Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Belarus bans Rammstein

Belarus has banned the March concert of German rock band Rammstein. The band is currently on a sell-out European tour and was scheduled to play in Minsk on 7 March. The nation's Public Morality Council found, however, that the band promoted "homosexualism, masochism and other deviations, cruelty, violence and obscene language" (see here).

The band has never been afraid of controversy. Its songs often pick up on controversial current social themes and treats them with irony and satire. Rammstein's latest album - Liebe ist für Alle Da - includes a song about the Fritzl case, that of an incentuous father gained worldwide attention for imprisoning and raping his daughter who he kept locked up in the cellar of there home in Austria. But the band's sense of irony seems to have been lost on the moral watchdogs in Belarus.

In a delicious irony of its own, The Public Morality Council invokes Belarussian traditions of "anti-Nazism" to further justify its anti-libertarian position against the band and its music. Too bad that its language and thinking is so redolent of Fascism, but all the better for we connoisseurs of irony!

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