System Of A Down’s Serj Tankian says he “respects” John Dolmayan, but not his political views

"I love and respect John very much, but I don’t love and respect his American political views"

System Of A Down frontman Serj Tankian has opened up on the ongoing differences of opinion within the band after drummer John Dolmayan expressed a selection of right-wing views across the last year.

He has criticised the Black Lives Matter movement and shown his support for Donald Trump in the past, as well as claiming that people won’t work with him now because of his views.

In stark contrast, Tankian said that he had “never seen a president suck so much” as Donald Trump and continually criticised the former president during his single term in office.

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But despite their differences, Tankian insists that their friendship is far stronger than their political viewpoints.

“We’re very good friends, we’re family, and he’s my drummer in my band, so of course we’ve talked about many, many different things, including political views,” Tankian told Consequence of Sound.

“When you don’t agree with someone after a while about a certain topic … look, it doesn’t mean that we don’t agree about other stuff. We agree a lot about Armenian stuff, for example, a lot about family stuff, a lot of other things, a lot of personal stuff.

“But when it comes to American politics, we happen to be on the polar opposite ends of it, and we’re both very passionate and vehement about our views, which is fine.”

He added: “I love and respect John very much, but I don’t love and respect his American political views. And that’s fine. And I can live with that and he can live with that because we respect and care for each other.

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“And it’s really just that. Have we talked about it? Yeah. But do we talk about it often? No, because there comes a point where when you don’t see eye to eye on something, you just rather talk about something else.”

It comes after Tankian previously said that online backlash faced by Dolmayan was “unjustifiable”.

In January, System Of A Down shared the video for ‘Genocidal Humanoidz‘. The song was released last November as a double A-side single alongside ‘Protect the Land’, marking the band’s first new material in 15 years.

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