The Inquisition/White Supremacy Controversy Continues
Last week, MetalSucks Senior Edior Anso DF filled you in an ongoing controversy involving accusations that black metal band Inquisition are Nazi sympathizers. I’m not going to repeat all the details, but you can play catch-up by reading Anso’s excellent piece, which also expressed disappointment in the “weak denial” offered by Inquisition’s Jason “Dagon” Weirbach via an interview with Decibel.
The truth, many of us would like for the accusations to be false because Inquisition are an excellent band, and no one wants to believe that an excellent band is being brought to life by a couple of bigoted fuckheads. But the evidence against Weirbach and his bandmate, drummer Thomas “Incubus” Stevens, seems to be getting more damning by the minute.
First, there are some disturbing photos left in the comments section beneath the original Decibel interview. These include a picture of Inquisition standing in front of a flag with a swastika on it (although, for reasons unknown, someone seems to have Photoshopped boobs over part of that swastika)…
…while another reader in that same comments thread has supplied screen caps (below) from the message boards of Full Moon Productions, in which a user calling himself 88MM makes some extremely racist comments. That user is said to be Weirbach, who has a side project called 88MM. Although we cannot currently verify this accusation, whomever 88MM is/was, he did frequently post about Inquisition on those same message boards, as evidenced by the second screen cap below, provided for us by an anonymous reader (click to enlarge).
But even if the above message board user wasn’t Dagon, he’d still have some serious explaining to do — because 88MM appeared on a 2006 comp entitled Declaration Of Anti-Semetic Terror, which was put out by the white supremacy record label Satanic Skinhead. The title of the 88MM track which appeared on that comp? “14 Showerheads, 1 Gas Tight Door.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq7419pjaLI
This is obviously a reference to the Holocaust, but it also seems to be an allusion to the “fourteen words” from Adolf Hitler‘s Mein Kampf that have taken on special significance in the current white supremacy movement:
“What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the creator of the universe. Every thought and every idea, every doctrine and all knowledge, must serve this purpose. And everything must be examined from this point of view and used or rejected according to its utility.”
In fact, the very number 88 is apparently sometimes used by neo-Nazis as shorthand for “Heil Hitler,” because “H” is the eighth letter in the alphabet.
And the controversy continues today with a new Decibel interview, this time with Daniel Gallant, the reformed skinhead-turned-activist who initially made the allegations against Inquisition. Regarding the Decibel discussion with Dagon, Gallant himself points out how problematic some of Weirbach’s responses were:
“What I see in the interview is that Jason contradicts himself in several places and in his explanation of 88mm he sidesteps his lyrics and the split album he did with Deathkey and Antichrist Kramer. On the discography for Deathkey are album names like ‘Hammer Of Aryan Terror’ and ‘Doctrine of Intolerant Hatred.’”
So, yes. It is possible that this is all just a big misunderstanding, and/or a series of unfortunate coincidences.
But like I said: the evidence is fairly damning.
Discuss in the comments section below.