Joel Zimmerman, known by his stage name deadmau5, was born and raised in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.
Some say deadmau5 is Jewish,[1] others say he's not.[2] Presumably people think he's Jewish because of his surname, Zimmerman–a German name which can be, but is not exclusively Jewish.
One of his fellow DJs, A Guy Called Gerald, seemed to imply he was Jewish in a blog post. Responding to an interview in which deadmau5 criticized other DJs, Gerald wrote,
The only button you and people like you are interested in pushing is a nuke for the Palestinians.[3]
In his response, deadmau5 may have fueled the rumors by commenting on the antisemitism:
i dont give a fuck. esp with the anti-sematic statement about 'nuking palestine' ??? what an ignorant fuck.[4]
But, as one of our diligent readers pointed out, if he really was Jewish, he probably would have spelled "antisemitic" correctly. The fact that his family celebrates Christmas doesn't make him sound all that Jewish either.[5] And finally, our reader has researched the genealogy of the Zimmerman line, finding no indication of Jewish ancestry.[6]
But does he believe in God? Well, maybe. He thanked God for all his fans in one interview, but whether he was speaking colloquially or genuinely credits God with his success can be debated. I'm guessing it's the former.[7]
There's a dead mouse in my politics
I will venture to guess that deadmau5 is both leaning towards the liberal side of things, and is too independently-minded to join a political party. I couldn't find much of anything regarding his views of politics in Canada, and he only gives us bits and pieces about those in the U.S.
He was conspicuously absent from an advertisement for the Obama campaign called "DJs for Obama," in which several high-profile DJs announced their support for the president in 2012.[8] Maybe he didn't participate because he's Canadian and can't vote in the U.S., or maybe he just didn't care about Obama.
But he sounded liberal when he showed his support for gun control laws in the U.S. after the Aurora, Colorado shooting in 2012 that killed 12 people.[9] He doesn't, however, see stricter gun laws as the final answer to gun crime. In illustrating how Adblock, a program designed to block advertisements from websites, is not entirely effective, he tweeted,
oh just like gun control removed all the gun crime?[10]
And then there was this weird tweet about banks and the government which I think makes him sound like one of the 99 percenters of the Occupy Wall Street movement:
Troll politics, banks fix prices, banks gets fined, fixes prices moar, pays fine. Govt wins monies. Puts in bank.[11]
There's no doubt that deadmau5 has loads of opinions that he's not afraid to share, but he's also not going to be easily packed up into a box with a big red (or blue) label on top. Liberal maybe. Party-joiner? Definitely not.
Loading comments...