sure, everything in the world occurs in infinite shades & degrees. yet decision-making and action are essentially binary, off/on, yes/no, do you or don't you. i think we can make good, useful determinations while acknowledging that reality is far more complex than any determination we might make about it.

thread needs Grampsy

we can't, we each make those decisions on our own in a godless vacuum

is grampsy real or parody? is grampsy gareth?

i'm confused why that implies indifference

only because you make frequent recourse to the "shades and degrees" argument, which isn't advocacy of a different standard, but rather a seemingly nihilist negation of meaningful moral judgment.

xp: I was gonna guess latebloomer or BJO

but my judgment is meaningful to me! i feel no nihilism at all, rather great optimism breivik can exist in a vibrant norwegian society that accepts and tries to understand burzum's magnetism

and i can by proxy join that pure, clean, bracing norwegian moral sensibility as a possible future for a kinder, gentler america

fair enough late great, did not appreciate daily fact of life dealing w/ this shit. prob gets old after a while. now i feel like Whitey McHipsterton preaching about what it feels like to be put down by the man.

okay, the goalposts just vanished over the horizon

uh, yeah, americans are probably too fond of stern moral judgment, and i'm as guilty of that as anyone

You guys see the doc Until the Light Takes Us? This Hellhammer quote truly made my stomach turn:

"Well, when I was told that Faust actually killed this fucking faggot from Lillehammer, I was quite surprised because, I mean, I didn't think he had the guts to do such a thing. But... I mean... I really honor him for that."

For whatever reason, I have more of a gut-level reaction with this than most of what I've read of Varg's idiotic views on humanity. The look of totally inhuman glee on Hellhammer's face when he says it is just... Ugh.

posting in a legendary thread

why did I just read this entire thing

feels like I'm the real victim here