2017 is proving to be an extremely difficult year to just sit by and ignore. With events in the prior year providing a springboard for the far right to preach their hatred in a scale that up until recently had been unprecedented in the modern era, it is becoming the duty of social media to monitor and moderate extreme views. Already we’ve seen Facebook and Twitter pledging to remove known far-right and white supremacist groups from their platforms. However, how far are they going when it comes to smaller groups, or in the music scene?
I ask this because a while ago I accidentally discovered a hatecore group called “14 Sacred Words” while having a routine scan through Bandcamp’s metal releases. They don’t identify as hatecore, and I was a naive kid at the time, but I would soon discover that their name referred to the “14 words” of white supremacy (two phrases which you can learn about on Wikipedia). At that time, I was very much an advocate of unlimited free speech and just ignored it. However, events and revelations in the past year have brought me more in line with the beliefs of people such as John Rawls, whose 1971 book A Theory of Justice outlined how certain rights should be restricted if they harm, or seek to harm, others. As such, it’s becoming clearer that hate speech should not be tolerated, as the harm it can bring to others by those it influences are much greater than the perceived harm that can be inflicted by restricting it.
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| Image via CNN, of the protests in Charlottesville which inspired this debate. |
I ask this because a while ago I accidentally discovered a hatecore group called “14 Sacred Words” while having a routine scan through Bandcamp’s metal releases. They don’t identify as hatecore, and I was a naive kid at the time, but I would soon discover that their name referred to the “14 words” of white supremacy (two phrases which you can learn about on Wikipedia). At that time, I was very much an advocate of unlimited free speech and just ignored it. However, events and revelations in the past year have brought me more in line with the beliefs of people such as John Rawls, whose 1971 book A Theory of Justice outlined how certain rights should be restricted if they harm, or seek to harm, others. As such, it’s becoming clearer that hate speech should not be tolerated, as the harm it can bring to others by those it influences are much greater than the perceived harm that can be inflicted by restricting it.
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| The three brackets are a common tactic used by the alt-right to single out Jewish people, or those they deem to be "allies of Jews". Note the band's support for Greek neo-nazi party Golden Dawn. |
This brings me back to 14 Sacred Words, who I didn’t intend on singling out (believe me, there are many considerably worse hatecore/nazi punk/NSBM bands out there) but as my first direct experience with white supremacist music, they are the best example I have. If you look through their Facebook page, you will see that they are very keen to preach alt-right values, and even post anti-semitic blog articles written by the man behind the band, who I shall not name. The clear nature of these posts should be alarming to anyone who reads them, but it appears to be of little concern to Facebook, who are willing to keep the page up and do not see a problem with it. On Bandcamp, they sell plenty of copies of their music, with Bandcamp taking a cut, which is even more of an issue considering how Bandcamp are profiting from white supremacist music in spite of their recent donation events for transgender charities and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Now, I know there will be a number of people on both sides of the coin who will argue about whether bands such as this should be allowed to voice their views, and will regard my opinion on the matter as intolerant. But that brings me to another philosopher whose work has become more prominent in the weeks since the Charlottesville protests, a man by the name of Karl Popper. In his book The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 1 (1945) he discussed something that is generally known nowadays as the “paradox of tolerance” - basically, by tolerating those with intolerant views, we will eventually be overwhelmed by intolerant people and a tolerant society will eventually be destroyed by the tolerance it had for those people. The solution? We make sure that tolerating intolerance is the one thing we cannot tolerate. This may seem hypocritical, but the logic is sound. By allowing intolerance to be heard, it will influence more and more people until it becomes mainstream belief (you can just look at the United States of America for this) and eventually removes tolerant people from society, therefore it is something that must be stopped at the source.
Back to music side of this argument, as this is what this blog is about, and you have to question why sites like Facebook (and Bandcamp in particular) seem OK with profiting from this sort of hateful rhetoric from the far-right. It doesn’t take much to find a wealth of Nazi punk, NSBM and hatecore bands on Bandcamp due to the tagging system in place (although some may be more careful with how they advertise themselves), so why doesn’t Bandcamp do anything about it? Another similar case is with the record label and distro Hells Headbangers, whose distribution roster was recently brought into question in an article on the website MetalSucks. While we can be fairly sure that those in charge of these businesses do not harbour far-right or white supremacist views, it doesn’t seem right that some of the money they make comes from hosting and selling music by far-right bands. And with companies such as Facebook and Twitter that are removing major far-right groups from their sites, we have to wonder whether or not they are doing enough?
This blog was made with the intention of being just about music, so it is unlikely that I will be making many more outwardly political posts on it in future. But when you have this disease permeating through a wide reaching genre that you love listening to, you have to start trying to raise awareness of the problem and to try to stamp it out before it gets out of hand. We just need to see if the websites in question will eventually act.
Update 30 August 2017: Bandcamp have now told me that they have removed the account of 14 Sacred Words from their website. If you find any more artists using Bandcamp as a platform for their hate, don't hesitate to report them to Bandcamp here.
Please note: Debate is encouraged on this article, but any comments left by readers will be moderated. Play nice.
Update 30 August 2017: Bandcamp have now told me that they have removed the account of 14 Sacred Words from their website. If you find any more artists using Bandcamp as a platform for their hate, don't hesitate to report them to Bandcamp here.
Please note: Debate is encouraged on this article, but any comments left by readers will be moderated. Play nice.