Who Makes the Nazis?: Tony Wakeford

Showing posts with label Tony Wakeford. 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:

Tuesday, 7 June 2011

Karl Blake Comments

I thought it might be useful to collect together a group of comments made earlier (16th-21st May) on the blog by Karl Blake, a onetime member of Sol Invictus-AS:

[An earlier comment had mentioned Karl's presence at a festival that Boyd Rice played at in London recently]

"... having been alerted by a friend I just have come here to reply to the above poster - Ben 14th May, above.

I was at the Mute 'do' because a friend of mine has made a film about Mark Stewart of the Pop Group and Maffia. He is over from Berlin for that purpose and I am giving him somewhere to stay. He asked me if i wanted to go and I said I didn't mind either way. I would have gone on friday and was quite prepared to confront the piece of shit that is Boyd Rice - I am, contrary to your suggestion, unhappy to even share this earth with him - and as down as I am on myself at times for once I am elitist enough to believe I rate more worthy of survival than that particular specimen - And I was quite prepared to look for [and confront] other pieces of crap that might be adhering to the jerks coattails too. I am also disgusted by Daniel Miller's attitude - but as was pointed out of course he'll defend the 'not needing defending' boyd rice - I can speak from experience that he can be very charming and very funny... BUT... I like to imagine Boyd on the Mrs. Merton show: 'so, boyd, why are you so nice to the multi-millionaire [probably], promotor and financer of your records, payer of your occasional wages, and Jewish[?], Daniel Miller?'

I do understand Daniel Miller. I too defended an undeserving creep for far-too many years. THE INTERNET WASN'T THEN WHAT IT IS NOW THOUGH - IT DIDN'T HAVE WEBSITES SUCH AS THIS THAT DO A VERY MUCH NEEDED JOB.

SEARCHLIGHT MAGAZINE, FOR EXAMPLE - SHOULD PUT ALL OF ITS BACK ISSUES ONLINE

However, I could not get in on the Friday. I toyed with the idea of waiting outside for my ex-friends to arrive so as I could spoil their days in however small a way but as it was still early and the prospect of seeing the moron parade depressed me I went instead to the wonderful Morrisons supermarket, and thence home. Another friend who was there on the Friday reported that Boyd was flouncing around the building as you reported. He also said that, pleasingly, and contrary to what you said, ANTIFA did make an appearance outside and there was trouble between them and security - the latter of which was particularly large in number. My other friend didn't see anything. I suppose it depends where you were. Its perfectly possible for people to be unaware inside a very noisy big building - what is happening in one small corner - when I shouted at the fuckwit mentioned above the people I was with not far ahead were unaware also.

I did attend saturday, however, and had the pleasure of telling a traitorous creep exactly what I thought of him [he is the subject of a blog on here] - I had to hurry to see the film or I would have spent more time on him. Later I spent time walking round the edges and at the entrance at the back of the Hall when Laibach played looking out for his and any 'faces' I knew may be there to share 'thoughts' with - but there were none further - unless you, 'ben' were one of the three largish men one with bluish camo trousers who went through the other door and looked and sounded as if you were going to come over but changed your mind ... you should of: I welcome telling people what and why I believe what I do.

But I suspect your motives for coming here instead... and I have theories of who you may be. The bit about Asians at the front doesn't surprise me in the slightest - or prove anything. Its odd that someone as well informed as you on other matters seem to think it might - were YOU there to protest?

I am increasingly being driven to give account for my past. I am quite open to doing an interview about exactly what my position is. Ironically it is a friend of a friend of Wakeford who has been pushing for this to happen - I look forward to giving him exactly what he deserves - soon. I did do an interview for a book mentioned within this site [in 2006 I think] - and not unconnected with what I said earlier, but my comments and those of Eric Roger also were ignored. I also did an interview for a mag in Germany - but the subject of Sol Invictus must have been so boring or my rambling so unbearably tedious and hard to follow that I was 'nowhere' - its still a bloody good mag though...

I'll give you one or two quotes - I was always convinced the man [Wakeford] whilst remaining stupid in his opinions - nevertheless was inactive in Politics - in fact I was assured of this by both him and David Tibet [1987]. I hold up my hand and say I was politically almost totally ignorant, but my attitude was that as long as people were not pouring petrol through peoples letter boxes they were entitled to their opinions - as long as I wasn't helping promote such disagreeable opinions. I didn't see the codes or whatever contained within the music. When i said to Wakeford, why don't we play that song "LONG LIVE DEATH' from the first album he didn't enlighten me [I wasn't on the first album, by the way, and the first gig I played was in Tokyo at the end of '88 I think - there had apparently been Sol gig[s] before - at least he [Wakeford] said - "private parties" - singular or plural I cannot remember...

Maybe there is a tape of these - maybe a release? "down on griffins farm" as a possible title - I wonder?

Wakeford said to me when he was due to marry Renee Rosen [who is jewish] that "I've lost friends as a result of this " [or words to that effect] - this was in 1998 - I replied "well, they are friends not worth having, aren't they, Tony?" to which he merely grunted. At some time prior to this Tony had warned me off of doing an interview for a [possibly belgian] magazine, as he was aware it was politically dodgy. So there did seem to be indications that he was learning, and after all his mate Richard Lawson and his funny [i mean that in a good way] wife seemed perfectly reasonable types] and many others thought the same. It wasn't until I had a meeting with Stewart Home after a chance meeting at a party in late 2005 that I knew who he REALLY was. Wakeford also made disparaging remarks about Combat 18 after some documentary on TV, which I hadn't heard - and I went to a pub with him once in Borough High Street and he recognised people who came in as Charlie Sergeant and other Combat 18 people and he got quite agitated.

Events in 2005 finally swung my opinion [I was still in the band at this time - my last gig was Leipzig in May 2005 - the tour prior to this had been disrupted [in retrospect] by what I now know to be perfectly reasonable antifa action - and this is an odd one - we were told that it had occurred as a result of a stirring up of action by a certain Vienna-based musician who himself was a raving nazi who hated Wakeford for various reasons - Renee being jewish one of them and the other as I thought recently as possibly a result of the exclusion of a prospective musician from Sol because of his presence on said persons label. Eric Roger did tell the story of his story on a french forum but sadly it was taken down - it is quite right that both of our stories need telling. I will stress though that If Wakeford dropped dead tomorrow I would continue to try to find out more and expose all the other people for doing what they are doing and have done. There is updating needed [connections are not old and dusty cobwebs whatever people may say] and the problems that other people mention are equally relevant it doesn't diminish the significance of this movement - a lot may just be unfortunate fashion victims and others, such as Wakeford, may now be still keeping his/their rightist connections partly only for the money - small beer though it may now be. As Eric Owens said to Wakeford in 2000 "you may not like it, but unfortunately for you we are your audience". If I saw mention of Sol being fascist I would alert Wakeford to it and expect him to do something about it - it was his baggage not mine - or, for that matter the baggage of the people I recruited to the band whom I forewarned of Wakefords past. He asked me why I told them and I said that it was only right and proper if we were getting gigs cancelled at times for what I believed was him being an idiot at some point in his life. In retrospect I was an idiot. This probably strengthened his 'need to know' basis [or I possibly I was the not-need-to-know bassist from then on...] as I presume was the case when I asked whatever happened to that nice chap Tony Williams who we shared a holiday with in 1991 in Cornwall "because he had a car"
...some sort of evasive and effective answer obviously, because I didn't know the answer to that until 2005/6 -[see David Copeland - Bomber].

Enough. For now. So - if any genuinely antifascist magazine, individual, website or whatever that I am convinced of wants to talk to me about this who like me believe in 'NO PLATFORM FOR NAZIS' [to me - I will not argue about satanist nazis or anti-satanist nazis - they are all morons and all nazis - and I use that word because I want to - irrespective of 'theoretical inaccuracy - as Alan Trench said - if it looks like a Nazi, it is a Nazi].

OK - FIRSTLY - As regards Wakeford - - I think I'll christen him 'TEFLON TONY' - from what I can ascertain, going by what he said in "Englands Hidden Reverse" about being put away [by the police] for a very long time, this does not add up. He says this was for petty crime and it doesn't explain, why, in about 2000 he was briefly taken to one side by two police on entering the country. He returned to us [some of the band] visibly shaken and said " Err, they said "WE KNOW YOU". His constant "Leagas and Pearce were wholly innocent - it was just me" smacks to me of mutual silence being beneficial rather being than being motivated by friendship. On the quiet his talk about them was - "Dougs lost the plot" - when Douglas was fighting World Serpent, and anger at bootlegs of DIJ that Patrick had put out without paying anyone else.

He is morally lax and totally defined by heightened self-interest, and because he dislikes certain kinds of confrontations is inclined to be two faced in his actions. Curiously, I noted in the booklet you mentioned [Satan etc.] that Sol Invictus were mentioned - but in no depth whatsoever - merely as a link to get to the subject of Ian Read - an enemy of Wakefords [as a result of real jealousy - not the 'supposed' jealousy I suffer from]. He was also too loose-tongued in public for Wakeford's liking]. I suspect, therefore, that Wakeeford keeps a foot in many camps rather than taking sides: one camp being the Nazi who wrote the booklet "Satan etc... which incidently does supply valuable info on the "enemy", despite having a bizarre theory about Paul Macartneys "Mull of Kintyre"!!!

Some time after my tenure with the Sol Invictus ended I discovered a Searchlight article from 1997, or maybe 1998, that dealt with Wakeford, Read and Freya Aswynn and others, which Wakeford undoubtedly knew about. This is one example of his total selfishness - rather than inform us [the rest of the band] about the article and let us decide about our position in the light of its publication ['we' = the band - you should note that all the releases read "Tony Wakeford with..." in other words he was Sol Invictus]. When it suited him we all were Sol Invictus - ie. when he wanted to prove to antifa that he couldn't possibly be fash of any kind. To give an example; there was an incident in England, early in the band's existence, when we were told of a threat to firebomb the queue for a gig with Death in June in Clapham Junction. [The Sol gig was cancelled the DIJ moved] - Wakeford used the band to claim - "We're not fascist - i've got an anti-apartheid'[sic] on cello, a chaos musician on drums, and a nutter on bass!". This has been his regular defense technique ever since - to hide behind his ill-informed band's ethnicity, faith or whatever.

My own theory is that Wakeford is first and foremost a casuist [but one that he would prefer that some kind of fascist state existed]. He bites his lip and writes pap about a mythical world of kings, queens and fools. I think he feels that way politically irrespective of any nonsense about his wife being Jewish or his bassist being a lesbian [and I bet he never told the latter that the title of her photo exhibition was lifted from a line of my Underneath project in 1986 - 'World Turn Green' - from the track 'Smear Ghosts' - he did ask my permission at the time]. He hides behind the laymans view of 'fascism' . A recent posting on Stormfront England said that his friend Richard Lawson's wife Eve was in fact part-Jewish - which in turn made his daughter, who the poster also said was an activist - Jewish also - and yet he [Lawson] is credited with anti-semetic writings in the 70s and 80s [aside from being the [ghost] author of a pamphlet called 'Lifting the Lid on the Anti-Nazi League' - and his mate Patrick Harrington - NF and latterly a BNP defender from the position of boss of the 'fake' union - Solidarity], worked with Jewish activist [and separatist] Rabbi Schiller. This again is rambling - but there are facts that need to be aired.
Anyway, music is part of the unifying zeitgeist and as a part of a cultural organism is open to infection, which is exactly what is happening and I don't think it is just tied to the neo-ghetto. This site makes an error at times of knocking the music - and that is neither a here or there - it's the Vessel and not the Essence. I too grew through a loose reactionary culture of transgression and believe in the flag of freedom... but only up to a point. The far right use civil rights for their own ends as well - use tolerance to defend their intolerance. I recall again how the KKK was represented by a black lawyer when fighting for their right to have their own public TV in the U.S.A. - and government repression is used as a shared bogey man to hide in amongst or alongside the extreme left, for example Casa Pound in Italy. My response about "looks like a nazi" in that case may well be sorely tested. If I come out with "hate-speech against hate speech" it is my reactionary shift against all of that - I've got 'Neo-poisoning' if you like! I really am fed up with it and a lot of that is down to feeling thoroughly used and duped. I hold my hand up and say I enjoyed going abroad and playing all the time - and recording. Its my own fault that I took the path of least resistance and sat back and took the easy option of just turning up and playing bass and laughing at all the idiots with silly haircuts and anal-aryan uniforms. I will agree that I am now, by contrast - guilty of "kill 'em all - let God decide" type reasoning here with the comment I made in an earlier post.

One other thing - the compilation "Not Alone" - a five cd benefit album put out in 2006 (http://www.discogs.com/Various-Not-Alone/release/638749) - and compiled by David Tibet. Profits were/are to go to medicin san frontiere to combat aids in Africa. How many compilations are Sol Invictus on? Loads - but not that one - even though Wakeford had his own studio at that point or could of, like my own Shock Headed Peters, given an old unreleased track - his reply to me when I mentioned it at the time was [talking about Tibet's request for a track] "you know what my response was, don't you" - so, no Sol on that release.....
Anyway - to Ben, again -

I advise you further to try to contact the webmaster here to do a piece about Jobbik and any cultural sources they may be feeding on and music they may like etc..

And you asked about Laibach - to me on cursory glance they are the musical version of "Romper Stomper" or "American History X" - supposed moral counters critiquing the far-right but 'turned around' and used as visual/aural pornography IN PART by the far-right [as sadly I have seen this website described as 'making fascism sexy";-{ ] - in the same way peedos might use innocent pics of babies for their own ends. I liked some of Laibach's music at the Roundhouse - I didn't like the literal porn [the blow job footage - but thats just my own prejudice] - I don't know what they [Laibach] actually represent - I have heard rumours about some people connected to them - I prefer truth and facts however and will continue to look...
So - in answer to your last and probably most important question:

"Fascism needs opposing and tackling where it is developing an organized and coherent political program and political force, is this music scene a real site for that type of development?" - Yes it should be tackled even if it apparently doesn't apparently conform to the "organised and coherent" dictum for, as ROBIN RELIANT said above "Can we get beyond this semantic hall of mirrors and look at ways in which dangerous ideas are drawn from 'politics' and amplified in 'art'? To suggest that anything exists in isolation these days is equally disingenuous: just look at the CV and 'political' associations of someone like Alex Kurtagić (Supernal Music) -and I'll say also if people like Troy Southgate, Jonathan Bowden - friends and associates of Kurtagić as well as would-be politicians [or activists] first and foremost are connected and interested to this area of music then yes - opposition and investigation and taking it seriously is needed however small and insignificant the scene may seem... the old English saying "look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves" - i'd say look after the pennies as well as the pounds... I'd call what we are taking on here a form of "investment fascism" - all these idiots with their uniform and badges today are the middle-management, bankers, scientists, web designers etc. of tomorrow

...thats the problem with not having constant linkage to the internet. Someone asks you something and a whole load of other people respond in the interim - and I am afraid I haven't the time to do an in depth reply to all now.
But I must say this - my 'being sacked' from Sol Invictus came about as a result of a couple of things - the specific one relating to this being that Eric Roger was sacked for objecting to the [i'd say] 95% fashtype line-up we [Sol] were being grouped with in a particular hall over 2 days as part of the Leipzig Gothik Treffen [2005]. Eric spoke to Wakeford about this first and he agreed that it sounded bad. Eric himself then contacted the promoter - which caused considerable flack - the first I heard about it was to get a phone call from Tony saying " hes gone mad!!" Wakeford then sent Eric an email telling him as much [that he'd gone mad] but that he could continue in Orchestre Noir as he valued his abilities... Eric understandably refused Wakefords 'kind' offer by not reponding at which point Wakeford had a further meltdown.

I had agreed to do the gig so honoured my responsibilities, but not without aggravation from Wakeford as It had already been arranged for me to be in Paris to rehearse with Eric before his 'departure' so transport became more complicated. When I eventually got to Leipzig I had with me a list of the bands and dodgy connections that Eric had done for me - as these were European and some [most] I hadn't heard of before. I offered it to Wakeford to look at but he refused to do so. He also failed to confront Albin Julius who was at the top of the stairs at the venue having said when I told him about Albin's presence that he didn't see him - he was still only a few metres away. Wakeford previously had said he would do various things to him as a result of the tour problems that we had been told were caused by Julius, and neither did he seek to avenge comments made sometime earlier by Julius to a World Serpent Person [I believe] about Wakefords wife].

I decided to leave Sol Invictus myself soon after this gig - and mentioned this to a third party who may well have informed Wakeford. I refused a [Polish?] gig we were offered in October '05 and Wakeford [on the phone] said he was thinking about changes - he wasn't sure what to do about Sol - this was the last time we spoke. I found out from the same 'third party' above in Jan or Feb of '06 [who contacted me to complain about Wakefords behaviour to them and a friend] that this [around the time of the Wakeford phone call] was when I was sacked!. This is a boiled-down version of events - I'm sure Eric can fill in [and I hope he does] - we have emails to prove this chain of events and no doubt will have to do so etc. etc. I must hurry - my access is very limited - they rush at me wanting to re-attach the straight-jacket and feed me pills - as they see the slight glimmer of carpet tile in my eyes!! ;-}

So - I am mentally ill, am I ? Seems a particular Nazi type of accusation - and no doubt the person who said that has a particular Nazi solution to that problem. After all, I may be dangerous, you know...

The tiles in question took a maximum of say one minute to mention on that fucking awful tour I did because I needed the money. I should have paid attention to Wakeford that time ["oo-er you knew what they were like!". Just to establish - they really are interesting carpet tiles - Heuga Felt - made with boars hair, pitch [thats tar] and hessian - and need a light watering every month to start with. The only consistently decent company on that tour was John Murphy - Ian Read went on about things such as why he was in the Masons, the Hollow Earth theory, dissing Albin's ex-girlfriend because her facial shape showed that she was a 'Slav' or somesuch, theories about if a black man had sex with a woman some chemical trace remained??? - and [admiringly] about two old men he had met who had head calipers to measure someones aryan status - and it was he [Read] and not I who had the piss ripped out of him. He said to me as a result - "You know, Karl, they are like this because this is all they have but I have this and also am the sixth most important person in the occult world today!" [or words very much to that effect]. Then he came back home and spoke to one of World Serpent - who we were united in being angry with for different reasons on on that tour - and told them the carpet tile story.

Doug and Boyd would be drinking at eleven in the morning or thereabouts. Albin was busy being unfaithful to his girlfriend and exhibiting an ego so large that his partner in Der Bloodyawful was telling us that he'd had enough of him and was thinking of going home. O.K., this will be taken out of context, but here goes: I was intent on making Wakefords life a misery at some point after Liepzig because of the treachery he had shown and lies he had told. However, as a result of what I learnt subsequently, had Wakeford dropped dead say at the end of 2005 I would still be pursuing what I think is a worthwhile activity - and thats fighting fascism in neofolk and elsewhere. What I thought consisted of merely a few idiots, was wrong, which I subsequently learned through discussion with people such as Eric Roger and Stewart Home, and any previous allegiances as mentioned above were purely and simply musical - and a degree of [in some cases] misplaced friendship. I could have just walked away when my time in Sol ended - I could have played up to the neofolkers and done OK had I been so disposed. I didn't take the easy path - and by the way, Shock Headed Peters were effectively "given an offer they had to refuse" in 1997 and were effectively thrown off of World Serpent for poor sales. I have never hidden this nor did it cause any rancour in my relationship with Wakeford at that time - why should it? If you look at my Myspaces it probably says the same somewhere - and I've always made a point of my "arm, a leg and an eye for an eye" policy [boy, the books getting big - payout time soon] - I also have said I have had to cut off from some people who I was to a degree sad to see go. This isn't a career move, this is all to do with conscience and sense of right and wrong - and I really hate liars.

I was politically ignorant as I said - but only up to a point - I was unaware, say, of the political significance of Runes, of 2nd W.W. history, of the Black Sun - I always stood against what I understood as fascism - which was racism and ultra-authoritarianism - Boyd Rice said to to me at the end of this tour "I guess Karl you'll have to be de-Nazified" - and I overheard him talking about me also - "Hes ANTI-EVERYTHING!"...
He also said "You know, he didn't get involved in the thing that united us the most on this tour" - this was reference to the confrontation with three supposed 'minders' of a group of coach party of people of southern Mediterranean appearance in a motorway service station.[which maybe started when the other member of Der Blutwaddever - the well-over 6ft bloke from Tesco Org with alopecia, muttered under his breath when they entered the shop "Untermensch"....] Rice obviously thought that I should have taken their side after this idiot had made this despicable comment...

One last observation of this tour - every place in Germany we went to they [including John] would all visit the Army Surplus stores in search of 'memorabilia' [eg. swastika belt-buckles].

More, MUCH more, later. And I said that I thought the original 'a.julius' was a fake - I think I know who it was - they'll do, anyway. Hi, anyway to the real Albin [Sunlight....] - but I still don't like or believe you [looks like I'm not alone], and you do Sky Saxon a disservice - maybe you confuse him with Kurt Saxon?"

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.

Tuesday, 23 November 2010

A Sunny Sense of Humour?

From an earlier blog comment: "when one of his fans sent him a picture of the Italian Fascist Julius Evola on his Facebook account, Wakeford replies jokingly, with a nod and a wink ("How did you know I liked Leonard Cohen ;-)"). Fans like that understand what Wakeford's game is, and so do we."

Thursday, 21 October 2010

Dragon, IONA and Wakeford

Here's a scan of the front page of the first issue of Dragon, from 1987, the one and, I believe, the only periodical that IONA (Islands of the North Atlantic) published before it transformed itself into the Transeuropa Collective. IONA was formed in the mid-80s by Wakeford associate (and, I believe, mentor) Richard Lawson. Lawson had been the Student Organiser of the National Front (NF), he was involved in the Strasserite wing of the party around John Kingsley Read that split from the NF in 1976 to form the National Party,(though he later drifted back toward the NF and in the 80s was associated with the Official National Front / Political Soldier faction around Nick Griffin, Patrick Harrington and Derek Holland, where he will have first met Tony Wakeford, as he too was a supporter of this wing of the NF), and he has operated over a long period of time as a Fascist ideologue and organiser. IONA was formed as a think-tank for intellectuals on the radical right and was closely associated with Michael Walker's similarly inclined Scorpion magazine, with whom IONA co-operated. In 1989 Lawson set up the Transeuropa Collective, which published the journal Perspectives to discuss "European identities, autonomies and initiatives". Transeuropa replaced IONA organisationally but embodied the same political orientation. Alongside their anti-Semitism and anti-Black racism and their promotion of ethnic regionalism, both Dragon and Perspectives also discussed environmental issues, British Folk culture and history and other topics designed to orient this wing of Fascism toward the Greens, to 'de-Nazify' them and generally give them a Left face. As such it was part of a wider contemporary European strategy of Fascist realignment ('convergence') toward, and infiltration of, Left and Green campaigns and organisations. Perspectives was criticised by Searchlight for its anti-Semitism and for infiltrating the Green movement. Others commented that Perspectives "says 'Green' but means 'White'". In 1995 Lawson launched Fluxeuropa, a website producing 'postmodern' cultural reviews and exploring "the creative tension between tradition and modernity". Lawson was also later involved in Alternative Green alongside ex-NF, ex-ITP (International Third Position) and now 'National-Anarchist' (and leader of the neo-classical martial group, H.E.R.R), Troy Southgate.

At the bottom of this page of Dragon you'll notice an article written by Wakeford, about whom I've already posted a series of articles detailing his involvement in Fascism (and I can guarantee there will be more of these in future). The reason I'm posting this page now is simply to note Wakeford's active participation in Lawson's project of the time. The relationship between Wakeford and Lawson continued (as detailed by Stewart Home) and has coloured Wakeford's thinking ever since (notice IONA and Transeuropa's concern for 'British Folk culture'). One of the main claims of this site is that there is an essential continuity between Wakeford's early overt political engagement with Fascism and his later involvement with what Anton Shekhovtsov, in an excellent article, called 'Apoliteic Music'. This continuity is driven by Wakeford's acceptance of the ideas promoted by Richard Lawson in his various guises. Wakeford's article here about Henry Williamson - the author of Tarka the Otter but also an admirer of Hitler and member of the British Union of Fascists - is itself probably of little intrinsic interest, though it does tend to confirm the old observation that authoritarians are commonly also drawn to the maudlin, the kitsch and the banal.

Hat-tip to Anton Shekhovtsov for the use of the scan.

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

Thursday, 16 September 2010

Tony Wakeford on Manoeuvres

Tony Wakeford (Death in June / Sol Invictus) with the National Front in Brick Lane

Tony Wakeford (left) with Ian Anderson (right) and the NF on Brick Lane, London, 29th Aug 1982
© David Hoffman, Hoffmanphotos

You can read elsewhere about Tony Wakeford (Death in June, Sol Invictus), his membership of the National Front (NF) and his association with Nazi boneheads like Ian Stuart and Nicky Crane. Wakeford likes to boast privately that he was handy with his fists... and his teeth (he's rumored to have once tried to bite off someone's thumb). Along the way he picked up a charge for GBH or ABH, but the details remain obscure because Wakeford, having publicly repudiated his time as an organised Nazi, still refuses to come clean about what he was up to and who he was involved with.

This picture appears to show Wakeford (on the left) at an NF stall in London's Brick Lane in 1982, campaigning for Ian Anderson (right), who went on to lead the party. For many years Brick Lane, in London's East End, has been at the heart of the city's Bangladeshi-Sylheti community, and for a long time in the late 70s and 80s it was a regular haunt of the NF, who pitched up there to intimidate the locals. As a result the area became notorious for racist attacks on local Asians.

In May 1978 a local man, Altab Ali, was murdered in a racially motivated attack - the park at the southern end of the lane is now named after him - and as a result there were demonstrations against the NF and the beginnings of a powerful movement of local opposition and organisation against them. These events also led to the formation of Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League. As an iconic symbol of the Bangladeshi community's resistance to the fascists Brick Lane was later also one of three sites targeted in 1999 by David Copeland, the 'London Nail Bomber', who had been a member of both the British National Party (BNP) and the National Socialist Movement. Copeland's bombs killed three people, including a pregnant woman, and injured 129, four of whom lost limbs

For a long time in the late 70s and the 80s Brick Lane was the site of pitched battles between fascists and a combination of locals and anti-fascists, who made it a priority to drive the Nazis from the area. In that case, Wakeford was almost certainly there on the day this picture was taken in order to confront the local opposition, and as some kind of bodyguard for Anderson. The significance of the picture is that it shows that Wakeford was much more than a fellow traveller of the NF with a vague interest in 'European traditions', as he likes to put it these days - he was an activist and a fascist street fighter. And as Wakeford did not leave Death in June until 1984 it also shows that Doug Pearce spent a good two years working alongside this fascist activist before ditching him.

If anyone has more information about the goons pictured above, the occasion for the stall being there, or about Wakeford's time in the NF generally, let us know at the address above. Note that it's possible that during his time in the NF Wakeford went by an alias - 'Dave Waters' has been mentioned.

Notes

The character seated at the desk looks as though it could be Ken Walsh, a long-time East End fascist activist who later stood as a BNP candidate, thus creating a rift with then BNP allies Combat 18, who judged that a party of 'morals' perhaps shouldn't be promoting a candidate who spoke so openly and enthusiastically about his sex-tourism in Thailand. Walsh was one of the organisers of a march celebrating the murder of Stephen Lawrence, killed by racist thugs in South London in April 1993.

Thanks to David Hoffman for the use of the photograph

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