Heavy Metal and Hate

Since Megadeth's Dave Mustaine launched into a bigoted, paranoid rant at a recent concert suggesting that the President "is trying to pass a gun ban so he’s staging all of these murders" (source ), I've been writing, editing, and deleting a post about bigotry and heavy metal music that raises the issue of class and white privilege without falling into classists tropes myself. Aunt B . did a better job that I ever could have: 

"We were growing up alongside Matt Hale, and, as it turns out, Wade Page. They didn’t have beliefs that different than ours. Uglier by degree, but not unknown to us. 

And so, I wonder, now, when we were listening to Megadeth, who did we think they were talking about? 

I don’t know. It’s hard for me to get at exactly the question I want to ask. But when we listened and we found those songs cathartic, who were the imagined bashed in? Shot? Murdered? Who did we imagine? Who did ole Dave?"