"Wars have always started over religion"
About this Quote
Danzig’s line hits like a blunt chorus: simple, absolutist, designed to provoke a reflexive yes from anyone raised on the stock story that humans can’t stop killing each other over gods. Coming from a musician whose brand trades in gothic menace and cultural taboo, the point isn’t careful historiography; it’s a mood. “Always” turns history into a permanent indictment, and “religion” becomes a shorthand for the way belief can license violence while pretending to be pure.
The subtext is less about theology than about cover stories. Religion, in this framing, isn’t the engine so much as the flag: the ready-made language that turns land grabs, succession crises, and state-building into cosmic necessity. Danzig’s cynicism works because it compresses a messy reality into a single, emotionally satisfying culprit. It’s the same compression that makes a lyric quotable: a big claim with an easy villain.
Context matters, because the quote lands in a late-20th-century pop-cultural atmosphere where “organized religion” is coded as hypocrisy and control, and where rock and metal have long positioned themselves as the skeptical counterchurch. Saying wars “always” start over religion isn’t a footnote-friendly thesis; it’s a cultural posture, a way of aligning with listeners who feel manipulated by institutions that preach morality while blessing bloodshed.
Its power is also its tell: the exaggeration. The line dares you to argue, and that argument is the point. It keeps the spotlight on how often sacred language is recruited to sanctify very worldly ambitions.
The subtext is less about theology than about cover stories. Religion, in this framing, isn’t the engine so much as the flag: the ready-made language that turns land grabs, succession crises, and state-building into cosmic necessity. Danzig’s cynicism works because it compresses a messy reality into a single, emotionally satisfying culprit. It’s the same compression that makes a lyric quotable: a big claim with an easy villain.
Context matters, because the quote lands in a late-20th-century pop-cultural atmosphere where “organized religion” is coded as hypocrisy and control, and where rock and metal have long positioned themselves as the skeptical counterchurch. Saying wars “always” start over religion isn’t a footnote-friendly thesis; it’s a cultural posture, a way of aligning with listeners who feel manipulated by institutions that preach morality while blessing bloodshed.
Its power is also its tell: the exaggeration. The line dares you to argue, and that argument is the point. It keeps the spotlight on how often sacred language is recruited to sanctify very worldly ambitions.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
|---|
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