Chester Bennington’s Son Jaime Says Fans Are Telling Him “To Kill Myself” After He Criticized New Linkin Park Singer
One day after Jaime Bennington, the son of the late Linkin Park lead singer Chester Bennington, criticized the band for their decision to hire new lead singer Emily Armstrong, the 28-year-old scion said fans are now wishing death on him.
“All these people come over to me and go, ‘You don’t know what your dad would think,'” the younger Bennington shared on social media. “You’re coming over to my posts and my livestreams and telling me to kill myself, that I’m awful, that my father doesn’t appreciate me. What are you talking about? You didn’t give a fuck when he died. If you did, you would understand what the problem is. You would understand why this is all wrong. I do because I’m his kid.”
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That so-called fans would tell Bennington to kill himself is made even more heinous — or at least grievously thoughtless — given the fact that his father died by suicide seven years ago. Now, the younger Bennington says he does not feel safe.
“There are a lot of people who do not like me. There are a lot of people saying some really awful shit right now to me,” he shared on social media, before saying he wanted to go to the band’s reunion show tomorrow in order to get closure. If he does, however, it seems he will have to but his own ticket. That option comes with its own set of concerns, he said.
“To be honest, I don’t think I feel safe going to the show under general admission because I don’t know who I’m around. I don’t know who would recognize me or take it upon themselves to respond to me in an aggressive manner when I’m just there to see the show. But I do need to see it.”
More specifically, he says he doesn’t feel safe around fans who may have.
“The audience themselves could be unsafe for me…I do feel it’s necessary to acknowledge the severity of my situation, the ways in which people choose to interact with me. So many of these Linkin Park fans who will be attending have been cruel, unusual and aggressive.”
“If anything happens to me or my partner while we are attending this concert, it is on Linkin Park,” he warned.
The whole contretemps was ignited after Linkin Park hired Armstrong and it came to light that she had ties to Scientology and supported Danny Masterson amid his sexual assault trial. Armstron later issued a statement distancing herself from Masterson, saying she did not at the time understand the seriousness of the allegations.
“I do not condone abuse or violence against women, and I empathize with the victims of these crimes,” she wrote.
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