Three years ago, Phil Anselmo, the former singer of Pantera, yelled the words "white power" onstage. This was at an all-star Los Angeles tribute to Dimebag Darrell, his former Pantera bandmate, and Anselmo threw a Nazi salute while delivering that phrase. Immediately afterward, Anselmo claimed that he'd been joking, saying that the phrase was a reference to the white wine he'd been drinking backstage. But after a few of his band Down's shows were cancelled, Anselmo offered a longer apology and offered to quit his band. But in the context of some of the terrifying racist violence we're seeing today, an apology may not be enough.
This past weekend, a white supremacist entered a mosque in the New Zealand city of Christchurch and opened fire. He killed at least 50 people and injured dozens more. Next week, Anselmo was scheduled to arrive in New Zealand to play two shows with his band Philip Anselmo And The Illegals -- a 3/26 Christchurch show and a 3/27 Auckland show. But in the wake of that shooting, the venues have cancelled both of those shows, as Stuff reports.
Before he delivered that Nazi salute onstage, Anselmo already had a history of making troubling racial statements, including a notorious white-pride speech at a 1995 Pantera show. Anselmo and his band are currently on tour in Australia, and he has yet to make any public statements on the show cancelation.
