You mean, people actually took the coronation seriously??

How metal and Jews taught me to disbelieve belief

I seem to have spent a large part of my life enjoying events, ceremonies and rituals that I don't buy into even for a second.

As I watched the coronation of King Charles III, I was perfectly content to be drawn into the spectacle as spectacle, as a lurid and ludicrous performance, while having no love for the institution itself. So complete is my ability to bifurcate the side of me that enjoys pomp and circumstance and the side that rejects the values that it purports to express, I found it quite difficult to really believe that some people found the spectacle to be either a reflection of their most dearly held beliefs or, alternatively, the antithesis of them. Why wouldn't you just relax in front of the TV and enjoy the sheer ridiculous, perfectly-choreographed weirdness? How could you not savour the 'The Rod of Equity and Mercy' and 'The Bracelets of Ceremony and Wisdom' (plus some wonderful choral music)?

Yet I know the answer to such questions: Because an indulgent attitude to spectacle can collapse into a smug kind of indulgence that verges on moral relativism. And such indulgence is profoundly risky at the very least, particularly at a time when protestors against the monarchy were arrested under a harsh new law that gives the police sweeping powers to detain demonstrators that are not to their liking.

Let's back up.

Part of my indulgence stems from my experience as a practicing, but not orthodox, Jew. It is very very easy to be a Jew who participates in Jewish religious rituals without thinking too much about the theology on which they are based. It's not that Judaism doesn't have a theology or a sense of God, but so much about Judaism is about doing stuff, that it is very easy to get swept up in it all without introspection. Ironically it is in progressive forms of Judaism where it is harder to ignore matters of faith, belief and values, rather than traditionalist forms of Judaism where adherence to Jewish law is almost a full-time job. The times I am most uncomfortable in synagogue is when the rabbi or service leader tells us what we should be feeling and what our values should be. Don’t tell me what to think; help me lose myself in the nuts-and-bolts of observance.

Here I am inserting a just-about-tangentially-related Simpsons GIF expresses what I feel about Jewish religious ritual. Or not. Really I just fancied including it:

I also strap in and feel the Gs in my metal life. To be a metal fan with progressive politics has, for me, involved something of a bargain: There is so much that is problematic within the metal world - from neo-fascist Satanism to extreme misogyny - that to be a metal fan with progressive politics has often compelled me to enjoy the brutal sounds without thinking too much about the ‘message’ that they send. Sure, in my work on extreme metal I have never ignored the presence of sexism, homophobia or other forms of prejudice in metal scenes. I did, however, spend a lot of time explaining how metal fans are not as committed to acting out the transgression they claim to be committed to, than seems to be the case when viewed from outside the scene.

I suppose that through much of my life, my guiding assumption was that there was no possible chance that the world could be arranged in ways consistent with my own values and beliefs, therefore my only choice was to revel in what remained without fully buying into it. In my Jewish life that has meant making compromises by working with Jews with a wide range of views on Zionism and other matters. In my metal life it has meant not excising the work of dodgy artists from my personal canon.

I do not believe in this

Developments in metal in the last few years have taught me that there were other options. In a previous newsletter I wrote about the development of leftist black metal, as well as moves to make metal scenes more inclusive spaces. This has caused me to wonder whether my previous pessimism that things could ever change meant that I was often far to indulgent of things in metal that I should not have tolerated.

Hopeless realism can sometimes curdle into a smug sense of comfort. I am, after all, a ‘white’ middle-aged middle class male. While I am not part of the gilded upper classes, monarchy is not a living symbol of a hierarchy that keeps me down. And even as a Jew, the British monarchy has not been a symbol of antisemitism for centuries. When I look at Charles bedecked in diamonds, rubies and gold, I don’t think of the looting and rape of my people in the imperial age.

There's also a curious naivety that I sometimes fall into. At the coronation I found it very difficult to believe that any of the crowds or people are watching TV were watching it for anything more than enjoyment of pomp for its own sake. It took a while for the penny to drop (assisted by scrolling social media) to realize that, yes, some people do buy into the whole thing they do genuinely believe in what monarchy represents. The same is true of those who see monarchy as nothing more than a disgraceful embodiment of power, privilege and empire. 

Perhaps my insouciance comes from making a too sharp division between symbolic politics and real politics; seeing the former as all surfaces that are irrelevant to the struggle for social change. For what it’s worth, I cannot justify the continuance of monarchy on grounds other than the fantastic entertainment they provide. And I do believe that, to make the UK a better place, we do need to radically change our constitution; I just don’t believe that the monarchy is the best place to start from. Electoral reform has a significance of several orders of magnitude than reforming or abolishing our royal sovereign.

Yet my resistance to becoming the republican I know I should be stems from more than apathy. Simply put I find it claustrophobic and also perhaps uninteresting when I discover a campaign or a scene that seems to be closely aligned to what I actually want or claim to want. It’s not that I am a contrarian. I think there is a strong argument to be made that spaces where belief, politics, ritual and community are all aligned are not just boring, they are not the optimum way to organise modern societies. Spaces where the constituent parts do not perfectly align are not just more interesting, they are perhaps a more sturdy basis for human cooperation. They cultivate the necessary cynicism that allows people to develop pretence of togetherness even as we understand the world very differently from each other. As such, I do feel that being a republican who gets a kick out of ludicrous royal pageantry might be the best way to be. And if and when we abolish the monarchy, I will no doubt find some way to both celebrate and sneer at whatever we put in its place.

Then again, this comfort in discomfort may ultimately just be a mark of my privileged existence.