Serj Tankian speaks out about “extremely polarized” political differences with SOAD’s John Dolmayan

Judy Moreno

System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian and drummer John Dolmayan have appeared totally at odds recently, each discussing his political views on social media -- and they happen to be just about polar opposites. So while Serj has called for Trump to resign and posted an early SOAD song to remind people that the band has always stood against racism and right-wing politics, John has called Trump the "greatest friend to minorities," called the movement to defund the police "the stupidest thing that I’ve heard," wished Trump a happy birthday, and called Democrats "the true bigots." Now Serj has addressed his and John's very different opinions in a new post on Instagram. He writes:

My drummer and brother in law @johndolmayan_ whom I love and respect irrespective of our extremely polarized political commentary and differences has always been my stalwart ally in efforts for recognition of the Armenian genocide within Soad. The amount of online hate and stupidity against him and I are unjustifiable: social media has created an erroneous digital society that partially thrives on this reality. Remember irrespective of the stance, only artists that truly care and are impassioned will risk alienating their base for what they consider the truth. Our dilemma and possible fallacy is that we have two in one band. Some may consider that a weakness but the artistic, political and social dichotomy if not quadrichotomy (not a word) has made @systemofadown what it is today. Thank you all for reading. We should all do more non-online reading :)

This comes after John blasted recent media portrayals of him, including a Metal Sucks post about his Instagram posts, and a Guardian post about "metal's varied response to Black Lives Matter." John writes:

Anyone who perpetuates this kind of baseless attack is as blind to justice as they are void of character. These kinds of fascist tactics are indicative of the establishment machines attempt at silencing free speech and condemning diversity of thought whenever possible .it’s no surprise that the dangerous , billionaire funded ,extreme left along with their puppet mouthpieces in the media and entertainment industry resort to personal attacks and attempt to dehumanize those they deem a threat to their “revolution “. These people will go to any lengths to destroy any narrative not in line with theirs and when they don’t have a substantive argument or factual backing data they simply insult the opposition and condemn them irrespective of truth. It worked splendidly for Obama who spent most of his presidential campaigns insulting the character of his political opponents who made no attempt to use similar tactics and lost because of it. Trump simply looked to them for the winning method and took it to a new high ( or low). This is not what we should be about , these are not the heroes we should respect , and I will not be scared into silence by people who think they have a moral high ground but who in actuality are morally bankrupt.