We’ve already seen the attack on Heavy Metal by Social Justice Warriors known as #MetalGate. Now they are going after a sub-genre known as Folk Metal, which originated in Northern Europe and emphasized the mythic past and the folkways and folk tails of their own people.
“A new study from Leeds Beckett University has revealed how the metal music subgenre of folk metal is not only a fantasy space for young, white European men but also an important example of how heavy metal can be seen to normalise masculinity and ‘whiteness’ and perpetuate sexism and racism.”
First of all, masculinity is normal for men. It is only abnormal when you consider much of Northern Europe’s attempt to illegitimate maleness and treat boys as imperfect little girls with dangly bits. As for “Whiteness”… um, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, &c. are not only White, but they tend to be the Whitest of Whites; their culture is made up of White people; that’s exactly where their folk tales and myths come from. This does not “perpetuate” sexism and racism… being White and male does not ipso facto mean that talking about that is inherently racist.
“[A]lthough women fans of heavy metal enjoy folk metal with the same kind of passion and intensity as male fans, and there is no doubt they find identity and belonging through the music, the heart of folk metal is predominantly masculine. The warrior myth that folk metal is focused on is normalising this masculine predominance in our modern day world- men still have enormous social, cultural and political power.”
So, both women and men enjoy folk metal (and there are plenty of Heavy Metal bands with female members), yet it is inherently male? Have the authors stopped to consider that most women, being heterosexual, like masculine men? In a society that increasingly denigrates men and turns them into beta males, women flock to the real men, while boys eschew a society that rejects their very biological being in favor of one that celebrates it. What other choice then is there that celebrates maleness? It’s either Folk Metal, which does respect women, or the child-rape happy Jihadists.
“The bands in the research are all trying to identify with some reputed folk culture that existed before modern times – a culture of pure white people, mono-cultural and mono-racial. In some bands, there is an explicitly racist purpose for their adoption of Thor’s hammers, Viking imagery and heroic pagan myths. While I do not think that the folk metal bands focused on in this research are explicitly racist, they are certainly romantic, conservative nationalists who sell the idea and myth of racial purity. They reduce complex ideas of roots, identity and belonging to simple, imagined and imaginary communities defined by race and nation.”
Society works and teaches through myth. Every culture does it, and it is insane to say that it is wrong when some do it but not others based simply on the color of their skin. If that is your culture, you should have no shame in celebrating and singing about it.
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