Down with the System: A Memoir

Fascinating And Humble Blend Of Personal Memoir, Cultural/ Personal History, and Activism. Serj Tankian burst into the public scene 25 years ago as the lead singer of System Of A Down - the band that had the number one album on 9/11, days before Tankian wrote a reflection on that day that nearly destroyed everything they had built.

This... is his story. We get to that day, but we get a long build up to it, explaining everything that had led him to that point in his life, including his grandparents' survival of the Arminian Genocide in the WWI era through his dad's legal troubles in Tankian's teens and early adulthood, through his initial work creating a software company, finding music, eventually forming System... and then his life with and after System.

Through it all, Tankian's activism to bring light to the horrors of the Arminian Genocide is never far from pretty well literally anything he is writing about in that moment. It is clear that it truly forms the backbone of his identity and everything he considers himself to be about - and truly, as the grandson of two survivors of WWII's Battle of the Bulge, I actually can appreciate the personal family history, even as the particulars of our families are so very different.

Indeed, even our reactions to 9/11 were distinctly different, as Tankian was an immigrant from the Middle East region in his 30s on that day and I was an 18yo American fresh out of high school rocking out to Toxicity that summer before that day. I don't remember my reaction to Tankian's post that day, if I ever even saw it or heard of the public outcry. My own reaction was better summed up first by Alan Jackson's Where Were You (When The World Stopped Turning) (which I *finally* had a chance to hear him perform live in 2022) and the (sadly now late) great Toby Keith's "Courtesy Of The Red White And Blue". I was a college junior that day, even though I had just graduated high school at the beginning of that summer, but still an 18yo male with a US Selective Service card - the knowledge that if America went to war, I could be called to fight in it very, *very* real on my mind in the immediate aftermath.

But that day and the fallout are but a small part of this book, though it *is* discussed. The overarching tale being, again, that of Tankian's work bringing publicity to the Arminian Genocide and his efforts to get to get the world to force Turkey to so much as acknowledge their crimes of that era and all that it has led to, including a new war in Armenia this decade that Turkey had a hand in, according to Tankian.

Overall this was truly an interesting look at a remarkable life that many of us had heard of before, but I suspect few of us indeed knew of the depth of the passion involved here and everything Tankian has done.

Very much recommended.