Our web is mainly written in Slovak language, but this article will be written in English. Why? Because this topic is starting to attract interest of more and more people. Social justice warriors and multicultural agitation can be seen not only in politics, but in the metal music scene as well.
On 13/01/2019 Arena Wien hosted a show of Behemoth, Wolves in the Throne Room and At the Gates. My friend, who has been living in Austria for some years now, decided to go to the show with his wife – actually, they just wanted to see one of the bands (and it was not Behemoth, but it’s not point). Metalheads like to wear patches and symbols of bands, countries or various things they like. And my friend had a usual vest, featuring plenty of patches of a number of bands and one more! A patch of Slovakia – the country he was born in and the country of the language he speaks. At the entrance into the club/arena a security guy just took some black tape and covered his national flag with it. With no explanation… My friend asked ‘Warum?’ (Why?) and the answer was just ‘Sicherheit’ (Security). When my friend just looked at him with a surprised face, he said ‘Next’. This is just one of the stories of things that happen on shows in Western Europe.
The question is: ‘What does have a Slovak national flag to do with a safety of a show?’ and, more important, ‘Do black metallers need some safe space at the show?’ Draw your own conclusions. My statement is a big FUCK OFF to social political correctness.
First, I recognize censorship as a stupidity and ban of any symbol is complete nonsense to me, so I can basically see the whole procedure when the security guys are checking visitors if their badges or patches are allowed or not as a totally ridiculous show. Political correctness is a shit.
I would be pissed of as well as you, but I think that this incident has nothing to do with Slovakia itself, nothing personal against you or your country. Maybe the organizer of this event was scared as shit and he wanted to avoid problems, maybe he thought that you can be target of someone’s anger because of your flag and he don’t wanted to have club full of metalheads fighting themselves or so on. But this is no excuse, this approach is wrong in any case.
Or.. you just had a bad luck and you only met a stupid security guy, a total moron, who has been told to tape over any suspicious symbol and he did not recognized it as a flag of adjacent european country, but flag of Russian Liberation Army or something like that.. this would be even more ridiculous.