That's kind of like all Marxists.

Talk about how oppressed you are, take over civilizations and destroy them, murdering millions of your best people in the process.

WBC to me sound like they're using Marxist-style rhetoric.

When a band makes a concerted effort via their band name, personal image, stage behavior, interview behavior, album titles, song titles, lyrics, album artwork, web presence, and all other types of expression they may partake in, it's ridiculous for any of us to pay that any mind, and we should just listen to the music, maaaaan? Metal bands *are* multi-faceted, and willingly putting on a pair of blinders so that you can just listen to the tunes without experiencing all of the rest of it is much more confusing than experiencing every aspect of the artwork as created by the artists.

You aren't an unknown commodity, you know. Revel in your internet metal forum notoriety.

And yeah, I like pointing out how lame you are.


The more they act out, the more evident it is that the acting out is itself the point of what they do. The less cogent their systematized political stances are. The more they become sideshow and the less they become a force that can convince anyone of anything.

Wouldn't you say that they are already a sideshow? I mean, they were hacked by Anonymous and people sent gay porn to their "leader." How much more sideshow-ey can you get? . I understand what you're saying and I completely agree... I just think that WBC is an exception to that rule.

That would be funny if it weren't so accurate. On second thought, it is pretty funny.

Greenway is a smart guy, too bad his political beliefs are batshit insane and in no way at all feasible in reality without the deaths of tens of millions of people.

In relation to the question at hand: I enjoy many, many bands whose ideologies I disagree with. Humans have a vast array of opinions and there is just too much to disagree about. I abhor Christianity and social leftists but I still enjoy bands/artists whose primary lyrical content relates to those topics.

He's a Maoist?

I see it this way... When you're religious and listen to something anti-religious than there's something wrong.
When I see some people write things on the internet like "I'm christian and love this band" (in this case it could be any anti-christian band video or song), I just don't get it.
It's like you're loving your mother, but love to listen to someone talking trash about her. Or what kind of christian are you when you listen to something with an anti-christian ideology, aren't you a heretic then ?
At least that's how I see it.

My thoughts on this have kind of shifted throughout the years. I used to be much more anti-anti, but these days I'm less black and white on the matter. For starters, I know that the rationalization of "separating art from artist" is incredibly problematic, but to what extent do we take it? I propose: what makes musicians special? Why aren't all entertainers held to the same standard? People are quick as fuck to call out Varg's ass-backwards views on race (nevermind that he murdered someone), but why not Roman Polanski? My favorite movie is Rosemary's Baby, but the filmmaker is accused of raping an underage girl. So what makes a musician with sketchy political ideologies more accountable than an artist in a different medium that is accused of physical evil (not simply evil thoughts/ideologies).

Another thing that comes to mind is this: is it important that the artist himself has abhorrent philosophies, or is it only important that those philosophies are reflected within that artists work? And what if the work is purely offensive for its own sake, outside of the artists ideologies? For example, Burzum records are all about fantasy themes where the creator is a bigot (we're taking this as given for the sake of argument), but if you look at a band like Arghoslent, their lyrics and imagery nearly fetishize black slavery and blatant racial violence, Incorrigible Bigotry is aptly titled. Unfortunately, I can't think of a good example, but consider a band that writes horrifyingly offensive material, but only as a schtick. However poor taste, the hypothetical creators are decent, thoughtful people in their personal lives. So are all these bands to be judged equally?

I know this is a bullshit answer, but it's the answer I come to: As fans of extreme music, we are constantly staring into extremity. Violence, death, misogyny, nationalism, racism, "evil", whatever. All in varying levels of sincerity. Some of it offends me, but not you. Some of it offends you but not me. Most of it offends most everyone, but there's at least someone who likes each one of these bands. The human mind is a complex thing, and as we learn and develop philosophies and ideologies, we are going to be confronted with our own inconsistencies, and unfortunately will maintain some level of cognitive dissonance. So I listen to what I am comfortable with. If something makes me uncomfortable, I choose not to. Generally, I try to judge music on the way it sounds, but that's not always possible, I don't ignore my conscience when it starts nagging. So my advice to whoever is still reading is to seek knowledge always. Be aware of your inconsistencies, but don't fight against them too hard. Our brains are complex and our ideologies are constantly developing, and to spend all of our time trying to remain consistent is an impossible battle to win.

I guess it would be your prerogative as to whether or not you stopped listening to him for those reasons. Nobody here is saying that you HAVE to stop listening to anything. Diversity does not necessarily equate to tolerance.

It's not that I'm against Napalm Death's anti-facist/political lyrics, it's just that it's just so damn tiresome and the fact that they have drained out the subject to death on 15 albums doesn't help.

Also, I'd compare this Napalm Death song (I know it's originally by The Dead Kennedy's but they did choose to cover it) with this Mortificiation song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzoebhQ7hjQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHM3MfqPrGE

Lyricially, they are two of the worst songs I have ever heard.

For me, I have no interest in listening to a band that is strongly religious. If a band is driving home the notion that Jesus is my "lord and saviour," no thank you. I'm quite the anti-theist, though I don't have a problem with a band that references religious deities (God/Jesus/Allah, Odin, whatever) because if I don't mind a song that references Satan or magic, then I don't see why I can't listen to a song that may reference a god(s). I just really dislike any band that is obviously religious (and not just Christianity - though I'll admit I have the largest gripes here - but any type of religion) or has religious undertones to their music. Just as I wouldn't really care to listen to a band that sings about how Satan is the coolest dude they've ever heard of.

As for bands that may have different political agendas than me, I don't care, unless they're really driving it home. Same thing applies to bands that may be vegan or vegetarian - I don't care if a band member is or isn't. But the second you're making some metal song about how we can't sacrifice goats anymore, no thank you.

I'll forgo listening to a band even if they have the sickest music I've ever heard, if I don't agree with their message.

tl;dr - unless you're a nutcase about a cause I don't support, I'll listen to the music.

There are plenty of Anarchist bands who have well written lyrics which are far more than childish angst. Check out Appalachian Terror Unit's Armageddon Won't Be Brought By Gods- for such a short ep it covers some heavy ground and discusses issues such as deforestation/ clear cutting, the plight of the coal miners in rural Appalachia and so forth.

Napalm Death are signed to a major label, it's best to listen tongue-in-cheek to whatever they have to say.

I think you're jumping to some conclusions here. Then again, you've basically admitted that you're motivated by envy and hatred.

That's the thing about Marxists: to endorse that philosophy, you pretty much have to be cool with the following:

* Mass executions
* Societies failing
* Thoughtcrime
* Corruption

That's how they all turn out. Why on earth would you endorse such a failed philosophy? Sounds lame to me.

Bravo! You seem to have this complex ideology-philosphy figured out, don't you? Im going to make this short.

1) NONE of those 4 points is mentioned in the writings of Marx&Engels as a MUST. They didn't really concentrate on the HOW side of achieving communism so much. What they mostly did was provide a narrative of where the modern (19th century) society was moving. Needless to say, they were mostly wrong but enough of that.

2) Your knowledge of Marxism is historical in a sense that your opinions of Marxism are based on particular examples of guys who labeled themselves as such. Two separate things: USSR, China, Cambodia etc. AND Marxism. Aforementioned three examples had actually very little to do with Marxism in its theoretical sense. What you are doing is essentially saying that a bunch of murderers who claimed to embrace the writings of Marx turned out to be so because Marx told them to act in such ways. Marx didn't thell them shit! They improvised.

So NO, you do not have to be cool with these 4 things you mentioned in order to be a Marxist. You just have to be a giant asshole.

Good strategy. I'm sure everyone will forget to continue criticizing the racism you support if you share your lurid fantasies about me.

@John_Sunlight:

Since I haven't supported any, nor are you defining "racism," I think you're outta luck.

@AYearInExile:

OK, I laughed!

The problem with Marxism is that, besides being a picture of what society was at the time, it provided near to zero strategy/solid philosophical-economical-political material to put in on march. For example, there's no way to measure how worthy is the work of every people for the State; it's also impossible to erase the 'minority ruling', since it's impossible to simply make everyone be a part of a form of government, being burgoises or protelariats, there'll be always a small group of people ruling the other, just to name a few fatal flaws.

You have only posted in this thread to divert the conversation away from criticism of racism and fascism in metal. Whatever phoney mysticism you say guides your arguments, materially they only serve the interests that benefit from the deflection of those criticisms: the people with the political agenda you say you aren't actively supporting. You are fully aware of these facts.

Do you willfully do this or are you a useful idiot? Who could say.

That and its economic suicide.

Sounds like you both are experts on Marxist theory.

In other words, it creates its own elite based on obedience to dogma, instead of competence.

I don't trust reward-before-performance systems. My experience with most of humanity is that while they don't mean well, they're content with a mediocre job that often results in underperformance or dangerous conditions.

This is why while it's not perfect, capitalism was the choice of the West. There are probably better ways of handling markets but they will require us to state our leadership principles more clearly.

For example, what is the goal of this society?

See that the State needs people to work for the State and not for themselves; in Marx' theory, the human being didn't matter: it was only a piece to work for a greater scheme. Since Marxism promotes equity, the possibility and desire to grow/develop for each individual is supressed! so, your personal goals are totally irrelevant and even undesired, since you need to do what you're told to do and be what you're told to be and nothing else.

If you have a family, you can't simply provide a better life' standard for it, not matter how good you are on your field, cause you have a defined assignment to commit and since money, market and weapon of choice is pretty much inexistant, you're forced to be struck in the situation the State wants. You can't progress individually on a Marxist society, so what's the good thing about it?

So, for Marxism to work, people within its system should be totally devoided of any humanity and be a fucking robot to do the work assigned. This is seriously stupid: the idea for the proletariat to rise is supposed to be moved for their own needs, but what happen to them once they're on the top? Nothing? I can see his system working on a camp, with max 5 people, but not an entire country.

There's another bullshitty thing about Marxism: it's transitional. Marx expected the proletariat, once in the power, to leave it for the community to decide and take decisions. This is simply childish. No communist goverment/regime has been democratic in the least. Once an empowered communist reach the power, he simply keep it endlessly (unless he's wiped out), as Stalin, Mao, Kim II Sung, Lenin, Castro, Pol Pot, Allende and so many others. They not only didn't resign the power the 'people' gave them but they killed systematically hundreds of millions under their tyrannical goverments, which all of them had the 'proletariat' flag.

See that most of the mass killings of those dictatorships ocurred when economical crisis began, as consequences of the poor and wrong economic decisions made for those governments. So, when they saw the communist system didn't work and started to make the country to crumble, they just killed people. Simple as that.

Oh, and of course, if you were to live in a communist country, you couldn't whine about the shitty stuff the government does, make protests and stuff like that, cause the proletariat has no voice in a real situation.

I find it funny what a fly on his butt you are. Just can't be comfortable until everyone agrees with the comrade? Why make assumptions and ad hominem attacks to a poster that has obviously already let it go?

I'm not entirely sure this was/is a tenant of Marxism. Marx's value of human beings came form the inherent humanity of work itself. An individual's goals aren't placed "aside" for the greater good, but re-contextualized in the schema of the whole. We can all still have our own individual goals, and individual wants, but again, they must be reconciled with social order and understanding - and "work" is a big part of that.



What would happen is hopefully a shift of ethos away from work as a commodity and work as a human necessity - completely morphing the ideas of money/ethic/politics to a more communal understanding. By having the work-force at the top, then there is no alienation of the worker from his work - and thus a more rewarding working environment.



I hate when people use the argument I'm about to use - but those aren't the best example of communism, let alone Marxism.



Sure, unless we were to shift the ethos of the people to a more community, democratic and work-minded mentality.

Thing is the wholess is first and if you want to do something different from what the State wants to do with you, you're screwed. I see it as a form of slavery, in fact.



That's one of the things Engels was wrong too. Money was created cause back then the simple trade and work wasn't enough to guarantee a correct/fair exchange, so Marx/Engel's concept of 'value' was unexistant. Something like that was already something banished for the same people, let alone it would be working on a society with the money as a common exchange measure already existed. For that thing to work, it was necessary to create a microcosmos totally separated from the rest of the world, where the State would be self-sufficient into providing absolutely everything was needed and at the same time, working on advaning technology and knowledge for people to also improve. Self-sufficient countries are unexistant nowadays.



Thing is that I first paraphrased the concept - transitional - and then the reality. For Marx, he needed people like 'the Ubermensch' to rule; someone whose principles were totally above the normal human being thus he could make the system to work putting personal desires/flaws aside for the greater good, which the dictators I mentioned couldn't.

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is first and foremost a dictatorship. Don't forget that, so it's fairly simple to understand how they built their regimes based on a totalitarian philosophy of 'community slavery'. I can even say those dictatorships are/were logical continuations of the Marxism-Lenninism way of thinking.



Again, communism is not democratic. See Cuba for example, if you try to protest, you'll get wiped out, in North Korea people was imprisoned for not crying enough the passing of the dictator. See that the Gulags were created under a communist regime to erase systematically people, especially the opositors.

It might look 'fair' on paper, but it didn't and won't work.

@Kveldulfr:

It seems to me like you paid attention to only half of what whoever told you about Marxism said, because your recount is seriously fragmentary, but whatever.

Fact is that in every society until and including the current western society the "human doesn't matter". Our ideology pays lip service to individuality while in fact suppressing the "desire to grow/develop" of the largest parts of the population by forcing them into precarious conditions that leave them no choice but to capitalize their labour in poorly paid jobs. Marxism is the attempt to liberate humanity from these conditions and thereby make individuality a realistic possibility for every human, not just the burgeois and ruling class. The goal is a society where personal development is not determined by the socioeconomic conditions of birth.

That society is not state-socialism though. As history has taught us the supposed transition process that is state socialism comes with a number of serious problems that include the dangers of authoritarianism, ideological dogma, poor economical planning etc.. It is just common sense that these issues are amplified by a constant state of war against an alliance of capitalist rival nations.

Again, in communism production isn't managed by a state. You are talking about personal development, but what does that mean other than realizing your individual abilities? Do we need authority to force people to do what they want to do anyways? The desire to be productive is part of human nature, it's how we give our lives meaning. "From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs". You see, the world's industries are able produce more than enough for every human to live comfortably while individually contributing only very little to the production process. This is why communism is not possible without modern industries. The question is whether there is a way for society to be organized so this is turned into an advantage for everyone.

In capitalism the overproduction is used to accumulate the capital of the ruling class. The benefit for those who produce the goods is kept to a minimum so they are forced to work even more and create even more overproduction and so on. Now we don't live in the industrial age anymore and reformist ideas have created the welfare state and softened the pressure for the working class in developed nations. The ruling class has allowed this because it makes the prospect of revolution less attractive but currently the trend is going towards eliminating the social state again which is what neoliberalism/new labour/Raeganism and so on is all about.

Did anyone mention Pete Steele? Pete is one of my idols, but some of his stuff, especially Retaliation and Slow Deep And Hard, has some pretty strong leanings to the right. But I never really cared much.

Only if they don't become parasitic, which is what happened in every leftist society to date.

Remember that superpower, France?

I'm amazed of how many latin american closet right-wingers say that "here the violent groups are the left-winged ones, when we see State repression from the conservative government of Piñeira, the conservative Mexican government of Peña Nieto, etc., everyday. It's ok to be a right-winger, just say it straight and stop posting lies dude....

Here we see another example of people who have never read Marxism, yet think that Cuba and North Korea are example of communist societies. Dude, those regimes are called State Capitalism; in a true socialist society, there would be no ruling class, neither private owners of the means of production nor the State.

Conservative societies produce more "parasites", being that 5% of the population that own 40% of the wealth in their respective countries...

And another case of ignorant conservatives who have never actually read Marxism...

If Piñera were to be a right-winged government, it could be ok, but it's not; only on paper. There has been way more public spending in this government than the last 4 left-winged ones; there has been way more restrictions and laws against capital accumulation/monopolies/corruption in general than before; education costs less today than in the last 20 years (there are more scholarships given than ever and educational loans are way less expensive); employment is better than in the last 2 decades (around 6% against the 12-13% of the left-winged ones), salaries has been raised in higher % than before; taxes for enterprises has been raised while the people/personal direct taxes has been lowered and so on.

See that he assumed as President just a couple of weeks after the 8,8 earthquake and the tsunami that killed thousands and destroyed entire cities and, in the first year of government, had near 50% of the damaged 'states' reconstructed AND managed to create enough jobs to not raise (and even lowering) poverty and unemployment.

The fact that Piñera has been way harsher with the local business world (with a focus on the biggest business) than the entire left-wing has on the country is a showcase of a more centered government.

Thing is that 40 years ago we had a de facto government from the army and the extreme right wing politicians, thus now right-wing support is totally banned. The military council in fact didn't granted all what the politicians wanted and managed to create a whole new group of laws to ensure Chile would rise from the terrible condition it was left for the communist regime of Allende (up to 1000% inflation, huge debts, poverty over 50%, paramilitary/guerrilla groups swarming terror, deep shortage of basic food/supplies, etc). Chile, in fact, managed to survive after all that and the economic crisis of the 82' to rise as one of the strongest latinamerican countries as it's seen today.



See that Marxism is a pretty utopic philosophy, it's impossible to organize a country without a minority directing things. There'll always be a small group of rulers; proletariats or not and communism hasn't and will never pass over that stage, so in the reality communism starts with the dictatorship of the proletariat and keep going as a dictatorship to the end.

Can't say for Mexico but nowadays left-winged violent groups far outnumber those of right-wing in south america, paramilitary and guerrilla groups largely supporting marxist ideologies and has been so since the fall of the military dictatorships throughout the continent, in fact true right-wing groups are inofensive and insignifcant because the legacy these dictatorships left a stigma so big that no one what those ideologies can gather any support, and those populistic/authoritarian regimes spread through latin american doesn't even make for a half-assed right. You can wank your agenda all you want but you are just naming a convenient exception.

Some people, I swear are still living in WWII, always thinking there are nazis and fascists out to get them. Why keep feeding confrontational paranoia when there are far more real and more important matters to worrry about is beyond me.

The way I see it, music is an expression of the soul. People like people that are similar to them, and dislike people that are different. If someone is making music with their soul, than it is, for me, possible to tell whether or not I support their ideologies without even hearing their lyrics.

I listen to the band Lament quite a lot. For those who don't know, they're a Christian Death Metal band. And although I'm an Athiest, maybe even an Anti-theist, I still very much enjoy their music. I don't agree with their ideology at all, but as far as I'm concerned, music is music. I recommend their album "Through the Reflection", really great stuff. The bass takes a very up front role.

Not metal but Skrewdriver's first album I though was great I don't quite agree with any music of theirs after, I actually find their national socialist songs to be comedic but rarely look any up.

If I'm not mistaken From Womb to Waste by Dying Fetus Is a pro-life song which is something I don't agree with.

Burzum though he doesn't put it in is lyrics he's still a bigot but I love his music.

ACxDC, Minor Threat or any other straight edge band.

Agreed. First Skrewdriver album is a classic.