At around 6:30 a.m. on Christmas Day, country singer JP Harris woke up to an explosion. A 63-year-old man had parked an RV next to an AT&T network hub in downtown Nashville and blown the vehicle up, killing himself, injuring eight others, and flattening several buildings. Cell service was knocked out for days.
When federal investigators looked into the Nashville bomber, they found letters he’d written promoting 9/11 conspiracies, suggesting the moon landing was fabricated, and claiming that reptilians had taken control of the Earth. (Needless to say, there is no evidence for any of these claims). “Everything is an illusion,” the bomber wrote in one letter. “There is no such thing as death.”
Until then, Harris hadn’t sung much about current events. “Country music brings people from different walks of life together,” he said. “So, I’ve not been incredibly outspoken about my personal politics.” But after the bombing, he fumed over fringe theories. “I just wrote out the most absurd histories of all these conspiracies to draw out the comparisons,” Harris said. “I tried to stretch it as far as I could, while keeping it tethered to the absurd shit that these people are saying and outlining on the internet.”
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Originally published at https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-country-music-turning-on-racism-and-qanon-conspiracies?source=articles&via=rss on .
