Chris Korda: Humans Are Stupid Monkeys

Amsterdam - A few 'silent' members of the Public Prosecution Service were in Amsterdam's Paradiso on Wednesday evening, November 13, to ensure that no one would commit suicide during the performance of suicide preacher and house musician Chris Korda. He stood in front of a half-filled hall, with many journalists, photographers and camera crews. A better audience is hardly possible for someone who denounces the voyeurism of the mass media.

Also read the report of an eyewitness: "Jeez, bitch. Weren't you paying attention or something?"

How Korda denounces the voyeurism of the mass media was shown on a screen several meters high in Paradiso. At the end of his concert, the famous video clip I like to watch was shown, in which images of collapsing WTC towers are cut up with men ejaculating in women's faces and flashes of sports matches. Including one of FC Utrecht.

Korda conjures up catchy techno and electro from his laptop for over an hour, and manages to get part of the audience moving, who have to dance around the photographers and cameramen.

During the concert, Korda shows hilarious footage of the counter-demonstrations he and his followers hold in Boston at protests by Christian anti-abortion action groups. People are seen walking with signs depicting Jesus and a photo of a young child, with the text: abortion survivor underneath. Korda and his followers suddenly appear behind them. Korda in women's clothing, next to him a man in a tribal old Germanic outfit and someone in a meter-high penis suit. They walk with signs that read, among other things: 'eat a queer fetus for Jesus' and fuck breeding. The anti-abortion demonstrators are completely stunned as soon as they see it. Some remain astonished with their mouths open, others start mumbling prayers.

The audience didn't seem particularly fazed by the images, and everyone turned out to be alive at the end. After that, the hall was half empty, because a real press conference was taking place in the basement. Like a true American television preacher, Korda uses clear slogans to present his Church of Euthanasia. He sets an equally radical pagan ideology against extremist American anti-abortion Christians. "The Church of Euthanasia is not a joke, I mean it seriously. It is also more than art. It is a real church, because it expresses moral and ethical positions. Life is not, as Christians believe, a gateway to heaven. The meaning of life is life itself, that it has come into existence and evolved. It justifies itself."

"And life is more important than people. The way people are behaving now means that they are the end of evolution. People are stupid apes, the only reason why all the trees have not been cut down is because mankind has not had the means up until now. With the industrialization of the last two hundred years, a holocaust has been wreaked upon the animals. Every forty minutes a species of animal becomes extinct. If the number of people on earth is not brought back into balance with the other species, eventually mankind will also become extinct, and life will be gone altogether."

Providing information about suicide on the website is related to this, but Korda mainly believes that it is a right of people to get out if they want to. "I do not physically help, that is prohibited in the United States. Providing information about suicide is allowed." Korda does not object to the fact that the information he provides on his website can be dangerous for some people because they do not know what they are doing. "Driving is also dangerous."

In the crowded basement of Paradiso, Korda has no problem with smoking. "I'm pro-smoking. It's a slow way."

Korda does not expect his church to have a large following. "With that handful of people who do not have children or commit suicide because of the Church of Euthanasia, it does not help. It is already too late. I also have nothing to do with environmental activists who think: 'if we recycle plastic and let cars run on alcohol, it can still be saved'. The Church of Euthanasia is mainly there for people who realize that they collaborate in the destruction of life, that it is already too late, and are ashamed of it. There will not be many people who understand that."

© Henk Willem Smits, November 2002

The preceding is a translation. The original language is here.