AMNESTY ATTENDEES

Robert Hilburn’s article on heavy-metal’s influence on our young people was downright scary (“Heavy-Metal Syndrome: What’s a Parent to Do?,” June 21).

Not that he carefully minimizes the dangers implicit in the destructiveness of heavy metal, but that he described the attendees at Amnesty International’s final “Conspiracy of Hope” concert as “the hope of the future.”

The overwhelming majority of attendees at the AI concerts were foreign-relations innocents who were barraged with sophisticated pamphleteering, sloganeering and emotional haranguing that would have made Hitler’s Ministry of Propaganda proud. This to benefit an organization that devotes perhaps 80% of its efforts on behalf of prisoners (political or otherwise) in, ironically, the free world.

Only if the attendees were able to rationally evaluate the information conveyed at the concert to reach their own considered judgment could they be sweepingly designated as “the hope of the future.” Media accounts of the concerts gave absolutely no indication of any such reasoned thought.

I wonder if Hilburn would have been equally enchanted if “the socially conscious themes of (the) inspiring musicians” had been, say, the withdrawal of the U.S. from the United Nations or the censorship of pornography?

JOHN V. GERMAN

Los Angeles