-Caveat Lector- The music of Marilyn Manson's third album, Anti-Christ Superstar (Interscope Records) is everything it sets out to be: driving, demonic, rife with church choruses turned to anti-social use. It is a compelling set of anthems for the malevolence within us, for the urge within all of us to revel in destruction. Music is a matter of attitude. Few people study the details of the lyrics. It's the emotional thrust that counts. But one generation's attitude is another's call for action. When Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath started their musical career over 25 years ago, their use of Satanic imagery was a commercial gimmick. Listeners were overwhelmed by ickiness of The Carpenters, Sonny & Cher, and Debby Boone. What better way to grab attention than to offer a refuge and a release? Ozzy Osbourne told me once, "I used to work in a slaughterhouse, and everyone felt that the job was just fine. Which did more harm, my killing a hundred cows a day while they rolled their eyes and literally made me cry, or biting the head off of one bat?" When he made that statement, Ozzy never imagined that the stage props he'd used and the attitude he'd projected would inspire mid-'90s Norwegian Viking Rockers to glory in the murder of innocents, and to call those who refused to join the killing disgusting cowards, people too weak to deserve life. Words can kill. And the names taken by the members of Marilyn Manson's group are the names of killers. Mass killers. How long will it be before the attitude carried in these names is transformed like Ozzy's comparatively innocent deeds to what Marilyn Manson so dearly wants, the "mission" of a "powerful coalition?" In a free society, the antidote to poisonous words, poisonous attitudes, is not censorship but debate. The antidote to words is even more powerful words. Take the message of Marilyn Manson seriously. The potential for evil, the potential to exult in violence, is within all of us. Thank him for reminding us. And thank him for reminding us that this form of "joyous freedom" leads to apocalypse. It did so in the First World War, when men and women still felt that bloodshed was necessary to purify and reinvigorate what the philosophers of the time and what Marilyn Manson today calls decaying individuals in a decaying world. Instead of reinvigoration, roughly ten million experienced death, while even more lived through an earthly re-creation of hell. The truths in much of Manson's message are the very reasons we should be arguing against his call toward the "beauty" of Armageddon. Marilyn Manson is right when he declaims, "Anti-Christ Superstar...is...me and every other person in America. ...You are what you should fear." But our job is to do what Manson asks and see the evil within us. Then to fight it with all our might. ---------- Howard Bloom (founder: International Paleopsychology Project; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, European Sociobiological Society; board member: Epic of Evolution Society), executive editor-- New Paradigm book series DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
