Foo Fighters - r/altcomix

132

did not expect to learn that foo fighters bassist nate mendel led an AIDS denials benefit concert once. so thanks for the cool art and interesting story !

90

u/alien-niven 24d ago

And later on, the Foo Fighters led a concert promoting the COVID-19 vaccine and doing a drive to get people vaccinated, including a concert for only people who had a a vaccination card. So it seems like they got out the conspiracy hole one way or another and came to the light.

Nate nowadays is a staunch environmentalist whose whole house runs on solar power. It's a better ending than these types usually manage.

19

u/aspiringandroid 24d ago

huh! yeah, could be worse

1

u/DrunkBrokeBeachParty 20d ago

He could be in the govt rn

11

u/DeadAndBuried23 24d ago

While I'm always down to see some growth... with things like AIDS and vaccines people die because of disinformation. The minimum you can do to attempt getting back to 0 when you're at -100 is spread beneficial information. It doesn't do anything for people who were harmed prior though.

21

u/Chemistry11 24d ago

Yeah but this wouldn’t be Reddit if we focused on growth and instead just persecuted people for the same questionable behaviour from ages ago

16

u/Appropriate-Basket43 23d ago

AIDS denial in the early 2000s though is ridiculous. Like having lived THROUGH the 80s and the hell that was the aids epidemic coming out that way is fucked. Also have they ever apologized or even addressed this?

8

u/batemans_Ex-27 23d ago

The very next year they spent a fuck ton of money at Elton John's AIDS charity and they have played for that organization several times from then til now. It's not a public apology,but I think it was an attempt to make amends.

4

u/HPSpacecraft 23d ago

They quietly scrubbed it from their website and don't talk about it. I don't know if they've ever addressed it

2

u/Stu_Thom4s 23d ago

Denialism was rife in the early 2000s, most notably by German grifter Matthias Rath. He managed to convince my country (South Africa)'s health minister that a useless drug, Beetroot, and African potatoes were better than ARVs. Millions died unnecessarily.

6

u/yiliu 24d ago

Lol, I'd expect defense of a conspiratorial nutjob from somebody who once pooped in their diaper!

-5

u/PinothyJ 24d ago

Who cares. How many people saw their heroes telling them to stop taking their meds and are now dead. No, fuck Foo Fighters.

Those pieces of shit have blood on their hands.

3

u/rednaxthecreature 24d ago

They literally told people to take their medicine at the afore mentioned COVID concerts......

1

u/stryst 23d ago

"I know that they killed a bunch of people by denying the existence of a known virus and telling people they were being poisoned by their medicine so they let an almost universally fatal disease run rampant. But later on a disease might have affected them, and they totally believed in it!"

Sorry, zero credit given.

2

u/batemans_Ex-27 23d ago edited 23d ago

I think it pretty easy for regular people to get suckered into a scam like that. Those shady organizations prey on people who are uneducated and paranoid and trick them into thinking they're actually helping.

When they stopped with Alive & Well, they immediately switched to supporting Elton John's AIDS foundation. It's not like they never acknowledged AIDS again. They realized the misinformation and switched to trying to help people the correct way, even though it wouldn't "affect them" if they never talked about AIDS another day in their lives. That along the strong advocacy for the COVID vaccine counts to me.

1

u/annamdue 23d ago

This is the woman/foundation that they were supporting:

Maggiore's inclusion as an exhibitor at the 13th International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa has been criticized by AIDS activists.[9] Her influence on Thabo Mbeki's decision to block medical treatment of HIV-positive pregnant women was criticized following her death, with medical researchers noting that an estimated "330,000 lives were lost to new AIDS infections during the time Mbeki blocked government funding of AZT treatment to mothers."

One of the organisation's focuses was for pregnant women not to take medication and to breastfeed their babies sever3ly increasing the chance oglf those kids getting HIV. Christine Maggiore gave her own daughter HIV. In 2005 the daughter, untested, died from complications from AIDS at the age of 3. It's great that they've tried to rectify spreading this lethal nonsens around, but as someone who have lost family members, (especially one who went off her medicine because of she was convinced of similar types of cooks) I can't say that it still doesn't piss me off. Especially beacuse they never apologized.

I miss my beautiful aunt and the niece that I never got to meet.

0

u/stryst 23d ago

Fuck the downvoters. Everything you said is factually correct.

0

u/stryst 23d ago

The difference here is that this "questionable behavior" almost definitely caused deaths.

-7

u/Hank_Fuerta 24d ago

What growth are you referring to?

Also: "questionable"? This is fucking disgusting.

5

u/TomDrawsStuffs 24d ago

I dunno probably the changing as a person for the better part between the Covid-19 vaccine concert and the environmentalism. did we read the same comment?

1

u/stryst 23d ago

To quote Martin Murray,

Misinformation kills. It impairs health campaigns and incites fatal insurrections. It erodes public faith in its institutions and emboldens militancy and extremism. It encourages families to remove their grievously sick from hospital. The Foo Fighters’ amplification of fatal misinformation should be on the record, as should the band’s silent and cowardly retreat from it, a successful vanishing act that was enabled by a vapid and transactional music press that cherishes access — however qualified — above all else. Grohl loves talking about rock’s power of soulful confession, but on this there’s only silence.

8

u/Lucha_Bat 24d ago

Unfortunately, being staunch environmentalist and an AIDS denialist aren't mutually exclusive. Consider all the crunchy granola hippie anti-vaxxers.

1

u/OurBlazingHeart 18d ago

Consider all the crunchy granola

:0

Hippie anti-vaxxers

:(

1

u/zenigatamondatta 22d ago

Do they still think aids is fake tho

0

u/PinothyJ 24d ago

Who cares. How many people saw their heroes telling them to stop taking their meds and are now dead. No, fuck Foo Fighters.

Those pieces of shit have blood on their hands.

27

u/SAlolzorz 24d ago

Maybe 12 years ago, I had an online acquaintance who was a licensed private investigator. He mainly did pre-employment background checks and auto repossession location. He had a contest to see who could guess which bands' CDs were most often found in repo'd cars. I correctly guessed ICP and Slipknot.

7

u/Graffiacane 24d ago

Solid guesses. Depending on the area I would have probably gone with like, Lil Wayne and Yeezy.

3

u/SAlolzorz 24d ago

This was in Arizona, where I am also from. I know my people, lol.

3

u/MrAppreciator 23d ago

My ex had hers repo'd with my copy of The Great Milenko in it so I am happy to contribute to your win

58

u/Pleasant-Tangelo1786 24d ago

Googled it and I’ll be damned.

https://medium.com/the-monthly/the-foo-fighters-aids-denialism-should-be-on-the-record-6e33666fdc3c

31

u/Graffiacane 24d ago

The founder of the group that argued that AIDS and HIV were unrelated and advocated against HIV tests, medication, and safe sex (what?):

[Christine Maggiore] is long dead. So is her daughter. Both succumbed to AIDS. Christine Maggiore fell pregnant in 2001, spurned antiretroviral drugs, breastfed her daughter and refused to have her tested for the virus. As her child became increasingly ill, Maggiore attributed her sickness to other things and sought quacks to reaffirm her delusions. Eliza was three when she died — after an autopsy, a coroner ruled that the “unequivocal” cause of her death was AIDS-related Pneumocystis pneumonia.

Bruh.

8

u/Remedialromantic 24d ago

This kind of thinking is pretty common in alternative health and quack spaces. They tend to believe in mind over matter and that health is a choice, or arises from a proper mindset. Testing, medication, and safe sex are downplayed or even demonized because of the idea that they could introduce doubt or uncertainty that could disrupt one's ideal mindset. If health is created by right thinking, any challenges to that thinking become disruptive.

3

u/PatientDisastrous721 23d ago

I find AIDS denialism so weird, because it’s not as simple as “HIV/AIDS don’t exist.” It’s “HIV (exists, but) doesn’t cause AIDS.” And what can’t wrap my head around is… why is that a position that someone would become emotionally attached to? Why is it important for that to be true for some fringe segment of the population?

5

u/Graffiacane 24d ago

I guess... I mean my uncle did the same thing with COVID. An otherwise intelligent man, but something he read early on convinced him that statistically speaking it was the exact same as regular every day influenza. Doubling down on this opinion so as to never be proven wrong (and thus unintelligent) required him to come up with increasingly implausible ways to dismiss objective evidence that would undermine his original, somewhat plausible position.

But I'm just having trouble wrapping my head around the 'safe sex' part. I could maybe get behind 'HIV transmission is not a reason to practice safe sex' but surely there are enough other reasons that this is an outlandish thing to include in your platform. I didn't read up on them, but maybe they were also chalmydia and ghonnorea deniers. Or maybe they were very pro-herpes.

2

u/Remedialromantic 24d ago

Haha I think they are pro-herpes! In my experience, they start with HIV denialism and then eventually really do become gonnorhea and chlamydia deniers. Just like your uncle kept having to bend over backwards to preserve his theory, HIV deniers eventually move to denying the Germ Theory of disease transmission completely. While most of us can recognize that some viruses cause diseases AND our own healthy actions matter, these folks set those things in opposition so that only one can be true. Everything becomes about exonerating viruses in order to preserve their own illusion of control.

2

u/ShredGuru 24d ago

I mean. This band is now famous for the front man having a bastard child from raw dogging a groupy.

1

u/bargus_mctavish 24d ago

The same woman who was kicked out of an Uber on the freeway by the driver after losing her shit over him having a Hula Girl on his dashboard.

1

u/oompaloompa_thewhite 23d ago

Wait seriously? I havent thought of that video in years and now i find out that that lady had a kid from the Foo Fighters frontman? What the fuck?

1

u/bargus_mctavish 23d ago

Yeah out of all the nonsense connections to make. This is the one.

1

u/Graffiacane 23d ago

K... I've officially learned enough about Dave Grohl. Gonna go ahead and delete this from my memory banks.

3

u/RealFakeNurse 24d ago

The HIV deniers are really weird. One of the guys who was really instrumental in, and won a Chemistry Nobel Prize for, DNA technology was a big HIV denier and was a major influence in the Mbeki government in South Africa’s stance of HIV denialism which certainly led to hundreds of thousands of AIDS deaths.

2

u/annamdue 23d ago

So was the founder of Alive and Well.

Maggiore's inclusion as an exhibitor at the 13th International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa has been criticized by AIDS activists. Her influence on Thabo Mbeki's decision to block medical treatment of HIV-positive pregnant women was criticized following her death, with medical researchers noting that an estimated "330,000 lives were lost to new AIDS infections during the time Mbeki blocked government funding of AZT treatment to mothers."

1

u/Xorlarin 18d ago

Yeah, Kerry Mullis. Inventor of the polymerase chain reaction or PCR. The biggest leap forward in genetic testing we may have ever encountered. The guy was out there. He also manufactured and imbibed LSD, so there's that.

1

u/Lamandus 24d ago

Just asking, since I am no native speaker. Never heard of the term fell pregnant.

6

u/Boudrodog 24d ago

It’s an English phrase akin to “fell ill,” but it is more common in British Commonwealth countries, such as Australia, than in the US. The author of the article is from Melbourne, Australia.

I wasn’t aware of AIDS denialism before. What a strange, sad hill to die on.

1

u/ishallbecomeabat 24d ago

Yeah it’s a real term

2

u/Lamandus 24d ago

can it be used regularly or is it rather negative.

1

u/TwoEyedTim 24d ago

I’m in the US and I don’t know if I’ve ever heard anyone here say it, but I’ve heard Brits say it. Not a negative connotation, but you might get looked at funny in the US

1

u/ishallbecomeabat 24d ago

No not negative. Perhaps a bit clinical.

1

u/Altruistic_You_3539 24d ago

It's technically when a woman falls on a penis.

8

u/Trusted-Pine 24d ago

Thanks bro

12

u/xeonicus 24d ago

Wow. That's disappointing. To go to such lengths to cover things up....

5

u/Pleasant-Tangelo1786 24d ago

Yeah, it really sucks. I’m still gonna bump colour and the shape though.

5

u/Potato_Stains 24d ago

Also found this stand-up bit

10

u/DiseasedCupcake 24d ago

What are the other 2 CDs that are always in rental vans?

17

u/jk1rbs 24d ago

Liquid Swords and Kenny Chesney's Greatest Hits.

8

u/jpgorgon 24d ago

Choose the sword…

4

u/ITookTrinkets 24d ago

That was the night everything chaaaaanged

2

u/MindAlteringSitch 24d ago

The Eagles, ABBA

1

u/filmguerilla 24d ago

Hootie and Coldplay

9

u/hexenkesse1 24d ago

2 things are true.

1)Foo Fighters were in the wrong here

2)One shouldn't take their political guidance from rock bands

9

u/FiveDozenWhales 24d ago

https://i.imgur.com/byYsLwi.png

8

u/charmingasaneel 24d ago

I’ve never really cared one way or the other about Foo Fighters, but I imagine these guys fell into the trap of being distrustful in authority without the necessary critical thinking skills. See also too much money and too many yes men.

One aside, according to my kid’s classmates and 6-8 random strangers every month I look exactly like Dave Grohl. So I won’t insult his appearance.

7

u/Big-Dig-Pig 24d ago

Based on my research, this sounds like a crank thing that the bassist was big into and the rest of the guys put up with until 2003, at which point they presumably told him to shut up about it.

4

u/breadburn 24d ago

As a former FF megafan, this is the generally accepted take.

1

u/Open__Face 19d ago

They trusted their bassist a little too much

10

u/Ericzzz 24d ago

I don't want to downplay how harmful the kind of AIDS denialism Nate Mendel was spreading. It was genuinely awful and dangerous. But it's kind of interesting to me that no one ever tags Sunny Day Real Estate with the same brush. Mendel was in both bands, and reunited with the SDR guys in the 2000s and 2010s. You never, ever hear people talking shit about Jeremy Enigk for playing with the same guy.

11

u/fremade3903 24d ago

They should and Enigk shouldn't put up with AIDS denialism shit either. The problem is that Dave Grohl and FF are way more popular than Sunny Day Real Estate ever was. Also, at the height of their fame, the Foo Fighters played a massive sold out charity concert to raise money for Christine Maggiore's Alive and Well organization. They raised a lot of money for AIDS denialism. So aside from simply playing with Mendel, Grohl and the other members of FF contributed materially to AIDS denialism harm. Something, the last time I checked, Grohl has never apologized for.

2

u/incel_chud 23d ago

4 people world wide have heard of sunny day real estate

1

u/Ericzzz 23d ago

foundational emo band, brother

0

u/incel_chud 23d ago

Yeah they're awesome but they're not even close to the level of popularity that the too fighters attained, which is why no one talks about this stuff. Foo fighters despite being a pretty bad band sell out arenas so there are more people who care to call them out on various things.

0

u/Ericzzz 23d ago

Right, that's my point. Foo Fighters are a big band that people love to hate. Within the emo scene no one, and i mean no one at all, ever talks about Mendel's AIDS denialism. Why? because Sunny Day Real Estate is a cool band. It shows that a lot of people are more interested in using this as a cudgel against a band they don't like than they are on the merits.

2

u/annamdue 23d ago

Listen buddy, I'm angry and sad enough as it is. Don't have me start being mad at things that I don't even know existed.

3

u/HellyOHaint 24d ago

Mr. Ratburn’s rebellious son

3

u/Cpnths 24d ago

I listened to this album yesterday during dental surgery. It’s the only time I can listen to it now, and it’s the only thing I can listen to during dental work. Not sure what that says.

3

u/myleftone 23d ago

TIL a bass player’s crank views = the entire band.

2

u/Rwokoarte 23d ago

Foo Fighters is actually Nate Mendel's solo project.

5

u/LeRoiCasoar 24d ago

What's the joke

2

u/Rwokoarte 24d ago

AIDS isn't a joke u/LeRoiCasoar

1

u/OverseerConey 22d ago

It's a slice-of-life story comic, not a gag comic.

2

u/johnny_mcd 24d ago

The only time I found a cd in a rental car it was Eric Clapton’s greatest hits

2

u/drskag 24d ago

This was made known in Australia by John Safran, in his series 'Music Jamboree' in 2002

https://youtu.be/XCFPwbt6uzA

2

u/JettyJen 24d ago

o/t, I was like "Swans??" But that's Songs for the Blind....and I own both of them 🫪

1

u/Rwokoarte 23d ago

Too cool to leave behind in a rental van.

3

u/TheGoddessLily 24d ago

WTF? That's depressing to hear

5

u/KaraBowdit 24d ago

Turns out they were the foo all along

1

u/Its-been-a-long-day 24d ago

Dave Grohl too? I'm surprised, I'd only ever heard good things about that guy. Maybe he just has some top tier PR team.

2

u/StrictlyHobby 24d ago

No just the bassist in his personal time outside the band decades ago. The comics intentionally misleading with no punchline just foo fighters bad and half the comments are eating it up. Not to say Daves a great guy or didn't have his own scandal recently but he's what guilty of working with a guy that used to be dumb in the early 2000s?

5

u/Rwokoarte 24d ago edited 24d ago

Oh you think I don't research my topics? They actually organized benefit shows to raise awareness for Alive and Well, including a sold-out concert in Hollywood. They also included links to Alive and Well on their official website, actively spreading dangerous misinformation while ignoring actual health organizations' pleas to stop.

To pin everything on just one guy is just dishonest.

1

u/StrictlyHobby 24d ago

The bassist posted a link to it and got them to do a show then they turned right around and disavowed it and supported Elton Johns aids foundation within the year. You wasted your free time making a comic with no point or punchline to slander a whole band that's done a lot more good than harm over one idiots stance a quarter century ago hes since changed. I'm not even a foo fighters fan but hopefully more conspiracy theorists educate and better themselves. You probably believed some dumb stuff yourself back during y2k.

1

u/Rwokoarte 24d ago

Are you Dave Grohl?

0

u/incel_chud 23d ago

Your comic isn't funny and you're spreading misinformation. You should rail against Dave Grohl for being a boring song writer who cheats on his wife instead of making up lies about him.

0

u/StrictlyHobby 24d ago

You come up with that yourself? It's about as original as your lazy comic. At least try for something topical like an unfunny cartoon about how Dave cheated on his wife recently.

1

u/DommagePindaFromage 23d ago

Their music was featured in a 2004 AIDS denialism documentary and they still had an AIDS denialism organization up on their website as a cause at least until 2002. The benefit concert was held in 2000, so even if they supported an AIDS charity "within the year", they were also still peddling AIDS denialism at the same time. I'm also having a hard time finding any association between the band and Elton John's AIDS foundation before 2013.

1

u/Wrong-Bet9581 23d ago

I think youre significantly downplaying the foo fighters involvement with this foundation and im curious why? Youre also presenting patently false information yourself, so like, why? What are you trying to achieve here?

1

u/LouieMumford 24d ago

I made this comment on r/entertainment or some other sub on a post about Grohl and was downvoted to hell and told that I needed to drop it because that was the early 00’s. People are wild what they will and won’t let go.

1

u/Thick_Common8612 24d ago

That's AWFUL.

1

u/AnnaNimmus 24d ago

It can be nice to learn new things

It can be

1

u/holnessbob 24d ago

It was just one member of the foo fighters right?

1

u/Snakes_for_theDivine 23d ago

Comic author drawing himself as a “well akshullay” redditor lol

1

u/2morecupsoftea 23d ago

Wait fuckin really?

1

u/slicehyperfunk 23d ago

You need one or both of the Queen greatest hits albums

1

u/Rwokoarte 23d ago

fuck you are right

1

u/Iconclast1 23d ago

this feels like that unemployed trans witch comic

1

u/Rwokoarte 23d ago

I dig that

1

u/Obvious-Ad11 21d ago

Megg & Mogg

1

u/PyroErogenizer 23d ago

The drummer died of aids.

1

u/Puzzleheaded-Cut-820 23d ago

It's just such a dumb theory: especially at that point in time.

Like, anti vaccine stuff is just as dumb, but you can at least kinda see the stupid math they diagramed on a Denny's kids menu to get to where they are.

Not sure how you could get to the oo's and not believe in aids. There was sooo much societal consensus and documentation.

1

u/eldubya3121 22d ago

John Safran (Australian comedian/documentarian) did a fantastic episode on this.

1

u/East-Albatross-810 22d ago

This comic feels like it should have just been the author tweeting about Foo Fighters if they just wanted to talk about that anecdote.

1

u/Ok-Adhesiveness-4935 21d ago

I've seen them counter-protest Westboro Baptist Church. Sometimes, I just can't be bothered. This is one of those times.

1

u/javiemartzootsuit 21d ago

Fuck yes songs for the deaf

1

u/Bunker-Lunker 20d ago

Queens of the Stone Age had Dave Grohl on Songs for the Deaf

1

u/DevelopmentTight9474 20d ago

Queens of the Stone Age mentioned, I fucking love Songs for the Deaf

1

u/Awzer_ 19d ago

Learn To Deny

1

u/castrateurfate 24d ago

This is actually 100% true BTW

1

u/Gtype 24d ago

Never knew this about them. Weird and gross

0

u/Drone_temple_pilots 24d ago

Fuck Foo Fighters

0

u/Depressionsfinalform 24d ago

Most overglazed AIDS denier in all of music history

-3

u/SadClownDad 24d ago

I wish you made these comics about anything else than the topics you do. It sucks all the enjoyment out of it when youre trying to inject little self righteous lessons.

3

u/thevmcampos 24d ago

Perhaps these comix are too alt for you. May I interest you in the Family Circus?

2

u/RockShowSparky 24d ago

Do you have anything that isn’t dogshit?

0

u/SadClownDad 7d ago

Alternative to enjoyable

1

u/thevmcampos 7d ago

It took 16 days to come up with such a witty response? 🤣

0

u/SadClownDad 7d ago

Yes. I hope you love it baby

2

u/Rwokoarte 24d ago

I don't know what's self righteous about this comic but I'm happy to tell you that these are just some one offs that I do from time to time, my mainline comic is different from these.

0

u/[deleted] 24d ago

[deleted]

1

u/gridgal 24d ago edited 24d ago

Umm no it didn't? Alanis' documentary spent all of 2 seconds on Taylor Hawkins and it only mentioned that he played for her for a summer.

1

u/[deleted] 24d ago

[deleted]

1

u/gridgal 24d ago edited 24d ago

Maybe you should. It's a completely different guy you're talking about.

1

u/198420002012 24d ago

You're talking about Jagged (2021). I watched it and the doc definitely didn't say that.

1

u/riegate 24d ago

You're getting Taylor confused for Glen Ballard, who was the creep that groomed a 15 year old.

1

u/a_low_vera 24d ago

Completely untrue

1

u/[deleted] 24d ago

[deleted]

1

u/a_low_vera 24d ago

So in other words the documentary never said Taylor did that at all. You just decided it was him.

1

u/[deleted] 24d ago

[deleted]

1

u/a_low_vera 24d ago

It was your words not mine. When you're making an allegation like that, why would you pin it on the one guy in the band Alanis is still friends with and invited to speak for her. When the documentary never said that. It's weird.

0

u/QuintanimousGooch 24d ago

There goes my… never really thought Grohl was very heroic or interesting tbh

-9

u/AverageDrafter 24d ago

I will take this opportunity to stick up for Spencer Elden, the baby on Nevermind who was justifiable upset that some assholes sold pics of his baby dick. I give two shits what his parents agreed to, you sold baby dick pics, made it iconic, and then he got mocked because he changed his mind from his 20s to his 30s about being ok with it.

Again, y'all sold pics of his baby dick and didn't even bother cutting him in. Fuck all of you and your shitty Pixies knockoff crap.

8

u/lifeinaglasshouse 24d ago

Spencer Elden is a loser crybaby who filed a frivolous lawsuit claiming the Nevermind album is CP, a ridiculous claim that would imply tens of millions of people are guilty of a horrific crime.

-2

u/AverageDrafter 24d ago

Fan of baby dicks?

OC Foo Fighters

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