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Behringer Launches Bizarre Attack on Music Journalist Peter Kirn (CDM)

I think there’s better products made by better companies.
Not at affordable prices. A couple years back I bought an audio interface with MIDAS preamps that sounds as good as many products in higher price categories. I don't know what their business practices are, but if you or anyone is concerned about them stealing ideas or cloning other products, welcome to the world of business. If you have an objection against that kind of behavior, then you should never use Windows, because Gates ripped off that idea from Apple, who, in turn, ripped off the idea from Xerox. So you probably shouldn't be using MacOS either. (Oh, and they all ripped off technology from a bunch of hippies in San Francisco)

We don't live in a perfect world. Never have, never will. But if we're going to criticize and refuse to buy products from one, we should refuse to buy from the others, as well. Which would pretty much put us out of business as modern composers. Moral relativism is a tricky thing.
 
To people saying they don't understand how this could be attributed to anti-semitism; have you never seen nazi propaganda cartoons or are you just blatantly ignorant?

You don't get to replicate this kind of imagery and feign ignorance.

I have googled that "le happy merchant" meme that was mentioned and flipping back and forth between it and the cork sniffer caricature I really don't see that "striking similarity". Both have dark hair and a beard, but that's about it. The nose is shaped differently, the hair style is different, the teeth are different, the posture is different, only one is wearing glasses, they don't look in the same direction.

Are you thinking of other anti semitic drawings that we may not know? I've seen the meme before, but I'm certainly no expert on anti-semitic imagery. Please share with us the image that you think they are referencing.


That said, I think it was a tremendously stupid move by Behringer, because now some random Jackass could take the "le happy merchant" meme and put it on a fake "behringer shekel maker" pedal and claim that it's a "worrying prototype, stolen from behringer's R&D department" and the already angry mob on twitter would signal-boost the fuck out of it and the more Behringer denies it, and tries to make the fake news go away, the more guilty they will look. A competent 3D artist could easily whip something like this up in a day or two and even fake a shaky phone video of the pedal on a desk or something like that. If it's done well, only a VFX pro would be able to tell it's fake. And no one wants to fact check anything anyway.

If you're thinking about doing this now, please don't! This outrage culture stuff has gotten way out of hand. I don't think any company deserves to go down over one poor taste marketing stunt and I'm sure lessons were learned from this.
 
Jesus christ, the whole anti semitism thing is just people wanting this to be anti semitism.

I just saw a video of someone destroying their behringer synth with a hammer. Our planet is dying and people are destroying perfectly fine electronics over a stupid video? Please fucking recycle it instead.
 
Super shady and immoral business practices aside, that artwork is seriously disturbing. Who drew it and why didn’t anyone in their marketing team speak up? Why would you want to associate your company with this kind of anti-semitic imagery?
Antisemitic? Drawing a long nose is supposed to be a "LIAR LIAR" thing.
 
Antisemitic? Drawing a long nose is supposed to be a "LIAR LIAR" thing.

I believe that's what it was intended to be, but to Behringer's detriment, the imagery just happened to be similar to anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda. Instead of giving Behringer the benefit of the doubt, some people began lambasting the company for being anti-Semitic.

Jesus christ, the whole anti semitism thing is just people wanting this to be anti semitism.

I believe this is unfortunately true. In my opinion, this is just one more manifestation of the SJW movement where people are searching for reasons to be triggered because their hypersensitive reactions produce a satisfying feeling of righteousness. Instead of looking at a situation from various angles and attempting to make a sound judgement, they go right for the endorphin rush by jumping into their SJW battle suits and going on the attack.

(Now if you'll all excuse me, I need to publicly smash and burn all of my AT&T products because their inability to come out and fix my landline in less than 48 hours is obviously an act of discrimination against musicians of Polish and German descent...)
 
When a group of people say that something is offensive to them, it's really not a good look to argue with them.

If something is purposely meant to be offensive to a certain group, then you absolutely shouldn't argue with them. But people—especially people who have been persecuted in the past (and I'm not speaking only about Jewish people)—sometimes find offense in things that aren't even targeting them. Even some Christians—who have had it pretty good in my country—are offended by pro-Gay sentiment and feel it targets their beliefs. So are we supposed to avoid arguing about that subject as well?

To me the picture reminds me of Pinocchio's long nose. I've seen many drawings of anti-Jewish propaganda coming out of Germany and elsewhere in the thirties and the images are very offensive, but not close to Pinocchio at all. I think it's clear that the liar nose is what Behringer was going for, and any other interpretation is tenuous at best.

That said, again, Behringer was DUMB to do it. Any business that goes after any critic in any way is being stupid.
 
That said, again, Behringer was DUMB to do it. Any business that goes after any critic in any way is being stupid.

Going after him if he is slandering the company is not a bad thing. Behringer has a right to speak up against his critics. He just did it in the most childish way possible. Instead of providing facts to dispute any argument they had against whatever Kirn wrote (and in truth I haven't been able to find what he wrote against Behringer), they just went for infintile slander that doesn't befit a company of their stature.

I think that the company in the past few years went from this semi-pro cheap provider of amature gear that nobody was paying attention to through to being a serious threat and being the next Yamaha or Tascam. I don't think they know how to deal with that. He took a chance on synths and then that exploded. They are major players still acting like college frat boys.
 
Visit a Holocaust Museum.

When a group of people say that something is offensive to them, it's really not a good look to argue with them.

I have politely asked to see an example, because I don't see the similarity. I followed your advice to look at historic antisemitic caricatures, but the noses always have a specific shape and usually point downward. Like this example on the right:

[image removed at request]


I simply don't see how this has "striking similarity" and can't possibly be anything but an antisemitic caricature of Kirn. I want to at least understand you group of people that are offended by this. Is it the sinister smile of the left one? I don't think it would be reasonable or fair to attribute that to antisemitic imagery alone. That would be such a huge detriment to political caracature as a whole.
 
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I have politely asked to see an example, because I don't see the similarity. I followed your advice to look at historic antisemitic caricatures, but the noses always have a specific shape and usually point downward. Like this example on the right:

I simply don't see how this has "striking similarity" and can't possibly be anything but an antisemitic caricature of Kirn. I want to at least understand you group of people that are offended by this. Is it the sinister smile of the left one? I don't think it would be reasonable or fair to attribute that to antisemitic imagery alone. That would be such a huge detriment to political caracature as a whole.

I assume you are referring to my earlier post. If it offends you, please delete "striking". I had no idea someone might take a bit of alliteration entirely seriously and would interpret it as me saying Behringer took a piece of neo-Nazi imagery and slapped it on on a mockup without changes.

While you are taking things literally, you might notice I actually wrote: "Although I think they were clearly going for the Pinocchio thing..." as the preamble. However, when I saw the grinning image with the hands I thought they had got accidentally close to the meme to which I referred. I simply wrote that to explain why people thought it was anti-semitic and I again apologise profusely for upsetting you with the adjective "striking". I shall of course take into account in future the needs of people who take things literally without actually reading entire sentences.

However, you clearly found that meme earlier so I don't see why you suddenly saw the need to post actual Nazi propaganda just so you can point out a Pinocchio nose is different.
 
@josejherring: I'll honor your request, but I don't see how it's possible to have a constructive debate about political carricature and "where the line is", if no one is willing or allowed to A/B the image in question and an actual antisemitic caricature.

Yes, you want a constructive debate. Of course you do.
 
I assume you are referring to my earlier post. If it offends you, please delete "striking". I had no idea someone might take a bit of alliteration entirely seriously and would interpret it as me saying Behringer took a piece of neo-Nazi imagery and slapped it on on a mockup without changes.

While you are taking things literally, you might notice I actually wrote: "Although I think they were clearly going for the Pinocchio thing..." as the preamble. However, when I saw the grinning image with the hands I thought they had got accidentally close to the meme to which I referred. I simply wrote that to explain why people thought it was anti-semitic and I again apologise profusely for upsetting you with the adjective "striking". I shall of course take into account in future the needs of people who take things literally without actually reading entire sentences.

However, you clearly found that meme earlier so I don't see why you suddenly saw the need to post actual Nazi propaganda just so you can point out a Pinocchio nose is different.

No reason to apologize at all! That post of your's you are referring to didn't offend me in any way and was helpful in finding that image that people seemed to think of. The thing is, in my memory the merchant meme looked a lot closer to the caricature of Kirn than upon direct comparison it actually does (to me personally), if you know what I mean. I thought maybe the actual nazi caricatures that people were talking about but unwilling to link an example of, looked closer to Kirn, but I couldn't find any that to me personally did look like him.
I apologize for any language related awkwardness on my part, English is a second language for me.
I really don't want to stir up any trouble here and didn't think that the image I posted would cause such a negative reaction. I apologize for my lapse of judgement, and I assure you that I'm not remotely right leaning in any way and I'll stress again that I said what Behringer did was stupid.
 
I imagine that the vast majority of people under 60 who aren't Jewish didn't make a connection with anti-Semitism.
But I wonder how many people who saw the potential connection and also noted the Pinocchio nose and the generic cartoon traits thought that it was actually anti-Semetic?
Still potentially hurtful for some but with no intent I see no foul here.
 
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