Teen Gothic

I remember Andrew Clinco of Drab Majesty came under fire for posting a racially insensitive tweet. There was a statement after “The tweet was myopic, unsympathetic, steeped in cultural prejudice, and it represented myself as both a racist and a bigot” He continues “I see now that it emanated from a position of white privilege, something that I promise to recognize moving forward. It was a careless and selfish attempt at humor without considering my audience and the current state of the world, and I see how this tweet contributes to a frightening climate of increasing harassment against Asians and people of color, making a space for discourse less safe.”

Recognising that is all well and good, however Andrew Clinco also has a music project called VR Sex of which Aaron Montaigne (Antioch Arrow) is a member. Montaigne is an ex soldier and has a tattoo of the Black Sun (a symbol used by the SS) on his lower leg. I also saw a video of him wearing a ring with the symbol on it.

If I remember correctly in the same video he mentioned being proud to have fought in combat and mentioning “the fucked up democracy we live in.”

As ironic as it seems, Cryptofascism is prevalent in areas of the Hardcore scene and this sadly extends to Goth and Industrial. What I find really creepy is the song Surrender. It appears to be from the point of view of someone in a club who sees someone there as being pretentious and stupid, noting that they “dress like Jimi Hendrix”

Plenty of racists deny their racism, especially when they’ve been called out for it in public. They’ll say anything to slip back under the radar.

You can easily disguise your sick beliefs in lyrics. These can be clues to others who believe the same “if you know you know”

It’s deeply disturbing because I love Drab Majesty’s music. It’s always sounded like some of the freshest music in the scene. So what’s going on with Drab Majesty?

I think that a lot of people truly downplay the impact of racism in the goth scene.

It's definitely there. If it's not evident by the fact that a lot of non-white people come into our subreddit and post questions like "is goth for white people only?" or "can I go to a goth event if I'm not white?", then I don't understand how much clearer I can make it for you.

Perhaps it's never even crossed your mind if you're a white person in the scene because it's just not something that you've ever had to consider.

As a POC goth myself, I've experienced some racism from the online community– after a few of my Instagram posts gained some traction, I received a comment from an individual stating "White people thing only, stop embarrassing yourself" in reference to the clothes and makeup that I was wearing. He then proceeded to call me a "dirty filthy black".

Not long before this, I stumbled on a comment about the goth subculture that stated "Maybe white people are so gatekeepy about the goth term because they have no ethnic culture". Time and time again, I've encountered plenty of people who either believe that goth is only for white people, forget that black people can also be goths, or legitimately ignore and exclude them altogether.

And can you blame them when a majority of our "goth icons" are pretty much all white? When you can listen to a popular goth song and hear a white man say the n-word? I mean, sure, you can talk about this idea that goth is supposed to be controversial, but I don't think that the point of "controversy" and "satire" are supposed to be about punching down. You're supposed to say "screw the man", not join the man in the same exact oppressive behavior.

If we want to encourage more POC to join this scene and we want them to stop asking questions about whether goth is race-related, maybe we should make more of an effort to make it blatantly obvious that POC are welcome and racists are actively shunned.