BEHEMOTH’S NERGAL FACES UP TO TWO YEARS IN PRISON FOR DESTRUCTION OF A BIBLE

Somebody call Antonin Skullia.

Nergal has been formally charged with insulting Roman Catholics after he called the Catholic Church “the most murderous cult on the planet” and destroyed a copy of the Bible on-stage during a 2007 concert (video above). This is possible because offending someone with regards to their religion is apparently a criminal act in Poland, and I guess freedom of speech laws are either non-existent or not as high of a priority there. Ryszard Nowak, head of the All-Polish Committee for Defense Against Sects (which sounds like one of those awful religious groups we have here in the U.S. that always have a nice name to cover uptheir bigoted agenda – e.g., “People Who Love Families” would be code for “Fuck the Fags”), tried to sue Mr. Nergal (né Adam Darski) for promoting Satanism immediately following the incident. Unfortunately for Nowak, Polish law apparently dictates that there must be multiple complaints for charges to be filed, so the case was dismissed after an initial hearing. Fortunately for Nowak, it was only a matter of time before he was able to find some cronies to join his suit, and so now here we are.

Metal As Fuck (great name for a website!) reports that during that first hearing, Nergal made the perfectly reasonable argument that he has artistic license to what he likes on stage, and no one should be offended. I’d agree; if you’re pissy because a blonde dude in make-up said something mean about your beliefs, you need to grow a pair.

But I’d go one step further and say, people should be allowed to do whatever the fuck they like in the name of freedom of expression, so long as they’re not physically hurting anyone. For example, I’m not happy that there’s a site called Jew Watch (no, I’m not providing a link – you can find it pretty easily if you’re so inclined) that covers the way the Jews are allegedly running the world and raping Aryan woman and blah blah blah on a daily basis. I hope the people who run it all have to watch as their pure, beautiful daughters marry Jews, blacks, Asians and Hispanics before giving birth to hordes of homosexual children. But I’d never argue that there’s any legal or even moral right to shut that site down; there isn’t. I can sit here and type all about how I fucked all their mothers in the ass and they can’t sue me, and they can sit there and type all about how I’m a dirty kike who’s gonna burn in hell and I can’t sue them. And that’s exactly as things should be.

With all due respect to Poland and its people, protecting the feelings of the religious community over freedom of artistic expression is neanderthal thinking at best. I know we’re supposed to be super-tolerant of other cultures in 2010, but gimme a break. This is total bullshit, like Muslim communities that won’t allow their women to be educated. I hate to echo the sentiments of someone as ridiculous as Bill Maher, but sometimes things are different, not better, and sometimes things are just better. And freedom of speech is just better. Period. End of story.

Hopefully this ridiculous case will get thrown out of court in record time. But regardless of what happens next, Nergal should have plenty of material for the next Behemoth record.

-AR

Thanks to our friend David for the tip.