Who Makes the Nazis?: Above the Ruins

Showing posts with label Above the Ruins. Show all posts

Monday, 19 August 2013

Anon: Fascists Rally at Stella Natura Festival

Guest post by a concerned group of antifascists who are lovers of black metal and Nature

This coming September 20th-22nd, the music festival Stella Natura will be taking place in Tahoe National Forest in Northern California. This festival is a project of Adam Torruella of the Pesanta Urfolk label and distro, and it is the third year it will take place. A three day long music festival in the woods which serves as a meeting ground for people seeking to reconnect to the land and form community seems innocent enough. However when certain individuals seek to build this event on a foundation of white nationalist propaganda and promote an extremely racist agenda, it is a call to action for all who consider themselves opposed to white supremacy. The information following was compiled with the intent of exposing these individuals for who and what they are, no longer allowing them to exploit music scenes and spirituality as they seek to hide their true colors.

Asatru Folk Assembly (AFA) is the first listed sponsor for the festival. Asatru is a pagan spirituality focused on the revival of Norse gods and mythology, and it has unfortunately been filled with deep associations with various fascist organizations. The Southern Poverty Law Center have written a concise and highly recommended article on dubious figures within Asatru, in which they explain: “Odinism, which is closely related to Asatrú, was much favored in Nazi Germany. Its Nordic/Teutonic mythology was a bedrock belief for key Third Reich leaders, and it was an integral part of the initiation rites and cosmology of the elite Schutzstaffel (SS), which supervised Adolf Hitler's network of death camps. Decades later, Odinism also influenced George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party” (1). SPLC go on to describe how this spirituality has gained a great deal of popularity with violent white supremacists over the last few decades. The AFA was founded in the mid-1990s by Stephen McNallen out of concern that other Asatru organizations had lost focus on promoting the Asatru faith as inherently tied to the white race. At least one of AFA's leaders has ties to white supremacist organizations, claiming former standing as a state-level organizer for the SS Action Group and links to a violent neo-Nazi skinhead gang. “'I'm a white racist and proud of it," he told a reporter while posing in a Nazi uniform in 1992. ' (1)”. AFA was a sponsor of Stella Natura last year with McNallen appeared on stage to perform a ritual as a guest of the band Changes, and they remain a sponsor this year. (2)(3).

Some of McNallen's white supremacist ideologies can be seen in his theorizing on migration and border politics. In an article entitled 'Wotan vs. Tezcatlipoca: The Spiritual War for California and the Southwest', McNallen refers to the increasing Latin population of the border states of America as a “tide of cultural and demographic conquest” that white Americans must resist rather than “accept our marginalization quietly” (4). He voices that he feels the needs to “fight for my people and my culture against all odds”, and calls for white people to “stand by your kin and your culture” in states he describes as “overwhelmed with illegal immigrants”. He perceives this as a realm of spiritual war, in which Norse gods must conquer Mayan gods. He closes the article by arguing that “We must sink down roots in the soil, and insist on our right to be here... European-descended peoples, true to their ancestral ways, are here to stay. Our forebears fought and died to carve out this place in the world, and we will not give it up.”

In a 2010 piece by McNallen, entitled 'A down and dirty breakdown of the 'browning of America'', he decries the decreasing percentage of America's white population as a sign that “our political and cultural clout will evaporate to a thin wisp of what it is today”, and follows with the absurd claim that “European Americans face minority status, then marginalization, and eventually extinction” (5). He states that “Illegal immigration on the present scale is a form of conquest” an “invasion” that can be “stopped and even reversed almost at once” as it is “ being carried out by identifiable people and parties”. He lists clear political aims for his racist agenda:

“First, the border must be secured. Contrary to liberal opinion, this can be done. I will not analyze the mechanics of this task, but a brainstormed list of options would include diplomatic punishment of Mexico for its role in encouraging migration, sanctions against employers of illegal aliens to include mandatory prison time, a physical wall (built by illegal aliens from our prison system), high-tech surveillance devices, and imprisonment with hard labor for individuals violating our territorial sovereignty. Until we are willing to take these measures, we are not serious about closing the border. Second, it must be clear that no amnesty of illegal aliens, wholesale or piecemeal, in general or in particular, is acceptable. Third, all illegal aliens must be deported and denied legal entry at any time in the future. Because of the logistical complexities involved, deportation could take the form of a “phased withdrawal,” just as troops are pulled out of a war zone when a peace treaty is concluded. This mass deportation should be carried out as humanely as possible, but it absolutely must be done. Fourth, legal immigration must be reformed. We need a temporary moratorium on all immigration, followed by the dismantling of the Immigration Act of 1965 and a return to the previous system, which favored immigration from Europe.”

Brian Powell, a journalist with Media Matters, did an expose on a white nationalist conference organized by the National Policy Institute (6). The full article can be found in our sources and it is recommended to read through as it provides a good indication of the shapes this form of white nationalist fascism is currently taking. Major themes at this conference were the building of a white ethno-state through the forced migration of people of color, along with claims of white people's supposed inherent biological superiority. Upon meeting several members of the AFA during this conference, the reporter states: "...they expressed frustration with a culture and government that they feel ignores and looks down upon the interests of the white race.... They were relieved that they had finally found a place where they didn't have to 'feel out' the conversation before navigating it into the straits of white supremacy.“ In his response to the Media Matters article, Stephen McNallen merely states: "The AFA will not dictate to its members which meetings they are permitted to attend as private individuals. There are suggestions that we discipline them for the crime of being present in a room where extreme statements seem to have been made. We will not do this. There will be no exposure, no witch-hunt, no apologies, and no reprimands... men and women of European descent have exactly the same right to meet and to promote their collective interests as do any other group. To demonize them for doing this, when every other group is encouraged to do so, is to indulge in a vicious double standard. (7)".

To state that an overtly white supremacist conference which involved proposing plans for white-only ethnostates, modeled on South African apartheid, is a discussion of the "collective interests" of white people provides us with a clear perspective on what the founder of the AFA means when he discusses his vision of promoting the goals of the white race. There are no excuses offered and none should be made on his behalf. On the AFA's webpage, the second goal of the organization is stated to be "The preservation of the Peoples of the North (typified by the Scandinavian/Germanic and Celtic peoples), and the furtherance of their continued evolution... the survival and welfare of the Northern European peoples as a cultural and biological group is a religious imperative for the AFA." (8). This statement by McNallen provides a clear idea of what AFA's purpose and points of unity are intended to denote in the form of practical application sought by its founders. Anti-racists have been intervening in Stephen McNallen's spread of white nationalist propaganda since at least the 1990's, as evidenced by a rather amusing article from a Canadian Holocaust denier organization that hosted him for a lecture and were highly upset by the ARA response they received (9).

Blood Axis / Michael Moynihan

Allowing for the participation of the AFA and McNallen was not the only way in which Stella Natura has provided a platform for racists. Michael Moynihan played at Stella Natura last year with his band Blood Axis, a group well known for their use of Nazi iconography and their high standing in fascist music circles. This year he and his Blood Axis bandmate Annabell (Lee) Moynihan are appearing at the festival as 'special guests' of Ian Read's act, Fire and Ice. Moynihan is a well-known figure among anti-racists for his covert and intellectual ways of promoting fascist politics for decades. He has edited two of Italian fascist philosopher and elite Nazi academic Julius Evola's books for English-language publication, including Evola’s Men Among the Ruins: Post‐War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist (10). In 1992, Moynihan collected and published the writings of National Socialist James Mason in the book 'SIEGE!' (11). Within these texts, Mason vehemently argues for the need for whites to gain power through armed struggle rather than political means, and applauds individuals for acts such as “Zebra Killings”(the murder of black and white 'mixed' couples). For a better idea of what this work includes, please see the enclosed chapter from Mason's book. Moynihan's aims in spreading fascist propaganda is clear in quotes of his such as: “I’m sick of people saying they’re ‘not political,’ as I think this is a cop‐out… If you’re going to espouse ‘fascist’ ideas, then I believe you have to accept some of the responsibility for their application in the real world; otherwise what is the point of espousing them in the first place?” (12).

Extract from James Masons's Siege!

One of Moynihan's present areas of focus is the editing and publishing of the journal Tyr, which collects pieces on the topics of Germanic paganism and the history of northern European peoples (13). While it does not describe itself as a fascist publication, it reproduces white nationalist and far-right discourse and publishes authors with ties to various fascist and white supremacist currents. One of the original editors and ongoing contributors of Tyr is Colin Cleary, whose political perspective is rather concisely summed up in an article in which he states: "I regard Ásatrú and White Nationalism as so inseparably bound to one another that to espouse Ásatrú while rejecting White Nationalism is to involve oneself in a fatal contradiction (fatal, really, in more than just the logical sense)... Disraeli really was right: 'Race is everything. There is no other truth.' (14)". Joshua Buckley, another editor of Tyr, is a former member of the SS of America (15). He makes a living as one-half of a notoriously shady real estate gentrification project with a long-term business partner, who he is set to inherit the business from, named Sam Dickson. Dickson is an attorney who provided legal services to the Georgia KKK for decades and who sat on the board of The Barnes Review, an academic journal focused on promoting Holocaust denial. Dickson's largest public presence in the last decade has been as a guest speaker at multiple conferences that advocate for militant white nationalism, such as the conference covered by Media Matters.

Robert Taylor is one half of the band Changes, who will be playing for their third time at Stella Natura. The Changes duo returned to the music scene in 1996 after decades of silence thanks to the encouragement and efforts of Taylor's friend Michael Moynihan, who went on to produce and release their next album (16). Robert Taylor describes himself as a “herald... one of the three founders of the [Asatru] movement” within North America, along with Steven McNallen. He describes Asatru as “a religion that is suited for Indo-Europeans because it contains and constitutes all the main features and spirit of how most of us feel inside” (17). Taylor was a founder of the Asatru Alliance along with former American Nazi party member Michael (Valgard) Murray and has a long history of allying with Stephen McNallen in pagan organizing (16). Taylor has a long history of involvement within the radical right and white separatist circles. In an interview with infamous 'national anarchist' and white supremacist political organizer Troy Southgate (39),Taylor outlines his youth involvement in “the most feared white street gang in Chicago at that time” and states that he joined as a “vehicle for fighting” because he “loved the exhilaration of combat”, and that he “never joined gangs so much for the camaraderie or as a group security thing” (16). He states that this environment “certainly brought grassroots social problems into sharp focus” and that “racial tensions flared up frequently”. He describes his participation in a white riot in which thousands of white people mobbed up against a black family that had just moved into the neighborhood he lived in. This mob chanted curses, bombarded the black family's home with bricks, tried to break down the door and then proceeded to fight with the police upon their arrival. He described the experience of being in this mob as “like a minuet movement. A dance of rage”. Taylor recounts that these riots went on for four nights, during which “dummies stuffed with rags and painted with black faces were hung from lamp posts and set ablaze in effigy” and city buses with black drivers were attacked with large chunks of concrete dropped from bridges. He claims that he's sure of the fact that the media did not report on the riots because it would have attracted “people from far and wide to join the mob and riot”. He also outlines a group he organized with other white youth that committed such disgusting acts as responding to black students being brought into a school in his neighborhood by holding a confrontational demonstration at the school which these students were being transferred from, in a black community.

Taylor speaks at length of his involvement with a 1960s right wing paramilitary organization named 'the Minutemen', in which he quickly moved through the ranks from being the principal organizer in the Chicago area to holding the position of national Director of Intelligence, and then becoming national spokesperson while also being the sole editor of their magazine. He describes the activities of the Minutemen as mainly consisting of: infiltrating leftist and communist groups in order to bring police violence against them or sabotaging their activities in other ways, identifying their members, and forming fake anti-war groups to give leftists a bad name in the press. He was a member of a special subgroup that was set up within the organization called the Defence Survival Force, which consisted of about 50-60 people trained in survival skills, killing, expropriation, explosives knowledge and special operational skills. They operated underground and rendezvoused in an organized way to meet in safe-houses and make claymore mines and pipe grenades. He outlines how this group slowly fell apart due to legal matters and how once their resources had dwindled enough and some members were facing incarceration, he used his position as national spokesperson to advise Minutemen groups across the US to organize as local militias rather than as a federation. In Taylor's own words, “The legacy of the Minutemen continues on now in various factions of the revolutionary right. We laid the groundwork, provided the basic concepts and more or less pioneered that movement. It brought a new sophistication of tactics and strategy to the Right” (18).

In 2006, Taylor defends his participation in the race riots by saying that for white working class people, “their job... their home, car and family was about all they had in the world” and that once black families began to move into neighborhoods dominated by white people, these were all threatened (17). He went on to claim that “[i]t was no secret that once blacks predominated in an area, the crime rate would soar and the streets would become dangerous to walk. (17)” Taylor espouses strong feelings about disseminating this viewpoint based on the perception that “white working class ethnics seldom have a spokesman or anyone who writes or speaks on their behalf. They are simply the dispossessed majority”. It is also very interesting to note that in this later interview, Taylor attempts to justify his participation in this riot, yet offers up no toned-down explanation of his prolonged and active organizing within the Minutemen. Taylor has gone on record stating that he sees the infamous and long-running white supremacist organization Aryan Nations and similar groups as representing “love and loyalty to one's race as opposed to geographical boundaries” (17).

Fire And Ice, one of the headliners of Stella Natura, is a band founded and fronted by Ian Read. Read is well known for his work with bands Current 93, Sol Invictis, and Death in June, whom he provided vocals for in their rendition of 'Horst Wessel Lied', the anthem of the German National Socialists on the Brown Book album (banned in Germany for supporting fascism) (19). He also played with the openly neo-nazi group Above the Ruins, whose name is derived from the writings of Evola and who contributed to the National Front's benefit album No Surrender Vol 1, alongside bands such as Screwdriver(20)(21). Read has also led militant security teams for both Holocaust denier and anti-Semite Michele Renouf and editor of far-right magazine Michael Walker (22). Michael Walker was one of the individuals who safe-housed a notorious Italian fascist, on the run from the police after having a large quantity of explosives and weapons found in his organization's office (23) (24). He was also exposed as an organizer of the Iona organization's Nazi street fighters in the 1997 article 'Rocking for Satan' by the antifascist Magazine Searchlight (22). One of Read's closest collaborators has been Tony Wakeford (Death in June, Sol Invictis, Above the Ruins), a member of the National Front who has also been a key figure within occult-fascist music (20). Wakeford's work within Above the Ruins and overt Nazism was too much for Death in June's Douglas Pierce, eventually causing Wakeford to split from the group and form Sol Invictis with Read (22). He was also heavily involved with Read in the IONA fascist group (22). Ian Read was also a member of the band While Angels Watch, which worked with British fascist advocate and organizer Troy Southgate (20).

Die Weisse Rose

Die Weisse Rose is another band slated to play at Stella Natura. This Danish band is the project of Thomas Bøjden and whichever friends he asks to join him in performances (25). These friends include people such as Gerhard Petak, the man who records his music as Allerseelen. Petak has released tribute albums to the Iron Guard, a profoundly violent Romanian fascist occultist party guilty of such horrific massacres that the Nazis had to urge them to practice restraint (10) (26). Petak celebrates and claims great influence from Evola, as well as Karl Maria Wiligut and the Ahnenerbe (the occultist wing of the Third Reich), and bases a large part of his music and imagery in direct references to the Nazi regime (10). Another of Bøjden's guest collaborators was Marco Deplano of Italian fascist band Foresta di Ferro, who have contributed songs to tribute albums for the leader of the Iron Guard (26). Bøjden has performed as a guest with Foresto di Ferro, Allerseelen and Blood Axis (27). About his collaborations with these fascist musicians, Bøjden states that they are “musicians that I truly admire and respect for their individual projects and their contribution to Die Weisse Rose" (25). Die Weisse Rose utilize sound collages, videos, and the wearing of Nazi Brownshirt uniforms in their performances, which Bøjden claims is merely for artistic purposes. Die Weisse Rose were selected by Douglas Pierce to accompany Death in June's farewell tour in 2012 and Bøjden describes Douglas Pierce as “a very wonderful and very inspiring person”, stating that Death in June had been formative in every aspect of his life for decades (25). Included is an image of Bøjden posing affectionately with Tony Wakeford.

Tony Wakeford and Thomas Bøjden

Another band on Stella Natura's 2013 lineup is Waldteufel, the project of Markus Wolff. Wolff was a founding member of Blood Axis and has collaborated with Michael Moynihan frequently (28) (10). Wolff has contributed writings on nationalist German authors and paganism to publication such as Tyr, and also helped Moynihan release English editions of Evola's works (10). He is the current staff editor and contributing artist and writer for Hex magazine, another sponsor of Stella Natura (29). Hex magazine has published works by Gerhard Petak in several issues, and promoted Allerseelen's recent West Coast tour ( 10), with Waldteufel playing a date on this tour. Hell and Dispirit, two other band appearing at Stella Natura, also played on the same tour despite agitation and information spread by the Rose City Antifa and actions against their shows by antifascists in Europe (30).

Yet another dubious act on Stella Natura's lineup for 2013 is Of the Wand and the Moon, the one-man project of Kim Larsen, which has issued a split album with Ian Read and Tony Wakeford's Sol Invictus (31). OTWATM also appeared on a compilation entitled 'Looking for Europe', which bears an iron cross on the cover and features essentially every high profile fascist or fascist sympathizer band in the neofolk scene, such as Blood Axis, Boyd Rice/ NON, Allerseelen, Changes and Death in June (32). Kim Larsen has been criticized by German antifa groups for posing for photos (33) wearing the Lebensrune, a Norse symbol that was used during the Nazi regime in place of the 'date of birth' label on paperwork. It was also the symbol of the SS Lebensborn and modern neo-Nazi organizations such as the German Heathens' Front (34). The German Heathens' Front is a racialist Asatru organization formed by a well-known neo-Nazi and is infamous for their virulent anti-Semitism and allegiance to the ideas of David Lane (35). This is not to claim that the use and revival of runes is inherently problematic, but merely that to wear a rune that has been so deeply associated with various fascist organizations without any critique or anti-fascist analysis is a heavily loaded action. In an interview with an online fanzine, Larsen names his biggest musical influences as “Death in June, but also bands as NON, Der Blutharsch, Current 93, Fire and Ice, Blood Axis etc.”, all bands that have racist tendencies and associations (36). In another interview in which he was asked the same question, he lists the same bands but adds Sol Invictus to the list (37). Larsen has also appeared as a guest in Die Weisse Rose's performances (25).

It is necessary to acknowledge that while many Asatru practitioners or fans of neofolk/industrial/black metal are well-intentioned music fans, many others involved in these scenes are actively promoting fascist ideas in order to normalize these tendencies. As outlined in Anton Shekhovstov's brilliant essay on the topic, which is highly recommended when approaching this subject,(38) this course is charted out within the post-WWII writings of Alain de Benoist and Julius Evola. These authors argued for fascists to retreat from active politics into the realm of culture until the time was right to begin recruiting for future fascist political movements. This form of 'metapolitical' fascism manifests in subcultural scenes focused on music or spirituality with their accompanying record labels, distros and spiritual organizations, as well as through networks of journals, publishing houses, conferences and think tanks. Neofolk as a musical subculture has always held an intellectual and elitist attitude that is eager to feign disassociation with more overt white supremacists, but this must be seen as what it is: part of a coherent and deliberate strategy to disseminate their unpopular ideas without risking immediate anti-fascist responses.The presence of fascists and white nationalists at Stella Natura is not an accident, but a planned infiltration; a co-opting of spirituality, heritage and music to suit their personal agenda. Opposition to this must come from within the scenes they seek to convert, and from the potential recruits they hope to gain.

Sources:

Thursday, 3 March 2011

Piss Poor Poet Found in the Dustbin of History

Guest Post by James Cavanagh

Of all the crimes, political and aesthetic, committed by neo-folk musician Tony Wakeford, surely the 1984 EP 'Songs of the Wolf' by his group Above the Ruins, released first as a cassette and later on vinyl and CD, has to be the most unforgivable. The utter dreariness of the music and the banality of the lyrical content are impossible to convey in words. Perhaps Wakeford intended to lead a great Fascist victory by simultaneously boring and depressing his opponents to death. Probably in June.

Recently some new research has turned up an unacknowledged collaborator on that Above the Ruins EP.

At the time of the recording of 'Songs of the Wolf' Wakeford was a paid-up member of the National Front and fronting Richard Lawson's Iona (Islands of North Atlantic) group. He was also following the same Fascist Gramscian cultural strategy that many suspect he still operates to this day. In his introduction to the Iona-published volume of poetry 1957: Before the Storm, by Paul Comben, (also published in '84), Wakeford opens with the following sentence: "The volume you are now holding in your hands is the first book to be published by 'Iona', an independent, non-political organisation dedicated to the preservation of our Norse and Celtic heritage." The term 'non-political' seems a little disingenuous, given that Iona is unequivocally described as a Nazi organisation by Searchlight magazine and others.

Wakeford's close friend Richard Lawson has a long history in British Fascism. He was a student organiser for the National Front in the late seventies, and part of the Strasserite faction that split with the NF and went on to found the National Party. He would go on to found the Transeuropa collective, attacked by Searchlight for anti-Semitism and for its entryist tactics in infiltrating the Green movement. In 1995 Lawson launched Fluxeuropa, and collaborated with Fascist activist and musician Troy Southgate on Alternative Green magazine. In 1997 Transeuropa launched Radical Shift magazine, whose raison d'etre according to Searchlight was to "delegitimise anti-racism, anti-fascism and liberal democracy in favour of... ethnic separation, bigoted regionalism and chauvinistic nationalism". Lawson was best man at Wakeford's wedding in 1998.

Wakeford closes his short introduction to 1957, Before the Storm with this sentence: "Above all else however, Paul (Comben) tells me that he wants people to think about what he has to say in the latter poems, whether they eventually agree with him or not." The poems he refers to are broadly speaking nationalist in nature, often concerned with class, as opposed to the earlier poems which are ostensibly about love and war. Again the awfulness of the poetry cannot be over-emphasised. Michael Croshaw reviewing Before the Storm in Scorpion at the time complains about Comben's "shoddy attempt at exact rhyme... " and suggests Comben might have "found a niche as a lyricist for Victorian ballads". He has a point. Take, for example, the young-fogeyish reactionary moaning about sixties culture in 'War':

And bang on time it did all that as once it did to Rome
I saw the whiskery young men go naked in the square
So I locked my mind at '55 and did my living there.

The clumsy versification goes on interminably throughout the book. I won't bore you with any more than is necessary. In one poem, a jaunty little nursery rhyme entitled "Progress", Comben berates some unnamed Socialist state for creating a homogeneous, servile society in thrall to a dehumanising government, closing with this sparkling stanza:

It's best to be humble
And do as you're told
To think as you're taught
And die when you're old
For such is the meaning
Of Marx and his word -
Wine for the Reds
And chains for the Herd.

For anyone who has had the misfortune to listen to Songs of the Wolf these words will be familiar. On closer examination of the poems in 1957, Before the Storm and the lyrics of Songs of the Wolf it becomes apparent that Wakeford has 'borrowed' from Comben's poems for some of his song lyrics. Comben has found his own 'Victorian balladeer' in the bulky form of Tony Wakeford. For example the song 'Roses' borrows from two of Comben's poems, 'Roses' and 'Crosses', with some other lyrics interspersed between them. But it is Wakeford's appropriation of the words in the afore-mentioned 'Progress' that really reveals Wakeford's state of mind at the time. Examine the way Wakeford amends Comben's words in the third verse for his own purposes:

Paul Comben

Mechanized, Centralized
Kept to your place
All the same manner
And all the same face
Freedom is freedom
From dissident views
Eyes full of nothing
But authorized news.

Above the Ruins

Mongrelized, centralized
Kept to your place
All the same colour
And all the same race
Freedom is freedom
From dissident views
Eyes full of terror
And authorized news.

The racist tone of Wakeford's amended lyric is clear, particularly in the substitution of 'mongrelized' in place of 'mechanized'. Obviously Comben's nationalist politics, objectionable as they are, were not explicit enough for Wakeford's purposes here. Nonetheless, it is interesting to examine where the long-out-of-print volume is to be found nowadays, and where it was originally distributed from, so as to recognise its perceived political position. An online search turns up Comben's book on a couple of sites, described as 'nationalist poetry'; one being a seller on ebay called 'Patriot 77', specialising in far-right literature, and the other the Final Conflict site, which bares the strap line "Brought to you by the people who brought you Nationalism Today". Nationalism Today was founded in 1980 by Nick Griffin and Joe Pearce, editor of National Front youth paper Bulldog. A small sticker on the back of Before the Storm reads "Burning Books, 50 Pawson Road, Croydon, Surrey". Burning Books was the publishing outlet of the National Front at the time.

Of Paul Comben and his identity little can be found. He seems to have disappeared after publishing another volume of nationalist poetry titled Occupation, published by Capstone in 1987. The publishers also have vanished. Occupation, like Before the Storm, crops up for sale on far-right websites occasionally.

In 1985 Wakeford was to contribute a track from the Songs of the Wolf to National Front benefit album No Surrender, Volume 1, alongside tracks by other overtly Nazi bands like Skrewdriver and Brutal Attack. Members of Above the Ruins included Liz Grey (Sol Invictus), Ian Read (Current 93, Death in June, Sol Invictus, Fire and Ice) and Neo-Nazi Gary Smith (No Remorse, Sol Invictus). (No Remorse were infamous for releasing Barbeque in Rostock, a eulogy for petrol bomb attacks on immigrant housing in Rostock and the subsequent deaths, which opened with this verse: "Didn't want their town filled with scum, So they got together and made petrol bombs. Then one cold, starry night, They set them filthy Turks alight!") The ATR song on the original cassette release that was donated to the NF benefit album was dropped from subsequent vinyl and CD releases in feeble attempt to bury history. The original cassette release of Songs of the Wolf turns out be published from a British Monomarks box number belonging to Michael Walker, New Rightist editor of The Scorpion and flat-mate to Roberto Fiore, convicted Italian Fascist terrorist (and now leader of the Italian neo-Nazi party, Forza Nuova).

The outpouring of disgust provoked by the release of Songs of the Wolf plagued Wakeford for over two decades and eventually he felt forced to make a statement expressing regret that he had ever been in the National Front. He obliquely suggests that his involvement with Fascism was a brief youthful folly. No mention of Songs of the Wolf, Above the Ruins, or the contribution to the No Surrender Volume 1 is made, and the reasons for his regret are not given.

"For the few who are interested in such things, Many years ago I was once a member of the National Front. It was probably the worse (sic) decision of my life and one I very much regret. However, I have no connection with, sympathy for, or interest in those ideas nor have I had for around 20 years."

This statement was made in February 2007. And note that he was still selling Songs of the Wolf from his Tursa website in February 2007, listed under 'Clearances' rather than the band name. In my opinion this makes his dictum untrustworthy in the extreme, especially in tandem with the rest of his subsequent activities. As far as Wakeford is concerned it is the last he will say on the matter. Despite having 'regretted' his past long-term involvement with Fascism, Wakeford is apparently happy to appear with Sol Invictus on a compilation called With Friends Like These, released in 2010 on his own label Tursa in collaboration with another label, Kaparte. The compilation features music from, amongst others, While Angels Watch, Richard Moult, and Rose Rovine e Amanti, all who have been involved with Fascism themselves, either directly or through collaboration with overtly Fascist bands. Angels Watch have worked with British Fascist activist Troy Southgate, and Ian Read from Above the Ruins is a band member. Rose Rovine e Amanti have worked with Von Thronstahl, an overtly Nazi band. Moult (aka Christos Beest) was a Hitlerist and member of both the Order of the Nine Angles - a Fascist Satanist organisation, and Reichsfolk, a Nazi organisation. Both were founded and fronted by arch-Nazi Satanist David Myatt. With friends like these indeed...

To bring things even more up to date, Wakeford's post-ATR band Sol Invictus are booked to appear at the Slimlight (a venue well-known for putting on neo-Nazi and Fascist bands) on 25th June 2011. They will perform alongside While Angels Watch, Sixth Comm, Joy of Life and Freya Aswynn. Patrick Leagas (aka O-Kill) from 6 Comm was a founder-member of Death in June. Gary Carey from Joy of Life, with its swaztika-style logo, has worked with While Angels Watch and Death in June. Dutch occultist Freya Aswynn is a long-term collaborator with Leagas, and released the single 'Wolf Rune' with the far-right French band Les Joyaux De La Princesse, who are described by Christoph Frangeli of Datacide as celebrating "an increasingly crystallized, extreme right-wing ideology”. She was also involved with a racist campaign against Black opera singer Willard White, organised by Scorpion in 1989.

Much of what has been stated here has long been in the public domain, dispersed over websites, promotional material, in books and the press. But the discovery that this dismal petit-bourgoise Fascist poet Paul Comben contributed lyrics to Wakeford's most politically heinous work, totally uncredited, reignited the feeling that Wakeford has built his career on Fascist politics and dishonesty. A quick glance at his current activities, in light of his hand-washing statement four years ago, only reinforces my conviction that he is a liar, and that his motivations have remained the same, even if he has dropped the outright Nazi propaganda of Songs of the Wolf in favour of the Evolaian aesthetic Fascism so loved by his fans. After all he has records to sell, gigs to play and books to balance.

Monday, 11 October 2010

From Anarcho-Punk to Fascism

aka. NAZI PUNKS FUCK OFF!

Gary Smith / Decadent Few

I've spoken in a previous post of Gary Smith's involvement in Above the Ruins and Sol Invictus (Tony Wakeford's bands after leaving Death in June). Smith was simultaneously a Combat 18 and BNP supporter as well as a member of hardcore Nazi skinhead group No Remorse.

One aspect of the situation that deserves having more light thrown on it is the extent of overlap or continuity between the anarcho-punk and Fascist milieus in the early 80s. On the left is a picture of Gary Smith around the time that he was a member of his first band The Decadent Few. According to their mySpace pages; "Formed in East London,1984 by Kaya, Mike, Bernie and Mark of YOUTH IN ASIA, plus Steph of HAGAR THE WOMB briefly, Decadent Few’s first gig was at Studio One in Slough, June 1984. Mark and Steph had stepped out by this point and a friend, Gary, was taught Bass by Mike in vintage Paul Simenon-style, i.e. coloured stickers on the frets to denote where to play which note which song. Luckily, Gary learnt fast and this line up played regularly across London with bands like FLOWERS IN THE DUSTBIN, TOM’S MIDNIGHT GARDEN, STIGMA, ANDY LOVEBUG & THE TENDERHEARTS and the WET PAINT THEATRE, a Punk Theatre Company".

The t-shirt he's wearing here is a bit of a giveaway, of course, since it features the Celtic Cross symbol beloved by Nazi skinheads and others. While anarcho-punks could be extremely militant against, and were often in the forefront of, physical opposition to, racism, Fascism, etc., at the same time there was an ambivalence in their ideas that could also make (some of) them in some circumstances susceptible to accepting Fascists in their midst. In his autobiography Crass founder Penny Rimbaud talks about how the group initially had a sizeable contingent of NF / British Movement (BM) supporters among their fans, and first adopted the anarchist symbol merely as a way of keeping both the NF and SWP at bay by taking up a position that was neither Fascist nor Socialist but independent of both (the SWP and RCP apparently had the cheek to ask Crass to play anti-Nazi gigs). This, of course, is to duck the issues rather than taking a clear anti-fascist stance. There are even rumors that Steve Ignorant (Crass vocalist) may have played on some Above the Ruins recordings alongside active Fascists such as Ian Read and Smith.

One of the interesting things about the list of bands The Decadent Few played with is the way that it overlaps with groups associated with pro-Fascist fan Dev, of While Angels Watch. According to Dev; "During the early 1980's I also played in: PERSONS UNKNOWN (Guitar and Vocals), YOUTH IN ASIA (Drums), FLOWERS IN THE DUSTBIN (first Drums then Guitar), TOMS MIDNIGHT GARDEN (Vocals and Guitar), HYPERACTIVE (Guitar and Vocas) and SIXTH COMM (Guitar)." This raises the idea that some parts of the anarcho-squat-punk scene overlapped and co-mingled with various Fascist and pro-Nazi ideologues. The mySpace pages for Tom's Midnight Garden explicitly mention Smith and Patrick Leagas (of Death in June) as members, and of course Sixth Comm was Leagas's band after leaving Death in June. All of which is further evidence of the many threads that tie Death in June to Fascism and Fascist musicians. But it also raises the question of to what extent Fascists were able to operate on the fringes of the anarcho milieu. No doubt we'll talk more of Dev in future, but for now I just want to register this issue and say that if you have more information about this murky territory I'd be happy to hear about it.

Sunday, 3 October 2010

Rock Against Communism: The Roots of Sol Invictus

A page from New Dawn, a short lived fascist magazine published after the decline of the National Front (NF) paper Bulldog, but before White Noise, the NF music magazine that eventually led to the racist and fascist Blood and Honour movement under Ian Stuart and Nicky Crane. Here they review Songs of the Wolf (1984), the only known release by Above the Ruins, the band formed by Tony Wakeford on leaving Death in June. I talked about the personnel of the band in an earlier post. The point here is to emphasise how openly and directly Above the Ruins were identified with the fascist NF - the magazine clearly sees them as part of an organised attempt by fascist musicians to break out of the skinhead ghetto and address other youth subcultures (in this case, electronic post-punk). They also mention the NF fund raising LP, No Surrender, to which Above the Ruins contributed a track. 'Rock Against Communism' was a movement of fascist musicians that organised many fund raising gigs for the NF and later merged into Blood and Honour.

In later years Wakeford would claim that his next group, Sol Invictus, represented a clean break from his Nazi past - but it seems that the first Sol Invictus line-up had the same line-up as the openly fascist Above the Ruins. According to the entry for Above the Ruins on the Blood and Honour site 'United Skins'; "The line-up for this studio-project was Tony Wakeford, Ian Read, Gary Smith and Liz Grey. The band name derived from the Italian fascist guru Julius Evola, reflected contempory developments in the National Front and its splinter groups. Their album 'Songs Of The Wolf' was recorded in 1985, shelved, then unofficially released by "political organisations", and finally officially released by World Serpent."

The New Dawn article is full of the usual NF bullshit of the time about how the music scene is "controlled by Marxists" and welcomes a new type of band "who will speak out for Britain". The promotion for a forthcoming Above the Ruins gig (did it happen?) promises an "all-White band playing all-White music". Wakeford seems still to believe in some variation on the sort of Third Positionist politics he picked up back in the NF. Please bear this in mind the next time you are reading an interview with him where he goes on about his continuing 'love for British culture', his interest in 'Paganism' and (as the current crop of ultra-rightists like to put it) 'Eurocentrism'.

See the scan in high resolution >>

Monday, 27 September 2010

Gary Smith on Manoeuvres

No Remorse
Smith on left, Browning second from right

While the facts are hard to come by, given the conspiracy of silence that surrounds the issue, it seems that Gary Smith played bass on the album Songs of the Wolf by Above the Ruins, the band Wakeford formed on leaving Death in June in 1986, and also on the 1987 debut Sol Invictus album, Against the Modern World. One curious connection between the groups, other than personnel (thought to be Smith, Ian Read and the mysterious Liz Grey), is the choice of names and titles: Above the Ruins was named after the book Man Against the Ruins, by Italian traditionalist and 'super-fascist' Julius Evola, while the album Against the Modern World can similarly be assumed to be named for his book Revolt Against the Modern World. Evola was a major influence on the faction of the National Front (NF) Wakeford associated with during his time as an open fascist. In any case, clearly there was a strong ideological continuity between the two groups to parallel the continuity of personnel.

Smith was also a member of No Remorse, one of the most extreme and explicit of the White Power / Blood and Honour skinhead groups. No Remorse also featured Will 'The Beast' Browning, leader (alongside Charlie Sargent) of the ultra-violent Nazi street-fighting group Combat 18. No Remorse subsequently gained a degree of notoriety for their recording Barbecue in Rostock, which celebrated the 1992 riots and arson attack on an apartment block housing asylum seekers in that city. Above the Ruins, on the other hand, revealed similar allegiances when they contributed a track to the National Front benefit album No Surrender vol 1 alongside the Nazi groups Skrewdriver and Brutal Attack. Clearly Above the Ruins were part of the same general movement as those Blood and Honour groups even if their music was just as clearly aimed at a different audience (ie. not the usual Nazi boneheads but those who prefer their racist claptrap served up with a drum machine and some moody synthesiser on the side).

The following two images are stills taken from a 1991 Panorama TV report entitled 'Race Hate UK', an expose of the racist British National Party (BNP). A person who appears to be Gary Smith is filmed marching on a BNP demo through through the East End of London chanting 'Rights for Whites' and giving the Nazi salute to bystanders.

Gary Smith with the BNP

Sieg Heil

As the commentator says, the BNP at that time were an openly racist party concerned explicitly not with nationality but race. In the course of the film barking, swivel-eyed BNP spokesman Richard Edmonds calls for "a final solution to the racial problems in this country". Gary Smith is precisely the kind of person Wakeford worked with and befriended when he was an open fascist.

These days Wakeford claims to have broken with the ideas he held at that time, but refuses to say exactly what those ideas were. In particular he refuses to say whether they included notions, taken in part from Evola, about 'metapolitical fascism', in which openly fascist politics are abandoned in favour of cultural / artistic work aimed at expanding the influence of anti-democratic, traditionalist and fascist ideas, preparing the ground for a future fascist resurgence - and these are the sort of ideas associated with the neo-folk scene and groups such as Wakeford's own Sol Invictus. He certainly seems to have been thinking in that direction at the time, saying at one point that "In the end economics, even politics, doesn't matter and only a living culture can guarantee a people's, a nation's future."¹ While I am quite prepared to believe that Wakeford has long ago dropped active membership of the NF (forerunner to the BNP as the party of choice for Britain's racists) the cultural themes he learned during his time with them, as aspects of their ideology ('Eurocentrism', Paganism, etc.) remain central to his work as a musician.

Another member of Above the Ruins and the original Sol Invictus was Ian Read, a Nazi Odinist who continues to be active with his band Fire + Ice, and who we'll no doubt talk about in future. As Stewart Home has already discussed this period of Wakeford's life at some length, I'll say no more for now other than to comment, first and most obviously, that these images and the film they are taken from offer a close-up view of the kind of world Wakeford immersed himself in before going all 'metapolitical' and obtuse on everyone. The other point concerns the dishonest nature of Wakeford's halting and half-hearted repudiation of his own past. First he denied making music as a fascist at all, then details of his involvement in Above the Ruins began to emerge. He has been known to say that the first incarnation of Sol Invictus was after his association with fascism, but then the evidence emerged that the first Sol Invictus line-up was in fact the same line-up as Above the Ruins, who were clearly identified with the NF through the No Surrender release mentioned above. Not only that but, according to the official version of the story, Wakeford was jettisoned from Death in June when he became a hardcore NF activist, yet a photograph we recently unearthed would seem to suggest that he'd been active for some years in both Death in June and the NF simultaneously before the parting of the ways. Other questions remain: was Wakeford working with David Tibet on the Current 93 album Imperium² at the same time as he was working with Read and Smith? What role, if any, did Mark Sutherland (Skrewdriver drummer) play in these early bands?

The story keeps on changing. No wonder Wakeford says that he no longer wants to talk about that period: every time he's done so in the past it has turned out later either that he'd lied or had left gaping holes in his story to cover up the extent of his (and other people's?) active involvement in fascist politics. It looks very much as though there may be a lot more to be discovered about the history of Tony Wakeford's fascism and his political relations with other players in the neo-folk 'scene'.

1. Tony Wakeford, Scorpion # 9, Spring 1986, p 31
2. whose title, incidentally, is probably taken from Francis Parker Yockey or (more likely in my opinion) Evola again

Tuesday, 14 September 2010

Peter Webb Investigates

In an earlier post I said of sociologist and Goldsmiths lecturer Peter Webb that "he is either unwilling or unable to do the work required to comprehend his chosen field". I think I owe it to Webb to bear that opinion out by looking more closely at his work. In a section of the book that concerns us, Networked Worlds of Popular Music: Milieu Cultures, he discusses the 'apocalyptic folk, postindustrial, folk-noir, neo-folk' scene through the work of the three core members of the group Death in June - Tony Wakeford, Doug Pearce and Patrick Leagas - who, he tells us, have been "central to the developing British underground and postindustrial/post-Punk milieu"¹. Webb is well aware of the controversy surrounding these musicians due to their use of fascist imagery and symbols², and their promotion of arguments associated with various strands of contemporary esoteric fascist and 'conservative revolutionary' thought derived from Ernst Jünger, Julius Evola, Savitri Devi, Otto and Gregor Strasser and others. He knows that Wakeford was a member of the fascist National Front, and he certainly should know of the fascist connections of some of the group's collaborators, such as Boyd Rice, Albin Julius and Michael Moynihan, since they have been widely publicised. Given this, what is staggering is the extent to which he accepts their excuses and evasions at face value and refuses in any way to critically examine the ideas they promote, or place them in a context that would make sense of them. Instead of challenging any of this he chooses to descend into the gutter with his heroes to join them in condemning the 'fascistic censoriousness' and 'McCarthyism' of the left³. The result is a complete whitewashing of the people concerned, and the corresponding destruction of any credibility Webb might have had as a researcher or commentator.

In his chapter on method ('The Theoretical Development of the Milieu'⁴) Webb says that his concept of 'the milieu' addresses "the networks of interaction, production and influence that music makers and actors in the particular music 'scenes' (are) involved in [and] articulates a set of overlapping levels of meaning, relevance, disposition and understanding"⁵. He argues that "there are three main levels of theoretical abstraction" that must be addressed in order to understand a milieu⁶, encompassing three sets of relations; those internal to the milieu itself, those between different milieus and different orders of milieu (specifically in this case, between the musical milieu and the record industry), and a third level of interaction between the milieu and the surrounding "culture, economy and politics"⁷. Anyone reading the latter might imagine that Webb would therefore want to examine - to pick some minor examples at random - what Patrick Leagas means when he says he has a "sense of being English" despite the fact that "I do not recognise this as England"⁸, or perhaps Doug Pearce's claim to have been part of a "reawakening of... Eurocentrism" in the milieu⁹, or any of the many similar statements that litter the interviews here.

Webb repeatedly mentions the group's interest in 'traditionalism'¹⁰ without bothering to find out if this might refer not to a vague hankering after Morris Dancers and cricket on the village lawn but rather the traditionalism of René Guénon and the 'super-fascist' Julius Evola¹¹ - who's work, after all, has been edited and published by a key collaborator of the group, Michael Moynihan (of Blood Axis), who is mentioned repeatedly in the book¹² and whose connection to Evola is even noted¹³. Similarly you'd expect that he might be interested to know whether the group's interest in "occult influences in the social and cultural order"¹⁴ might possibly be connected with Evola's idea that an occult war is being waged for control of society, in which Jews and Masons work for the "forces of subversion" seeking to overthrow the "forces of order"¹⁵. According to Evola this plan was revealed in The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, the infamous anti-Semitic tract for which he wrote an introduction when it was published in Italian in 1937, and the veracity of which he continued to defend long after it had been exposed as a forgery¹⁶ cooked up by the Czarist secret police. Since Evola's arguments on the matter are taken from a book edited and published by Moynihan there is every chance that this is precisely what was intended, but Webb is in no hurry to find out. Indeed, Webb seems not even to be curious about the politics involved: his bibliography lists none of the relevant texts by or about the fascist ideologues who have inspired so many members of this 'scene'.

Despite the constant use by the group of dog-whistle references to ideas from the radical right¹⁷, Webb consistently steers clear of any attempt to find out what the members of Death in June and their friends actually think. In fact, if we are to believe Webb his subjects have few real opinions¹⁸. Instead they seem to suffer from an incurable case of chronic ideological indeterminacy which prevents them from concluding anything at all; they are forever 'exploring' and 'investigating', apparently without arriving at any definite convictions. So, his musicians have "a thirst for esoteric knowledge, and an art of self-questioning and soul searching"¹⁹; they 'deal with' "the traditions of Europe"²⁰ and 'allude to' "paganism, heathenism, Europe, the West"²¹; they have "explored and looked at a variety of philosophies and pagan knowledges"²² and "sought out ideas and ways of understanding"²³; they are "searching for something else"²⁴; they 'take inspiration' "from a wide variety of sources and (show) "their thirst for knowledge and new ways of interpreting things"²⁵; and the neo-folk milieu as a whole has created a space in which "a variety of ideas can be explored and developed"²⁶. But it is impossible to imagine how any idea could be 'developed' if everyone involved in its development refused to say what they thought of it, how they interpreted it, or whether they believed it to be true. But, again, Webb puts his blind eye up to the glass and refuses to see.

To some small extent this dereliction of duty simply reflects Webb's declared methodology. In an early chapter ('A Journey Through Theories of the Intersection of Music and Culture'²⁷) he offers a potted overview of the history of popular culture studies in which, broadly, the (pseudo-) Marxism of Dick Hebdige and the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) is given a rap on the knuckles for placing undue emphasis on structure above agency, and a string of post-modernists are wheeled out to make a case for privileging instead "the subjective meanings of subculturalists rather than deriving these from a pre-given totalising theory"²⁸. While I have no interest in the minutia of such debates within the sociology department, it's clear from Webb's arguments that he simply wants to justify his preferred approach, in which he can tell his story from an insider's point of view, as a fan of the genre, its cod philosophy, kitsch aesthetics and atavistic politics. To some extent, then, the problem is that Webb, in his enthusiasm to paint himself as the hippest and most edgy sociologist in town²⁹, has simply 'gone native'. His 'phenomenological' approach is solipsistic, allowing him to seal off his favourite musicians from even the possibility of criticism. This is hinted at in the tendentious example he provides of a 'momentary milieu', in which someone from "a Socialist background", on meeting a Nationalist, may "respond with disdain and contempt", in which case their "momentary exposure to this other political milieu is... fenced off by the rigidity of his or her particular political vision"³⁰.

This relativism is mirrored by a corresponding blurring of moral lines. At one point he considers the lyrics to the Death in June track 'C'est un Reve' (It's a Dream):

Ou est Klaus Barbie?
Il est dans le coeur
Il est dans le coeur noir

Liberté
c'est un reve

Webb concludes that Barbie (an SS captain in occupied France known as 'The Butcher of Lyon', who personally tortured his victims and had as many as 4,000 murdered) is to be found "in the heart" of everyone³¹; a repulsive argument which attempts to capsize the moral distinction to be made between Barbie and his victims³². Webb offers this as an example of "the direction of Death in June's art" which works to "enliven, question, re-examine and provoke a response"³³. Certainly arguments like this are going to 'provoke a response', if only because they are so repellant, but that hardly justifies the art. If it did then we would have to be similarly grateful to Barbie himself for also 'making us think'.

Another gear in Webb's machinery of obfuscation is his idealist concept of art. For Webb the aesthetic is a privileged domain in which no one needs to say what they think or be held responsible for the results. He claims that the racists and fascists who attend neo-folk concerts have "taken the symbols and references... directly and uncomplicatedly", not understanding that the bands are using them "for artistic purposes"³⁴, as if the re-presentation of an idea in the context of a song somehow means we can ignore its meaning or the intentions of the singer. Of course a song can express opinions on behalf of a character other than the singer, but in the case of Death in June the two may often coincide. If we were to rely on Webb we would never know: he might have tried to find out one way or the other, but instead he uses the idea of 'artistic ambiguity' to avoid the question. Similar feelings about the sublimity of art are common among those postindustrial fans who claim they are interested in 'the aesthetics of fascism' but not the politics, ignoring the fact that, as the anti-fascist critic Walter Benjamin argued, fascism crucially involves precisely the admixing of aesthetics and politics, such that the two cannot be so neatly separated³⁵.

Webb relies extensively on his half-baked notion of 'ambiguity' to provide cover for his pop idols. Of course such ambiguity can be central to the artwork, but it can also provide the perfect cover for supporters of the radical right pursuing a strategy of 'right-wing Gramscianism'. This strategy has been developed by Alain de Benoist and other supporters of the Nouvelle Droite / European New Right (ENR), whose ideas chime neatly not only with the 'third way' faction of the NF that Wakeford mixed with but also with the positions defended by him to this day. As Anton Shekhovtsov has explained, the aim of the strategy is;

"to modify the dominant culture and make it more susceptible to a non-democratic mode of politics... the adherents of the ENR believe that one day the allegedly decadent era of egalitarianism and cosmopolitanism will give way to ‘an entirely new culture based on organic, hierarchical, supra-individual, heroic values’. It is important to emphasize, however, that ‘metapolitical fascism’ focuses... on the battle for hearts and minds rather than for immediate political power. Following Evola’s precepts, the ENR tries to distance itself from both historical and contemporary fascist parties and regimes."³⁶

Webb notes that Death in June "deliberately were ambiguous about any political meaning that they might be conveying"³⁷, but fails to register that if someone dresses up on stage as a fascist and sings songs promoting fascist ideas while waving a fascist flag around, but then denies being a fascist, what they are engaged in is not ambiguity but subterfuge. He notes that "this milieu acts as a source of pathways into a set of... ideas"³⁸ but refuses to consider what those ideas might actually be behind the blabber and smoke.

If that were all there were to it this book would be just another example of the vacuity of academic sociology, the impotence of postmodernism and the dangers of letting a fanboy loose in the academy. But Webb's self-imposed myopia becomes a shade more sinister when you consider the gaping aporias he leaves scattered around his text so that his boys can emerge from it unsullied. For instance, in telling the story of the group's origins he omits to mention that their name commemorates the 'Night of the Long Knives', in June 1934, when the Nazi regime executed the leadership of the Sturmabteilung (SA - The Stormtroopers, or Brownshirts), including Gregor Strasser, a major influence on sections of the National Front with which Tony Wakeford has been associated. This event, in which the Nazi leadership dispatched the left-facing wing of their movement, was also known as Operation Hummingbird, which also happens to be the title of an album the group recorded with Albin Julius, whose band, Der Blutharsch have been banned from playing in Israel and elsewhere because of their stance. Such coincidences are certainly going make the audience think; unless, of course, they are sociologists or phenomenologists from Goldsmiths University.

Webb discusses Crisis at some length, since they were the band Wakeford and Pearce belonged to back in the days when they were, respectively, members of the Socialist Wokers Party (SWP) and International Marxist Group (IMG). Strangely, though, he has nothing to say about the group Wakeford formed on leaving Death in June - Above the Ruins - whose members reputedly (Wakeford will neither confirm nor deny) included Gary Smith, previously of the openly Nazi band No Remorse (who were part of Ian Stuart's Blood and Honor organisation and also, co-incidentally, recorded an album that referred to the Brownshirts; The New Stormtroopers) and Nazi activist Ian Read. The band contributed a track to an a album, No Surrender, which was produced as a fundraiser for the British National Front, and which included a track by Skrewdriver, the first and most notorious White Power band, and their name is presumably derived from the title of Evola's book, 'Men Among the Ruins'. None of this gets a mention from Webb. Perhaps Wakeford himself never mentioned the band or its members to him. This is possible, since Wakeford has admitted lying to and misleading interviewers in the past (on preparing for a particular interview he says "I better dig out my bumper book of fibs"³⁹), but then such evasions could be got around by a little independent research. But it seems that Webb has no interest in doing such research, preferring to base his work entirely on the say-so of his subjects - in the name of 'phenomenology'.

Similarly, when Webb discusses Wakeford's involvement in the online fanzine Flux Europa he tells us that the magazine "discussed postmodernism, art, literature, philosophy, film and music", reassuring us that "the content was diverse". He proves this by mentioning the articles it contained "on Camille Paglia, Jack London and Ezra Pound"⁴⁰. What Webb conspicuously fails to mention is that, as reported by Stewart Home, Flux Europa was an extension of the cultural activities of Transeuropa, which itself emerged from the wreckage of National Front cultural-intellectual group IONA (Islands of the North Atlantic) - both organisations that Wakeford has had some involvement with. And - a tiny detail but one that is highly revealing - while Webb mentions Camille Paglia, Ezra Pound and Jack London as artists about whom Flux Eropa had published articles, what he omits to mention is that they are among a small group of people who are included under the site's 'Personae' section, which is presumably how Webb came to choose them in the first place, and at the time Webb was doing his research that section contained biographies of just two other people; the Vorticist and fascist supporter Wyndham Lewis, and Ernst Jünger, the German Nationalist fanatic who celebrated war, death and pain, and whose Stirnerian concept of the sovereign individual as 'Anarch' has inspired subsequent generations of radical rightists and neo-fascists - including Troy Southgate of the neo-folk band H.E.R.R. In an act of blatant self-censorship, Webb chooses not to mention these names. Of course, if he wanted to exclude all of the fascist supporters on the list then he'd have omitted to mention Ezra Pound too - but that wouldn't have left him with much of a list.

Another curious omission concerns Death in June's album Rose Clouds of Holocaust, which was banned from sale in Germany by the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien (Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young People), who found that the title song cast doubt on the occurrence of the Holocaust on account of lyrics that run "Rose clouds of Holocaust/ Rose clouds of lies/ Rose clouds of bitter/ Bitter, bitter lies"⁴¹. As we have now come to expect, none of this is mentioned by Webb.

Boyd Rice

Webb applies his now familiar uncritical and tendentious attitude to Wakeford's supposed renunciation of his fascist past, hastily posted to the Sol Invictus website when the heat was beginning to be turned up on him, and which is worded so ambiguously as to convince me that he still holds to at least some of the core ideas he learned as a member of the National Front (NF). He says; "I have no connection with, or sympathy for, or interest in [the ideas of the NF], nor have I had for around 20 years"⁴², but then that would be true of other ex-members who also moved on to more diverse forms of radical rightist politics since that party's collapse. When Wakeford adds that "none of the artists I work with hold such views either" you know that he is throwing sand in your face given that he has worked with the likes of Boyd Rice, who is quite happy to promote the white power skinhead party, the American Front, appearing in full Nazi uniform alongside its leader, Bob Heick. Webb, on the other hand, accepts the statement as definitive proof that Wakeford has nothing to answer for. Stranger still, he continues to believe Wakeford's reassurances despite having been shown to have been misled by him. As Stewart Home has argued, Wakeford's attempt at rehabilitating himself falls a long way short of what you would expect from someone who had truly broken with their fascist past.

Apart from covering up for this gaggle of neo-fascists Webb has little or nothing of interest to say about the milieu or its art. His analysis of the music on offer would make even the the most lazy and inept music hack blush. Generally all he can muster is the observation that the music is 'melancholic': so Nico made "intense melancholic music"⁴³; Scott Walker's work combines "simple melody... with the melancholy of the words"⁴⁴; Death in June are attracted to "melancholic poetry"⁴⁵ and their work is pervaded by "a type of melancholia"; neo-folk has added "melancholia" to industrial music⁴⁶, and so on. It never occurs to him to ask what the artists are melancholic about. He doesn't bother to speculate about why folk music, which idealises the pre-capitalist past, should be so appealing to his subjects. His attempts at analysing the use of collage in art are laughable: he manages to compare Death in June's deliberately evasive and dishonest jumble of fascist iconography with John Heartfield's superbly pointed and polemical anti-Nazi collages⁴⁷, and he thinks that what Death in June do "is like a more structured version of William Burroughs and Brian (sic) Gysin's cut up method" adding "(reference needed here)"⁴⁸. Indeed, a reference is the very least that would be required to make this argument get off the mortuary table - it's like saying that a car maintenance manual 'is like a more structured version' of an exploding library.

Peter Webb has written a book which deals with a milieu that is riddled with neo-fascists and supporters of the radical right. He claims that he wants to explain the milieu by considering the relationship between it and the wider 'culture, economy and politics', and admits that "there are many questions [concerning] the political and cultural implications of a scene such as this", but he finally concludes that "These questions are outside of the remit of this book"⁴⁹. To the rest of us this looks like exactly what it is; an attempt to justify an utterly craven and dishonest book that fails to meet even the most minimal academic or intellectual standards.

NB. Peter Webb subsequently replied to these criticisms in a statement that we have also published - Strelnikov, 11/10/10

Evola, Julius. 1953. Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist, (2002: tr. Guido Stucco, ed. Michael Moynihan, Inner Traditions, Rochester NY)
Shekhovtsov, Anton. 2009, Apoliteic Music: Neo-Folk, Martial Industrial and “Metapolitical Fascism"’, in Patterns of Prejudice, Volume 43, Issue 5 (December 2009), pp. 431-457. This excellent essay is also available online.
Sykes, Alan. 2005. The Radical Right in Britain, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
Webb, Peter. 2007. Exploring the Networked Worlds of Popular Music: Milieu Cultures, Routledge, Abbingdon.

1. Webb, 2007, p65
2. ibid, pp93f
3. ibid, pp94f. In an extraordinary page-long digression from his thesis, he also claims that these 'fascistic tendencies' are also behind the hounding of former members of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), who we must assume are his former comrades since I see no other justification for his dragging in them into the argument at this point.
4. ibid, pp29-38
5. ibid, p30
6. ibid, p37
7. ibid, p38
8. ibid, p96
9. ibid, p97
10. ibid, pp 98, 99, 105
11. Evola, Julius. 'Things Put in Their Proper Place and Some Plain Words', in La Torre, issue #5, April 1930, quoted in H.T.Hansen, 'Introduction', Evola, 2002, p42. Here Evola explains that he is an 'anti-fascist', critical of Mussolini and Hitler, only to the extent that he is a 'super-fascist' and wants to go much further.
12. Webb, 2007, pp 66, 67
13. ibid, p92
14. ibid, p97
15. Evola, 2002, p236
16. ibid, p239f
17. My use of the terms 'fascist', 'revolutionary conservative' and 'the radical right' is sometimes fairly loose since with many of the people concerned it is hard to say exactly where they stand in the spectrum of ultra-right thought. But I follow Alan Sykes in seeing the 'radical right' as a term that encompasses fascism. I also include within this the 'traditionalism' of Evola and others, as well as movements that could be described as 'reactionary modernist', 'radical imperialist' or similar. Sykes, 2005, p2.
18. Although in the case of Patrick Leagas this may well be true, since he admits that "coming to a conclusion about anything at all is beyond me!". Webb, 2007, p81
19. Webb, 2007, p66
20. ibid, p68
21. ibid, p68
22. ibid, p81
23. ibid, p85
24. ibid, p85
25. ibid, p89
26. ibid, p105
27. ibid, pp11-28
28. ibid, p21
29. "This book has been inspired by a love of popular music for over three decades", ibid, p7
30. ibid, p30-31
31. ibid, p79
32. In April 1944 Barbie ordered the deportation to Auschwitz of a group of 44 Jewish children from an orphanage at Izieu. He was also responsible for a massacre in Rehaupal in September 1944. See Wikipedia.
33. Webb, 2007, p79
34. ibid, p92
35. Walter Benjamin, 'Epilogue', 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'
36. Shekhovtsov, 2009. Apoliteic Music
37. Webb, 2007, p76
38. ibid, p105
39. Wakeford, Sol Invictus profile, Facebook, 26 July 2008
40. Webb, 2007, p89
41. Shekhovtsov, 2009. Apoliteic Music, note #6.
42. Wakeford, 'A Message From Tony', tursa.com 14 Feb 2007
43. Webb, 2007, p61
44. ibid, p62
45. ibid, p98
46. ibid, p105
47. ibid, p93
48. ibid, p78
49. ibid, p105

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