Hey everybody,
I love Afsky’s music but read some confusing stuff about Afsky. I know they played in Israel when the war started. Afsky seems like a nice fellow (saw him at an Afsky show back in the day) but at least Reddit’s RABM conversation seems to be a bit conflicted. I don’t have social media so I wouldn’t know if they’ve taken a stance in this matter. Would anyone care to enlighten me?
And if I’m totally wrong and my post is based on false info, please correct me. I’m not here to start a fight. I just care for Palestine so much.
FWIW, I know even less about the band and their politics than you seem to. On a quick search I found this (Reddit repost of a) facebook post from the guy in Afsky.
It’s a really longwinded screed that reads to me like he didn’t at all see a problem with playing a gig in Israel, but being kicked off an antifascist show for the same reason apparently is an issue. So, that sounds very uninformed, or willingly blinkered, but the whole wall of text gives me a distinct “guys, this is really complicated actually, let me show you by complicating it” vibe.
When somebody feels a need to wade through “what is fascism really? couldn’t we argue that being antifascist is really really intolerant and therefore actually fascist?” (paraphrasing), I think they’ve used up any benefit of doubt they may have accumulated.
Yeah. I get that he’s propably gotten a lot of shit and sometimes the discourse gets a bit too black and white, but then again, people boycott Israel because of it’s invasion of Palestinian land. The text he’s written seems like it’s missing a lot of context about the Israel-Palestine situation - but then again, he’s a black metal musician, not a historian (no, you don’t have to be a historian to understand the conflict, but what I’m trying to say is that not everyone is as informed even in an important issue as this is) so I try not to judge. I’m also conflicted by asking these kind of questions because I would not like to spread a false word about anyone.
Again, I lack a lot of context here. I’m not actively following the RABM scene (much less black metal scene as a whole) beyond using this community and the “sketch band” list that’s doing the rounds as sanity filters. I’m well over bands turning out to be bigoted dipshits at this point.
I guess if I’d been invested in Afsky since he put out his LGBT+ band stickers, I’d have another impression that I might want to preserve. My sense is, like you say, he’s a BM musician — the RABM part seems more peripheral to his actual music and lyrics, and might just be the subscene that picked up on his signaling?
But I don’t know, seeing that attempt at rhetorical sleight of hand doesn’t make me keen on checking out his music.