Political statement from Summoning
Due to some Nazi propaganda videos which i found on YouTube using Summoning music I decided to finally write down all the facts I know, showing why metal music and rock music in general don't suit Nazi, fascist or racist ideologies.
Actually, Summoning was never accused of being connected to this scene, and so there is no need to defend us or excuse anything. The reason I write is that I think it's a pity the scene is tending more and more in this direction, and therefore working to its own extinction. Also, I think there is a lack of information coming from the non-national socialist side, information which needs to be said as no one else does it. At the beginning I never wanted to associate Summoning with any kind of political topics as our music is not connected to reality at all, but as national socialism-supporting bands are constantly spreading their political thoughts, I think the time has come to finally stand up and show people that Nazism is not the only ideology of the current metal scene.
Here you can read all the facts and thoughts I gathered in the last 15 years, showing why national socialism, fascism or racism is in contradiction to any kind of sub culture.
- Metal music has historically been heavily influenced by black music. First there was blues music done mainly by black people, then rock developed from blues, and finally metal developed from rock music. Metal has no roots in any of the old Germanic tribes at all. Any metal fan thinking that his music is an Aryan one is simply wrong, and singing German does not make this music traditional white music. Nazis in the third reich called music like blues (as well as jazz) "nigger music" and therefore would also not have liked metal music either.
- Apart from the black blues influences of metal music there are lots of other non-Aryan influences in metal. The bass drum used in metal music derived from the bass drum used in jazz, which is originally the Turkish bass drum "davul". Cymbals of any kind have Chinese roots, also with Turkish influences. The same goes for tom toms.
- Metal is not the only music that has non-Aryan roots - the same goes for classical European music:
- The oboe derived from the Arabic "mizmar" (or "zurna" in turkish), which later became a shalm and finally the oboe as we know it.
- The lute is nothing other than the Arabic "oud". Not even the shape has changed.
- The guitar is Spanish as well as Mauritanian (that's probably why "Varg Vikernes" once called them "nigger instruments" and therefore stopped playing guitars in "Burzum").
- The violin derived from the Persian instrument "rebab". It is well known that Persians are "Aryans" as well, but anyway they don't belong to the old Germanic tribes.
- The complete percussion section in European orchestra music comes from the Turkish military music of the Ottoman empire called "Janissary" music.
- All of these modern Nazis who use the 'fracture letters' because they think they are Nazi-styled should know that those letters where forbidden in 1941 by the NSDAP regime because they found out that they have centuries-old Jewish roots – the font was called "schwabacher judenlettern".
- Slavonic people where not considered Aryan by Hitler, and all of these Polish NSBM bands who think he was just wrong and that Nazis love the Polish people shall check the lyrics of a well known German Nazi rock band Landser, called "Polakentango". Polish people are pure scum for real German Nazis. If you are from Poland and need to be proud about something, rather be proud of great artists like Stanislaw Lem, Zdzislaw Beksinski, or even Marian Rejewski :-), than support Nazi propaganda.
- All those Varg Vikernes-admirers thinking that a nation can only survive if it is clean and pure should take a short look at the Ottoman empire that was an extremely multi-cultural nation and lasted 624 years - that's 52 times longer than The Third Reich :-). I know that the Ottoman empire behaved awfully to other countries and I did not mean to offend any person in those countries (because I realised how sensitive Nazis are concerning that). I do not mention the Ottoman empire because i adore it - actually they did nothing else than Hitler wanted to: try to conquer the world. I mention it to show that different ethnic groups don't need to fight with each other. For example in Austria you just need to take a look in the telephone book and read the different names there, you will see that 30% of all names are Slavonic ones, because during the centuries and decades people in Austria got mixed together a lot, and there was never a problem about it. No one will ever notice a difference between people with such names and people with pure German names. Those people look, speak and feel like pure Austrians (some of them even are against foreigners despite their non-Austrian names).
- If you think you are an individualist or rebel because you like fascism then you are wrong. There is no space for individualism in fascist regimes. In fascism conformity and obedience are the most important value. This goes for Nazi Germany as well as the Stalin-Soviet Union. Fascism means extreme conformity and following orders and leaders. You have to be a working component in the huge fascist system - thinking for yourself will disturb this system.
- Nazis leaders don't care about the people of their folk - they care only for symbols like flags, and for their personal advantage. A real Nazi leader did not mind if 1000 Germans died on the battlefield as long as the flag was not get damaged and the leaders could live in luxury. While thousands of people fought in a war, freezing and with hardly anything to eat, Hitler and his friends lived in luxury until the end. Officers at the Stalingrad front-line had champagne each day whereas the normal soldier was freezing with only 2 slices of bread per day.They could have prevented the death of a million German people and the destruction of thousands of German houses by stopping a war that was already obviously lost 2 years before its official end. But they did not because the end of the war would have meant the end of the peaceful and luxurious life they had each day.This doe not mean that i think positively about the huge English and American bombings of Austrian and German cities; they where also a crime in the Nazi style, but I want to say that the Nazis could have prevented that if they hadn't been such cowards.
- I often experience that people think if they are against Stalin then they have to love Hitler. Two wrongs don't make a right, and an idiot fighting against another idiot does not turn either idiot into a wise man. Stalin was fascist like Hitler. If you don't like Stalin then it is absurd to like Hitler.
- Another problem I notice often is that people can not decide between fascism, racism and nationalism. Those are three different things that don't necessarily have to be connected. Fascism means the maximum of conformity and control of its people, racism means a simplified way to understand people personality by just considering their race, and nationalism means to be free from other national influences. You can be a non-racist nationalist for example. Gandhi was something like that - he wanted to keep India free from English reign but was surely not a racist. On the other hand the Nazis were not strict nationalists. They still supported colonies for Germany, they always wanted to increase their German "master race" and take space from other countries for that etc. To be true nationalists they should have cared about their historically ground, their historically culture and not mess around in countries they didn't belong to.
- I prefer to be proud about things i did or am responsible for, but I never ever could feel pride for things I could not even decide upon. I can be proud about my music for example, but never that I was born in Austria. I am of course happy to live in a country like Austria instead of a poor country, but I am definitely not proud about that. It seems for me that Nazis have nothing else to be proud of than the coincidence that they were born in their father-land. Even if you are proud of your country, that doesn't naturally mean you're a Nazi. But if national pride is your most important pride, and probably the only pride you have, then it starts getting a bit weird.
If you feel like part of your country, and see the positive things your country did as a personal act of yours because of your derivation, then you also have to accept the consequences and be ashamed of all the bad things your country did. That's why I never ever felt ashamed about anything that Hitler did, what happened to the Jews etc. I am not responsible for that.
- I know a lot of Summoning fans and have friends from and contacts to people of different nationalities. I personally know and like people who are Arabic, Jewish, Chinese, Russian, people from Latin America, blacks etc. and I never could see any difference between me and them. For me the personality counts and not the ethnicity, and i prefer an Arabic or Israeli music fan 100 times more to an Austrian with total different interests. I choose friends because of their personality, not because of their ethnicity.
- If you like the old Germanic tribes, their traditions and their runes etc., that's fine. The ancient culture of your own nation is probably the most obvious one to deal with if you are interested in ancient cultures; I also have a Germanic drinking-horn hanging on my wall btw. But it is a huge mistake to think that you can accent those likings by supporting the Nazi regime. Apart from some runes on some uniforms they did not bring back any Germanic symbols or traditions. On the contrary they even supported the greatest historical enemies of the Germanic tribes, the ancient Roman empires. Here's some info proving this statement: Hitler decided to name his new empire the "Third Reich" because he considered the so called "Holy Roman Empire Of German Nation" (that lasted from the medieval times till 1806) as the first one, and the "German Empire" (from 1871 to 1918) as the second one. He even kept the Catholic and Protestant Religion as the main religion in Germany and did not really bring back the old gods like Odin etc. During the Third Reich they had a good relation to the Church, and the Pope and other important people from the Church even blessed the weapons of the German army. I am an atheist so I believe neither in Odin, God nor any other kind of higher force. I just wanted to show that Nazis did not care about old historic Germanic traditions very much, and saw the Christianisation of the German tribe as the real rise of the German empire.
- I support total freedom in speech and thought, and even a Nazi should be free to say whatever he thinks. For me forbidding special thoughts or opinions does not fit into a democratic society. Forbidding opinions turns them to taboo, which attracts young metal heads very much. It makes them feel like real rebels to break those taboos. I want that those taboos never even appear. As long as they don't abuse my music for that they can say or do whatever they want. The more they talk openly and freely about those weird ideologies, the faster people will realise all the contradictions ... as long as there are still some opposing people drawing attention to those contradictions.
- Original black metal has no national socialistic elements, so you are not more "true" or whatever if you follow national socialistic tendencies. For example Burzum makes good music which influenced us a lot at the beginning of Summoning, but this was never a reason for us to follow his ideologies because we always preferred to think for ourselves.
- There is nothing wrong if you only love your own culture and don't like other ones; nobody can force anybody to like anything, but what I want to add is that you cannot escape foreign influences even if you listen to pure European music. Of course European culture found its own way during the centuries and now doesn't have much to do with its outside influences, but it cannot be denied that without those influences, it would not exist.
For example Summoning definitely does not sound like blues, nor do we have any other obvious foreign influences, but like any other kind of music derived from metal it would not exist without it. That might be self-evident for some but not for narrow-minded Nazis who want to remove anything they thought is not pure German styled - even if there is the slightest non-German influence in it (like the above mentioned fracture letters). I personally don't like hip hop at all for example, but as it is so easy to turn off a radio or switch off a tv show i have no problems with it. I like being free to decide what I have to do, to like etc. and don't want any dictator deciding for me what i have to do, like etc.
