System of a Down‘s Serj Tankian has responded to Imagine Dragons frontman Dan Reynolds‘ comments regarding the latter’s decision to play a show in Azerbaijan.
As previously reported, Tankian urged the “Radioactive” band to cancel their then-upcoming concert in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, saying that playing the show would “normalize and whitewash” Azerbaijan’s “heinous human rights violations” against his ancestral home country of Armenia. After ID went through with the performance, Tankian said he has “zero respect” for the band members and that they’re “not good human beings.”
When asked about Tankian’s comments in an interview with Rolling Stone, Reynolds replied, “I don’t believe in depriving our fans who want to see us play because of the acts of their leaders and their governments. I think that’s a really slippery slope. I think the second you start to do that, there’s corrupt leaders and warmongers all over the world, and where do you draw the line?”
In a Facebook post responding to Reynolds, Tankian writes, “Respectfully, I draw the line at ethnic cleansing and genocide.”
“Azerbaijan’s dictatorship with popular support was already into a 9 month starvation blockade of [the Nagorno-Karabakh region] qualified as Genocide by [a] former [International Criminal Court] prosecutor … when they decided to play Baku,” Tankian writes. “Would they play in Nazi Germany?”
In pointing out Imagine Dragons’ vocal support of Ukraine amid Russia’s ongoing invasion, Tankian writes, “Why don’t they want to play in Russia? Because it’s not popular?”
“The only ‘slippery slope’ is the farce moral equivalency at the heart of this hypocritical attitude,” Tankian continues. “I have nothing against this guy nor his band. I just hate artists being taken advantage of to whitewash Genocidal dictatorships.”
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