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Originally Posted by Glice
I don't necessarily want to refer to 'obscure' groups either - there are some huge figures in music with black marks against their names - Elton John is clearly a prick, Bowie's flirtation with the Nazis, Nico's rabid racism, various well-known anti-semites, the widespread homophobia of hip-hop and especially dancehall, perhaps even slightly less black-and-white political issues such as Zorn's Zionism. Not that Zionism is per se a bad thing, of course, but it is a politically contentious issue.
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I will get back on this because I haven't got the time to articulate myself properly and I'm still recovering from one of those heavy weekends, but for now I'll say that this is an interesting thread for many reasons. The whole debate about politics in music seems like it's generally swept under the carpet like a particularly nasty can of worms, because so many other factors go into it other than the music itself, and the fact that many of the dubious political leanings of those musicians who feel like they want to throw them in for shocking effect or for more serious reasons, can be put to bed with less words than you're reading on this post or on a whole book about it. The Nazi sympathies in Black Metal, to name one whole genre that engages itself in such activity, I generally see more as the need to shock attached to the actual desire for grotesque suffering that the music itself expresses, often with comedic results.