HRH: Well I’ve got a question for you that might be an awkward one, but the cover of Use Once and Destroy and a lot of Pantera’s merchandise has the Confederate flag on it. What’s your take on all this business…the backlash against the flag?Philip H. Anselmo: Uh, I think there’s some legitimacy to it man. If it’s something that…you know, I guess…at my age, if there’s a symbol…it’d be like, you know, would we be flying the Nazi flag? I don’t think so because flags are looked at whether it be nationalism or symbols of something, you know? Truthfully you know it’s like…I wish fucking everyone would get along. I wish that more than anything, but we all know as logical human beings that that’s pretty much impossible. You know, everybody’s got different ideas about stuff.
Uh, and I think really where the use of the rebel flag or Confederate flag with us really came from was from our love of bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd and what not…shit like that, you know. There was never a time when it was okay to promote hate without a little bit of the tongue-in-cheek, you know. It was never this blatant thing unless I was completely out of my mind, which I was at points in time. I’ll own that for damn sure, but that was a long ass time ago.
I’m coming up on 47 years old…and I think that if it’s upsetting enough to people in general, you know, I guess…this is tough to say without taking any side…like I said, I can see where if people see it as a symbol of hate then…these days, I wouldn’t want anything to fucking do with it because truthfully…I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t want much to fucking do with it at all and personally you know I would never…the way I feel and the group of people I’ve had to work with my whole life, you know…you see a Confederate flag out there that says “Heritage, not hate.” I’m not so sure I’m buying into that, you know?
But I can look at any…people can point out flaws in any social group, any ethnic group, any ideology and anything like that and that’s once again because everybody has different ideas about things and at this point in time I just wish everybody would chill the fuck out man and realize, you know, maybe a good dose of love, for lack of a better word, would do us all friggin’ a lot better instead of pulling sides, taking sides. You know everybody wants to have a firm stance on things, but maybe sometimes we should sit back and listen for a change. You know?
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 16 July 2015 00:39 (eight years ago) link