(The following essay and its Appendix were written by our South Africa-born and Vietnam-located contributor Vizzah Harri.)
This is not going to be an easy read. If you are triggered by words that end in -isms, especially abstract concepts that have real-world consequences on the life and liquidation of innocents, you know, the ignorant kind, then you won’t get further than the next paragraph.
Abusive, brainwashed, callous.
Archaic bellicose construct.
Avaricious bloodsucking cowards.
Abhorrently bootlicking chauvinists.
The ABCs of Repression Fascism
“كانت يديه تضفر أحشاء الكاهن
، إذا لم يكن لديه حبل ، لخنق الملوك”
“וידיו היו קולעות את מעי הכהן,
בהיעדר חבל, לחנוק מלכים”
“And his hands would plait the priest’s entrails,
For want of a rope, to strangle kings.”
– alternative translations of the infamous Denis Diderot quote.
Telling it like it is can be misinterpreted, it is easier to look at what is not said.
Pensive inflections of pause.
A message more jarring can be that of the void left in the wake of a silenced scream.
One surefire way to tame, pacify and divide dissenters is to dilute the impact of the voice of art.
If you speak too loud in opposition towards constructs of control: you are silenced.
The Tunisian band Znous has been removed from two of the largest social media platforms.
The music we’re sharing with you today gives voice to the voiceless. Two bands, 3 releases. Znous recently unleashed a new single of resolute finality, and at the end of last year an EP which deserves coverage. Transgressive are from Arizona and earlier this year they too released a single of import and reflective substance.
Znous – Din Acharon
The Tunisians have never shied away from their stance on imperialism and they say much more on their social media that has not been involuntarily deactivated. However, the stand-alone single of Din Acharon “דין אחרון” is a step in the direction of art in the ranks of which does not just weave, it exposes, its accusing and heralding howls so much more potent for the emphatic constitution of its gaping maw caught in crunching, severing stasis.
‘Din Acharon’ is Hebrew for ‘The Final Judgement.’
A statement of intent, of being, of will to power. Not so much a castigation as a condemnation.
There is an oppressive mass of dunes eclipsing pyramidal majesty in tonnage of sand spent on producing this. At 266 seconds it would relate not to the heaviest atomic matter in the known universe of Oganesson, but that of an element, Bihexhexium, that does not exist, yet postulated to come into being in one of the heaviest phenomena of the known universe, neutron stars.
It plays as an epic cinematic sweep of building suspense. The bass thumps, ticking down like a world doom clock sped up to have us exclaiming “slow the fuck down!” We then get a chant in Arabic which is poignant, and heart-wrenching.
Znous have never been more aflame in ire.
Blistering pace. Thrashing supremacy.
Invigorating if ever one were to use a misplaced word.
A doubling down of the main riff into more melodious territory does not let up on the fury.
That verse riff is tasty as fuck and the dessert served in solo that blends with symphonic sonance into a zithering jawharp leaves this listener wanting a whole damned album of this.
In answer to comments on the YouTube video that is still up last time I checked, the band had this to say:
“A Final Whisper: The Znous project has been shadow-banned, silenced, buried beneath digital sands of tyranny. Instagram erased us for speaking up. YouTube throttles every release since the release of Rotzhey Yeladim. Facebook—shadow banned and useless, deactivated. Not to mention the ethical compromise of feeding the algorithms of entities like Google and Meta. Znous music was never built for the algorithm. Din Acharon is no exception, It is for the enduring one — not the silent and complicit many. If it hits you, carry it. Share it with someone who needs to hear what no one dares to say out loud. Sometimes, one whisper travels further than a thousand screams. Thank you for being the echo. — Znous”
And further:
“Info about the voice sample at 1:35 since many are wondering. It is taken from an actual footage/recording of a prayer call through a mosque loudspeaker in Gaza where the imam is expressing strong faith in Allah and total despair and hopelessness towards humanity and the muslim world.”
Their Instagram is down so if for some reason their YouTube gets deactivated too and one isn’t able to see anymore what words they added into their videos, it will be documented below:
“You try to say it but no one hears you.
So it sits in your heart.
And settles in your cells.
And it becomes your genetic imprint.
And then moves through generations.”
The quote expands and is attributed to Tala Abu Rahmeh, a Palestinian academic and poet who has used it, however it reads in full from the original as follows:
“There is no English equivalent to the Arabic word qaher قهر. The dictionary says “anger” but it’s not. It is when you take anger, place it on a low fire, add injustice, oppression, racism, dehumanization to it, and leave it to cook slowly for a century. And then you try to say it but no one hears you. So it sits in your heart. And settles in your cells. And it becomes your genetic imprint. And then moves through generations. And one day, you find yourself unable to breathe. It washes over you and demands to break out of you. You weep. And the cycle repeats.”
Hamma also shared these words with Islander and me:
“Din Acharon” (דין אחרון), a standalone track that strips everything down to one final, surgical blow. It’s not an album. No filler. Just a focused burst of blackened death, ritual atmospherics, and lyrical indictment.
While Znousland 4 explored rage in multiple directions, Din Acharon delivers it as a verdict — one that questions chosenness, indicts sacred violence, and replaces theology with targeting protocols.”
And there doesn’t need to be much added to what the band themselves proclaim on their media:
“A final breath forced through the dust of collapsed temples, where children are crushed beneath the weight of a rotten myth.
This track confronts the foundational delusion of chosenness as the structural core of a theological death cult. Divine election is not merely a historical fiction; it is weaponized by design — a metaphysical architecture built for supremacy, conquest, and the ritual annihilation of the other.
The lyrics are extracted from the language of Torah and Talmud — not to reinterpret, but to expose their embedded dehumanization, and to incite an inquiry into the seed of our collective demise. These are not sacred texts misused, but operational scripts — blood-bound, law-coded — encoding violence as destiny. Angels are replaced by drones. Scripture becomes AI-generated targeting. Human sacrifice is reduced to logistics.
The God of the exceptional — in full display.
This is not a song. It is an act of counter-liturgical revolt. A forensic psalm from the underside of history. A final exhalation at the edge of memory, where children are starved and incinerated on the altar of racial mythology, doctrinal machinery, and the imperial danse macabre.
Judgment here is not divine.
It is HUMAN.
And it is irreversible.”
Znous – Aleph Beth Gimel
In December last year an EP got released that didn’t get much coverage. I do believe my first reaction upon viewing art that seems like it was produced with artificial pilfering tools is one of skepticism, and maybe a few expletives. My stance on A.I. can be a bit extreme. I’m going to give the band the benefit of the doubt and a moral out. The image in question acting as cover of the EP can probably be produced by using digital drawing techniques and applying Gimp filters, something I do with my own photography.
Consideration becomes more contemplative when arising at the idea that AI is digital microplastic. It permeates almost everything. Setting up systems to detect the use of AI within images can and are used to train less detectable AI, just like the overview of this scourge will faux-eruditely inform you at the top of your search results in corporate browsers. We can still ask people working in digital fields about veracity at this point in time, but it will become increasingly difficult. It’s like a self-replicating virus that only becomes stronger the more it is resisted, almost like it is a perfect fit for ideological constructs of manipulation.
“The most dangerous madmen are those created by religion, and people whose aim is to disrupt society always know how to make good use of them on occasion.” – Denis Diderot again
The moral out. This band understands how AI systems are used to aid the killing of Palestinians. Using AI to create an image of a mother and child of Middle-Eastern origin is not a copout, if true, it would in my mind be more of a strident statement of condemnation of an apartheid state that uses AI to cleanse their land of people worshipping the wrong desert god.
It is a subversion and a reminder, because every previous release has contained altered images, yet images of real people who were undermined, exploited, raped, and killed by colonial powers. Why not use a real image even if this turns out to be painted? Commentary, whether intended or not, Znous are not a band who are blind to any collateral, seeing as globally there are only 12 sovereign and unoccupied countries that have stood up in opposition to the atrocities in Gaza with a call for prevention and intervention in Palestine, itself recognized by the ICJ as the 13th state to do so (at this writing).
The countries calling for intervention were South Africa, Colombia, Libya, Mexico, Spain, Türkiye, Chile, the Maldives, Bolivia, Ireland, Cuba, and Belize. On the 14th of April Israel was given a get-out-of-jail-free card with an extension until January 2026 to react to the censure.
The choice of an image of fictional humans whether painted by a human hand or computer model is commentary on how invisible Palestinians are. That they are being erased.
As always, the band does not believe in hiding their intentions and provided extensions to each piece on their media, only some of which is excerpted here.
The ancient glyphs are only digitally represented by a few choice fonts, so this picture is a representation of the left-hand path search for the correct one and the right way to read them.
“Aleph , the glottal stop, gave birth to the human “alphabet,” to the word of Man and deities, to the big bang of the human script, to the onset of linguistic awareness in honor of the horns of the mighty ox, the asset beast of agriculture and ancient civilizations.”
“Aleph The March is a friendly reminder that history knows its way towards the future and that history is not a video game.”
“Aleph “ is industrial, urgent, emphatic – a call. I won’t hold my breath for a filmmaker brave enough to use their music in the cinematic realm, though it plays like it was written for a score.
This is a recurring theme, the pattern, the soundscape, the atmosphere, tribal (read superior) percussion, and for all I care they can keep using it.
The majesty of sci-fi background deep notes depicting the arrival of some extraneous force to play administrator to our woes.
The march of Aleph is sweeping, bombastic and succeeds in commanding your attention from second one until the final glottal stop administered like a crescentic axe to the throat.
“Beth The bedtime story is a lullaby to all the tormented souls which never gave up on their humanities [sic]. All the people doom scrolling day and night finding it hard to bear the silence of sleep. All the mothers who had to project the images of their children in small bits.
All the fellow human beings from every corner and culture who feel like they need light years of therapy and realized that this is not about a specific group of people somewhere far away, that this is about the fate of our species.”
“Beth “ rings out with burning melodic tones and big game production interrupted with a jarring voice sample from a child living in Gaza in 2023. No less immediate, a tension held in suspense, a clarity and production ringing with an insistency no less unsettling than the consistent revolutions of chopper noise as a reminder of death’s ever-present threat. You’d like to click past the targeted ads, the calls for aid, Znous doesn’t allow us to avert the gaze, you can choose not to listen but it will be difficult to do so once you’ve pressed play.
“Gimel The completion of the inverted red triangle or the pyramid of power. A protest song to infinitely resonate in the ears and the upcoming years of the age of dehumanization and total decay of the western myth and the irreversible moral collapse of the civilized states and nations zombified by hatred, extreme individualism, racism and ignorance.
A trinity pointing down those who are the top.”
“Gimel “ is the third letter in the Phoenician alphabet. Whereas aleph denotes an ox and beth a house, gimel represents a weapon. Weaponized hardcore rhythms lash out with lyrics of consummate resolve and gravitas. The music sways, ebbs, furnishes into progressive melodicity and then breaths out again with sounds that loop straight from the crisis. Unceasing siren wails and lapping flames, voices silenced from smoke emanating out of that conflagration however visceral or imaginary, the choke is not so much from the vice grip administered, but from breathing the barbequed flesh of the departed. Please enjoy your dinner.
Znous are:
Hamma – Guitars & Vocals
Halima – Bass
Jabeur – Drums
Transgressive – Remember us to Death
Artwork by Andrey Krasnov
To add songs of protest of one minority group in the same breath and article as that of one protesting an ongoing genocide and hegemonies of global parasitism is not lost on me. It is also not unequitable; seeing as the fight, the struggle of the minorities in LGBT communities, is not an apart struggle. It is one and the same.
The oppression of women, the oppression of anything deemed “other”, it ties, because people who happen to be darker of skin or in countries under the vice of religious anti-knowledge and were also born “wrong” are even more hidden and unseen and live a daily hell of double oppression.
The primal scream of existence is no different to that of the perpetually hegemonically oppressed.
Hesitance can take many forms. There are arguments for walking away or turning the other way for self-preservation. Silence can mean tacit consent. To implicitly condone for the remaining on a fence picketed paler than the bone dust of the insecure vectors controlling the spread of their seed from beyond the grave.
Silence can be a profoundly powerful way to communicate, it can also bolster and allow those with more pressing voices to be heard without conflating an outside influx of influence to shift the color of the filter we hold over the lens we choose to peruse the message by, the narrative.
“What is a monster? A being whose survival is incompatible with the existing order.” – more Denis Diderot
The message, it is but one solitary communication, which is found in correspondence, within different forms of media, does not need explanation or dilution or reinforcing for clarity or effect. It does however need support. There is another form of silence too. The silence that results from forcefully being throttled and muted. Not completely, there are still outlets, but it is in the best interest of demagogical, authoritarian, vampiric, proselytizing, diabolically hypocritical forces to muzzle any thing; and we are talking about things here, not people, species, inhuman: fit for extinction.
Ants crawling over your desk, a fly sitting on your kitchen table. Squash. That there is little to negative zero in remorse, ridding our tiny place in the universe of pests, insects, vermin, it is deemed a duty. If ants on the desk can be exterminated, why cry over the fly on the kitchen table, the rat in the ceiling, the tick in your daughter’s hair?
Kill it, lest it spread its abhorrent disease or proliferate and spawn and infest.
Nothing to digest. Species other.
There are people in this world, with some of whom I share a past, a history, bright memories, and yes, blood, can read what was written above and not bat an eyelid in acquiescence as to the ant being an infidel, the fly an immigrant, the insects filthy transexual minorities, the vermin brown people whose beliefs are mere idolatry.
I hope you are uncomfortable now.
The slippery slope of bigotry holds that if today it is okay to deny the Zimbabwean, the Sudanese, the Congolese, to vilify the Nigerian, to say it’s okay for xenophobic attacks on people with but an iota in difference in melanin content that speak a different language are justifiably driven out for taking “our” jobs, then tomorrow it is okay to say there is white genocide in South Africa, ignoring the violence that is an everyday reality in the townships.
Then the day after tomorrow it is okay to say that the Israelis are in their spiritual home and the “infidels brought it upon themselves.” It is much easier even to ignore the largest voiceless minority of all. LGBT communities within historically impoverished, vilified, enslaved, and exterminated populations. The global south, the developing world, the continually yoked. The misogyny, the race hate, the bigotry, is so vile a magic that it comes from within the house, meaning that in some spaces a queer person can feel like they are a minority of one. It is not just the same struggle. What I’m saying is, is that within Gaza, within Sudan, within Myanmar, within every destabilized and war-torn space there is a voiceless group of people who cannot even be themselves.
They are dying the same death, for to accept that these “others”, these “species”, are human, is to deny centuries of scripture, is to lose hold on the power it has as a mind control device, as a pacification device, as an excuse to exterminate. To commit genocide. Sometimes that which is perceived as darkness is not the evil absence of light. For a lot of what Abrahamic-influenced society deems as evil is confused.
There is space for art that is bright, light, colorful, allows space to breathe. There is also art that transcends genre, some of which lives within the ranks of that which is washed and constructed as popular yet subverts by not playing into genre-specific lyrical themes. It helps people feel seen. It is no less powerful than music with distortion and resolute intent, it is perhaps not going to change anything other than keeping people from annulling themselves. Which is the fucking point.
“I picture the vast realm of the sciences as an immense landscape scattered with patches of dark and light. The goal towards which we must work is either to extend the boundaries of the patches of light, or to increase their number. One of these tasks falls to the creative genius; the other requires a sort of sagacity combined with perfectionism.” –Diderot
It is not always more “honest” to confront darkness directly. To observe the life of a child seeping out of holes punctured by our own silence. To realize that forces we thought were supposed to protect the dignity of humanity and the most vulnerable, are complicit in the evisceration, disemboweling, scalping, decimation, gut ripping, rape, sadistically torturing, planned extermination, complicit in a genocide of a fucking people. Pop ain’t gonna cut it, for some people, there are others who have only that.
“Nothing is duller than a progression of common chords. One wants some contrast, which breaks up the clear white light and makes it iridescent.” – Fucking Diderot
Transgressive play a deathy thrash with a tendency to write riffs that induce a lot of replays. Infectious as all fuck.
Band from left to right: Joshua Payne, Alicia Cordisco, Beef, and Leona Hayward
An EP’s worth of authoritative riff preeminence in one 8 minute and 46 seconds stretch. After the overture fades out, the song opens not with a silence, but spoken words in remembrance of the fallen, before it fucking explodes in indignation.
There are sonic and thematic similarities here with the music above as when “Remember Us to Death” opens we can notice some Arabic scaling, as well as before it really starts kicking off in the second movement. If you did not see that coming, the cover song of Aus-Rotten is sure to bring you back to the reality of things.
With methods mirroring that of the music of their Tunisian comrades in giving voice to the silenced and deceased, Transgressive also has a chest-burst of fury to deliver.
Thrashed up riffage with an insistence that sure as shit will poltergeist the volume knob into broken speaker territory. As the song builds in intensity the gear is put into that ghost 7th slot one searches for when one fumbles for losing count in an old stick shift mobile. No mistakes or missteps here though, and just before “I will not be silenced” is wrenched with the force of demonic possession from vocalist Pitts’ jugular, the riffs become magisterial.
Fuckin power metal highs in the vox which I didn’t expect, but fitting like a knuckleduster snug and ready to crush jaws and shatter teeth. The reprise is necessary with a wailing solo to boot, jacked, pressing, commanding as fuck.
If you don’t like your art to be sprinkled with social justice and refrain from reading the lyrics, then I doubt you read this far, but the chops Transgressive display in just the dueling guitar solos and fat as fuck crunch of the drums impacting like maces Ḥashshāshīyīn with bass that bleeds breadth of grandeur is enough to induce a click on the buy button.
I decided to pair Transgressive’s music with that of Znous based on just the titles and the music, but upon reading the lyrics to “Remember Us to Death” it made even more sense.
From the band:
“This EP is dedicated to Channell Perez Ortiz, Ashia Davis, Ranko Brown, Ashley Burton, Tasiyah Woodland, Eden Knight, Brianna Ghey, and all trans people we have lost either through stochastic terror, state violence, or social genocide, in all countries, in all times.”
And from the lyrics:
“Violence escalating in the state and in the streets
Fascist agenda always there, preying upon the meek
But your minds won’t open enough to see what’s plainly there
We’re the scapegoats, and you’re the pawns, it’s time to see the truth
I will not be silenced
I will not behave
I will not assimilate
I will liberate
We have all been scorned
Under skies where acid pours
Only wish to survive
To live a life free of strife
1933 they burned our books and slaughtered our progress
Forgotten history, left aside, by the Imperialist west
Don’t you see it’s all tied up? The mission’s always been the same
Tyrant’s hands reaching out, to slaughter amber waves of grain”
Transgressive are:
Alicia Cordisco – Lead/Rhythm Guitar, Writing, Lyrics
Leona Hayward – Bass
Bethany “BEEF” Pitts – Vocals
Joshua Payne – Lead Guitar, Drum Programming
with Special guest Lux Edwards (Soulmass, Wraithstorm) on “Remember us to Death”
Mixed/Mastered by Brett Windnagle (Soulmass, Lascaille’s Shroud)
“Fuck Nazi Sympathy” is a cover of Aus-Rotten’s and as far as covers go, it’s timely, it’s filled to the brim with immediacy, and it’s really fucking good. ‘Ausrotten’ is German for ‘eradicate’.
The lyrics for the Fuck Nazi Sympathy EP, just like Remember Us to Death, contain some lines that delve into much of what has been dealt with thematically in the work of Znous and that’s why a picture of it from the same embed link of the YouTube video is included above. Instead of cropping it for relevance the whole block is displayed and so a caveat has to be added.
The 4th song aligns with pure conspiracy theory and has been thoroughly debunked and investigated as far as how deep it is has been ingrained in society. We can rally around our agreement that intolerance should not be tolerated, though people can still make mistakes in the same breath. Broken clocks can be right twice a day but the other 86398 seconds can weigh heavily on someone’s legacy. Ex-President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, is one such figure who aptly called out recent division in the new South African coalition government, adding just cause and heft to calling out hypocrisy and weak governance by a political party more interested in safekeeping historic appropriated wealth than securing discourse for a brighter future. Mbeki still to this day is an AIDS denialist.
If you were overloaded with the links and missed it, if you type “86398” and “wikicommons” in your browser, this is what you get. The name of the first settlement of agriculture for Zionists in Palestine. Beit Hanan (בֵּית חָנָן), which translates to House of (dis)Grace.
Appendix
(This was how the review of Din Acharon started, I felt that I couldn’t use it further up for it would overshadow and take away too much from the music, and too much of a focus on South Africa. I was born there and the more I read about our history and how it interrelates with global geopolitics, I felt compelled to write a bit more, for what we’re seeing in the Middle East is directly tied to South Africa. And the more we learn about this link, more of what has played out on the world stage starts to make sense. This is not a conspiracy theory and yes, I know this is a music site so I tried to intersperse it with links)
“From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step” – Denis died, rot.
Absolutism is a quickfire way to lead to extremism, reactionary thought, and misconceptions.
Double-speak is common when a true motive goes against popular opinion. It is apparently blood libel to compare a genocide to the worst atrocity in history but if it is pointed out that the very flag one will die and kill for has more resemblance to the Jewish Ghetto Police from Nazi Germany than anything else, then you’re on a list.
Delving deeper into understanding the thought of people living in denial about genocide, especially about the term ‘antisemitism’, can lead to a semantic impasse. Attributing a word of which the root ‘semitic’ does not apply to followers of only one desert myth seems like a misappropriation.
Words can and do evolve over time and experience shift, and in the case of words finding a new meaning it is said to be etymologically fallacious to call for the original use of a term, however encrusted in the viscera and blood of its new meaning. Before we call something a fallacy, perhaps it would be good to learn a bit more about what the roots of term mean, but it is also good to remind oneself that ‘semitic’ is an obsolete racial term.
“We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.” – Denis fuckin Diderot
Cognitive dissonance happens when one is confronted with conflicting information towards what one holds close to the heart. (R.I.P. Prince of Darkness, this link is from earlier this year, it is going to hurt reading it, and some might say that there is a time for things, that some truths can be delayed or passed over. I still induce horrified silence at karaoke evenings yelping “War Pigs,” the truth however is indifferent as the universe is to our feelings of idolization. Art, in my opinion, once created and released upon the world is not anymore the subject of just the artist. It is creation in the purest sense. We can be absolutist or accept that there is nuance to this too.) In the case that this does not happen, the pathological toxicity of indoctrination is the only answer as to the unshakable conviction that one’s cause is just when everything else points out that it is neck-deep in injustice. The dissonance should set in when one reads conflicting accounts from within the house.
Science and art get undermined unless it is for profit or means of control. Innovation in protocols and designs for subjugation and surveillance are preferred over advancement of humanity. Tacitly consenting to the overhaul of explicit methods of control through artificial intelligence is an attack on creativity, on labor, on effort, on value, it is an acceptance of mediocrity. When given a proper gander, the message is that real art, voices going against the grain, art that provokes, asks questions and calls out: need to be quashed.
Paranoid bureaucratic entities do not like too much freedom for artists and their ideas to mingle. Art that is passive, that doesn’t say much about the now and here is considered okay. If one takes a snapshot of art from 2025 in your country, ask yourself, did any of the music, the paintings, the literature, say anything about what was happening at that point in time, or did it simply harken back to golden ages of yore?
If the headlines are anything to go by, we live in a global corporatocracy, and if we take into consideration the controversial report by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, the fertile crescent is in the vice grip of authoritarian capitalism, euphemism much?
When words are used as weapons by propagandists, we can forget what their original meanings were. When words are flung en masse so as to soften its initial intent, to veil the heft contained within them, it is the ones that had to endure the bearing of its stupendous weight, that lose. Words can and do change over time, but to claim that a word being used for a certain purpose in a closed context should not be evaluated or deconstructed as to its origins plays into the hands of the entity shaping it into a weapon of dispossession.
The rise of large language models and their implementation universally is the newest innovation in subjection. All we need to really know about AI is that it has been described as the new arms race. So, the question isn’t about who is profiting, it is about what is lost.
Streamlining for the sake of speed at the loss of affecting at the very least our environment should be a big red flag already. I never read much Burroughs, but this quote sums it up pretty good:
“What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty, and, above all, it eats creativity. It eats quality and shits out quantity.”
Which can also be read as ‘A.I. eats quantity and shits mediocrity.’ Don’t quote me on that, it’s probably been said before.
Words have substance and mass you hear: “كَافِر ” is a word in Arabic that is the equivalent of the N-word in Southern Africa. It is written in Latin text as ‘kafir’. Add an extra ‘f’ and change the ‘i’ to an ‘e’ and you have one of the most viciously vile racial slurs in Southern African history.
Before it was used as a racial slur to denote Africans in countries colonized by the Dutch, Germans and British, it meant infidel or non-believer in Arabic spheres. It can be reclaimed (breakout hit by Arthur Mafokate of the kwaito musical style with the line “don’t call me a ka**ir”), it can be seen as an empowerment to declare one’s being unshackled from imperial means of oppresion, however white Afrikaner trust fund babies cannot claim they are makrut (the lime that used to be prefixed with that ‘k’ word).
There is weight there, to illustrate one can imagine a tiny protrusion of glacier fragment sticking out of the Arctic Ocean, not even a hill. Insignificant, forgettable, light and easy to sling about. Beneath the surface, yet way more viscerally corporeal, so entrenched as to be tangible, so debasing that it leaves a stench more powerful than the odium of bacterial proliferation from not having had the privilege of a shower for breaking one’s back unpaid for hours uncountable.
A stench more revolting apparently than the sickly-sweet offence that smugly emits from one’s oppressors who have the weird habit of consuming a disproportionately large amount of bovine byproducts daily. Yeah, when the superficial and visual slurs run out, bigots like to debase the oppressed as filthy, as animals. And if you didn’t know, the paler-skinned spectrum has a smell too, it’s sour. Beneath the surface is not an iceberg in any traditional sense. A mountain that dwarfs Olympus Mons as impenetrably obscure as the deepest reaches of dark mattered space. The weight is such that it is inconceivable to the indoctrinated. The pain and suffering held there a map of history unslaked by lime. Not unwritten, never ignored, conveniently still under the surface.
How we use words and which ones we choose and what their origins are can have far-reaching effects if we do not pay attention. Bands like Znous are very aware of what words they use, what they mean and their etymology.
The idea of there being no color, no race, that racism is illogical, sure, but it is something we have sculpted into our collective psyche just like the construct of time we still do not understand so well yet live by. Once we truly understand the magnitude of pain that simple utterances can deal, perhaps we can be more careful in our own placement and use of them instead of accepting the fucking word-slushed mediocrity that those in power and seeking only self-enrichment so badly want us all to capitulate towards.
Even if the etymology of a word describes perfectly what one would want to be described as, some words are not to be uttered for being tone-deaf in solitary confinement. If there ever was a kafur, infidel, or apostate, one could label this scribbler as such, but that word has too much corpulence. If unfamiliar, it would be like me typing the word starting with N that rhymes with wigger unironically. Yet here is the thing. The apartheid mandated language was never a white language. Hence the nickname kitchen Dutch. It was spoken in the kitchens, the farm fields, the factories, the railways, the mines, the places where bile evaporated while blood secreted out of lacrimal glands bare of tears shed for being veritably paid in sweat and a toll extracted in struggle never requited. A debt unpaid. Afrikaans is an African language, it is a black language, it is a stolen language, it is a language bastardized by white supremacy.
To understand the complexity of global politics, humanitarian crises, and conflicting interests it becomes quite clear that it is not a complex issue if one looks at history. It is not exactly about revisionism, though narrative does have a lot to do with it. The connection is apartheid and corporate gangsterism. The ongoing duplicity of a nation still tied to the fertile crescent. While South Africa might have been the first country to accuse Israel of committing crimes against humanity indistinguishable from genocide, there is silence from the government about South African coal still being supplied to – and powering the war effort genocide in Gaza.
The best time to destabilize a country and the easiest way to have such an action obscured is to do it within a time of transition. Find elements within an organization that are easily swayed by dollar signs. Power corrupts as they say, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. That’s why corruption departments are needed in any government, for criminal elements would exist no matter how progressive the constitution.
Some of the Nazis got due diligence at Nuremberg, others were hunted down across the globe. Useful Nazis were kept alive to aid the US and other powers in research. When the winning forces see that there is more value for their systems of control to keep alive intelligentsia who can bring value to the war machine, then they’ll be kept alive. And for matters or reasons of national security shit will get covered up. To save face.
The biggest joke, the dirtiest most despicable joke of the 20th century, in my opinion, was the truth and reconciliation commission of South Africa. If people with a moral compass would be outraged that all Nazis got amnesty at Nuremberg for giving testimony about their actions, but were not outraged about what transpired in South Africa in the nineties…? The Nazis were hanged, some of them at least.
Yet, the white supremacists supported by the US and Israel just had to give a fuckin confession. Tell your sins to the lord and you are acquitted. That sounds crazy right? That’s what happened in South Africa because we allowed a colonial brownnosing sycophant in the guise of cultural and spiritual visionary, Desmond Tutu, to fool the whole country into accepting the amnesty of war criminals and bigots. If the 22 instances of the ‘f’ word in this article is as offensive as this opinion for being too harsh, then perhaps one should ask questions about the effectiveness of restorative justice in comparison to what hardships were endured in times of struggle, like the 22 freedom fighters put on trial back in 1969.
And people wonder why it’s going the way it is (if link fatigue got to you, that’s 32.9% in unemployment with a 46.1% youth unemployment rate). It’s been destabilized and kept in check by the US and Israel for decades and if you were waiting for the conspiracy theory angle, well Mossad and the CIA have been very adept at creating third force elements counterintuitively aiding their own counterinsurgency ideals. It would certainly make quite the story if declassification of documents were to reveal nefarious connections between the Planet Hollywood bombing of 1998 and outside (in)security forces.
Most terrorism post-apartheid came from right-wing fascist diehards though. It is in the interest of ex- or neocolonial forces to keep the economy in shambles. Nobody wants an economic juggernaut in Africa aligning with the ‘commies’ in BRICS… “how the fuck could we then keep exploiting them? Fuck that, send economic hitmen, subvert, pay the money hungry MK boys complicit and infiltrated by the organized crime sect of the NP party and keep them hungry by teaching them how to enrich themselves. Fuck the people.” That is the message, because what is happening in Gaza is not unique or new. The kakistocratic spiel in the new world is not absurd, it is planned. Down to the ruse of having a hysterically incompetent leader, the states learned that from this guy:
“Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest” – the popular version of the most notorious Diderot quote
The third world war is not looming, warfare has taken a shift at the turn of the millennium with the rise of the digital age, hence the reason why the west freaked the fuck out about that book you keep seeing popping up in links written by 2 Chinese Airforce Colonels in 1999. The very media that keeps us connected is that which is being weaponized to drive us apart. And every time you use ‘A.I.’ tools, you’re training something that will be – and is being – used to undermine the freedoms of others. We need to be vigilant by making sure of our sources, we need to be patient for truths however uncomfortable to come out before we jump on a bandwagon, we need to support honest art. Paranoid demagogues don’t like honest art because it questions their authority. So, to end off, if you can’t buy music right now, stream the fuck out of it
This quote by Barbara Hillary comes to mind, and any religion, ideology, mythology, or to call a pot a kettle, any cult, can be replaced with the first word:
“Christianity is the greater shackle, the greater rape of the black mind, than slavery ever was.” The real quote (I live in a one-party state and the link that worked a week ago is now labeled ‘404 Not Found’ or like a priest that deserves burning used to say, it might just be the paranoia speaking):
“Christianity [is] a greater shackle than the slaves knew in the slaveship. Christianity is the perpetual shackle that rapes the black mind. But from slavery forward the systematic, psychological programming of the black mind was very clever, very smart, and it has been very destructive––and destructive is an understatement.”
“Just shackle your minds when you’re bent on the cross!
When ignorance reigns, life is lost, lost!
Why stand on a silent platform?
Fight the war, fuck the norm” –Rage Against The Machine
“People stop thinking when they cease to read.” – Baal take his rotten soul to the deepest pit it’s another goddamn Diderot quote attributed by use of a lifted Erikson quote… JFC, only Anu can save this sordid soul… Peace be with thee brethren and sistren.