David Ingram (Benediction, Bolt Thrower) has tantrum over defense of free speech

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Popular music is a hard gig. To maximize your chances, you quit doing everything else and it becomes your only option in life. Then if that turns out poorly, you have the choice of being a 40-year-old shelf stocker at the local grocery, or swallowing your pride and becoming a cheesy third-ring entertainment figure. For this reason, musicians — especially those who first bands did not make the final cut of election to “favorite” of the public — tend to pander, flatter and provoke the public whenever they can. The resulting drama is the only thing standing between them and putting those cans on the shelves.

And yet, drama finds us all. It started on Twitter. Drama often starts on Twitter:

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To clarify what is happening here: some armchair white knight decides that because some guy out there does not like homosexuals, there must be a social activity consisting of people gathering to hate on this guy. As usual, I point out the reality-based analysis which is that his opinion does not concern us; let him do his thing, and you do yours, and stop being a busybody nanny state jackbooted interloper simply because your life is boring and your society is failing and you want a scapegoat for all your problems. Grow up, in other words.

That set off a chain of nasty replies. According to David Ingram (Benediction, Bolt Thrower): if you defend free speech, you are on the side of “hate” and you are a very, very bad person. To him, defending the right of people to coexist is the same as endorsing the most extreme of their opinions, even though I never said anything in support of what the guy said, only his right to say it and the maturity of letting him enjoy that freedom over there without our action against him. Free speech works when the other guy says what he wants, and you say what you want, and you do not directly intervene in one another. Boycotts and mob attacks change that, even if non-violent, and we all suffer as a result.

Not wanting to let a good dialogue drop, I took it up with Ingram when one of his promotional spams hit our inbox:

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Again we see the formula: defend free speech and you are a Nazi.

Join the angry mob and you are “good.”

Interesting to see Mr. Ingram cave to this. I suspect he is just doing it to try to keep his (flagging) career alive, and I have sympathy for that. But one can never truly have sympathy for those who use bad logic and are motivated more by hatred (of anyone who disagrees with them) than a desire to do right.

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