Score another one for male feminists, as “Justin Sane,” lead singer of the tirelessly preachy punk band Anti-Flag, has been indirectly accused of sexual assault — apparently prompting the band to break up and go completely dark online.
Anti-Flag is a stain on my hometown of Pittsburgh, a band known solely for its far-left politics with zero memorable hooks, melodies, or lyrics. Their content is the flipside of the worst elements of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) — all message, music on autopilot, chasing after trends set by actual creatives.
Before catching wind of this story, I had mostly forgotten they existed, and checking back in on their recent output — woof. It’s all so safe, so auto-tuned, so flatly compressed you’ll hear rougher edges on early-2000s pop groups like New Found Glory. How can you ever justify doing a “4-Chord Song” in the modern day? How do you stop pushing yourself to get better and come up with something new in 30+ years of performing? Just pathetic.
That said, it appears anyone who appreciated and bankrolled AF’s oeuvre won’t be hearing any new mediocrities anytime soon. This Wednesday, a terse statement on the band’s Patreon page (whose banner image reads “No Borders. No Nations”) announced: “Anti-Flag has disbanded,” the group will stop taking funds from fans, and its Patreon profile will be deleted once recent membership fees are refunded.
The band’s website and social media accounts have all been deleted without any further explanation.
The breakup and frantic online scrubbing come right as a woman — without naming Justin Sane, née Justin Geever, directly — said a “political punk band” frontman sexually assaulted her years ago. Kristina Sarhadi, a therapist appearing on enough. — a podcast focused on sexual misconduct in the music industry — claimed this rocker got her drunk despite being “straight edge,” pinned her on a bed with his hand on her throat, and claimed to use a condom but did not.
Justin Sane of Anti-Flag performs during the Vans Warped Tour 25th Anniversary on July 20, 2019. (Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images)
Now, as the world has been burned too many times by false MeToo claims, it’s important to note this story has not been corroborated by other witnesses, nor has the accused perpetrator yet had a chance to provide a rebuttal. Sarhadi says she waited years to tell anyone else about the alleged encounter and does not mention any contact with the police, though her description of the episode sounds a lot like what could be reported as rape.
Online commentators quickly speculated that Sarhadi’s account on this podcast could be the reason for Anti-Flag’s abrupt end, pointing to anonymous posts on Tumblr and a now-defunct punk music forum as confirmation that this alleged behavior may be part of a larger pattern with Geever.
Punk fans fumed that the allegations undermined the band’s political messaging, such as the pro-abortion “No Apology” or the ever-so-subtle “Feminism Is for Everybody (with a Beating Heart and a Functioning Brain),” where the quartet declared:
We’re all the people’s feminists
We won’t put your patriarchal systems back together again
This is what a feminist looks like
This is what a feminist sounds like
The band also partnered with “A Voice for the Innocent,” a now-defunct nonprofit “dedicated to the support of those affected by rape and sexual abuse.”
On the podcast, Sarhadi also vented that the band of her alleged attacker publicly espouses feminism, speculating that it may be a strategy to “lure” young women into feeling safe around the accused singer.
They’re headlining festivals. They’re still preaching the same rhetoric about caring about women and protecting women and speaking out against violence and the most ironic shit — basically, the opposite of what I saw that night. And it makes me so angry. More than anything, it’s betrayal and rage that he’s allowed to still have this platform — to just lie and lure people in. It feels like a lure — to be like, “Come hang out with me. I’m so safe. Look how much I’ll protect you. I’ve been campaigning for your protection for decades and decades.” And that’s not who he really is.
Again, nothing is proven here. Geever may provide undeniable exculpatory evidence. Maybe Sarhadi will clarify she wasn’t talking about him. But if the allegations are true, the inevitable backlash and career implosion couldn’t have happened to a nicer male feminist.