I was listening to the System of a Down Album Toxicity again and the song Deer Dance had this lyric in it, and I had to share.

You can’t be neutral right now, you have to fight back however you can.

Give the album a listen if you haven’t, it’s a banger and is still relevent to this day 24 years after it’s release.

Image description: Pictured is Serj Tankian known as part of the band ‘System of a Down’, singing into a microphone and the text “You can’t afford to be neutral on a moving train”

  • witty_username@feddit.nlEnglish
    2·
    3 days ago

    I always thought this line was meant sarcastically. Reflecting the kind of rhetoric that George W Bush pushed at the time; ‘either you’re with us or you’re against us’

    • Midnitte@beehaw.orgEnglish
      9·
      3 days ago

      The context for the song was Rage Against the Machines protest concert across from the DNC Convention where several people were shot with rubber bullets. I don’t think the line is sarcastic, it’s entirely a protest song against police and State brutality. Probably also saying that peaceful (and not disruptive) protest is just a “deer dance” against violent oppression.

      A rush of words. Pleading to disperse. Upon your naked walls, alive. A political call. The fall guy accord. We can’t afford to be neutral on a moving train

      Beyond the Staples Center you can see America. With its tired poor avenging disgrace. Peaceful loving youth against the brutality. Of plastic existence.

      A deer dance, invitation to peace. War staring you in the face, dressed in black

      • Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        Hell yeah it’s a protest song

        The album is full of banger politically driven songs, I highly recommend it