Right. Following on from my earlier post 'Music, lyrics and the PMRC', I've done a bit more thinking about what I said, particularly about the political side of things. For a start, I'm going to emphasize that I stand by everything detailed in that post, and still hold those beliefs. But a question that did occur to me is whether censorship is ever truly appropriate. To clarify, in my earlier post, I did not mean that I thought that the lyrics of Green Day should be censored; far from it, I just felt that these are some of the most extreme cases in the mainstream.
However, outside of the mainstream there are some murky things to be found. What I want to explore is whether music should ever be completely censored. The three famous cases of censorship that spring to mind are Cannibal Corpse albums being banned due to the artwork, similarly, The Scorpions' album 'Virgin Killer' being banned due to its artwork (which depicted a naked prepubescent girl) - and even recently the wikipedia page was blocked for a while to all UK IP addresses - and the case in which Earache records were raided by the police for possibly illegal content of some of their records; Digby Pearson has since complained that he never got his Alice Cooper poster back, even though they were found to be not guilty.
However, even these seem practically tame compared to some things which aren't censored due to their limited availability, and I should probably make it clear that I am strongly against censorship in the aforementioned cases. There are two cases in which I feel universal censorship is appropriate. These are the more extreme cases of the pornogrind genre (the name of which probably speaks for itself), and NSBM, which stands for National Socialist Black Metal. I daresay that there are similar cases in other genres, but metal, and metallic music, is my area of so-called expertise, and so these are appropriate case studies for me to look into.
Pornogrind has developed for a few years, and varies from grindcore with innuendo, to the stuff with endless porn samples and frankly disgusting artwork and lyrics. A case of the latter, and a case that I will use to argue for censorship to be introduced to this part of the genre, is XXX Maniak's album 'Harvesting The Cunt Nectar'. This album contains frequent extreme song titles and samples, often referring to paedophilia and its practise, although the artwork is comparatively tame. After reading a review in Terrorizer magazine, I decided to give it a listen, almost as some sort of initiation rite, and was nearly sick at some of the stuff contained; and I have a strong stomach!
At the other end of the should-be-censored spectrum is NSBM. This is something that I am strongly against; anything that encourages prejudice against a race or group should be strongly discouraged in my eyes, and although it is debatable whether it is a suitable topic for an art form (in my eyes, it's reasonably okay if one doesn't actually believe in the politics), anybody who is highjacking art and using it to spread Nazi propaganda in general ought to be shot. That this is now viewed as a legitimate strain of the black metal genre is frankly ridiculous, on two fronts: firstly, the actual belief in the lyrical content itself, which is turning one or two black metal kiddies with malleable minds into anti-Semitic wannabe Nazis; and that they're adding an extra genre classification based on lyrical content? Really?
So, although there is very little music, and indeed all other art forms, that I would encourage censorship of, I think to summarise, all the things which encourage highly illegal activity (the adjective being there as I don't mind 'UGH! LET'S SMOKE SOME DOPE!' lyrics, just find them pathetic), such as Nazism and paedophilia. Of course, there are one or two exceptions - the one that springs to mind is that 'Mein Kampf' and other texts are interesting and useful in a historical context, and thus should not be censored. But the principal as a whole, I think, is sound.
Showing posts with label extreme right politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label extreme right politics. Show all posts
Wednesday, 30 June 2010
Thursday, 24 June 2010
One cook makes a broth.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... exams are finally over. I expected a sort of climactic feeling, but I have none, just one of calm relief, the sort that you'd expect you'd get lying on your deathbed at the end of an ordeal. I expected to have a feeling of euphoria akin to several hundred simultaneous orgasms, but no. Just this feeling of freedom.
It could just be that it's taking a while for the feeling to settle in; I certainly have to keep pinching myself to remind myself that yes, I am actually free of my shackles, binding me to the feeling that I have to keep grinding, trying to pull these GCSE results out of the bag. I've always been sure that I had the potential, I just wasn't too sure about the willpower. But now I'm quietly confident of decent enough results to continue my Oxbridge aspirations.
Anyway, let's move off the ego-trip. As I now have GLORIOUS freedom, I will be blogging a lot more. Thus I need stuff to blog about. I feel that this can be partially sated by keeping a closer eye on the news, but I would like people to suggest interesting topics for me to cast my ire upon. Or praise, it depends what it is. But probably ire. As you may have guessed, I don't praise much.
I would write briefly about the budget which has just been released, but in all honesty, right now I neither know enough already or can be bothered to do enough research to write a suitable piece on it. So there is one planned, but how close to fruition it is, or indeed whether or not it will actually come into existence is unsure. In the meantime, those of you who are desperate to hear more of my political omniscience, I want to write a small summary of my views on extreme right politics.
Whilst in years gone long by, extreme right politics were the norm, as in the poor continued to be poor, the rich continued to be rich, and anyone different was burned at the stake, but nowadays, thankfully they are something of a minority belief. We haven't really had a bad case of extreme racial prejudice since the demise of the original Nazis in 1945, although we have had other smaller cases, for instance apartheid, the National Front (who, I might add, might have considered rhymes before choosing their name to protect against misnomers) against immigrants in the UK, and America against all who don't follow their 'Christian' conservative values.
However, extreme right wing parties are certainly getting a lot more mainstream press coverage, enough so that a UKIP candidate stood at my school's mock election (although fortunately he only got 3% of the votes), and that the EDL are planning to make a series of demonstrations across the UK that are well-publicised enough for counter-demonstrations to have to be planned. If there was one in York, I'd be going, but hopefully the whole thing will have been crushed to nothing by the time they get to such low population cities.
Let me get this straight, if I haven't already; extreme right political believers are scum. They should not be persecuted based on it, otherwise one becomes as bad as them, but rather exposed to their flaws and absolutely demonised. A great number of them are ill-educated, and thus their malleable minds will instantly jump to anyone who offers a scapegoat to their problems that are often their own fault. Case in point: Germany in 1933 had extreme economic problems, so the public voted the Nazi party in. As this was such an extreme time, even those who would normally have more political nonce felt obliged to vote Nazi based on the 'common enemy' principal.
Along similar lines, this is why I feel that better political education should be enforced in schools. Starting in year 6, or the last year of primary school, children would be taught about politics about once a week, which could replace some of the less useful lessons about. Although it is argued that this education already exists through citizenship lessons, having experienced 3 years of those myself, I can say they're frankly inadequate in terms of politics, albeit quite effective in scaring year 7 kids off sex and alcohol for a year or two.
However, it could be very difficult to get enough teachers to teach this from truly impartial perspectives. Those who have no political views would be useless, as they are generally just dumb by the time they get to their mid 20s if none have yet developed, and those who are keen enough to teach the subject would also have developed strong political views that would be difficult to hide during lessons. I still wonder how a friend of mine's father - who is a professor of politics at Leeds - manages.
Anyway, I sort of derailed from the initial intention of my post, but let's face it, that happens in most posts, and I still managed to put across my point, I feel. Back to my simmering in a half-slumberous position in this spinny computer chair, to those of you that have read my early posts.
It could just be that it's taking a while for the feeling to settle in; I certainly have to keep pinching myself to remind myself that yes, I am actually free of my shackles, binding me to the feeling that I have to keep grinding, trying to pull these GCSE results out of the bag. I've always been sure that I had the potential, I just wasn't too sure about the willpower. But now I'm quietly confident of decent enough results to continue my Oxbridge aspirations.
Anyway, let's move off the ego-trip. As I now have GLORIOUS freedom, I will be blogging a lot more. Thus I need stuff to blog about. I feel that this can be partially sated by keeping a closer eye on the news, but I would like people to suggest interesting topics for me to cast my ire upon. Or praise, it depends what it is. But probably ire. As you may have guessed, I don't praise much.
I would write briefly about the budget which has just been released, but in all honesty, right now I neither know enough already or can be bothered to do enough research to write a suitable piece on it. So there is one planned, but how close to fruition it is, or indeed whether or not it will actually come into existence is unsure. In the meantime, those of you who are desperate to hear more of my political omniscience, I want to write a small summary of my views on extreme right politics.
Whilst in years gone long by, extreme right politics were the norm, as in the poor continued to be poor, the rich continued to be rich, and anyone different was burned at the stake, but nowadays, thankfully they are something of a minority belief. We haven't really had a bad case of extreme racial prejudice since the demise of the original Nazis in 1945, although we have had other smaller cases, for instance apartheid, the National Front (who, I might add, might have considered rhymes before choosing their name to protect against misnomers) against immigrants in the UK, and America against all who don't follow their 'Christian' conservative values.
However, extreme right wing parties are certainly getting a lot more mainstream press coverage, enough so that a UKIP candidate stood at my school's mock election (although fortunately he only got 3% of the votes), and that the EDL are planning to make a series of demonstrations across the UK that are well-publicised enough for counter-demonstrations to have to be planned. If there was one in York, I'd be going, but hopefully the whole thing will have been crushed to nothing by the time they get to such low population cities.
Let me get this straight, if I haven't already; extreme right political believers are scum. They should not be persecuted based on it, otherwise one becomes as bad as them, but rather exposed to their flaws and absolutely demonised. A great number of them are ill-educated, and thus their malleable minds will instantly jump to anyone who offers a scapegoat to their problems that are often their own fault. Case in point: Germany in 1933 had extreme economic problems, so the public voted the Nazi party in. As this was such an extreme time, even those who would normally have more political nonce felt obliged to vote Nazi based on the 'common enemy' principal.
Along similar lines, this is why I feel that better political education should be enforced in schools. Starting in year 6, or the last year of primary school, children would be taught about politics about once a week, which could replace some of the less useful lessons about. Although it is argued that this education already exists through citizenship lessons, having experienced 3 years of those myself, I can say they're frankly inadequate in terms of politics, albeit quite effective in scaring year 7 kids off sex and alcohol for a year or two.
However, it could be very difficult to get enough teachers to teach this from truly impartial perspectives. Those who have no political views would be useless, as they are generally just dumb by the time they get to their mid 20s if none have yet developed, and those who are keen enough to teach the subject would also have developed strong political views that would be difficult to hide during lessons. I still wonder how a friend of mine's father - who is a professor of politics at Leeds - manages.
Anyway, I sort of derailed from the initial intention of my post, but let's face it, that happens in most posts, and I still managed to put across my point, I feel. Back to my simmering in a half-slumberous position in this spinny computer chair, to those of you that have read my early posts.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
