There is a point in One Assassination Under God – Chapter 2 where the language of survival finally becomes the language of retaliation. “The Arsonist” is that point. The song is not simply about having survived an attempt to destroy you. It is about what happens afterward, when the person who has been burned decides that the fire did not finish him and that the scars it left behind have become part of his strength. Manson himself described the song as the moment when the narrative of the two chapters “crystallizes into a battle stance,” and, referring to the painting he created for it, said that the “burned scar tissue” had formed into armor. That description gets very close to the heart of the song. The fire has not disappeared. It has changed him. The title is important because Manson does not call the song The Survivor or The Victim . He calls it "The Arsonist." An arsonist deliberately starts a fire, and this changes the entire perspective of the song. The speaker is no...
In Evan Rachel Wood's documentary Phoenix Rising , she made a new shocking accusation that Marilyn Manson would drug her, repeatedly rape her in her sleep, and forbade her to use any sort of birth control, which resulted in her getting pregnant and having an abortion. She says that he flew in to New York where she was filming Mildred Pierce to be there for the abortion, but he was far from caring or supportive. "He flew out for the abortion. The second it was over it was like, 'Make me dinner.' And I remember being like, 'I’m supposed to be resting — my body has gone through this trauma ... there’s aftermath here.' And he didn’t care." When it was revealed that Manson apparently forced Evan to cook him dinner immediately after her abortion, the media focused on that detail like a hawk in their headlines: Evan Rachel Wood Says Marilyn Manson Made Her Cook Him Dinner Immediately After Losing Baby ( Radar Online ) Evan Rachel Wood: Marilyn Manson made me...