Musician Jeff Hanneman, recently-deceased guitarist and lyricist for the heavy metal band Slayer, wrote a song called Angel of Death about the Nazi monster Josef Mengele. The song, the first track on the album Reign in Blood (1986), was controversial from the outset, and drew heaps of criticism from people who thought he was glorifying Mengele. Hanneman, in true metal fashion, stood his ground, noting:
I know why people misinterpret it. It’s because they get this knee-jerk reaction to it. … There’s nothing I put in the lyrics that says necessarily [Mengele] was a bad man, because to me – well, isn’t that obvious? I shouldn’t have to tell you that.
I know the song, I like the song. So do millions of other heavy metal fans around the world. Reign In Blood, produced by the legendary Rick Rubin, is widely considered one of the greatest heavy metal albums of all time, and has been massively influential since its release 30+ years ago.
Does penning the song make Hanneman a Nazi? Does being a fan of the song make one a Nazi sympathizer, or imply racist or white supremacist leanings? Does producing the song make Rick Rubin, a Jewish white man who founded the Def Jam Records label and is an iconic figure in the hip hop/rap pantheon, a Nazi sympathizer?
To assume so is to be a fool. Or worse – it suggests a lazy, callous propensity to assume the worst about people one has never met and knows nothing about. It should be obvious that the average person today finds Nazism and white supremacy abhorrent. Unfortunately, in this polarized and hyperventilating time, where calling others terrible names at the drop of a hat, this seems not to be the case.
I was reminded of Hanneman’s plain-spoken truth this week as the political firestorm over the Charlottesville Nazi rally, the Antifa counter-rally, Trump’s all-over-the-map responses, and the sudden rush to purge the nation of every memorial that could even tangentially be connect to racism grew into a conflagration. Yes, neo-Nazis and white supremacists are loathsome people. Yes, the Third Reich and the National Socialist Party pursued an ideology of hate and destruction that resulted in tens of millions dead. We all know this, don’t we? Does someone actually have to say “Nazis suck” for others not to assume he’s a racist, separatist, supremacist fiend?
Or is the outrage akin to that which Hanneman refers – a knee-jerk reaction, perhaps tendentious and synthetic? Is the escalation of this story to deafening levels rooted at least in part in opportunism? Is the Charlottesville incident one that the Left has been hoping for, i.e. an opportunity to bleat “racism!” at everyone who’s not 100% on board with their own totalitarian agenda?
Consider this: how much concern did any of us have of the rise of Nazism in America prior to this pathetic march that turned into tragedy because of one particular asshole murderer? Was it even on anyone’s radar? Sure, there has been a running narrative that America suddenly turned racist, despite electing a black president twice, in order to install a New York City Democrat-turned-sorta-kinda-Republican into the White House. If you find that narrative credible, you really need to get out of your echo chamber. Yes, there certainly are racists in America, but racism and Nazism are not equivalents, and this “Unite the Right” rally, touted as the largest gathering of white supremacists in the nation in years, drew mere hundreds of attendees. Not exactly the 1963 Civil Rights March, the 1993 LGBT march, or the 1995 Million Man March, each of which drew hundreds of thousands. Should we really worry about nascent Nazism in America, based on this one event that, were it not for the violent clashes with (more numerous) counter-protestors and the tragedy of one young woman’s death, would have been less than a footnote in history?
Unfortunately, a young woman was killed, and a number of people were injured. Fortunately, the piece of shit who rammed his car into the crowd has been arrested and will be prosecuted, but the damage is done. This damage has been used to accelerate an assault on history.
The recent movement to purge the Confederate Battle Flag from not just public grounds, but from the entirety of the nation, has morphed into an exponentially expanding movement to remove statues and memorials of the Confederacy. And, with incredible swiftness, we’ve hit the slippery slope that Trump warned (and was mocked) about:
George Washington was a slave owner. And we need to call slave owners out for what they are, whether we think they were protecting American freedom or not. He wasn’t protecting my freedom. I wasn’t someone who, my ancestors weren’t deemed human beings to him. And so, to me, I don’t care if it’s a George Washington statue or Thomas Jefferson statue or a Robert E. Lee statue, they all need to come down. — CNN political commentator Angela Rye
With the president of the United States basically justifying neo-Nazism, it seems unthinkable that we will ever see a day when there is a serious push to blow up Rushmore and other monuments like it. But if that moment ever arrives, I suspect I’d be onboard. – VICE contributor Wilbert L. Cooper
A stark embodiment of the white supremacy that Roosevelt himself espoused and promoted. The statue is seen as an affront to all who pass it on entering the museum, but especially to African and Native Americans. – Activist statement regarding the removal of Theodore Roosevelt’s statue from the American Museum of Natural History
A growing number of communities are changing “Columbus Day” to “Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” and at least one statue of Christopher Columbus has already been taken down.
A Boston community organizer wants iconic Faneuil Hall renamed because it memorializes “a man who engaged in the sale of human flesh.”
There’s a mad rush, a sprint, really, to expand the list of what should be removed and renamed. What seemed like foolishness a couple years ago (a Change.org petition to take down the Washington Monument got a mere couple hundred signatures, some of them mocking) is now rapidly becoming a point of actual debate. Today, normal-thinking people assert that there’s a stark difference between statues of Confederacy heroes and memorials to American icons such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Tomorrow, normal-thinking people will succumb to the threat of being called “racist” for not vocally denouncing the slave owner and the race-separatist, and admit that there may be good reason for de-memorializing them.
Unfortunately, we are in a time where, if you don’t say the words that the shrieking scolds demand you say (and, at times, even if you do) you are presumed a racist. How many people will stand up to the likes of Angela Rye, Wilbert Cooper, and all the others who are rushing to be among the first to call for removing the names Jefferson, Washington, et al, from public memorialization due to their slave-owning history? How many will, instead, find themselves saying “well, they’ve got a point,” and later saying “I was against it before I was for it?” How many will allow themselves to be bullied into voicing concurrence, lest they be declared “racist.”
Does this sound excessive? Does this sound like a slippery-slope argument? The litany of voices (mostly, but not entirely on the Left) saying “relax, one will not lead to the other” is long. I suspect many of them are saying this simply to gainsay Trump. Others are saying it to calm those who are jittery in their guts about the removal of Confederate statues – polls show a majority of Americans oppose their removal – and coax them over to the “remove” side. That litany has the stink of “doth protest too much” about it. It is irrefutable that, with absolutely astonishing speed, calls for the de-memorializing of prominent figures of the Revolution and the founding of the nation have materialized.
Normal-thinking people should grasp that memorializing Washington for his contributions to America doesn’t mean he was a saint, or absolve him of failings. But, normal-thinking people should also understand that a handful of Nazis rallying does not mean the nation is secretly populated by millions of them, and that it’s not necessary that their neighbors explicitly disavow Nazism to avoid the presumption that they secretly support it. As Jeff Hanneman observed, that should go without saying.
Can we manage to look upon a statue of Robert E. Lee without presuming that the people who don’t want it torn down are racists and traitors secretly itching for the South to rise in rebellion? Normal-thinking people should expect so. But, these are far from normal times. There is a mass hysteria unfolding before our eyes, with Salem-witch-hunt-esque accusations of racism and Nazism flying in countless directions, and mobs armoring themselves in faux righteousness in order to tear statues down. Whether it’s a bubble, as Scott Adams suggests, or it’s a tell-tale of a seismic shift in America remains to be seen.
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