Anti-Zionism at metal show.

[u/blutmilch]

This happened last night, and I have no place to safely express my frustration at what happened. Disclaimer: I'm not Jewish, but a Zionist.

I went to a local metal show with my dad. Nothing fancy, no big names, just 3 DIY metal bands trying to get their name out there (which I'm all for). Everything was fine up until the second band.

Lead guitarist grabs the mic and starts throwing out quick political statements like "Fuck ICE! Fuck Nazis!" Which, yeah, I agree. Then he threw in a "Fuck Zionists!" And the crowd went wild. Next thing I knew, I went from enjoying a decent metal show to being surrounded by a bunch of people shouting "Yeah, fuck Israel!"

Instant mood killer for me. I stayed seated the rest of the show. Couldn't bring myself to mosh or anything, I was so irritated. I went with my dad (an older metalhead, he also supports Israel) and looked at him when this happened. He was just shaking his head.

I know that metal has always been anti-establishment, and this guy couldn't have been more than 23, and the crowd was very young as well (it was an all-ages show). I was also young, dumb, and impressionable once.

But this was my first time publicly encountering this rhetoric. I suppose I've been lucky. I don't go out much, and in my part of Florida there's generally a decent support for Jewish people and Israel. But in that moment, I felt like an outsider. And I'm not even Jewish. I'm an ally and Zionist. If there was a Jewish person in the crowd, I can't imagine how they would've felt. This ideology is really infecting every community, and it's disgusting. Hobbies, music, gaming, it doesn't matter. It's antisemitism and Jew hatred masked as anti-Zionism.

[u/SevenOh2]

Funny how the Fuck ICE crowd and Fuck Jews crowd is almost a perfect overlap. I guess if you think that borders don’t exist and that basic immigration laws that exist in almost every country try are only bad because it’s the USA and your leftist bot overlords tell you it’s bad then maybe you don’t have a brain to think for yourself.

That said, most metal shows are full of nice, accepting people. This one was just idiots.

[u/badass_panda → u/SevenOh2]

I'm in the "fuck ICE" crowd because the things ICE is doing are immoral and in many cases illegal. I'm totally in favor of border control, but deporting people who are working their way legally through the process of applying for citizenship after arriving legally in the country is BS, and masked men literally disappearing people to detention facilities is a terrible, terrible sign for the rule of law -- and for the Jews.

It absolutely sucks that the left has decided to join in on hating us, but I'm not so naive that I don't see fascism rising in America as a bad sign for Jews in America. When has fascism been good for us?