ive read a few things on here about the LLTBP tour and I just want to put my personal opinion. Military uniforms, propaganda posters, stark architecture, and invented regimes are common visual shorthand in literature, film, and music. Artists often use these aesthetics to explore themes like control, conformity, grief, fear, or rebellion. not to celebrate authoritarianism. I don't think Gerard meant it in a bad way but I see where your coming from. If "Keposhka" is part of the tour's fictional setting, it functions as a worldbuilding device. Someone can dislike how it sounds, but that alone doesn't mean it's intended to mock a real language or alphabet. The tour shows how propaganda works visually. You can see how governments throughout history have used uniforms, symbols, banners, and mass spectacle to create a sense of unity and power. That's an interesting historical theme to explore through art. I don't think the lore is supposed to center directly into a real world country, I think it makes it feel less like a caricature of one country and more like a commentary on how power presents itself across different places and eras. Novels, films, operas, and plays regularly use wars, revolutions, dictatorships, and political symbolism to tell stories. Engaging with those subjects isn't inherently disrespectful, it really just depends on how they're presented and I think Gerard/the band is doing a great job on doing it in a good way. Maybe its because I have a fascination in war and how and why it was created, and that's why I think the lore is interesting. its okay to not like it but I think some of us are getting the wrong message.
Maybe you just read one post or maybe you skimmed through the main ones and missed some very important points.
He’s using war aesthetics (specifically linked to Russia, a country that is actively invading another one) to tell a story about HIMSELF, about his OWN exhaustion while performing TBP during 2006.
He created an EXCLUSIVELY white country to depict a story about himself and to sell overpriced merchandise about fictional fascist symbols to his fans.
I clarified many times that there’s nothing inherently wrong about uniforms, but that’s the plausible deniability that exists across EVERY piece of media Gerard creates. Particularly when it comes to his preference for white race and his fascination with white suffering and wars involving predominantly white countries.
Suuuuure, he’s not mocking Russia, nononono this is DRAAAG!!! yet he’s constantly alluding to Russia throughout this lore. He’s inviting Russian actors, he’s performing in a Russian accent, he created a “language” that purposefully resembles the russian alphabet, his team asked for Americans with “Russian accent” as voice actors, the whole setting is meant to convey “cold communist Russian propaganda” or whatever the fuck his understanding of Russian history/ politics may be, after all he has a documented obsession with Russia and used to label himself as “Russian David Bowie”.
And it doesn’t end there, he’s also bringing Nazism into the conversation, he wears the German flag with his black parade uniform (which was already inspired by German/ Prussian hussar world war uniforms). So… if he’s character is a soldier following the orders of a horrible white dictator, set around the 30s-40s (given the aesthetics), and he wears a German hussar inspired uniform AND the German flag, what am I supposed to interpret?
That he doesn’t know what he’s doing? Comeee ooon people wake up!!! He does know what does symbols evoke and he uses them carelessly, bc he can always claim this is fiction and this is about his own made-up nation and it doesn’t reflect reality. That’s plausible deniability.
Also, don’t you think it’s fucking distasteful given the current political climate all around the world? To have him align himself with a soldier (but not any soldier, A NAZI SOLDIER!!) just bc he was forced to perform a record he had grown to hate? Ehhh??? 🤨
Bc that’s what his character deal is all about: being forced to do something he doesn’t want to do!! And we’re meant to feel sorry for him. Just like we were meant to be sorry for Draculoids and Grant Morrison’s character in Killjoys (both killers, fascists, race purists). Ohhh, so there’s a pattern in his writing… (I could add more examples but that’s beyond the point).
He’s not critiquing war, he’s aestheticizing it. Because to him war and tragedies are 🤩vibeees🤩!!! That’s why he did that fuck ass JFK photoshoot, that’s why he writes what he writes, that’s why he never gives an actual opinion on REAL world tragedies happening in HIS OWN COUNTRY.
Come on!!! He’s a grown man, and he’s very lectured about these things, he made a career out of fictionalizing these things. And trust me, I was just like you at first, I gave him the benefit of the doubt, but the more I read his work and payed attention to his OWN words and actions (not fanfictions, not faith projections, not edits, funny posts, noo hIS OWN WORDS). I realized how deeeeply weird he was.
Which is why I emphasize: he’s not rebelling against anything with this lore. Just like you, he loves war, he’s fascinated by it, he’s mesmerized by powerful figures or symbols of power and horror. Hence why he defended the distribution of a comic book about JEFFREY DAHMER 2 MONTHS AFTER HIS ARREST!!! And he did it on television!! In front of a GRIEVING MOTHER!!!
And you may think: omg pussy he was fifteen!! Give him a break.
Suuuure, but if you check his own personal ideology and the foundational ideas of his entire body of work, you’ll conclude that he has a very fucked up perspective. And not in the “aaah I’m a quirky twisted dude with a lot of whimsical ideaaaas”, hell no. more in the oh that’s a white supremacist, imperialist, incel. More in the “I’ve got nothing to say but my characters loook siiiiiick”.
Which is what happens here. The story is not clear, that gorgeous paragraph you wrote about how power can present itself in different ways… that’s YOUR OWN interpretation.
My comments on the execution aren’t my opinions, those are facts!!
He is wearing the German flag and doing a Russian accent on stage (ONLY HIM, the rest don’t even engage in using keposhka!!!) It is truth that every single person in the cast and mostly behind the scenes are white!!! It is truth that they used actual footage from Serbian films about war disasters. He did cast a Russian soldier!!! They diiiid ask for an American capable of doing a Russian accent!!! And the merch doooes align with the dictatorship rather than the resistance!!! It is also well-known that Gerard is in charge of the lore and he hand picked the majority of the team involved in this project.
If this was a critique he wouldn’t be reproducing behind the stage the type of segregation and exclusion his worldbuilding presents.
So, no. I don’t think he has grown artistically. This bullcrap of a lore is no better than Killjoys or Umbrella.
Matter of fact, I believe is waaaaay worse, bc it has y’all spending bag on merchandise celebrating fascist symbols. If this was a critique on fascism then the merch wouldn’t side with DRAAG, and if y’all “understood” the assignment as much as y’all claim you do you wouldn’t buy the merch, but na.
Y’all have a fictional Nazi flag hanging in y’alls room. And suuuuure it’s fiction, suuuuuure it’s made-up, but it stops being all funsies and games when you realize they’re all signed to literally the biggest and most Zionist music company in the world. That’s not a critique. That’s not “smart tongue in cheek commentary”. Nooo, they’re literally contributing to Warner Israel with this crap.
Bc all of this merch slop is UNNECESSARY to begin with.
It stops being funsies and games when he brings MAGA Billy Corgan and hugs him on stage and makes TikToks for him reheating his career, it stops being funsies when they invite the mayor of Belleville (Milei, Meloni and RFK supporter) to join them on stage, it stops being funsies when he does image cleanse for his racist wife in front of a massive crowd.
You think the band is doing a great job bc the whole thing is ambiguous enough for you to think the best out of it and fill the gaps, but as someone who suffered from the consequences of dictatorships I disagree. I fucking disagree.
There’s nothing “neutral” about this. Bc these events are happening right now for him to use them as inspiration or a sandbox/Pinterest board for his own creative projects.
I think there’s an urgency to talk about power, I agree with you on that, but I fear we’re in different places.
I don’t think putting on costumes and cosplaying a Russian is relevant or tasteful when the country he lives in has a racist pedophile for a president and its whole history is cemented in acts of terrorism against other nations and against their own people. If he had something important to say about power he’d critique that. He wouldn’t invite bigots on stage. He wouldn’t dress up as a fictional nation that doesn’t exist, he’d critique the United States of America.
HE’D REJECT DYNAMIC PRICING.
He’d complain about multi-millionaires and billionaires, he’d put on a Ronald McDonald costume and the dictator would be orange and the shootings would mean something else other than spectacle. Because America has suffered from mass shootings more than any other country in the world, and he still has the nerve to use it as SPECTACLE?? as a prop?? Without warning??
I’m not American, but even I was shocked by how distasteful and inconsiderate that was.
But he doesn’t care about those things, HE NEVER HAS. He called himself a “bill Clinton fan”, he has made colorist and imperialistic remarks across his career, he married a racist, supported and platformed pedophiles and abuser after abuser, he pipelined those men (and their work) by welcoming them to his own audience full of minors. He writes racist and misogynistic stuff, he refused to even mention the word “racism” during Black Lives Matter, let alone condemn it.
So I ask you: why is this time so different to you?
It’s okay to admit that you’d never read his work. It’s okay to admit that you never went down the rabbit hole. It’s okay.
I was just like you last year I guess. And you’re free to like whatever, but pleeeeeaseeee don’t claim this is a critique or that it’s revolutionary. Bc it’s not. It’s commercial slop. It’s a cash-grab and another vacant, highly aestheticized and proudly insensitive vanity project orchestrated by the great DM Gerard…
I’m being sarcastic, his writing sucks bc his moral compass is next to those propagandist white supremacy superhero comic books he still fails to outgrow.
