On July 5th, 2025, David Draiman (from the band Disturbed) performed at the “Back to the Beginning” farewell concert for Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne at Villa Park in Birmingham, England. According to reports, he was booed during his performance. The question is: why? This was supposed to be a celebratory event, paying homage to the godfathers of heavy metal.
Shortly after the concert, David Draiman posted this on X: ““As you can see … I wasn’t ‘booed off stage’ as so many people in the press and CERTAINLY #FreePalestine crowd, would have you believe. Yes, there were a few boos when I walked out, but I came to pay homage to my teachers, my idols, the mighty Black Sabbath, and I wasn’t about to let a few Jew hating morons deter that. It’s all about feeding their narrative, generating clickbait, and inciting hatred of Jews. There’s even a track being passed around out there that added enhanced booing to the performance just to add fuel to the fire. Pathetic. The live stream shows the truth. Both songs went over great. You wouldn’t know that from some of the media however, who are only too eager to roast marshmallows next to this dumpster fire of a bullshit story. Oh well. Still here. Still coming back to the UK in the fall to what’s shaping up to be a VERY successful run, if ticket sales are any indication. And I am STILL UNAPOLOGETICALLY A FIERCELY PRO‑ISRAEL JEW. I will ALWAYS stand up for my people, and I won’t be deterred, intimidated, or shamed out of rocking the asses of the masses. Put that in your pipes and smoke it.”
It seems that the boos, or the reports of him being booed, upset him. It upset him so much, that he could not control himself an started to rebuke the boos with some ad-hominem attacks: Jew-hating-morons. Later he identified himself as a Jew, and not just a Jew, but an unapologetically and fiercely pro-Israel Jew (all in caps). It seems that in the back of his mind at least, he felt the need to distinguish his Pro-Israel Jewishness from ordinary Jewishness. I wonder, though, how many people knew that he was Jewish? I certainly didn’t and I had been a fan of Disturbed for almost 20 years, until I found out what Draiman had done.
In a June 18, 2024 article from The PRP, Draiman shared an Instagram photo of himself signing a 155 mm artillery shell, writing “F**k Hamas” on it. The Jerusalem Post also noted that in June 2024, he visited Israel and posted images from that visit showing him autographing an IDF shell with that phrase. So David Draiman shared pictures of himself on social media, celebrating the fact that bombs were being dropped on the people of Gaza, which is a war crime. David Draimon did not just publicly supported war-crimes however, he also celebrated them. This was not some political act of expressing love for Israel, this was a celebration of barbaric, sadistic desire, literally expressed with sexual vernacular. He was enjoying himself.
Now the problem with David Draiman’s sadistic jouissance over war crimes however is, that these are not just war crimes. No legitimate state fights terrorists with bombs. This is for a good reason, because an indiscriminate use of bombs on a population trapped on a small strip of land could easily be legally defined as a genocide. This is exactly what the ICJ considered in a statement on January 26, 2024, a few months before Draiman’s photo-op. The ICJ established that the legal case for an investigation into the conduct of the Israeli Army in Gaza as suspected genocide had been made and that all those who had signed the genocide convention, which includes Israel, were legally obliged to prevent this from happening.
Like the Israeli government, David Draiman was clearly not impressed by legal arguments and thereby made himself complicit in the celebration of genocide. I wonder how this would go down in history? How do we look today at those who celebrated the anti-Semitism of the Third Reich including the Shoah? Let’s be more precise here: How do we evaluate those who celebrated the Shoah on the basis of identifying themselves as pro-Third-Reich-Germans? It sounds really absurd, but that is exactly the template upon which David Draiman grafted his defence of the celebration of the bombs.
By asserting that he was booed because he was Jewish, Pro-Israel David echoed the repeated accusation that people criticize the Genocide in Gaza performed by Israel because Israel is a Jewish state. This is a deflection. Just imagine if someone used that to argue against being condemned for Holocaust Denial? How would it sound when someone says: “you are only attacking my celebration of the Holocaust because I am German?” It sounds totally absurd. That, however, is what David Draiman did. Just because in his world, he is not being sanctioned for celebrating the genocide in Gaza, does not mean that it should not be strongly opposed and condemned.
In fact, people like Draiman would probably insist that there is no such thing as a genocide in Gaza going on. After all, Israel says that is only going after Hamas, a terrorist organization. At the same time, however, the same people who say that also say that no Palestinian is innocent. That may explain why there is no widespread outrage at the murdering and starving of babies, children, pregnant women, women and old men. They were born guilty. This may remind those with a modicum of historical awareness that one of the main reasons why Jewish women and children were sent to concentration camps in the Third Reich was that they were also born guilty. They were guilty of their ethnic identity. Their identity was that of “enemy within”.
Genocide denial is rooted in the same cowardice that cultivates genocidal intent. Just as David Draiman claims to always stand up for his people, so did the Nazis. Taking the position of a victim is of course a core component of the neurosis of identity politics. David re-imagined the reality that he was booed, not because he celebrates genocide, but because he is Jewish. And by reversing the perpetrator-victim roles, he blames the victims for being bombed, starved, and massacred while lining up for food. Pretebnding to be victimized while blaming the victims of your crimes exposes the deep-rooted cowardice of identity-thinking.
There seems to be something else in his statement, however. Disturbed David Draiman seems to have the need to be adored by the masses. He seems to feel the need to downplay the numbers and volume of the boos. He suggests that these were inflated on the recordings. This resonates extremely well with his identity-political cowardice. His need to be adored is a reflection of insecurity. He fears being rejected. This fuels his paranoia, his insecurity, as if he already knows that he is in fact a fraud.
The overarching need for adoration is a hallmark of the kakistocratic mind-set. As it is vanity engendered by neurosis, it requires conspiracy accusations when confronted with reality. Just as Benjamin Netanyahu claims that the international outrage over Israel’s relentless violations of international law, including ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide, is the effect of orchestrated and well-funded defamation campaigns – which is especially odd since Israel is outspending every nation on international propaganda (Hasbara( and all western mainstream media support and defend Israel by hiding facts and copying word for word the press releases from the Israeli state – so does David Draimain believe that Pro-Palestinian forces care enough about him, that they would spend time and energy on increasing the volume of booing. If unchecked and unmedicated, neurosis easily becomes paranoia.
David Draiman is a sick man. By calling himself a man who supports piece, while posting a photograph of himself signing a bomb, it is clear that he is really disturbed. Down with the Sickness is indeed the signed bomb that destroys another maternity ward, school or refugee camp, burning refugees alive. And when people raise ten-thousand fists in the air in protest, he runs away crying and starts writing pathetic posts, wallowing in his own self-victimization. Indeed, it would be fair to conclude that David Draiman is a coward, a neurotic sick man, that he is not authentic but merely a little fascist pretending to be cool.
However, I refuse ad-hominem attacks just as I refuse identity politics. David Draiman is not a horrible person because he is Jewish; he is perhaps not even a horrible person. Just as his beloved Israel, he is merely scared of being booed. Just as his beloved Israel, he is not used to being booed for such a long time. He identifies with the power and glory of Israel because it seems to winning. He is on the safe side. He is merely the mouth-piece of a neurosis that has been cultivated for centuries. This is the neurosis of imperialism and white-supremacy which has bene bought and paid for by capitalism. It is the neurosis that the father may return to perform the ultimate act of de-masculinization; David Draiman is the embodiment of a castration anxiety that is not of his own making. So next time, when you hear Down With The Sickness, perhaps think about poor David.
Disaffected Sociology 
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