This is the sad story of a «white rasta», as they say. A reggae singer with an unfascist attitude... but whose haircut didn't please a few neo-leftists not inclined to dialogue.
Condemned, without further ado. The verdict for Mario Parizek fell a few days before his concert scheduled for Tuesday August 16 at the Das Gleis bar in Zürich: cancellation, as the revealed the NZZ this morning. The musician's fault? Wearing dreadlocks even though he's white - which, in today's inclusive vocabulary, is called ’cultural appropriation«.
When the Left settles scores with the Left
It has to be said that the term is still little known outside militant circles. Few are the initiated. But that was without counting on the invaluable work of Amnesty Switzerland, always at the cutting edge, and whose «inclusive glossary»gives us the following explanation:
«Cultural appropriation occurs when a person or company adopts and profits from the cultural or spiritual codes of a culture to which it does not belong, and does so without giving intellectual or financial credit to the people whose cultural heritage these codes traditionally represent. [...] Such gestures are particularly harmful when the culture being appropriated is that of a marginalized and/or historically oppressed group.»
Dear Mario Parizek was therefore guilty of adopting the aesthetic codes of a racial category to which he did not belong. A «nuisance» behavior, then, because it could have disturbed the regulars of the establishment that was supposed to host the concert, according to its managers. Ironically, the offending singer told the Zurich newspaper that he had been wearing dreadlocks since the age of 13 to mark his «openness to others», having himself been born in a «fairly right-wing» Austrian village.
This is how the left settles its accounts with the left. Parizek, painted as the unworthy son of Bob Marley, was quick to denounce the «more or less fascist attitude» of his censors. All this may seem crazy. But the news of recent weeks tells us that the Zurich case is not isolatedstories like these are legion. So, white men beware: the wokes are now hunting down dirty hair.
Write to the author: antoine.bernhard@leregardlibre.com
Header image: Montage Le Regard Libre
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