Nergal Suffers A Setback
It may be confusing to you how an action taken in the privacy of a rock concert could possibly harm a millions-strong religious group. You may wonder how one person can be threatened with incarceration for expressing his personal views before a consenting audience. You may be baffled that one wingnut can be so sensitive about the reputation of his belief system that he wants to jail a guy for tarnishing it.
Well, friends, remember Ryszard Nowak and Poland’s flimsy freedom of speech protection, both direct from the dark ages? Sure you do, for they’ve been dragging Behemoth frontman Adam “Nergal” Darski into court since 2007, when the metal musician/national celebrity destroyed a bible onstage and called it “a book of lies.”
And jail might happen for Nergal: Reuters reports last night a judge ruled that Darski committed a crime when calling the Catholic Church “the most murderous cult on the planet.” Darski admits that there are limits to free speech — eg. libel — and that he is “not infallible.” Reports state that a lower court must “decide if Darski is guilty”; his sentence could be up to two years in jail.
A court spokesperson states: “[The ruling] said a crime was committed even if the accused did not act with the ‘direct intention’ of offending those feelings.”
No audience member, including Catholics present at the concert, claimed offense at Darski’s acts, just as no animal-lover cries to the police when a comic like Louis CK tells his audiences that he’d fuck monkeys if allowed. Non-retards recognize that within the realm of art and entertainment, no statement can be viewed as immediately and measurably dangerous, that no monkey owners have to rush home to bar their windows and no Catholics must take up arms to repel waves of indignant Darski followers.
Says Nergal’s lawyer: “[The ruling] is negative and restricts the freedom of speech. The court decided that this is allowed in a democratic system. We are still arguing that we were dealing with art, which allows more critical and radical statements.”
