What's new

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

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.
its literally pinnochio.

I don't think peter kirn is even jewish, so going out of your way to decide that's antisemetic is a bigger stretch than the yoga my girlfriend tries to get me to do.

I mean, correct me if I'm wrong on his ethnicity - but it's even more ridiculous considering the racism wouldn't even fit the target. Would be like some obscure thing like handing an Asian man a banana and trying to play it off like some sort of racist dog whistle as if he were black.
 
There is more modern day hatred, envy, jealousy, bigotry, shallowness, narcissism, racism, anti-semitism, and prejudice in the world than anyone can fathom. If one wants to tackle these energies being a stand up comic or comedy writer/actor is the best way to diffuse it.

However, given the historical hatred in France and England of Jews and the murder of 6 million Jews by Germans and Austrians, I have zero tolerance when a non-comedian German corporation (Behringer) engages in any kind of racist or anti-Semitic humor.

Frankly, unless the company makes its bread and butter regularly delivering satirical or comedic content, I have no tolerance for any corporation to engage in this kind of behavior, it’s completely inappropriate and inhuman. It demonstrates that people and management at that company are using and hiding behind satire and comedy to openly display their racist and anti-Semitic loathing. It is extremely common for anyone to use comedy or sarcasm to express their true feelings and then cowardly act like they were just joking.

If there are journalists who consistently criticize a corporation the best way for that company to respond is to simply ignore them and go about their business. Behringer showed the world how they have powerful people at that company with a racist and anti-Semitic agenda. Those people should be fired immediately and Behringer should come out with a strong public apology. I have never bought a Behringer product and I never will. I won’t be buying any German cars either because the auto industry in Germany files their entire economy and too many powerful families that run the largest manufacturing companies in Germany have major ties to the Nazi party during WWII.

Anyone trying to defend Behringer in this regard is either fvcking clueless, immature and lacks character or racist and anti-Semitic themselves!! So go keep publicly defending this company and let others know who you are at your core. You can’t just hide beyond the excuse of comedy and sarcasm when it comes to any Germans or Austrians at a large corporation publicly using comedy and satire to demonstrate their racist and anti-Semitic beliefs. The Germans and Austrians lost all their give-them-some-slack-comedy credit-they-were-only-joking once those nations engaged in the Holocaust, which occurred when my grandparents and parents were alive. I know people whose entire families were murdered in the Holocaust and some who survived the concentration camps as young children. Go travel to Germany and Poland and visit the concentration camps where Jews were exterminated like worthless insects, grow a backbone, get some character and grow the fvck up. Don’t cowardly defend this disgusting company, boycott Behringer!
1.) I don't think I saw anyone in the entire thread defending Behringer
2.) Many of us are simply pointing out that it's not anti semetic.
3.) You also just lobbed actual racist beliefs against people from 2 countries.
4.) There is a whole lot more " hatred, envy, jealousy, bigotry, shallowness, narcissism, racism, anti-semitism, and prejudice" when you go out of your way to see it in everything.
5.) Nice of you to "censor" the "F" word with a single character while also calling people names and making prejudice statements based on literally on nationality. Might be time to go take a walk, look into a mirror, eat lunch, or whatever you need to do in order to calm down.
 
Behringer:
“Please allow me to respond to the video we had published today. For the past 20 years, Peter Kirn and Behringer have had an ‘interesting’ relationship to say the least.
What was meant as pure satire by our marketing department, has clearly offended some people and looking at the video, I could understand why. However, in no way did the team ever intend to make any connection to semitism, as some people have alleged.

We unreservedly apologize to Peter and anyone who felt offended.

Uli”
...and the day after they also removed this post. I have had enough with Behringer.
 
1.) I don't think I saw anyone in the entire thread defending Behringer
2.) Many of us are simply pointing out that it's not anti semetic.
3.) You also just lobbed actual racist beliefs against people from 2 countries.
4.) There is a whole lot more " hatred, envy, jealousy, bigotry, shallowness, narcissism, racism, anti-semitism, and prejudice" when you go out of your way to see it in everything.
5.) Nice of you to "censor" the "F" word with a single character while also calling people names and making prejudice statements based on literally on nationality. Might be time to go take a walk, look into a mirror, eat lunch, or whatever you need to do in order to calm down.
He forgot how the Chinese love the Uighers, and how they also love the Japanese. And, how central and western Europe loved the Mongols, or, how the Spanish loved the peaceful liberation in 711, on and on and on. By the way, he also forgot to mention that Canadians are polite and peaceful people of the world, and if you disagree with that premise, they barrage you with Timbits. [tongue in cheek]
 
...a large corporation publicly using comedy and satire to demonstrate their racist and anti-Semitic beliefs.

You're clearly assuming Behringer's satire was intentionally anti-Semitic. But... what if it wasn't? What if some naive people at the company simply drew up a funny-looking Pinocchio-like caricature to poke fun at that reporter, and had no idea it would ever get misinterpreted as being racist? Do you really think any prominent company like Behringer, who enjoys global sales, would risk losing their entire business by purposely creating and publicly promoting racist propaganda in today's world?

Let's say you drew a picture of a flower from memory, embellished the petals with a little artistic flair, and posted it on Facebook. But then a few people noted that it looked similar to a logo used by a South American drug cartel. Suddenly it goes viral and thousands of people all over the world are publicly slamming you for being a drug pusher. According to your own logic, you must be a drug pusher, because there's no way the flower's resemblance to the cartel's logo could be purely coincidental.

Obviously you're not a drug pusher, but I also believe in giving Behringer the same benefit of the doubt.
 
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.

It's important of course to be sensitive by the anti-Semitic trope of caricatured nose size, common in racists cartoons from the 19th century through Nazi propaganda and sadly very much alive today.

But also, in my friend and one time (very cool) bass player David used to laugh about the size of his 'shnoz' at band practice. He was writing a PhD on the holocaust at the time, and was himself devoutly Jewish. So it's ok to be relaxed about these things too in the absence of any actually anti-Semitic context.

And the trope of this Beheringer cartoon is clearly a Pinoccio reference, whether to the Italian myth or the Disney version. The single similarity with the anti-semetic trope is extremely superficial.

Of course, the nature of signification and meaning is , by its nature, fluid, even slippery. Which make it possible to distort just about anything into meaning just about anything else (witness the witch trial in that Python film - "if she weights the same as a duck ... she's a witch", satirize the use of power to create these connections of meaning is invalid ways).

I'd argue that it's important to understand the anti-Semitic trope in broader context - which is to say that there just really isn't anything here substantial to suggest anything other that a straightforward pinocchio reference. Which is an even more common, and frequently useful trope to out a liar.



And it's also important to reign in these unjustified connections precisely because this kind of over-reading of a superficial similarity risks diluting the important ability to respond forcefully and with genuine outrange to combat actual anti-semitism.

Sort of a "boy who cried wolf" effect.
 
Last edited:
And, for those who say this has nothing to do with anti-semitism and is only about some Pinocchio 🤥 liar liar pants on fire 🔥 reference. It’s highly inappropriate for a major company to be attacking an individual journalist in that way too having nothing to do with racism. There is no way one can examine what Behringer did as a good thing. It’s horrible business and completely inappropriate behavior for a company to engage in.


It is highly inappropriate.

But is it not also highly inappropriate for punters on the internet to use a superficial and unjustified similarly to a completely different anti-semetic trope and use it to support their own attack on a company they want to punish for something unrelated to the much more serious sin of anti-semitism.

Again, it may strengthen the short term pleasure of attacking Behringer , but it comes at the longer term cost of weakening legitimate outrage at actual anti-semitism.
 
If they did nothing wrong then why did Behringer remove it and apologize? If you can’t realize how utterly inappropriate it was for Behringer to engage in these type of tropes and attacks on a journalist then you’ve got some major problems. Attacking a journalist directly is just not appropriate for any corporation to do. It’s incredibly petty and small minded. Clearly, Behringer disagrees with your stupidity and lack of character.
I think your replies are a whole lot more offensive and insulting than the whole Behringer thing.

Uli Behringer is a human being with human character traits.
He goes online a gets a whole lot of anger vented at him and his company.
So, it could happen he gets angry and where he should have shown restraint decides otherwise.
Not wise, but understandable.
It is not wise because it is not just about Uli the person, but Behringer the company which reacts, and he should realize that.
So what? He makes mistakes like all of us.

I am not the kind of person who holds someone's mistakes/shortcomings against that person and I am not going to make this bigger than it is or invent an excuse to condemn him to hell.
If that is stupid in your eyes, great, let me be the stupidest person on the planet, I think a whole lot more good comes into this world by not reciprocating hate with hate and anger with anger.
If you DO, and everybody does that, the world will become an unlivable place.

Again, in my opinion it has nothing, nada, to do with anti Semitism.
You may get upset at the fact that I do not stare at the clouds and see the same thing as you do, but that's your problem, and I am not going to make it mine.
 
You can’t possible know. So why are you defending a German company that very well may have engaged in an anti-Semitic attack?

If you can't possibly know, then why are you prosecuting them and accusing them of racism instead of giving them any benefit of the doubt?

If you drew and posted a flower that happened to bear resemblance to a drug cartel's logo, and after it went viral everyone started verbally attacking you for being a drug pusher, wouldn't you prefer that people give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it was coincidental? If yes, why can't you do that for Behringer?
 
Last edited:
So what? He makes mistakes like all of us.
Unfortunately, we live in an era that public figures (and many others) are not allowed to make any mistakes ever. Now or in the distant past. The intolerance all across the political spectrum is staggering and disheartening.
 
How hard is it for people see that it's Pinocchio? I really don't see how it could be mistaken for anything else unless you already despise Behringer and you need more reason to justify it.

Yes, it's clearly pinocchio. And at some point I don't think it's a wholly innocent mistake, but the discourse of anti-semitism being appropriate not out of any concern for actual anti-semitism (for which there is no evidence in this context at all), but for satisfaction of people wanting to just feel better about have having a stronger, more personally satisfying, attack on Behringer.

I even think at some point some point this sleight of hand appropriation might itself risk becoming, in effect, kind of anti-Semitic.
 
Last edited:
Unfortunately, we live in an era that public figures (and many others) are not allowed to make any mistakes ever. Now or in the distant past. The intolerance all across the political spectrum is staggering and disheartening.

Do you or anyone else remember what happened to meteorologist Jeremy Kappell a couple years ago? He meant to say "Martin Luther King Junior Day", but his tongue got tied up in the delivery, and in correcting himself, it came out "Martin Luther Kuhrn King Junior Day." Enough people made a clamor saying that he called MLK a "coon" and as a result, he was fired from his job. All because of a mistake that every other human being on earth makes from time to time.

This is what some of the comments in this thread remind me of. A company admittedly makes a boneheaded mistake, but the mistake gets blown way out of proportion and context, and the torches come out wanting to burn the company to the ground. Pitiful.
 
Do you or anyone else remember what happened to meteorologist Jeremy Kappell a couple years ago? He meant to say "Martin Luther King Junior Day", but his tongue got tied up in the delivery, and in correcting himself, it came out "Martin Luther Kuhrn King Junior Day." Enough people made a clamor saying that he called MLK a "coon" and as a result, he was fired from his job. All because of a mistake that every other human being on earth makes from time to time.

This is what some of the comments in this thread remind me of. A company admittedly makes a boneheaded mistake, but the mistake gets blown way out of proportion and context, and the torches come out wanting to burn the company to the ground. Pitiful.
I hadn't heard about this one, but I remember a female reporter saying that Kobe Bryant played for the Los Angeles Nakers (she was about to say Knicks and switched gears mid-word) and people accused her of saying the N word. There's a petition to get her fired with over a hundred thousand signatures. I don't think the network listened this time, but they easily could have.
 
Unfortunately, we live in an era that public figures (and many others) are not allowed to make any mistakes ever. Now or in the distant past. The intolerance all across the political spectrum is staggering and disheartening.
Yeah, the thing is, if people demand perfection, then no one qualifies for anything simply because it is human nature to make mistakes and do dumb things.
Maybe it can't hurt to look in the mirror every once in a while?
 
I hadn't heard about this one, but I remember a female reporter saying that Kobe Bryant played for the Los Angeles Nakers (she was about to say Knicks and switched gears mid-word) and people accused her of saying the N word. There's a petition to get her fired with over a hundred thousand signatures. I don't think the network listened this time, but they easily could have.
Anybody here old enough to remember what happened to the Bee Gees in the late 1970s with the song "Too much Heaven". The line went "oh, you and me girl", but of course the easily offended cancel culture of that era eventually led Jesse Jackson to intervene on the band's behalf. Often people see AND hear what they want as an alternative fact instead of the truth.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom