Content Warning: Sexual assaults, rape, trauma, cults, etc.,
Since writing Skin to Bone, the noise and community research on Emily Armstrong only got stronger. I realize that I have a blind spot for Linkin Park, in so many ways, so I reached out to a dear friend and co-educator of mine (I’ll call him Z) who shall remain anonymous for his protection.
I had so many questions, about morality, accepting and even idolizing the deeply flawed, and specifically about this band (a shared bond of ours). Z is a survivor of one of the more horrific cults known today and has unique insights into what Emily’s situation might actually look like today.
Before we get started, I’m going to give you a spoiler: Emily is guilty. I will give her a chance, so I am also guilty. The question before us isn’t about guilt, it’s about justice and what it demands from us.
Brief Aside to Catch You Up
Emily Armstrong is the new lead vocalist for Linkin Park. She has received a lot of criticism for showing up to Danny Masterson’s trial presumably in his support, as well as her relationship to the church of scientology (a known cult). The details of who, what, where, and when are all vague enough to make it unclear what actual actions Emily took in her past and what they mean.
Question 1: Does Silence on Emily’s Part Equal Support for The Church of Scientology and What They Do?
Obviously, nobody, at all, can tell us what Emily feels or supports except for Emily. All we can do is examine the evidence before us and make good guesses based on our experiences. When it comes to cults, I have very little experience, but on the subject of silence: I have plenty.
In advocacy circles, there’s an understood moral idea that maintaining silence in the face of something horrifying is creating an environment where that thing can grow. Using this logic, silence is a form of tacit support. If you are not actively fighting against something, loudly, you are a part of it.
On the face of it, there’s actually merit to this idea and the logic checks out. Even in my own work, I often say that spaces that accept injustice are spaces where injustice can grow. I can’t truly fault the underlying principle.
Is it that simple, though?
When we factor in all the other pressures in peoples’ lives, the influences and needs they have, is silence truly a moral decision?
I’m going to use my history and put me on the chopping block.
Do I support rape because I haven’t named my rapists?
Knowing that outing my rapists would cost me my family, my peace and health, and my safety, as well as subject me to endless loops of rehashing it year over year until I’m dead — is my silence support for the rapes I endured as a child? Do I have a moral obligation to forget about myself, the victimized party, and put myself through retraumatizing testimony that might not even be taken seriously and achieve nothing, or else I am a supporter of rape?
Now, if we apply the question above, the only conclusion you can come to is “yes.” If you believe it is truly that simple, you must come to the conclusion that because I, the victim, have not risked everything I’ve worked so hard for to out my attackers, that I am inherently supporting rape.
But, see the flip side of that coin is that the trauma informed approach to this would say that blaming me for my rape and silence after it is a seriously screwed up thing to do, moralistically.
So, if you believe that I support rape because I haven’t named my rapists with my vast platform, am I not being victim blamed and held to account for my assault and trauma?
So, who’s in the wrong here?
Let’s turn our attention back to Emily for a second. She was, as a factual matter of record, born into scientology and did not join the cult directly. All available records seem to indicate she is not a terribly active member, but shows up when told to or for important events.
She is, I’m sure to some extent, aware of the horrors the church of scientology visits upon its members and anyone who crosses them. If I’m putting on my personal thinking cap, I can empathize enough that everything I’m worried about losing by speaking out probably is just the beginning of what would happen to her and everyone she cares about if she spoke out.
When I talked to Z about this exact question, as a cult survivor. He said I had vastly underestimated what cults are capable of doing to people who cross them and that he will never blame anyone who chooses to say nothing in the face of that. He said, I’m paraphrasing here, that when you cross them like that, “dying is the best you can hope for.”
Putting together what we actually know about her, she was born in deep into a cult that has incredible creative potential for torture. And we have no idea what, if anything, was ever done to her in the name of that cult.
If we apply the same rubric of justice that I described above to her, you can only come to one conclusion: her silence must equal the support of the church of scientology. The rubric of justice is a simple, blunt tool which makes its output a simple guilty/not-guilty. If you use it, she is guilty and clearly so. That’s all that needs be said.
So, is the tool right? Is that rubric of silence equalling support a reliable indicator of anything? Does the tool lead us to justice, ultimately?
What do you believe? Tools like this one are perspectives, we can choose to employ, and this one is easy to apply quite carelessly to draw an easy black and white conclusion. Is it that easy? Are the results true?
Question 2: Does Consuming The Unclean Make Us Unclean?
Let’s say that the first question ends up being true, in your mind. You agree that she does support the Church of Scientology regardless because of her silence on it.
The next question is, when buying products and art, how much of that guilt is transferred to us? How much are we supporting the guilt by our purchases? In capitalistic terms, dollars and advertising are equal to support or “voting” for the thing in question (roughly). So when we cast our vote for a song, a piece of electronics, or a t-shirt, how much guilt is transferred to us?
And, is there a line where we say that doesn’t matter as much? Is the transfer of guilt less because a product or service is essential vs. optional? What if something was vital to us in our traumatized youth? What if that thing brings us some mild degree of comfort in a dark world?
Again, if we use the simple rubric, it seems that the more a purchase is optional, the more guilt is transferred because it’s not like you’re just trying to survive. Therefore, consuming art from a corrupted source means you’ve got some guilt on you.
I want to use a different example here that, I think, is more favorable towards this tool and really examine it: J. K. Rowling.
J. K. Rowling is an active participant in right-wing politics of bigotry, and has been known to use her considerable influence and prestige to erode trans protections or prevent them from existing in the first place. She has also said that, like with the tool above, she sees purchasing her products and stories as support for her politics.
My advice on her is that Harry Potter is her horcrux, as long as the brand is being marketed or popular, even acknowledging its existence is tantamount to creating the platform she speaks from. And I still defend that, and so does she. So on some level, I agree with this idea that consumption of art and the like is a choice that has impacts.
Where I differ, though, is that I believe in naming actions and consequences in the pursuit of justice. While the former approach of, “if you buy this, you’re investing in it and are unclean” represents a sort of spiritual morality that I don’t take part in.
What I mean by that is that in current justice based discourse, there are implicit rules: anything there’s a record of you doing can and will be used against you, there is no statute of limitations, and everything is on your permanent record.
In some cases, there’s another implicit belief that a proper amount of apology, explanation, and gestures can allow you to move on from whatever it is you did, but it will never be forgotten. That’s a damn familiar form of justice for me who grew up in an Italian family, the Catholic Church has a very similar set of beliefs about justice.
One of the key ingredients of this song and dance: disgust.
Consuming tainted things means you’re tainted, and that feeling that you might as well have just eaten a taco made from bat droppings. So when you’re happily enjoying your art and someone informs you it’s tainted, there’s also a performance you’re expected to do of “disgust” so that people don’t think you were willingly consuming it. Wouldn’t we all have questions if we told someone a taco was flavored with guano, and they didn’t seem concerned?
So, let’s ask again with Emily: If you consume Linkin Park’s music, knowing that she has said nothing about scientology or her relationship to it, is that the same thing as supporting (tacitly) the church of scientology? Is that transference of guilt based on your existing knowledge, or does it require the guilty party to tell you what you’re supporting by supporting them?
Before you answer, let’s revisit the question of that permanent record version of morality.
Think back on everything you’ve ever enjoyed how many moral guano tacos have you eaten without knowing it? How many books, dripping with their colonialist and racist ideologies, have you consumed and made part of you? Did you get to choose what you took away from that? How many influenced what you create today? Are you clean enough to decide what’s unclean? Is it even fair that you’re being put into a logical framework that dictates every single action in your life can and will be used to give shape to your moral permanent record? And if your record is unclean, does that mean all the opinions and things you’ve shared with others, that they’ve consumed from you are also unclean?
If this is starting to sound oppressively difficult to suss out, it’s because these rules are not human and are enforced selectively with heavy biases towards marginalized individuals who are expected to “know better” by virtue of having been marginalized. The victims are supposed to be even more pure, more clean, right? That’s the narrative?
How Do We Create Digital Justice?
The creation of the digital permanent record means that we have to ask ourselves larger questions about justice than almost any generation before us. In eras past of religious justice and up to the present, really, the idea is to live without sin, right?
I ask you, right now, is your record truly clean? Is there nobody with a bone to pick against you? Nobody you hurt? No records of you saying things you’ve later learned not to repeat?
In the past, growth and justice happened in the context of forgetting. Time took things away, softened wounds, and allowed us to move on and change towards the more just versions of ourselves.
Today, this is not true. Today everything about you exists right now. Using Emily as an example, what happened with her was years ago, right? But to all of us, we’re just now finding out about it so it might as well have been yesterday.
We, as a civilization, are tasked with creating justice in a world where nothing is ever forgotten and the worst things you did will be preserved and fresh for the rest of your life. A world where you can, and will, be put on trial at any given time based on whether someone complains loudly enough about you.
In the past, justice systems handled this by setting thresholds for what they were willing to deal with. In 2024, our primary focus seems to be less on justice and healing than it is on cleanliness and the image of cleanliness. Everyone in this world gets to go through your history looking for proof that you’re unclean to suit their ideals of you. There is nothing you can do about it if the first two questions hold true in your mind.
If I may make a proposal: digital justice means accepting that cleanliness will never exist in us. That for the sake of ourselves and our kids, we have to teach ourselves and our kids to accept deep faults in people forever working towards a bettered version of themselves.
A digital justice means putting the harm on trial and fixing it, including in the people who are responsible for what happened.
We need to have standards, and our standards cannot be as vicious and morally pure as the ones we were handed. Our standards have to include harm reduction, but the belief that anything can be built from and moved past to create a better future.
Digital justice needs to be innovative, creative, and optimistic rather than judgmental and religious in its nature and tone. None of us are living up to our ideal image of humanity, but the beauty of us as a species is that we get to keep trying and that nobody is truly lost permanently.
We have to put some soft statutes of limitations on people and watch their behavior in the present more than surfacing their pasts selectively to tell whatever story we want to tell about them.
This justice is hard. It’s really hard. It won’t be perfect, bad people will escape what should be rightful punishments and be allowed to move on from what they did. Even now, that offends my sensibilities. But I was the victim, justice is about me, not who hurt me. My justice is found in teaching and healing others, and being loved and healed myself.
I’m going to keep listening to Linkin Park. I will listen to Emily’s songs, and I’ll probably like a lot of them. I don’t know if they’ll have the same emotional place for me that they did when Chester sang. I have no clue. I will give her the opportunity to make her case for who she is, rather than believing what I hear about her automatically, and I will keep my ears and eyes tuned towards warning signs about cultish rhetoric in the crowds or the songs.
Digital Justice, the justice I believe in, says that we are called to make each other whole — not make each other clean.
This is powerful. There are people who NEED to use their platform to make amends for the harm that they've caused. But there are also so many people who are judged instantly because people on their feed tell them to or else they are also bad.
Even when someone is wrong or has caused harm, if we can't believe that someone can change and do better with what they have healed through, then like.. what's the point? We're better than that and can be better than that.
I completely agree with you on this. I grew up in a cult. I converted others into that cult. I actively caused harm and said awful things to and about people while in that cult. Now that I'm an adult and I'm out of that situation, I accept that I caused harm. I'm working through the harmful things I've internalized and trying to make up for the harm I caused, but I can't go back and change the past. I'd like to speak out about it, but if I do, I risk losing contact with my underage siblings because my parent will feel threatened. So I have to wait until they are grown up to speak out.
The cult I was in is nowhere as organized or dangerous as scientology. We have no clue what Emily's situation is. I'm willing to give her grace on that. I appreciate that she made a statement about Masterson and how she doesn't support him or his actions. I hope at some point, she's in a safe place where she can physically distance herself from scientology, but until then, I'm ok with consuming her music. As far as I know, the money she makes from creating music isn't going into scientology, so I feel ok about it. Some folks might not agree and that's ok too. It's nuanced.