Serj Tankian vs Imagine Dragons, controversy continues

System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian has hit back at Imagine Dragons’ Dan Reynolds, who defended the “Loom” band’s decision to perform in Azerbaijan, a nation that has been in conflict with Tankian’s home country of Armenia for years and has been governed for over twenty years by President Ilham Aliyev, son of his predecessor Heydar Aliyev, who has been accused by several international observers of authoritarianism.

“I don’t think we should be depriving our fans who want to see us play because of the actions of their leaders and their governments,” Reynolds told Rolling Stone, who told him of Tankian’s harsh words (“I don’t respect them as human beings. Fuck their art, they’re not good human beings, as far as I’m concerned”) following the show’s failure to cancel: “I think that’s a very slippery slope. I think the moment you start doing that, there are corrupt, warmongering leaders all over the world, and where do you draw the line?”

“With all due respect, I draw a line between ethnic cleansing and genocide,” Tankian replied in a post on his official accounts: “The dictatorship supported by the people of Azerbaijan was already in place when they implemented a 9-month blockade to starve Nagorno-Karabakh that was described as genocide by former International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo when they decided to play there. So they would play in Nazi Germany? Why don’t they want to play in Russia? Why is it not popular to do so? They support Ukraine but not the Armenians of Artsakh? The only ‘slippery slope’ is the charade of moral equivalence at the heart of this hypocritical attitude. I have nothing against this guy, nor his band. I just hate that artists are exploited to cleanse genocidal dictatorships.”

In a recent interview with the New Musical Express, Tankian also explained his position on the ongoing conflict in Palestine, which is leading several artists – Roger Waters first and foremost – to call for a boycott by international productions against the state of Israel: “With regard to the invasion of Israel by Hamas, I say of course that it was a terrorist act, that (the Hamas militants) are war criminals and deserve to be punished. But the response of the Netanyahu government is at the same time, as we can see from the number of civilian deaths, a war crime”.