Noisey pointed out this sad fact a month ago: nearly every major online retailer is selling racist-themed music! You can find any kind of hateful, white power music, even National Socialist black metal (so totally out-of-the-closet Nazis) on iTunes or elsewhere I guess. The problem is that there is so much stuff out there that there is no way some company can judge all the albums, plus there is always the delicate and weird idea of censorship,… and who wants to be accused of being a censor? One of the bands named in the article was Skrewdriver, ‘the proud poster boys for the racial-hate movement in the UK’ as their bio reads, a band which can’t be more direct in his racial hate with a strangely anachronistic Southern blues rock sound! They preach the Aryan beliefs of the Nazis, making you wonder how these guys can get away with such racism,… but apparently this is over for them!
According to Rolling Stone magazine, Apple has decided to remove all music with racial supremacy-themed messages from iTunes, after the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) investigation had found that at least 54 white power rock bands were offered on the famous music service.
‘Apple is doing the right thing by preventing iTunes from being used as a recruitment tool for white supremacists,’ said Heidi Beirich, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project. ‘Amazon and other online retailers that continue to sell this music need to realize that they are providing a powerful platform for extremists to reach young people with messages that advocate hate and violence against African Americans, Jews and others.’
So far, Apple has removed 30 bands, and it is unclear whether they will continue to remove some other bands. Amazon has not reacted… yet and what about Spotify or Youtube? They have Skrewdriver for sure!
As much as I would like to see these people disappear, this is a dangerous slope, I hate any form of censorship, and how are they gonna decide when a song is racist or promote hatred in general? When do you know that the artist is serious or just a satirist and when did Apple become the authority to decide this? There are some rap lyrics that are pretty offensive, misogynistic or homophobic,shouldn’t they be subjects for censorship too? Eminem or Odd Future’s ones promote rape and murder at each line and honestly, anything that Tyler has written is much more offensive than a few lines of some Skrewdriver’s songs! I know, I know, Eminem and Tyler are just kidding while Skrewdriver is the real white power deal, but are people always smart enough to tell the difference?
