Behringer - Please think at least twice before buying anything from them

espiegel123

@Max23 said:

@espiegel123 said:

@Max23 said:

@CRAKROX said:

@Max23 said:

@CRAKROX said:

@Max23 said:

@espiegel123 said:
@Max23 : not sure how that relates to my comment. The people treating it as ridiculous to wonder if the image is anti-Semitic are either insensitive or ignorant. As I said, I have opinion as to the intent of the image in that respect.

no its neither insensitive or ignorant.
I am German. I know anti-semitism when I see it.
this simply isn't anti-semitism.

Err you don’t get to make that call I’m afraid.

why not? that's ill logic
by your logic I need to be black to call out on racism

Nope that’s a false equivalence

A white person can call out racism when they see it but....

a white person Is not in a position to decide if something is not racially offensive to black or Jewish people.

See the difference ?

you don't need to be white to be a racist or antisemit.
nore do you need to be a jew to call out on antisemitic ish.
See the difference ?
I dont approve of us vs. them ideology.

You are misconstruing what has been said. The question is whether people who aren't part of a historically demonized and ridiculed class can be the final arbiters of whether something FEELS like it is in line with the historic demonization and ridicule to which you have been subject.

So, yeah your opinion has less weight about whether something FEELS like it might be anti-Semitic or anti-African than that of someone in the group that feels targeted.

All people are entitled opinions...not all opinions on all topics have equal weight. On questions of misogyny, I defer to women I know if something strikes them as misogynist that isn't obvious to me. Does that guarantee that they are right? No. But their opinion has more weight than mine. And they have often picked up in things that I missed that were later clearly borne of misogyny.

hm, we are kind of getting to the point here
a feeling is a feeling, routed in reality or not
a fact is a fact

Yes. And we can't know the fact of the video creators intention.

The question I was addressing (and explicitly so) is whether it is fair to call people RIDICULOUS (or sick-minded as someone else put it) for watching that video and consIdering the possibility that it was anti-Semitic. On that question, the opinion of people that have been targeted carries some weight about how it resonates to them.

Again that is a totally different question from the intent of the videos creators.

CRAKROX

@cian said:
'lying-face' emoji from Apple:

Is this anti-semitic? Does this not make the case that the use of a long nose like this is to caricature someone as a liar?

Certain uses of imagery are anti-semitic because they were used HISTORICALLY as a dog-whistle for anti-semitic purposes. Principle among these was the use of a 'hooked-nose'. A HOOKED NOSE. There is a long history of anti-semitic prejudices surrounding hooked noses, which were seen as stereotypically Jewish.

There has NEVER been a stereotype of Jewish people having long thin noses like Pinocchio. This is not a thing. However there is a long history, going back at least to the Disney film and probably longer, of a 'Pinocchio' nose being used in cartoons, comics and caricature to indicate a liar.

If you're Jewish and you find it offensive I can't stop you. However if you want to argue that it is playing on old anti-semitic tropes then you're wrong.

I'm not defending the cartoon. I think it's offensive and stupid. It's easy to make that case without add baseless charges of anti-semitism. Also I really despise situations like this where a powerful party (Behringer) is punching down at a weaker party (Peter Kirn). And I like Peter Kirn - he seems like a good guy.

But seriously there are enough examples of anti-semitism at the moment, without making them up unnecessarily. Hungary and Ukraine have anti-semitic governments, there are anti-semitic powerful politicians in the US congress. Maybe focus on that?

You seem to be deliberately ignoring the other factors in the cartoon (beady eyes, the beard, hands drawn as grasping) and the fact that it’s directed at someone with a Jewish surname.
It’s not just about the nose.

klownshed

If one of those little yappy-type dogs starts jumping up at your legs, you might find it very annoying but if you kick the dog you’re in the wrong.

You should trademark the dogs name and create a video mocking the dog instead.

Er. I think I may have taken a wrong turn somewhere with that terrible analogy. :-/

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

[Deleted User]

@Fruitbat1919 said:

@MonzoPro said:

@Fruitbat1919 said:

@MonzoPro said:

@Fruitbat1919 said:

@MonzoPro said:

@Fruitbat1919 said:

@espiegel123 said:
@Fruitbat1919 : so you would be all good with a large company putting its resources into ridiculing you and having millions of people laughing at your expense?

How about if they put a poster ridiculing you somewhere you and your friends and family saw it everyday? You would feel like their free speech rights were being infringed if your friends and family asked to take it down?

There is differences involved that most free speech advocates respect regarding duration, but that’s a long subject and it’s my tea time soon. As for the rest I will answer later maybe if you are indeed interested.

To be fair, most of the complaints you see about the curtailing of ‘free speech’ are racists who have broken the law, or Facebook hate groups having their memes taken down.

It’s all bullshit. You can say pretty much what you like, providing it isn’t racist or hate speech.

My nephews wife likes to share BNP type meme posts every year complaining about ‘Muslims stopping us from wearing poppies’.

Obviously they’re not, as was confirmed by the British Legion. ‘Do you have a lot of problems with Muslims telling you to remove your poppy down there Jo?’ I asked her once. Her response was to post a picture of a golliwog, complaining you can’t even share pictures of them these days without the ‘PC brigade’ having a go.

And there are many examples where people have had there freedoms inhibited by freedom of speech being taken from certain individuals. Even examples where it was found unlawful.

Examples?

Yep of course. Between preparing tea no probs. One was quite recent where the police asked a bloke to ‘check his thinking’ and the incident could have stopped him gaining certain employment just due to the police ‘non crime report’.

His thinking about what? Did he break the law? Was it a racist comment?

None of his comments broke any laws, but caused someone to report offence. His views were politically incorrect if you get my meaning, but the law found the police to be unlawful in their actions towards him. I will try to find you a link, but I’m afraid you will need to read multiple reports, as most are biased one way or the other.

The police don't always get it right. For every example of the type you've aluded to above, I could probably find another ten where racial or other forms of abuse were ignored and led to more serious consequences.

The laws are there to protect people, particularly minorities and the vulnerable. Sounds like your friend was on the borderline legally, if not morally. But doesn't sound like a case of freedom of speech being curtailed.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

AudioGus

Oh I get it now. His nose is long so he can sniff all those corks at once. I think someone owes Disney an apology.

drcongo

Sounds like quite a lot of you have never heard of Karl Popper or the paradox of tolerance.

AudioGus

@drcongo said:
Sounds like quite a lot of you have never heard of Karl Popper or the paradox of tolerance.

Not me. Karl Popper is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century. He was also a social and political philosopher of considerable stature, a self-professed critical-rationalist, a dedicated opponent of all forms of scepticism, conventionalism, and relativism in science and in human affairs generally and a committed advocate and staunch defender of the ‘Open Society’. One of the many remarkable features of Popper’s thought is the scope of his intellectual influence: he was lauded by Bertrand Russell, taught Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend and the future billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros at the London School of Economics, numbered David Miller, Joseph Agassi, Alan Musgrave and Jeremy Shearmur amongst his research assistants there and had reciprocally beneficial friendships with the economist Friedrich Hayek and the art historian Ernst Gombrich. Additionally, Peter Medawar, John Eccles and Hermann Bondi are amongst the distinguished scientists who have acknowledged their intellectual indebtedness to his work, the latter declaring that “There is no more to science than its method, and there is no more to its method than Popper has said.” Anyway, i could go on about old Poppy all day.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

cian

@CRAKROX said:

You seem to be deliberately ignoring the other factors in the cartoon (beady eyes, the beard, hands drawn as grasping)
It’s not just about the nose.

Beady eyes are not anti-semitic. Peter Kirn has a beard. It looks like that beard. It also is not a curly beard, which is what anti-semitic cartoons typically had. And I fail to see how those hands are grasping:

The hands aren't even pointing in the same direction and they're certainly not touching (which is the classic anti-semitic trope of greedy Jewish banker).

the fact that it’s directed at someone with a Jewish surname.

So you're saying that any criticism, or caricature of a Jewish person is anti-semitic?

[Deleted User]

@MonzoPro said:

@Fruitbat1919 said:

@MonzoPro said:

@Fruitbat1919 said:

@MonzoPro said:

@Fruitbat1919 said:

@MonzoPro said:

@Fruitbat1919 said:

@espiegel123 said:
@Fruitbat1919 : so you would be all good with a large company putting its resources into ridiculing you and having millions of people laughing at your expense?

How about if they put a poster ridiculing you somewhere you and your friends and family saw it everyday? You would feel like their free speech rights were being infringed if your friends and family asked to take it down?

There is differences involved that most free speech advocates respect regarding duration, but that’s a long subject and it’s my tea time soon. As for the rest I will answer later maybe if you are indeed interested.

To be fair, most of the complaints you see about the curtailing of ‘free speech’ are racists who have broken the law, or Facebook hate groups having their memes taken down.

It’s all bullshit. You can say pretty much what you like, providing it isn’t racist or hate speech.

My nephews wife likes to share BNP type meme posts every year complaining about ‘Muslims stopping us from wearing poppies’.

Obviously they’re not, as was confirmed by the British Legion. ‘Do you have a lot of problems with Muslims telling you to remove your poppy down there Jo?’ I asked her once. Her response was to post a picture of a golliwog, complaining you can’t even share pictures of them these days without the ‘PC brigade’ having a go.

And there are many examples where people have had there freedoms inhibited by freedom of speech being taken from certain individuals. Even examples where it was found unlawful.

Examples?

Yep of course. Between preparing tea no probs. One was quite recent where the police asked a bloke to ‘check his thinking’ and the incident could have stopped him gaining certain employment just due to the police ‘non crime report’.

His thinking about what? Did he break the law? Was it a racist comment?

None of his comments broke any laws, but caused someone to report offence. His views were politically incorrect if you get my meaning, but the law found the police to be unlawful in their actions towards him. I will try to find you a link, but I’m afraid you will need to read multiple reports, as most are biased one way or the other.

The police don't always get it right. For every example of the type you've aluded to above, I could probably find another ten where racial or other forms of abuse were ignored and led to more serious consequences.

The laws are there to protect people, particularly minorities and the vulnerable. Sounds like your friend was on the borderline legally, if not morally. But doesn't sound like a case of freedom of speech being curtailed.

Definitely sounds like one to me. I wonder if you would feel the same if it was you they came to and your job prospects altered when you had by their own words done nothing illegal?

Saying you can find ten to every one of mine, is a bit dick waving isn't it?

cian

@Max23 said:
its both
long nose = liar
sniff the cork of winebottle = elitist / snob

easy to see if your mind isnt preoccupied with your own political agenda.

This. It also works well visually because the nose stretches over all the buttons.

[Deleted User]

@Fruitbat1919 said:

@MonzoPro said:

@Fruitbat1919 said:

@MonzoPro said:

@Fruitbat1919 said:

@MonzoPro said:

@Fruitbat1919 said:

@MonzoPro said:

@Fruitbat1919 said:

@espiegel123 said:
@Fruitbat1919 : so you would be all good with a large company putting its resources into ridiculing you and having millions of people laughing at your expense?

How about if they put a poster ridiculing you somewhere you and your friends and family saw it everyday? You would feel like their free speech rights were being infringed if your friends and family asked to take it down?

There is differences involved that most free speech advocates respect regarding duration, but that’s a long subject and it’s my tea time soon. As for the rest I will answer later maybe if you are indeed interested.

To be fair, most of the complaints you see about the curtailing of ‘free speech’ are racists who have broken the law, or Facebook hate groups having their memes taken down.

It’s all bullshit. You can say pretty much what you like, providing it isn’t racist or hate speech.

My nephews wife likes to share BNP type meme posts every year complaining about ‘Muslims stopping us from wearing poppies’.

Obviously they’re not, as was confirmed by the British Legion. ‘Do you have a lot of problems with Muslims telling you to remove your poppy down there Jo?’ I asked her once. Her response was to post a picture of a golliwog, complaining you can’t even share pictures of them these days without the ‘PC brigade’ having a go.

And there are many examples where people have had there freedoms inhibited by freedom of speech being taken from certain individuals. Even examples where it was found unlawful.

Examples?

Yep of course. Between preparing tea no probs. One was quite recent where the police asked a bloke to ‘check his thinking’ and the incident could have stopped him gaining certain employment just due to the police ‘non crime report’.

His thinking about what? Did he break the law? Was it a racist comment?

None of his comments broke any laws, but caused someone to report offence. His views were politically incorrect if you get my meaning, but the law found the police to be unlawful in their actions towards him. I will try to find you a link, but I’m afraid you will need to read multiple reports, as most are biased one way or the other.

The police don't always get it right. For every example of the type you've aluded to above, I could probably find another ten where racial or other forms of abuse were ignored and led to more serious consequences.

The laws are there to protect people, particularly minorities and the vulnerable. Sounds like your friend was on the borderline legally, if not morally. But doesn't sound like a case of freedom of speech being curtailed.

Definitely sounds like one to me. I wonder if you would feel the same if it was you they came to and your job prospects altered when you had by their own words done nothing illegal?

Saying you can find ten to every one of mine, is a bit dick waving isn't it?

Just to add, the police didn’t get it wrong according to their service guidelines, as they are now being taught this as procedure. So if, one day you get a visit from the police to ‘check your thinking’, hope you haven’t got an urge to dick wave with the politically correct police lol

[Deleted User]

Bored now. Think I’ve done this conversation to death. While it was fun chatting to start with, it’s now just going over the same ground over and over, so enjoy folks, but I’m politely bowing out now.

Maybe it’s the meal I’ve just cooked that makes me too tired for this stuff. Go enjoy a ride on ya pinochle noses all you weird buggers

ExAsperis99

I've shown this image to several New Yorkers with NO prior knowledge of this situation at all, and their unanimous response was WHOA! (New York is pretty Jew-friendly, fwiw.)
But despite their initial response (and many online as well) we cannot know if this was intended to be anti-Semitic.

Yet it's really something to watch the contortions some people are performing to express their certainty that it was absolutely definitely not anti-Semitic.

drcongo

@Fruitbat1919 said:
Just to add, the police didn’t get it wrong according to their service guidelines, as they are now being taught this as procedure. So if, one day you get a visit from the police to ‘check your thinking’, hope you haven’t got an urge to dick wave with the politically correct police lol

I’ve tried really hard to understand what this anecdote is about, but I honestly have no idea what any of this means. You believe the police are taught to turn up at people’s houses and ask them what they’re thinking about? And that if they do this, it goes on some kind of imaginary record that affects your job prospects? Every post you’ve made needs to be taken with a massive dose of citation needed.

knewspeak

@ExAsperis99 said:
I've shown this image to several New Yorkers with NO prior knowledge of this situation at all, and their unanimous response was WHOA! (New York is pretty Jew-friendly, fwiw.)
But despite their initial response (and many online as well) we cannot know if this was intended to be anti-Semitic.

Yet it's really something to watch the contortions some people are performing to express their certainty that it was absolutely definitely not anti-Semitic.

It either, was definitely or wasn’t definitely, do you have a definitive answer?

echoopera

The irony of all of this is that ‘this’ wasn’t even an original idea. Check it:
https://reverb.com/item/21514392-the-cork-sniffer-preamp-dirtyboost-from-blammo

wim

@AudioGus said:

@drcongo said:
Sounds like quite a lot of you have never heard of Karl Popper or the paradox of tolerance.

Not me. Karl Popper is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century. He was also a social and political philosopher of considerable stature, a self-professed critical-rationalist, a dedicated opponent of all forms of scepticism, conventionalism, and relativism in science and in human affairs generally and a committed advocate and staunch defender of the ‘Open Society’. One of the many remarkable features of Popper’s thought is the scope of his intellectual influence: he was lauded by Bertrand Russell, taught Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend and the future billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros at the London School of Economics, numbered David Miller, Joseph Agassi, Alan Musgrave and Jeremy Shearmur amongst his research assistants there and had reciprocally beneficial friendships with the economist Friedrich Hayek and the art historian Ernst Gombrich. Additionally, Peter Medawar, John Eccles and Hermann Bondi are amongst the distinguished scientists who have acknowledged their intellectual indebtedness to his work, the latter declaring that “There is no more to science than its method, and there is no more to its method than Popper has said.” Anyway, i could go on about old Poppy all day.

Is his music on Sound Cloud?

[Deleted User]

@Fruitbat1919 said:

@MonzoPro said:

@Fruitbat1919 said:

@MonzoPro said:

@Fruitbat1919 said:

@MonzoPro said:

@Fruitbat1919 said:

@MonzoPro said:

@Fruitbat1919 said:

@espiegel123 said:
@Fruitbat1919 : so you would be all good with a large company putting its resources into ridiculing you and having millions of people laughing at your expense?

How about if they put a poster ridiculing you somewhere you and your friends and family saw it everyday? You would feel like their free speech rights were being infringed if your friends and family asked to take it down?

There is differences involved that most free speech advocates respect regarding duration, but that’s a long subject and it’s my tea time soon. As for the rest I will answer later maybe if you are indeed interested.

To be fair, most of the complaints you see about the curtailing of ‘free speech’ are racists who have broken the law, or Facebook hate groups having their memes taken down.

It’s all bullshit. You can say pretty much what you like, providing it isn’t racist or hate speech.

My nephews wife likes to share BNP type meme posts every year complaining about ‘Muslims stopping us from wearing poppies’.

Obviously they’re not, as was confirmed by the British Legion. ‘Do you have a lot of problems with Muslims telling you to remove your poppy down there Jo?’ I asked her once. Her response was to post a picture of a golliwog, complaining you can’t even share pictures of them these days without the ‘PC brigade’ having a go.

And there are many examples where people have had there freedoms inhibited by freedom of speech being taken from certain individuals. Even examples where it was found unlawful.

Examples?

Yep of course. Between preparing tea no probs. One was quite recent where the police asked a bloke to ‘check his thinking’ and the incident could have stopped him gaining certain employment just due to the police ‘non crime report’.

His thinking about what? Did he break the law? Was it a racist comment?

None of his comments broke any laws, but caused someone to report offence. His views were politically incorrect if you get my meaning, but the law found the police to be unlawful in their actions towards him. I will try to find you a link, but I’m afraid you will need to read multiple reports, as most are biased one way or the other.

The police don't always get it right. For every example of the type you've aluded to above, I could probably find another ten where racial or other forms of abuse were ignored and led to more serious consequences.

The laws are there to protect people, particularly minorities and the vulnerable. Sounds like your friend was on the borderline legally, if not morally. But doesn't sound like a case of freedom of speech being curtailed.

Saying you can find ten to every one of mine, is a bit dick waving isn't it?

Ok time for me to butt out, before I say something we both regret.

AudioGus

@echoopera said:
The irony of all of this is that ‘this’ wasn’t even an original idea. Check it:
https://reverb.com/item/21514392-the-cork-sniffer-preamp-dirtyboost-from-blammo

Yup, that is the hilarious head splode part of the 'gives no fucks' what this guy says, but clearly do give em...

jrjulius

This is amazing. First off, to the “we need thicker skin” people, let’s remember this all allegedly started because Kirn wrote an article about Behringer’s attempts to sue Dave Smith Instruments and GearSlutz. Behringer also removed critical comments from their social media before backtracking and deleting the video (source: https://www.musicradar.com/news/behringer-forced-to-apologise-after-bullying-row). They also went above and beyond by applying to trademark his name, which is insane and frankly impossible to misinterpret. Kirn, on the other hand, hasn’t said a word.

And regardless of what they “intended,” the fact that no one at Behringer thought the drawing might call to mind anti-Semitic cartoons from the past blows my mind.

“How could anyone make that mistake? The nose isn’t hooked, the beard isn’t curly, and the hands aren’t quite clasped!”

anickt

According to Tim Webb, Peter is not Jewish...

https://discchord.com/

jrjulius

@anickt said:
According to Tim Webb, Peter is not Jewish...

https://discchord.com/

Irrelevant though. The point is, the drawing reminded people of anti-Semitic cartoons, making it a fuck-up for Behringer regardless of what they intended.

Littlewoodg

@echoopera said:
The irony of all of this is that ‘this’ wasn’t even an original idea. Check it:
https://reverb.com/item/21514392-the-cork-sniffer-preamp-dirtyboost-from-blammo

Hilarious that the copy cat company copy-catted their parody

cian

According to Tim Webb, Peter is not Jewish...

https://discchord.com/

Also, it just seems to be an ordinary German name. The assumption that it's a specifically 'Jewish' name appears to be wrong.

TheOriginalPaulB

Does anyone have any examples of previous anti-semitic behaviour from Behringer?

AudioGus

https://djmag.com/news/behringer-forced-apologise-after-sinister-attack-journalist

Update (15:11 03-March)
We reached out to Peter for a quote and he replied with:

"Behringer's apology is down; the last post to follow it involves their social media team bragging about the size of their YouTube following. I didn't ask for an apology, though, so that's really up to Behringer. I haven't communicated with them at all since I was made aware in January that they filed the trademark registration in the EU for 'KIRN'. But I support the people who did complain yesterday. Since I'm not Jewish, I have an added obligation to listen to Jewish friends who raised those concerns.

"It seems strange, the whole thing. Most of us are in electronic music entirely for love. This is very obviously not about snobbery; I've spent my entire career writing about, producing, and teaching inexpensive and free music tools. If I did this to get rich or collect a bunch of vintage gear, I, uh, really really screwed up. But I love this community because the people I know in it are dedicated to developing new ideas and talking freely about what they think and feel.

"Oh, and I find the Cork Sniffer really funny. The problem is - it wasn't Behringer's joke.

https://reverb.com/item/21514392-the-cork-sniffer-preamp-dirtyboost-from-blammo"

espiegel123

@jrjulius said:
This is amazing. First off, to the “we need thicker skin” people, let’s remember this all allegedly started because Kirn wrote an article about Behringer’s attempts to sue Dave Smith Instruments and GearSlutz. Behringer also removed critical comments from their social media before backtracking and deleting the video (source: https://www.musicradar.com/news/behringer-forced-to-apologise-after-bullying-row). They also went above and beyond by applying to trademark his name, which is insane and frankly impossible to misinterpret. Kirn, on the other hand, hasn’t said a word.

And regardless of what they “intended,” the fact that no one at Behringer thought the drawing might call to mind anti-Semitic cartoons from the past blows my mind.

“How could anyone make that mistake? The nose isn’t hooked, the beard isn’t curly, and the hands aren’t quite clasped!”

Well put.

And just a reminder to folks: Behringer's actions were effed-up simply on the basis of the bullying mockery of an individual regardless of whether there was any racism. You don't have to think the thing was anti-semitic to see that it was messed up to mock Peter Kirn.

It is weird to me that we've got people in this thread who normally are super critical of big powerful corporations jumping to defend a giant corporation trying to bully an individual (who happened to be doing a reasonable job).