Fever 333 on pulling down statues: "It's great. We want to move forward"
Jason Aalon Butler of political post-hardcore outfit Fever 333 has lent his support to the removal of statues that honour people with a racist history.
“It’s great. We want to move forward,” Butler told NME when asked for his thoughts on the subject.
“If there’s a statue that represents a long-standing history of racism and suffrage, you shouldn’t be all that perplexed when people want to take it down. We’ve been inundated with the idea of ‘this is history’ but that doesn’t make it right. The American Revolution, that was all terrorism until we won.
He continued: “If you want to celebrate these people, talk about them in whole. These figures built their wealth on slavery and the destruction of cultures. You don’t want to celebrate that. I understand there was a financial benefit, but why should we all be forced to sit there and look at a history celebrated that we don’t all benefit from? It’s good that we’re challenging these things. We want to win this fight, so we need to rewrite our future then we can talk about the history behind it.”
Worldwide protests were sparked by the death of George Floyd last month, an African-American man who was killed when a white police officer appeared to kneel on his neck as he lay on the ground during an arrest.
Officer Derek Chauvin has since been sacked and charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter. Three of his colleagues, Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J Alexander Keung are now all facing charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder, and aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter.
The issue of statues being removed in relation to the protests was highlighted when a monument to Edward Colston was pulled down by Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol. It has since sparked both further removals of statues and backlash from counter-protest groups.
Colston was a member of the Royal African Company, which transported thousands of men, women and children from Africa to the Americas. When he died in 1721, he left his wealth to various charities and his legacy is still visible in the name of Bristol’s streets, memorials and buildings.
One of those buildings, music venue Colston Hall, has removed its signage ahead of a full name-change in response.
Meanwhile, Fever 333 dropped a new song earlier this month, the timely, Blondie-sampling ‘SUPREMACY’.
