Earlier this week, a nutter obsessed with the Columbine massacre gunned down a bunch of people in Montreal, killing one, before being shot dead by police. Afterwards, his online journal came to light, being hosted on a site named Vampire Freaks, which seems to be something like DeadJournal crossed with MySpace, with extra Goth. In other words, unlike the Columbine killers (who were erroneously associated with the Goth subculture despite not being part of it), Kimveer Gill vociferously identified himself as a Goth.

Before this leads to reprisal attacks (the torching of industrial clubs, assaults on Goths, punks, hessians, Hassidim, ninjas, or random chromatically-challenged individuals by clueless rednecks), an important distinction must be made. The enemy are not Goths but Gothists. Goth is a subculture of peace, and explicitly prohibits violence against the innocent. Gothism, however, is a militant, intolerant ideology committed to the annihilation or subjugation of all jocks, preppies, "normals" and "mundanes" across the world, and the ushering in of a global reign of darkness. The vast majority of Goths do not subscribe to the extremist beliefs of Gothism, and indeed consider it to be a false ideology, a sick perversion of the tenets of their subculture. It is clear that peaceful coexistence with Gothism is impossible, and this ideology must be uprooted and neutralised before it causes any more damage; this is something which we will need the cooperation of moderate/liberal Goth leaders in achieving.

Having said that, Goth community leaders should be more outspoken in condemning atrocities carried out in the name of their culture, and the Goth community needs to take action to prevent its marginalised youth from being radicalised by the agents of Gothism.

Posted by: blablabla | | Sun Sep 17 06:00:27 2006

From the interweb:"Gothist - a racist against goths"

Whatever the case may be, to hell with the lot of them, Goths and Gothists!

Posted by: gjw | http://jimbob.suprglu.com | Sun Sep 17 06:51:37 2006

I was unaware being a "goth" or a "gothist" was so complicated! Back in my day it just involved wearing black and listening to The Mission...

Posted by: Niall | | Sun Sep 17 11:24:39 2006

Well I thought that was funny and clever, even if no-one else got it...

Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org | Sun Sep 17 12:07:40 2006

Hint: it's not actually about Goths.

Posted by: dj | | Mon Sep 18 03:51:23 2006

Have you changed your surname to something beginning with 'S'?

Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org/ | Mon Sep 18 10:02:50 2006

No; why?

Posted by: dj | | Tue Sep 19 09:18:36 2006

Sorry, that was a rather obtuse reference to a modest proposal.

Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org/ | Tue Sep 19 20:16:29 2006

Ah; well, perhaps I should wax Swiftean more often (or at least Brookerian, or perhaps Brookmyrean?). I've gotten a little bored with just posting links to things, especially if I don't have a great deal original to say about them; which is why this blog has been somewhat sparser of late than it used to be.

Posted by: pessimizer | | Fri Sep 22 18:05:42 2006

Satire like this rarely catches me, and this one totally had me fooled for 5 full seconds. I think that it has something to do with the fact that I'm getting older, and so much of what the 'kids' take seriously nowadays seems equally absurd.

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