After receiving complaints from members of the public, the owners of the Union Chapel - the Islington, London venue - have cancelled the booking for Death in June for 9th Dec. According to an email that was passed on to us here at WMTN, the organisers say they decided to cancel having investigated the group and found video of audience members Sieg Heil-ing at an earlier gig.
Keeping an eye on the neo-fascists burrowing their way into a subculture near you
Showing posts with label Death in June. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Death in June. Show all posts
Wednesday, 6 November 2013
Death in June London Show Cancelled
After receiving complaints from members of the public, the owners of the Union Chapel - the Islington, London venue - have cancelled the booking for Death in June for 9th Dec. According to an email that was passed on to us here at WMTN, the organisers say they decided to cancel having investigated the group and found video of audience members Sieg Heil-ing at an earlier gig.
Labels:
Death in June
Monday, 7 October 2013
Neofolk or Neovolk? One's Personal Take on a Death in June Concert in Baltimore
![]() |
Death in June, Baltimore 2013 |
Read the full article here >>
Labels:
Death in June
Friday, 13 September 2013
Queers to shut down Death In June in San Francisco on September 13th / DIJ exposed by queer anti-fascist
Due to a technical snafu we have only just been able to publish this iece today, the day f the protests - we publish it anyway because it is an excellent article and may be of use to anyone who wants to protest at future DiJ gigs
Please contact the Mezzanine to demand they cancel they show or we will shut it down ourselves:
444 Jessie St (between Mint St & 6th St)
San Francisco, CA 94103
Neighborhoods: Union Square
info@mezzaninesf.com
415-625-8880
https://www.facebook.com/mezzanineSF
To get to the Mezzanine by public transport: Bart, Bus or Muni to Powell Street Stop (5th and Market). Walk down 5th toward Mission and take a right into Mint Plaza (near Chez Papa + 54 Mint) Continue down Jessie St. and the venue is on your right.
1. The European Colonization of Australia
\
When asked Do you see Australia inescapably as an outpost of European colonialism? Douglas stated:
"As Dutch, British and French explorers literally put this Great Southern Land on the map it would be ridiculous to say that modern day Australia is anything other than a grand - and successful - outpost of Euro-colonialism and, more specifically Anglo-Celt British colonialism. It's a fact of life like the Euro-colonization of the Americas etc. If it was an outpost of, let's say, Iranian or Zimbabwean colonialism would so many people still be so desperately trying to get into Australia by any means necessary, legal or otherwise? It's doubtful. Thank the Gods for Euro-colonialism!" - Douglas Pearce 1
2. Genocide
Q: How do you imagine these scents of genocide, what’s this “perfume”? What does it evoke to you, in real? What brings men to do that?
A: "I also say in the same song that “you can’t smell experience like that”! But, if genocide smells of anything it’s probably Nostalgia. Once men catch a whiff of that most will chase after it." - Douglas Pearce 2
3. Xenophobia
Q: Looking back and making some kind of the symbolic conclusion to the end of epoch, what are your present anxieties and prophesies about the future?
A: "IT'S HARD NOT TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT THE "END TIME" AS WE RACE TOWARDS THE END OF THE MILLENNIUM. I DO THINK ABOUT IT AND I DO WONDER IF ALL THE PROPHECIES FROM ALL THE DIFFERENT RELIGIONS IN THE WORLD WILL COME TRUE OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS/YEARS. I EVEN SOMETIMES WONDER HOW PROPHETIC SOME OF MY WORDS COULD BE. I FEEL THAT 'PURITY OF INTENT' SHOULD ALWAYS DICTATE ART OF WORTH - IN ALL ITS FORMS. I'M VERY CAREFUL WITH THE WORDS I CHOOSE. "EUROPA HAS BURNED AND WILL BURN AGAIN" BECAME ONLY TOO TRUE. UNFORTUNATELY!
THE WORLD SEEMS TO BE SO FULL OF SO MANY DANGERS THAT IT'S HARD TO SINGLE ANY PARTICULAR ONES OUT. CERTAINLY THE MOST OBVIOUS THAT SPRING TO MIND ARE THE GROWTHS IN ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM AND OUT OF CONTROL BREEDING. EVEN IN EUROPA, WITH ZERO POPULATION GROWTH IN MANY COUNTRIES, THOSE WHO ARE DOING THE BREEDING APPEAR TO ME, AND I THINK MANY OTHERS, TO BE OF DUBIOUS CHARACTER. THEY FUCK, THEY HAVE KIDS AND THAT IS ALL THEY DO! I DON'T BELIEVE THAT IS ENOUGH!! I DON'T THINK I NEED TO TELL ANY RUSSIAN ABOUT ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM. I ALWAYS BACKED THE FORMER U.S.S.R IN AFGHANISTAN AND FEEL THE WEST, BY BACKING THE WRONG SIDE IN THAT WAR HAS STILL YET TO PAY THE FULL PRICE OF THAT MISTAKE. I'VE NEVER AGREED WITH THE PHILOSOPHY THAT IF HE IS MY ENEMY'S ENEMY HE MUST BE MY FRIEND. THAT TRULY IS NAIVE. AUSTRALIA IS NOW EXPERIENCING THE CONSEQUENCES OF SUCH NAIVETY WITH INDONESIA. BY THE TIME YOU GET THIS WE COULD BE AT WAR WITH THEM. TRADITIONAL ENEMIES WERE NEVER FRIENDS!" - Douglas Pearce
Q: Some years ago you've left your motherland, claiming that England to your mind "isn't the best place for the spiritual development" in Europe because of the present degradation of the country and the nation. Can you comment these words?
A: "AS I'VE SAID IN A PREVIOUS QUESTION I TRULY FEEL THAT ENGLAND, AND PROBABLY TO A LESSER EXTENT, MAINLAND EUROPA, HAS SEVERE STOCK PROBLEMS. THAT, AS FAR AS I CAN SEE HAS ONLY GOT WORSE. THOSE WHO SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO BREED ARE DOING SO WITH SUCH FREQUENCY THAT THE UK IS BEING OVER POPULATED BY MORONS WITH NOTHING TO DO EXCEPT HARASS THE REST OF THE POPULATION. THERE IS NO OTHER PLACE FOR THEM. BRITAIN AS AN INDUSTRIAL POWER IS A THING OF YESTERYEAR. LARGE POOLS OF MANUAL, UNSKILLED LABOURERS ARE NO LONGER REQUIRED. HOWEVER, THE OLD HABITS LINGER ON. MONEY IS STILL GIVEN TO THOSE WHO BREED. THE MORE KIDS YOU HAVE THE MORE MONEY YOU GET. THIS IS TOTALLY UNREAL. IN A COUNTRY THAT NOW GAINS ITS INCOME FROM THE ARTS, HIGH TECHNOLOGY AND TOURISM THERE ARE FEW PLACES FOR THOSE CAPABLE OF ONLY PUSHING A BROOM IN FRONT OF THEM.
BRITAIN IMPORTED MILLIONS OF UNSKILLED LABOURERS FROM THE COLONIES FOR THAT KIND OF WORK AND LOOK WHAT A HUGE SUCCESS THAT WAS! THE HATRED IS BARELY RESTRAINED INTO THE OCCASSIONAL RIOT. I DON'T LIKE BEING IN A PLACE WITH SUCH AN ATMOSPHERE. EVEN GERMANY, THE FORMER RICHEST COUNTRY IN WESTERN EUROPA SEEMS TO BE TANGIBLY FALLING TO BITS. IT IS NO LONGER AS CLEAN AND AS WELL ORGANISED AS I REMEMBER FROM, SAY, 10 YEARS AGO. IT HAS BEEN FLOODED BY THOSE WHO WANT BUT, WITH LITTLE TO GIVE! THE WEST'S LIBERALISM WILL BE ITS DEATH." - Douglas Pearce 3
4. "Euro-centric Racialism"
Q: In interviews you've expressed Eurocentrism. How do you feel about fans that are Eurocentric/Racialist?
A: "Depending upon their ' version ' of Eurocentric Racialism, then 9 times out of 10 I feel very comfortable with it. This is how it's supposed to be. I would like to think that the Klu Klux Klan version isn't included in this. Eurocentrics goes beyond reactionary Christian, political militias. I believe in seizing the end of time, not being a passive part of it. " - Douglas Pearce 4
Q: Don't you think your vision concerning the history of Europe (which in your opinion is the best one) is nevertheless a European opinion? I'm not talking about the americans who have no past and who probably have no more future but about the Chinese, for example, who were in the past a very powerful nation...
A: "Yes, I am totally Euro-centric. I'm not overly concerned with the past but, I do care about the present and the future. European culture, morals, ethics, whatever, are under attack from all sides these days. Even, most dangerous of all, from within Europe. Whilst we have room for regret about some of the mistakes of the past (and of the present) regarding our treatment of the earth and some of it's peoples/wildlife, there is also plenty to be content about. I'm tired of being made to feel guilty about the sins of the world. Europe has contributed a MASSIVE amount to the world on ALL fronts. We will regret the day when we let that position slip from our hands and fade from our memory." - Douglas Pearce 5
5. National Socialism
Q: WHY HAVE YOU TAKEN SUCH AN INTEREST IN NATIONAL SOCIALIST GERMANY? DO YOU, FOR INSTANCE, QUESTION YOURSELF WHETHER YOU WOULD HAVE JOINED THE RANKS OR NOT?
A: "Yes, naturally. It's been an overriding interest since I was very, very young. My parents used to be quite angry about the morbid fascination I had as a child for this part of history. In the end, though, they actually gave up on it because I was so sincere in my interest. It wasn't just a passing dalliance but an actual obsession and I seem to be quite knowledgeable in that area. Outside of that, what are the reasons for my interest? I think, overridingly, that one of the main reasons is that you can still communicate with people who have taken part in these events. You just don't have to read books or see films about them, these people are very much alive today." - Douglas Pearce 6
6. The fascist symbol the "Totenkopf"
Q: Throughout the period of Death In June you have employed strong imagery - what is the significance of symbolism such as the Totenkopf, most commonly associated with extreme right-wing philosophy, to you?
A: "The Totenkopf is used all over Europe as a sign of total commitment, so I've never really had any problems with it. When I thought of Death In June it was really the be all and end all of my life - it still is - so that's why I chose to use that symbol, plus the fact that the simple symbolism reads easy. The Totenkopf for Death, and the six for the sixth month - June. I've always been interested, intrigued...and I suppose obsessive with symbols in so many ways and that particular one is a perfect representation. " - Douglas Pearce 7
Douglas P. being gay is not an excuse to promote racist or fascist ideas. One of the founders of fascism was openly homosexual.
While many claim that his work is clearly shock value because Douglas P. is gay, I am queer and recognize his aesthetic to be aligned with that of the SA who was lead by a gay fascist named Ernst Rohm. 8
Gay historian Frank Rector wrote "Although it was clear the Nazi party viewed homosexuals negatively, as was evident from the destruction of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexual Science in Berlin, “some gays [in the SS] may have been reconciled by the knowledge that Hitler’s right hand man, Ernst Rohm, was a homosexual," 8
"projected a social order in which homosexuality would be regarded as a human behaviour pattern of high repute... He flaunted his homosexuality in public and insisted his cronies do the same. He believed straight people weren't as adept at bullying and aggression as homosexuals, so homosexuality was given a high premium in the SA." 8
Gay columnist Johann Hari writes "Rohm often referred to the ancient Greek tradition of sending gay solider couples into battle, because they were believed to be the most ferocious fighters. The famous pass of Thermopylae, for example was held by 300 soldiers - who consisted of 150 gay couples. In its early years, the SA - Hitler and Rohm's underground army - was seen as predominantly gay. Rohm assigned prominent posts to his lovers, making Edmund Heines his deputy and Karl Ernst the SA commander in Berlin. The organisation would sometimes meet in gay bars. The gay art historian Christian Isermayer said in an interview, 'I got to know people in the SA. They used to throw riotous parties even in 1933... I once attended one. It was quite well-behaved but thoroughly gay. But then, in those days, the SA was 'ultra-gay.' " 9
The SA was one of the most violent fascist groups during World War II. In this 2011 interview Douglas Pearce acknowledges his interest in gay fascist Ernst Rohm:
INTERVIEWER: "I recently saw the Danish movie "Brotherhood". The Plot is that Lars has to leave the army after accusations of having made a pass at some of his men. Disillusioned he joins a Neo-Nazi movement, even though they practice gay-bashing. He and his peer Jimmy become embroiled in a secret love affair. Moving from hostility through grudging admiration to friendship and finally passion. Events take a darker turn when their relationship is uncovered. What's your opinion about Brotherhood/Homosexuality in the SA and how can be (if can be) mixed Nazism and Homosexuality?"
Douglas Pearce: "I’ve heard about the ‘Brotherhood’ film you mention but haven’t seen it. I do intend to get a copy of it on DVD soon. I’d be better placed to answer that question regarding that film after that. However, regarding being Gay in the S.A. the early Nazi movement and brotherhood etc. then at this late stage of the game with few, if any, surviving members that were involved in any of that at the time we can only surmise or read books and wonder. And, it is a big wonder! A truly fascinating question as to what was, and what might have been. However, it’s an impossible question to answer with any accuracy. The only thing I can say is that nearly 20 years ago I did have a conversation with a then member of the SS who later became in the war a very high ranking member of the Waffen SS and was around in those early days in 1930s Germany and he said that during the Night Of The Long Knives the question of homosexuality was never brought up. They weren’t sure exactly what was happening when they were told to be on alert at the end of June, 1934 and that they expected an attempt on Hitler’s life from elements in the Storm Troops (S.A.) The Gay angle appeared only after the purge of Ernst Roehm and his comrades as some sort of extra excuse made up by Goering and Goebbels as to why such a purge was necessary. About a year later homosexuality then also became officially illegal in Germany which up until then had no specific laws against being Gay. That was unlike Britain or the USA which had outlawed homosexuality for decades and where it was still punishable by imprisonment and sometimes death. Hitler doesn’t have seemed to have made any direct comments, or even be concerned, about any of his close comrades being Gay and, in fact, there are strong rumours that when he was a struggling artist in Vienna he did spend time being a male prostitute to help pay his bills etc. Being Gay and being aligned to the Nazi Party certainly didn’t become apparently mutually exclusive until the change of laws in 1935." [10]
Crisis from 'left' to right wing
"I think Crisis (Well Doug and me) saw Crisis as way of imbuing or infiltrating a distinct ideological strain of left wing politics into punk." - Tony Wakeford [11]
"At the start of the eighties, Tony and I were involved in radical left politics and beneath it history students. In search of a political view for the future we came across National Bolshevism which is closely connected with the SA hierarchy. People like Gregor Strasser and Ernst Röhm who were later known as 'second revolutionaries' attracted our attention." - Douglas Pearce
Death in June will be playing at eight locations across the United States. Please contact the venues, tell your community, and organize non-violent direct action if necessary.
Bay Area Antifa alert!
An anti-fascist queer bloc has been called to protest and shut down the Third Position fascist band 'Death In June' concert on Friday, September 13th - 9 pm @ the Mezzanine in San Francisco. While there is a queer bloc all anti-fascists are invited but if you are a straight person please do not dominate the protest. As you can read below Douglas Pearce is a gay fascist so it is best if queer folks are on the front. Any homophobic remarks made by anyone in our presence with be dealt with accordingly.Please contact the Mezzanine to demand they cancel they show or we will shut it down ourselves:
444 Jessie St (between Mint St & 6th St)
San Francisco, CA 94103
Neighborhoods: Union Square
info@mezzaninesf.com
415-625-8880
https://www.facebook.com/mezzanineSF
To get to the Mezzanine by public transport: Bart, Bus or Muni to Powell Street Stop (5th and Market). Walk down 5th toward Mission and take a right into Mint Plaza (near Chez Papa + 54 Mint) Continue down Jessie St. and the venue is on your right.
Why do we oppose Death In June?
Racist, Euro-centric, and Fascist statements made by Douglas Pearce.1. The European Colonization of Australia
\
When asked Do you see Australia inescapably as an outpost of European colonialism? Douglas stated:
"As Dutch, British and French explorers literally put this Great Southern Land on the map it would be ridiculous to say that modern day Australia is anything other than a grand - and successful - outpost of Euro-colonialism and, more specifically Anglo-Celt British colonialism. It's a fact of life like the Euro-colonization of the Americas etc. If it was an outpost of, let's say, Iranian or Zimbabwean colonialism would so many people still be so desperately trying to get into Australia by any means necessary, legal or otherwise? It's doubtful. Thank the Gods for Euro-colonialism!" - Douglas Pearce 1
2. Genocide
Q: How do you imagine these scents of genocide, what’s this “perfume”? What does it evoke to you, in real? What brings men to do that?
A: "I also say in the same song that “you can’t smell experience like that”! But, if genocide smells of anything it’s probably Nostalgia. Once men catch a whiff of that most will chase after it." - Douglas Pearce 2
3. Xenophobia
Q: Looking back and making some kind of the symbolic conclusion to the end of epoch, what are your present anxieties and prophesies about the future?
A: "IT'S HARD NOT TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT THE "END TIME" AS WE RACE TOWARDS THE END OF THE MILLENNIUM. I DO THINK ABOUT IT AND I DO WONDER IF ALL THE PROPHECIES FROM ALL THE DIFFERENT RELIGIONS IN THE WORLD WILL COME TRUE OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS/YEARS. I EVEN SOMETIMES WONDER HOW PROPHETIC SOME OF MY WORDS COULD BE. I FEEL THAT 'PURITY OF INTENT' SHOULD ALWAYS DICTATE ART OF WORTH - IN ALL ITS FORMS. I'M VERY CAREFUL WITH THE WORDS I CHOOSE. "EUROPA HAS BURNED AND WILL BURN AGAIN" BECAME ONLY TOO TRUE. UNFORTUNATELY!
THE WORLD SEEMS TO BE SO FULL OF SO MANY DANGERS THAT IT'S HARD TO SINGLE ANY PARTICULAR ONES OUT. CERTAINLY THE MOST OBVIOUS THAT SPRING TO MIND ARE THE GROWTHS IN ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM AND OUT OF CONTROL BREEDING. EVEN IN EUROPA, WITH ZERO POPULATION GROWTH IN MANY COUNTRIES, THOSE WHO ARE DOING THE BREEDING APPEAR TO ME, AND I THINK MANY OTHERS, TO BE OF DUBIOUS CHARACTER. THEY FUCK, THEY HAVE KIDS AND THAT IS ALL THEY DO! I DON'T BELIEVE THAT IS ENOUGH!! I DON'T THINK I NEED TO TELL ANY RUSSIAN ABOUT ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM. I ALWAYS BACKED THE FORMER U.S.S.R IN AFGHANISTAN AND FEEL THE WEST, BY BACKING THE WRONG SIDE IN THAT WAR HAS STILL YET TO PAY THE FULL PRICE OF THAT MISTAKE. I'VE NEVER AGREED WITH THE PHILOSOPHY THAT IF HE IS MY ENEMY'S ENEMY HE MUST BE MY FRIEND. THAT TRULY IS NAIVE. AUSTRALIA IS NOW EXPERIENCING THE CONSEQUENCES OF SUCH NAIVETY WITH INDONESIA. BY THE TIME YOU GET THIS WE COULD BE AT WAR WITH THEM. TRADITIONAL ENEMIES WERE NEVER FRIENDS!" - Douglas Pearce
Q: Some years ago you've left your motherland, claiming that England to your mind "isn't the best place for the spiritual development" in Europe because of the present degradation of the country and the nation. Can you comment these words?
A: "AS I'VE SAID IN A PREVIOUS QUESTION I TRULY FEEL THAT ENGLAND, AND PROBABLY TO A LESSER EXTENT, MAINLAND EUROPA, HAS SEVERE STOCK PROBLEMS. THAT, AS FAR AS I CAN SEE HAS ONLY GOT WORSE. THOSE WHO SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO BREED ARE DOING SO WITH SUCH FREQUENCY THAT THE UK IS BEING OVER POPULATED BY MORONS WITH NOTHING TO DO EXCEPT HARASS THE REST OF THE POPULATION. THERE IS NO OTHER PLACE FOR THEM. BRITAIN AS AN INDUSTRIAL POWER IS A THING OF YESTERYEAR. LARGE POOLS OF MANUAL, UNSKILLED LABOURERS ARE NO LONGER REQUIRED. HOWEVER, THE OLD HABITS LINGER ON. MONEY IS STILL GIVEN TO THOSE WHO BREED. THE MORE KIDS YOU HAVE THE MORE MONEY YOU GET. THIS IS TOTALLY UNREAL. IN A COUNTRY THAT NOW GAINS ITS INCOME FROM THE ARTS, HIGH TECHNOLOGY AND TOURISM THERE ARE FEW PLACES FOR THOSE CAPABLE OF ONLY PUSHING A BROOM IN FRONT OF THEM.
BRITAIN IMPORTED MILLIONS OF UNSKILLED LABOURERS FROM THE COLONIES FOR THAT KIND OF WORK AND LOOK WHAT A HUGE SUCCESS THAT WAS! THE HATRED IS BARELY RESTRAINED INTO THE OCCASSIONAL RIOT. I DON'T LIKE BEING IN A PLACE WITH SUCH AN ATMOSPHERE. EVEN GERMANY, THE FORMER RICHEST COUNTRY IN WESTERN EUROPA SEEMS TO BE TANGIBLY FALLING TO BITS. IT IS NO LONGER AS CLEAN AND AS WELL ORGANISED AS I REMEMBER FROM, SAY, 10 YEARS AGO. IT HAS BEEN FLOODED BY THOSE WHO WANT BUT, WITH LITTLE TO GIVE! THE WEST'S LIBERALISM WILL BE ITS DEATH." - Douglas Pearce 3
4. "Euro-centric Racialism"
Q: In interviews you've expressed Eurocentrism. How do you feel about fans that are Eurocentric/Racialist?
A: "Depending upon their ' version ' of Eurocentric Racialism, then 9 times out of 10 I feel very comfortable with it. This is how it's supposed to be. I would like to think that the Klu Klux Klan version isn't included in this. Eurocentrics goes beyond reactionary Christian, political militias. I believe in seizing the end of time, not being a passive part of it. " - Douglas Pearce 4
Q: Don't you think your vision concerning the history of Europe (which in your opinion is the best one) is nevertheless a European opinion? I'm not talking about the americans who have no past and who probably have no more future but about the Chinese, for example, who were in the past a very powerful nation...
A: "Yes, I am totally Euro-centric. I'm not overly concerned with the past but, I do care about the present and the future. European culture, morals, ethics, whatever, are under attack from all sides these days. Even, most dangerous of all, from within Europe. Whilst we have room for regret about some of the mistakes of the past (and of the present) regarding our treatment of the earth and some of it's peoples/wildlife, there is also plenty to be content about. I'm tired of being made to feel guilty about the sins of the world. Europe has contributed a MASSIVE amount to the world on ALL fronts. We will regret the day when we let that position slip from our hands and fade from our memory." - Douglas Pearce 5
5. National Socialism
Q: WHY HAVE YOU TAKEN SUCH AN INTEREST IN NATIONAL SOCIALIST GERMANY? DO YOU, FOR INSTANCE, QUESTION YOURSELF WHETHER YOU WOULD HAVE JOINED THE RANKS OR NOT?
A: "Yes, naturally. It's been an overriding interest since I was very, very young. My parents used to be quite angry about the morbid fascination I had as a child for this part of history. In the end, though, they actually gave up on it because I was so sincere in my interest. It wasn't just a passing dalliance but an actual obsession and I seem to be quite knowledgeable in that area. Outside of that, what are the reasons for my interest? I think, overridingly, that one of the main reasons is that you can still communicate with people who have taken part in these events. You just don't have to read books or see films about them, these people are very much alive today." - Douglas Pearce 6
6. The fascist symbol the "Totenkopf"
Q: Throughout the period of Death In June you have employed strong imagery - what is the significance of symbolism such as the Totenkopf, most commonly associated with extreme right-wing philosophy, to you?
A: "The Totenkopf is used all over Europe as a sign of total commitment, so I've never really had any problems with it. When I thought of Death In June it was really the be all and end all of my life - it still is - so that's why I chose to use that symbol, plus the fact that the simple symbolism reads easy. The Totenkopf for Death, and the six for the sixth month - June. I've always been interested, intrigued...and I suppose obsessive with symbols in so many ways and that particular one is a perfect representation. " - Douglas Pearce 7
Douglas P. being gay is not an excuse to promote racist or fascist ideas. One of the founders of fascism was openly homosexual.
While many claim that his work is clearly shock value because Douglas P. is gay, I am queer and recognize his aesthetic to be aligned with that of the SA who was lead by a gay fascist named Ernst Rohm. 8
Gay historian Frank Rector wrote "Although it was clear the Nazi party viewed homosexuals negatively, as was evident from the destruction of Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexual Science in Berlin, “some gays [in the SS] may have been reconciled by the knowledge that Hitler’s right hand man, Ernst Rohm, was a homosexual," 8
"projected a social order in which homosexuality would be regarded as a human behaviour pattern of high repute... He flaunted his homosexuality in public and insisted his cronies do the same. He believed straight people weren't as adept at bullying and aggression as homosexuals, so homosexuality was given a high premium in the SA." 8
Gay columnist Johann Hari writes "Rohm often referred to the ancient Greek tradition of sending gay solider couples into battle, because they were believed to be the most ferocious fighters. The famous pass of Thermopylae, for example was held by 300 soldiers - who consisted of 150 gay couples. In its early years, the SA - Hitler and Rohm's underground army - was seen as predominantly gay. Rohm assigned prominent posts to his lovers, making Edmund Heines his deputy and Karl Ernst the SA commander in Berlin. The organisation would sometimes meet in gay bars. The gay art historian Christian Isermayer said in an interview, 'I got to know people in the SA. They used to throw riotous parties even in 1933... I once attended one. It was quite well-behaved but thoroughly gay. But then, in those days, the SA was 'ultra-gay.' " 9
The SA was one of the most violent fascist groups during World War II. In this 2011 interview Douglas Pearce acknowledges his interest in gay fascist Ernst Rohm:
INTERVIEWER: "I recently saw the Danish movie "Brotherhood". The Plot is that Lars has to leave the army after accusations of having made a pass at some of his men. Disillusioned he joins a Neo-Nazi movement, even though they practice gay-bashing. He and his peer Jimmy become embroiled in a secret love affair. Moving from hostility through grudging admiration to friendship and finally passion. Events take a darker turn when their relationship is uncovered. What's your opinion about Brotherhood/Homosexuality in the SA and how can be (if can be) mixed Nazism and Homosexuality?"
Douglas Pearce: "I’ve heard about the ‘Brotherhood’ film you mention but haven’t seen it. I do intend to get a copy of it on DVD soon. I’d be better placed to answer that question regarding that film after that. However, regarding being Gay in the S.A. the early Nazi movement and brotherhood etc. then at this late stage of the game with few, if any, surviving members that were involved in any of that at the time we can only surmise or read books and wonder. And, it is a big wonder! A truly fascinating question as to what was, and what might have been. However, it’s an impossible question to answer with any accuracy. The only thing I can say is that nearly 20 years ago I did have a conversation with a then member of the SS who later became in the war a very high ranking member of the Waffen SS and was around in those early days in 1930s Germany and he said that during the Night Of The Long Knives the question of homosexuality was never brought up. They weren’t sure exactly what was happening when they were told to be on alert at the end of June, 1934 and that they expected an attempt on Hitler’s life from elements in the Storm Troops (S.A.) The Gay angle appeared only after the purge of Ernst Roehm and his comrades as some sort of extra excuse made up by Goering and Goebbels as to why such a purge was necessary. About a year later homosexuality then also became officially illegal in Germany which up until then had no specific laws against being Gay. That was unlike Britain or the USA which had outlawed homosexuality for decades and where it was still punishable by imprisonment and sometimes death. Hitler doesn’t have seemed to have made any direct comments, or even be concerned, about any of his close comrades being Gay and, in fact, there are strong rumours that when he was a struggling artist in Vienna he did spend time being a male prostitute to help pay his bills etc. Being Gay and being aligned to the Nazi Party certainly didn’t become apparently mutually exclusive until the change of laws in 1935." [10]
Crisis from 'left' to right wing
"I think Crisis (Well Doug and me) saw Crisis as way of imbuing or infiltrating a distinct ideological strain of left wing politics into punk." - Tony Wakeford [11]
"At the start of the eighties, Tony and I were involved in radical left politics and beneath it history students. In search of a political view for the future we came across National Bolshevism which is closely connected with the SA hierarchy. People like Gregor Strasser and Ernst Röhm who were later known as 'second revolutionaries' attracted our attention." - Douglas Pearce
- http://www.deathinjune.org/wiki/index.php/Interview:2011-NegativeGuestList
- http://www.deathinjune.org/wiki/index.php/Interview:2010-Obskure1
- www.deathinjune.org/wiki/index.php/Interview:1999-Achtung_Baby
- http://www.deathinjune.org/wiki/index.php/Interview:1998-Scapegoat
- http://www.deathinjune.org/wiki/index.php/Interview:1996-Descent
- http://www.deathinjune.org/wiki/index.php/Interview:1994-Per_Nostrom
- www.deathinjune.org/wiki/index.php/Interview:1996-Judas_Kiss
- excerpt from - Nazi Extermination of Homosexuals by Frank Rector (New York 1981)
- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-strange-strange-story_b_136697.html
- http://www.deathinjune.org/wiki/index.php/Interview:2011-Pride-CulturaGay
- http://www.deathinjune.org/wiki/index.php/Interview:200
Death in June will be playing at eight locations across the United States. Please contact the venues, tell your community, and organize non-violent direct action if necessary.
Death in June Tour Dates and Venue Information
- THURS. 12TH SEPT. THE VEX LOS ANGELES CA.
- FRI. 13TH SEPT. MEZZANINE SAN FRANCISCO CA.
- SAT. 14TH SEPT. INFEST AUSTIN TX.
- MON. 16TH SEPT. REGGIES CHICAGO IL.
- TUES. 17TH SEPT. RESPECTABLE STREET COCONUT CREEK/WEST PALM BEACH FL.
- FRI. 20TH SEPT. THE BELL HOUSE BROOKLYN NY.
- SAT. 21ST SEPT. OLD TOWN HALL SALEM MASS.
- SUN. 22ND SEPT. THE OTTOBAR BALTIMORE MD.
Further Reading
- Death in June - a Nazi band?
- Ex-Crisis member Tony Wakeford
- A great site exposing Third Positionist bands, Who Makes the Nazis?
Labels:
Crisis,
Death in June,
Doug Pearce,
Ernst Roehm,
gay politics
Wednesday, 7 November 2012
James Cavanagh: Death in June Coming to Electrowerkz
Once again fascist-dabbling neofolk group Death In June are on tour in Europe, stopping off in London for their only live appearance in the UK on 15th December 2012 at Electrowerkz in Angel.
Using a band name derived from June 30, 1934, the 'Night of Long Knives', Hitler's murderous response to the National Bolshevik faction in the Nazi party led by Ernst Roehm and Gregor Strasser, Death In June, long-term project of Douglas Pearce, are back to promote a new album and to mark 30 years since their debut release.
Pearce's long history of far-right agit-prop has garnered him notoriety over three decades, and caused his concerts to be cancelled across the world; in Norway, Switzerland and Germany in Europe and in Chicago, Seattle and Portland in the US. Last year the band played Camden Underworld, prompting Love Music, Hate Racism to call, unsuccessfully, for the gig to be cancelled.
In May 1999, a few days after BNP member David Copeland nail-bombed Brixton and Brick Lane markets and The Admiral Duncan pub in Soho, Death In June played The Garage in Islington (with fellow Nazi-admirers NON and Der Blutharsch). Copeland killed 3 people and injured 129. It has been widely corroborated that Pearce dedicated a song from the stage to the 'White Wolves' – a neo-Nazi grouping who had initially claimed responsibility for these atrocities. In much the same spirit, a valedictory message was posted to the Di6 Yahoo group forum immediately following Anders Breivik's Utoya massacre, and mainland bombing.
This year Pearce has chosen to play Electrowerkz, a venue that has often promoted fascist acts in the past, both in the Slimelight Club and in its main auditorium. Last year Slimelight hosted a concert featuring Sol Invictus, 6 Comm, Joy of Life and Freya Aswynn, acts that have fascist history, members with a fascist past or who have collaborated with fascist music projects. Tony Wakeford of Sol Invictus and Patrick Leagas aka Patrick O‘Kill of 6 Comm were both founding members of Death In June with Douglas Pearce, before going on to found their own bands, most notably in the case of Wakeford who founded Above the Ruins, a band that under his leadership donated a track to National Front benefit album No Surrender, Volume 1, alongside tracks by other overtly Nazi bands like Skrewdriver and Brutal Attack.
The event was written about in a guest post on WMTN, and was subsequently taken up by LMHR, an Islington councillor, the Unitarian Church, Unite Against Fascism and many independent protesters angry at the venue's decision to put on acts that promote fascism. Islington South Labour MP and Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry made this comment in the Islington Gazzette at the time;
In the end a peaceful gathering of 70-80 people turned out on the night at Slimelight to protest. This largely took the form of discussion and leafleting.
As long ago as September 2004 the Slimelight hosted a bill of far-right neofolk bands; Foresta Di Ferro, Ostara and Spiritual Front. Foresta Di Ferro and Spiritual Front appeared on a tribute album to the Romanian ultra-Fascist Corneliu Zelea Codreanu alongside the likes of Von Thronstahl, Dernière Volonté and Blood Axis. Codreanu was a Romanian anti-semitic fascist terrorist and leader of the notoriously vicious Iron Guard, also known as the The Legion of the Archangel Michael, active in the inter-war period. His antisemitism was so extreme that even the Nazis kept their distance from him. Ostara is the project of Richard Leviathan, who names among his influences in an interview in Heathen Harvest - Death in June, Boyd Rice, Changes, Blood Axis and Ain Soph, all pro-fascist bands. Leviathan also worked with Douglas Pearce on a project called Kapo. Ostara have been banned from playing for their far-right politics in Nuremberg and in the Netherlands.
In June 2005 Italian fascists Ain Soph played at the venue.
In 2006 a junior member of the Slimelight online forum called Tier posted about anti-semitic band Grand Belial's Key being booked to play the venue in February of that year. He comments; "Grand Belial's Key is a black metal band whose views border on National Socialist. One release of the band is named 'Judeobeast Assassination". He goes on to quote the band in interview expressing violent anti-semitism, their lyrics in the same vein, and mentions that various band members are in other racist far-right bands. A senior forum member CIW responds like this; "Well, fortunately for UK, this is a country where one can say what one believes, not in my country, where you get serious problems with it, just because it can't cope with its past... so, let em play, by forbidding stuff you just get what they want..." Another senior member Ecclecticbb makes this response; "It is not clear to me that Tier wants us to react against this event... I don't give a shit (not sorry) about it!"
In late 2007 Indymedia UK published an article about a concert at Slimelight in October of that year featuring NON, industrial/noise project of Boyd Rice, writing;
In November of the same year promoters of far-right neofolk and Industrial music Hinoeuma The Malediction hosted an event at Slimelight that included Austrian fascists Der Blutharsch, Sutcliffe Jugend who contributed to a compilation cassette called White Power that had a swastika on the cover, alongside other groups closely associated with the fascist element of the neofolk scene.
In March 2009 Nachtmahr played the venue, a band criticised from the stage this year at the Kinetic Festival in Montreal for "the use of misogynist and racist tropes in (the) band’s music and publicity materials."
A quick look at set lists for DJ Blackdeath, resident Slimelight DJ for the past fourteen years, typically reads like a who's who of far-right neofolk, power electronics and black metal; Death in June, Burzum (aka Varg Vikernes - "the main person to have brought Nazism into the black metal scene", according to Wikipedia), Forseti, Sol Invictus, NON, Dernière Volonté, and Deutsch Nepal. DJ Blackdeath is also a Cold Spring record label DJ. Cold Spring have ultra-fascists Von Thronstahl on their books, along with H.E.R.R. and Seelenlicht, two musical projects involving racial seperatist Troy Southgate.
And now Death in June is booked to play the venue. That Death In June is a pro-fascist band has been disputed by some, but not by many of the band's most ardent fans. This very positive review of DIJ's latest album posted on Counter Currents Publishing by Greg Johnson describes the band's politics and influence like this:
Elsewhere, he has been keen to flaunt his personal association with veteran Nazis. From the Di6 blog:
Belarusian officials consider Death In June to be “British neo-fascists of international fame” who “openly promote Third Reich ideas”, and banned their Minsk concert which was timed to commemorate Germany's assault on Russia in 1941. It seems that Tidal Concerts and Electrowerkz have no such qualms.
Facebook page for the Demonstration Against Death in June Concert in Wien >>
![]() |
Doug Pearce |
Pearce's long history of far-right agit-prop has garnered him notoriety over three decades, and caused his concerts to be cancelled across the world; in Norway, Switzerland and Germany in Europe and in Chicago, Seattle and Portland in the US. Last year the band played Camden Underworld, prompting Love Music, Hate Racism to call, unsuccessfully, for the gig to be cancelled.
In May 1999, a few days after BNP member David Copeland nail-bombed Brixton and Brick Lane markets and The Admiral Duncan pub in Soho, Death In June played The Garage in Islington (with fellow Nazi-admirers NON and Der Blutharsch). Copeland killed 3 people and injured 129. It has been widely corroborated that Pearce dedicated a song from the stage to the 'White Wolves' – a neo-Nazi grouping who had initially claimed responsibility for these atrocities. In much the same spirit, a valedictory message was posted to the Di6 Yahoo group forum immediately following Anders Breivik's Utoya massacre, and mainland bombing.
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20190401020309im_/http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ixu0WHTHs7M/Tgrszon8TWI/AAAAAAAAAUY/ozOahesfD3c/s1600/nazigoths.jpg)
The event was written about in a guest post on WMTN, and was subsequently taken up by LMHR, an Islington councillor, the Unitarian Church, Unite Against Fascism and many independent protesters angry at the venue's decision to put on acts that promote fascism. Islington South Labour MP and Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry made this comment in the Islington Gazzette at the time;
"It’s a shame and a disgrace that these peddlers of poison are playing in Islington. We have a proud history of tolerance in this borough”.The local press picked up on the campaign as did several prominent anti-fascist websites.
In the end a peaceful gathering of 70-80 people turned out on the night at Slimelight to protest. This largely took the form of discussion and leafleting.
![]() |
NON / Boyd Rice |
In June 2005 Italian fascists Ain Soph played at the venue.
In 2006 a junior member of the Slimelight online forum called Tier posted about anti-semitic band Grand Belial's Key being booked to play the venue in February of that year. He comments; "Grand Belial's Key is a black metal band whose views border on National Socialist. One release of the band is named 'Judeobeast Assassination". He goes on to quote the band in interview expressing violent anti-semitism, their lyrics in the same vein, and mentions that various band members are in other racist far-right bands. A senior forum member CIW responds like this; "Well, fortunately for UK, this is a country where one can say what one believes, not in my country, where you get serious problems with it, just because it can't cope with its past... so, let em play, by forbidding stuff you just get what they want..." Another senior member Ecclecticbb makes this response; "It is not clear to me that Tier wants us to react against this event... I don't give a shit (not sorry) about it!"
In late 2007 Indymedia UK published an article about a concert at Slimelight in October of that year featuring NON, industrial/noise project of Boyd Rice, writing;
"The Slimelight event was headlined by Boyd Rice in his NON guise. An individual with a long and malicious history of fascist provocation and the focus of Anti-Nazi attention worldwide, it is particularly alarming that Boyd Rice, an acknowledged Social Darwinist and member of the neo-Nazi American Front organisation, has actually been given the all clear to enter the UK and perform in London as NON next week."Non were supported by another fascist band called Luftwaffe.
In November of the same year promoters of far-right neofolk and Industrial music Hinoeuma The Malediction hosted an event at Slimelight that included Austrian fascists Der Blutharsch, Sutcliffe Jugend who contributed to a compilation cassette called White Power that had a swastika on the cover, alongside other groups closely associated with the fascist element of the neofolk scene.
In March 2009 Nachtmahr played the venue, a band criticised from the stage this year at the Kinetic Festival in Montreal for "the use of misogynist and racist tropes in (the) band’s music and publicity materials."
A quick look at set lists for DJ Blackdeath, resident Slimelight DJ for the past fourteen years, typically reads like a who's who of far-right neofolk, power electronics and black metal; Death in June, Burzum (aka Varg Vikernes - "the main person to have brought Nazism into the black metal scene", according to Wikipedia), Forseti, Sol Invictus, NON, Dernière Volonté, and Deutsch Nepal. DJ Blackdeath is also a Cold Spring record label DJ. Cold Spring have ultra-fascists Von Thronstahl on their books, along with H.E.R.R. and Seelenlicht, two musical projects involving racial seperatist Troy Southgate.
And now Death in June is booked to play the venue. That Death In June is a pro-fascist band has been disputed by some, but not by many of the band's most ardent fans. This very positive review of DIJ's latest album posted on Counter Currents Publishing by Greg Johnson describes the band's politics and influence like this:
"Death in June’s combination of acoustic folk and industrial sound collages, as well as its use of images and themes related to Nazi Germany and European fascism in general, have had an immense influence on the development of what is called 'neo-folk' and 'martial-industrial' music, which is the core of a world-wide youth subculture, characterized by racial consciousness, far Right politics, and inclinations toward neo-paganism and esoteric spirituality, including Esoteric Hitlerism, Traditionalism, and Aleister Crowley. Neo-folk and martial-industrial fans overlap significantly with the Goth scene and West Coast White Nationalism."Neo Nazi music promotion network Blood and Honour published this description of the band on their website
"Two men take to the stage dressed in SS pea pattern smocks and start to pound a military beat on kettle drums draped in Totenkopf banners....and so twenty five years ago my musical world was turned upside down. That was Death in June (named after the night of the long knives) the band that kicked it all off. A rash of bands has followed including Above The Ruins (who were promoted by the National Front youth paper Bulldog) and Der Blutharsch. Images used of SS soldiers; runes and even the Horst Wessell sung on an LP clearly mark many of these bands as travelers (sic) of the right. "I think the black sun is the flag of the European Nations in mourning. It is blue, silver and gold. It is the true banner of a united Europe and it flies above us now." (Doug P) Modern bands in this genre continue this thrust of marshal (sic) music onwards and the history of fascist and national socialist movements to the attention of more and more."Aside from the nazi imagery and lyrical references, Pearce is generally ellusive on the subject of fascism, but occasionally he makes a statement (in this case on the subject of protests by anti-fascists to his music) that reveals where he stands politically;
"I think censorship is essentially 'Communistic' and left wing. Censorship was one of the first things that happened in Russia after the Revolution in 1917 and continued until it fell to bits decades later. The way I understand it is that, to paraphrase Mussolini, the Fascists are the real anarchists for they truly did do exactly what they wanted. Libertarianism and Fascism are bedfellows no matter how some people might find that repugnant."Of the Something Is Coming album, the proceeds of which were donated to the Bolnichi Clinic in Zagreb, Croatia during the Balkan conflict, Pearce has said "This was not purely a humanitarian gesture. It was a cultural one. A socio-Euro political one." The inference here is clear, despite the characteristic coyness; a diffidence which extends to the endlessly recycled back catalogue items listed for sale on the official Death In June website. "We STRONGLY recommend that all those living in Germany wishing to order 'BROWN BOOK' (Achtung!) UeBER DO NOT (!!) order direct from NER as random Customs checks do exist between the U.K. and the mainland of Europa... Talk to any of the million zillion illegal immigrants that now wander lonely as a black cloud through Europa's streets forlorn..... Those not living in little red angel's po-faced, goody 2 shoes Germany are also free to take advantage of these internet mail order firms...." he advises. The album in question, 1987's Brown Book contains a version of the SA anthem 'Horst-Wessel-Lied', and has therefore been totally banned for sale or distribution by the German authorities. In 2005, the album 'Rose Clouds Of Holocaust' was banned for sale to minors due to its questionable lyrical content.
Elsewhere, he has been keen to flaunt his personal association with veteran Nazis. From the Di6 blog:
"There was some discussion recently as to whether or not '18' (eg. Adolf Hitler) survived the battle for Berlin. As a close personal friend of someone whose last battles, in WWII at least, were in the Villa Goebbels, the Tiergarten and the Fuehrer Bunker itself ( which was evidently absolutely beautiful and filled with statues, paintings etc.) he maintains that during the chaos and confusion at the end it was ALWAYS possible to get out. As he, in fact, did himself. During rest periods within the Bunker he saw '18' go past him outside to have a look around several times and a double could have come back as his replacement – at anytime! During the last organised breakouts my friend was momentarily captured by Bolshevik troops who luckily became distracted by the bigger 'catch' of a Party Leader, the contents of the Party Leader's briefcase and his subsequent, on the spot, execution. This horrible incident, however, provided my friend and 2 of his kameraden the opportunity to escape and make their way West out of the city. He was later arrested at a railway station by British troops who had taken a keen interest in the design of his trousers(and later discovered blood group tattoo!) On 20th April, 1989 I remember well him saying to me that "if he wasn't dead then, he should be by now."So Slimelight has long hosted fascist and pro-fascist musicians, and the club itself has long acted as a spiritual home for neofolk, black metal, industrial, martial, power electronics and other related genres. Genres that have a persistent strand of fascism running through them (I emphasise; a strand - the genres themselves are not political in this way). Despite protests over the years it continues to host fascist bands, and Pearce is more than aware of the reception which is likely to greet his own appearances. Of his 30th Anniversary live schedule, he stated that "we are trying to make performances as accessible geographically as possible. And we trust we 'let the right ones in'. Please remember that some performance locations will be kept secret until the last moment for very good reasons. Not everyone out there in internetland and elsewhere has our best interests at heart. Far from it! (.......) Careless talk can be the difference between a show happening - or attracting 'problems' for scurrilous reasons at the last moment - which could lead to cancellation."
Belarusian officials consider Death In June to be “British neo-fascists of international fame” who “openly promote Third Reich ideas”, and banned their Minsk concert which was timed to commemorate Germany's assault on Russia in 1941. It seems that Tidal Concerts and Electrowerkz have no such qualms.
Postscript 2012-11-19
Facebook page for the Demonstration Against Death in June Concert in Wien >>
Labels:
Blood Axis,
Boyd Rice,
Death in June,
Der Blutharsch,
Doug Pearce,
Electrowerkz,
NON,
Ostara
Monday, 19 December 2011
LMHR Calls for Cancellation of Death in June at Camden Underworld
Love Music Hate Racism (LMHR) are calling for Death in June's forthcoming gig at Camden Underworld to be cancelled.
This is the text of the leaflet they have issued. You can contact LMHR via their website, or you can find out about the local campaign by emailing LMHR North London. You might also want to read previous posts on this site concerning Death in June.
On the 23rd of December the band Death In June will play at The Underworld in Camden.
Death In June are in the vanguard of the neo-folk scene and are, to a large extent, credited with its creation.
One of the founding members of Death In June, Doug Pearce, has stated in an interview with Zillo magazine that one of the inspirations for the band is National Bolshevism, closely associated with the hierarchy of the SA - commonly referred to as stormtroopers or Brown Shirts. The name of the band comes from the date in late June on which the SA leadership was executed to remove its threat to Hitler.
Pearce has been quoted as stating that "the most influential man of the 20th century has been Adolf Hitler! He's shaped the world we live in today with his hate and destruction". In 1992 during Yugoslavia's bloody civil war Pearce visited the front-line and the HOS Miliz (Croatian fascists). He made several live recordings in Croatia and then released them as a two-CD set called "Something Is Coming: Live and Studio Recordings From Croatia". Proceeds from the CD went to a Croatian (fascist) military hospital.
Death In June played The Garage in Islington in 1999, a few days after David Copeland (a former BNP member) nail-bombed Brixton and Brick Lane markets and a gay pub in Soho, killing 3 people and injuring 129. In full knowledge of this Pearce dedicated a song from the stage to honour the 'White Wolves' - a very small Nazi organisation who, at that time, were trying to claim responsibility for Copeland's bombs.
The band's aesthetic is militaristic with overt use of Nazi/SS symbols - the Totenkopf, Life Rune and Black Sun - and songs containing Third Reich imagery and tropes with lyrics suggesting Klaus Barbie, the butcher of Lyon, is in the heart in "C'est un Reve" - Ou est Klaus Barbie?/Il est dans coeur/Il est dans noir coeur. This has caused the band to be banned from playing in Lausanne and in Germany their album Rose Clouds of Holocaust was banned from sale to minors due to Holocaust denial and 'Brown Book' was banned completely for inclusion of the 'Horst-Wessel-Lied' Nazi party anthem.
The band, and many of their fans, claim that they are just using the aesthetic of fascism/Nazism and not the ideologies in their music. But the aesthetic of the Nazi regime cannot be divorced from the politics of the party. The aesthetic of the Nazi Party was created to reinforce the politics of the Nazi Party, to encourage an acceptance of the concepts and ideas of fascism through more easily assimilated visualisations and the use of atmospheric tropes to link the ideals of fascism with the visual aesthetic of it.
The Totenkopf (skull and cross bones) symbol and runes that Death In June use are directly connected, through the SS, to the industrialised genocide of 6 million Jews and the slaughter of millions of others who through birth, disability, belief or activity didn't fit into the Aryan 'reality' of Nazi Germany.
We believe that the use of Nazi and fascist symbols can in no way be considered an exploration into folk mythology nor a legitimate artistic aesthetic. They are what they are; symbols of genocide. It is the often playfully disguised removal of the taboos associated with these symbols and concepts within the neo-folk/industrial scene, and the obfuscation as to what they really represent, which poses the threat, allowing both for the rehabilitation of the esoteric/mystical side of the Nazi regime and for the potential of the ideology associated with them to be normalised in the wider community.
We believe that many attending the gig will not be racists or fascists, this is certainly the case for most people who use and enjoy the venue on other nights. We appeal to those fans to join Love Music Hate Racism, Unite Against Fascism, anti-racist groups, trade unionists, local activists and the diverse community in Camden in condemning this concert and calling on the management of The Underworld to cancel it.
CAMDEN UNDERWORLD
The Underworld
174 Camden High Street
London
NW1 0NE
Tel: 02074821932
Fax: 02074821955
Email: contact@theunderworldcamden.co.uk
This is the text of the leaflet they have issued. You can contact LMHR via their website, or you can find out about the local campaign by emailing LMHR North London. You might also want to read previous posts on this site concerning Death in June.
![]() |
Click to Enlarge |
Death In June are in the vanguard of the neo-folk scene and are, to a large extent, credited with its creation.
One of the founding members of Death In June, Doug Pearce, has stated in an interview with Zillo magazine that one of the inspirations for the band is National Bolshevism, closely associated with the hierarchy of the SA - commonly referred to as stormtroopers or Brown Shirts. The name of the band comes from the date in late June on which the SA leadership was executed to remove its threat to Hitler.
Pearce has been quoted as stating that "the most influential man of the 20th century has been Adolf Hitler! He's shaped the world we live in today with his hate and destruction". In 1992 during Yugoslavia's bloody civil war Pearce visited the front-line and the HOS Miliz (Croatian fascists). He made several live recordings in Croatia and then released them as a two-CD set called "Something Is Coming: Live and Studio Recordings From Croatia". Proceeds from the CD went to a Croatian (fascist) military hospital.
Death In June played The Garage in Islington in 1999, a few days after David Copeland (a former BNP member) nail-bombed Brixton and Brick Lane markets and a gay pub in Soho, killing 3 people and injuring 129. In full knowledge of this Pearce dedicated a song from the stage to honour the 'White Wolves' - a very small Nazi organisation who, at that time, were trying to claim responsibility for Copeland's bombs.
The band's aesthetic is militaristic with overt use of Nazi/SS symbols - the Totenkopf, Life Rune and Black Sun - and songs containing Third Reich imagery and tropes with lyrics suggesting Klaus Barbie, the butcher of Lyon, is in the heart in "C'est un Reve" - Ou est Klaus Barbie?/Il est dans coeur/Il est dans noir coeur. This has caused the band to be banned from playing in Lausanne and in Germany their album Rose Clouds of Holocaust was banned from sale to minors due to Holocaust denial and 'Brown Book' was banned completely for inclusion of the 'Horst-Wessel-Lied' Nazi party anthem.
The band, and many of their fans, claim that they are just using the aesthetic of fascism/Nazism and not the ideologies in their music. But the aesthetic of the Nazi regime cannot be divorced from the politics of the party. The aesthetic of the Nazi Party was created to reinforce the politics of the Nazi Party, to encourage an acceptance of the concepts and ideas of fascism through more easily assimilated visualisations and the use of atmospheric tropes to link the ideals of fascism with the visual aesthetic of it.
The Totenkopf (skull and cross bones) symbol and runes that Death In June use are directly connected, through the SS, to the industrialised genocide of 6 million Jews and the slaughter of millions of others who through birth, disability, belief or activity didn't fit into the Aryan 'reality' of Nazi Germany.
We believe that the use of Nazi and fascist symbols can in no way be considered an exploration into folk mythology nor a legitimate artistic aesthetic. They are what they are; symbols of genocide. It is the often playfully disguised removal of the taboos associated with these symbols and concepts within the neo-folk/industrial scene, and the obfuscation as to what they really represent, which poses the threat, allowing both for the rehabilitation of the esoteric/mystical side of the Nazi regime and for the potential of the ideology associated with them to be normalised in the wider community.
We believe that many attending the gig will not be racists or fascists, this is certainly the case for most people who use and enjoy the venue on other nights. We appeal to those fans to join Love Music Hate Racism, Unite Against Fascism, anti-racist groups, trade unionists, local activists and the diverse community in Camden in condemning this concert and calling on the management of The Underworld to cancel it.
CAMDEN UNDERWORLD
The Underworld
174 Camden High Street
London
NW1 0NE
Tel: 02074821932
Fax: 02074821955
Email: contact@theunderworldcamden.co.uk
Labels:
Death in June,
Love Music Hate Racism
Thursday, 16 June 2011
Far-Right Tendencies in the Wave and Gothic Scene
By Arne Gräfrath
Originally from D-A-S-H.org
(Note: despite several attempts to contact D-A-S-H, I heard nothing back. Consequently, this article is used without permission)
To start out with, an explanation of the term, 'wave and gothic scene', or subculture: in the following essay, this term refers to the whole spectrum of the so-called 'black scene' with all its sub-genres like dark wave, gothic, EBM, industrial, fetish, etc. This is done knowing that some will therefore be forced into a niche where they don’t belong.
Since about the end of the 1980s, far-right tendencies have been observed again and again in the bands of the wave and gothic scene. But neither general (far-right) developments can be defined in the wave/gothic scene (WGS), nor can the attitudes of or statements made by groups or individual people be seen to be representative of the musical and cultural scene as a whole. This article addresses accepted phenomena and appearances within the scene.
Far-right influences in the wave and gothic scene
Neo-Nazi attempts to infiltrate the wave scene have been around as long as the musical genre has. The wave/gothic scene developed out of the punk movement of the seventies – it saw itself however as an apolitical counter-culture. Every opinion that possessed connecting elements to the wave scene was tolerated (thereby allowing the extreme right’s first successes). It is striking in this context that tolerance is often confused with ignorance, disinterest and lack of criticism. It is the lack of criticism towards neo-fascist opinions and content that makes the contradiction within the scene so obvious – on the one hand, the WGS sees itself as a critique of and counter-culture to a technocratic society that is contemptuous of human life; on the other hand, it flirts with symbols that cannot be more contemptuous of human life. It shares with the neo-Nazi subculture elements of esotericism, occultism and neo-paganism.
When The Cure released the song 'Killing An Arab' in 1979, the British neo-Nazis (belonging to the BNP or British National Party) made their first attempts to break into the punk/wave scene and to claim the song and band for themselves. These attempts failed, however, thanks to The Cure’s immediate and vehement opposition to this development and due to regular conflicts between neo-Nazis and goths at concerts.
As so-called neo-folk bands became popular towards the end of the 1980s / beginning of the 90s, the WGS’s iconography was increasingly marked by paganism and elements of fascist ideology. A clear interest in the goths’ counter-culture could be seen on the part of the so-called 'new right' (and especially the far-right newspaper, Junge Freiheit or Young Freedom).
Roland Bubik, recipient of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung’s grant and a writer for the Junge Freiheit (JF), wrote in JF’s Culture section in the fall of 1993: "the youth culture of today offers promising approaches (..) A curious consciousness of living in a phase of decline is virulent. The 'age of destruction' is spoken of. Parties in the techno scene are like macabre funeral ceremonies for the era. One (…) mistrusts the explicability of the world, turns backwards even, for example in the forms of the various independent scenes." In his texts, Bubik refers to the Italian cultural philosopher and representative of Anti-Modernism, Julius Evola (1898 – 1974), whom Umberto Eco called a 'fascist guru'. Bubik believes he recognizes Evola’s Revolt against the Modern World in the dark wave scene.
After Bubik’s dreams of the techno scene ('Stahlgewitter als Freizeitspaß', or in English, 'Storm of steel (i.e. battle) as a leisure activity') turned out to be nonsense ('mental rape by beat-computers and the masses'), he thought he found links in the neo-folk and gothic scene. He points to bands like Dead Can Dance or Qntal, whose 'medieval ’music’ [speaks] a different, non-modern language'. The truth is that neither of the bands has anything to do with far-right ideology. Qntal belongs in the same category as German dark wave bands (e.g. Deine Lakaien, Estampie, Das Ich), which repeatedly and vehemently speak out against the far-right Kulturkampf (cultural war) (see also 'Aufruf zum Dark-X-Mas-Festival 1992'). And Bubik’s co-editor, Peter Bossdorf (see below) had to concede that Dead Can Dance know no (musical) borders and cannot be reduced to the category of medieval music. On the release of their CD 'Spiritchaser' (4 AD/Rough Trade 1996), he is disappointed to find that: "the Orient is parodied in an affected pose, (…) accompanied by unsurpassably boring, jungle-type percussion. (…) If this is supposed to be world music, the world is not to be envied." (JF 29/96)
But the scene did have real connections to the extreme right: Bubik’s girlfriend, Simone Satzger (alias Felicia), singer in the gothic band called Impressions of Winter, propagated far-right cultural instrumentalization in 1995, recommending that one "open oneself to current cultural and political phenomena in order to use them for one’s own purposes"(1). Beyond that, there existed even then a number of bands which were genuinely far-right. The gothic scene’s tendency towards mysticism was of particular interest to the 'new right'. The relation to romanticism, paganism and esotericism on the part of certain gothic subcultures is also of interest to the right, as it can be exploited for the purposes of far-right propaganda.
(1) from 'Elemente', published in Bubik’s (ed.) Wir 89er, 1995, Bands, publishers, fanzines – the combination of commerce and ideology.
'Operation Dark Wave' took its course in the Junge Freiheit (a far-right newspaper). A writer who was familiar with the dark wave scene could be found via a 'competition for new blood'; she soon threw in the towel. In an open letter to Rainer 'Easy' Ettler, the publisher of a fanzine called Zillo, she urgently warned of a far-right culture war and advised the goths that, for the right, they are only "useful wackos on the path to power." (Unfortunately the letter was never published by Zillo, although it belonged right there in 1996 and a wider debate on the issue still hasn’t taken place.)
In the mid-90s, Peter Bossdorf, a Junge Freiheit editor who can look back to a long history with, among other institutions, the Thule Seminar and the Republikaner Party, was hired by the magazine, which had the highest circulation in the 'independent scene': Zillo was not above repeatedly printing far-right ads, among others for the Junge Freieheit (Zillo 2/96). Cooperation between Zillo and Junge Freiheit was well known due to protests within the scene: the Hamburg wave label, 'Strange Ways', (producer of the band, 'Goethes Erben', among others) and the distributor, Indigo, made the scandal public. After Rainer Ettler, Zillo’s editor-in-chief, died, Peter Bossdorf was finally thrown out in the spring of 1997.
But that does not signal the end of the far-right Kulturkampf. In the meantime, solid structures and networks have been developed. Publishers, magazines and a great number of bands have gained attention for their continued work for a far-right 'cultural revolution'.
Excursus: Death in June
Death in June are the most important name in this context. They achieved a 'first': in 1997 an article on the band appeared in RockNord, the Nazi skinhead equivalent of Bravo (German teen magazine). The band’s name is their platform: they openly refer to the 'national Bolshevik' wing of the NSDAP, led by the head of the SA, Röhm, who was killed in the so-called Night of the Long Knives on 30 June, 1934, by order of the NSDAP leadership.
Also worthy of mention is the fanzine, Sigill (subtitled 'Magazine for Europe’s Conservative Cultural Avant Garde'), which in its conception is perhaps the magazine most worthy of being taken seriously in the so-called 'black scene'. The nucleus of the dark wave scene’s far-right faction expresses itself here: Death In June, Sol Invictus, Radio Werewolf, Kirlian Camera, Orplid, Strength Through Joy, Allerseelen, Forthcoming Fire, The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath a Cloud, etc. Even if Sigill places great value on not being seen as a Nazi publication, the choice of authors, including Markus Wolff (Waldteufel), Kadmon (Allerseelen) and Martin Schwarz, who also writes for the NPD (the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany) publication, Stimme, tells another story. So do their articles, fed as they are through the 'German machine': compact discs are not called CDs as they usually are, but the German literal equivalent of 'Lichtscheiben'. This is linguistic preparation for what Sol Invictus has joyfully sung about: 'The Death of the West'. The far-right label with an affiliated book publishing house, VAWS, is another example.
Many members of far-right neo-folk and industrial bands also work part-time for far-right publishers and magazines that intellectually deepen the far-right ideology already present in their lyrics. In the long run, fans don’t just buy the records of their favourite artists, but are also interested in what they have to say in writing. Almost all the magazines named above share a mix of reporting on new far-right band projects from neo-folk, black metal and industrial genres; pagan issues; Germanic, Celtic and Viking cults; the study of runes; and more or less clearly Nazi, anti-Semitic or national/revolutionary issues. They recurrently appeal to 'freedom of expression', 'artistic freedom' and 'free thought' independent of 'clichés' like left and right. At first glance, this makes things very confusing and contradictory, when people like Moynihan called themselves 'anarchists' while at the same time using liberal and democratic freedoms to spout Social-Darwinist, anti-Semitic and racist 'Blood and Soil' drivel, and to associate or even found far-right circles.
>Even if the circulation of all far-right 'wave' magazines are not a cause for panic, they are still important links between the far-right Kulturkampf and goths who are interested in featured bands or in paganism. The extreme right uses these links to rehabilitate the whole esoteric/mystical side of the Nazi regime (for example the SS Ahnenerbe and the school connected with it, Wewelsburg bei Paderborn); the national/revolutionary factions of the NS, like the SA; Italian fascism and the artistic genre of futurism that is so closely connected with it; the fascist Iron Guard from Romania and its founder, Corneliu Codreanu; Nazi artists like Riefenstahl, Thorak and Speer; Germanic cults; Social Darwinism; and anti-Semitism, and thereby the decisive ideological components of fascist, national/revolutionary and national socialist groups and organizations. Through the often playfully disguised removal of taboos associated with symbols like the swastika and the cross potent, and the establishment of Germanic runes, the extreme right is also trying step by step to change views on the Third Reich and ultimately world history in accordance with their own.
The magazines that have been mentioned can be obtained at certain festivals, like the International Wave Gothic Meeting in Leipzig, at concerts and in record stores. The records can be also be found in stores whose owners or managers are neither far-right nor unaware. Commercial interests make it especially easy for the far-right Kulturkampf.
It must be mentioned in this context that a large number of fans of bands like Death in June, Sol Invictus or Kirlian Camera are themselves not far-right, but simply enjoy these neo-folk bands’ music. Most people are aware of the bands’ 'far-right image'. But especially in Germany, the fans fall back on the bands’ excuses and statements of disassociation that are published in music magazines and that claim their critics 'misunderstand' them. There are, however, documented cases of fans who, through their involvement with neo-folk bands, suddenly became interested in sponsored ideologues like Ernst Jünger or Julius Evola and, as a result of their fascination with them, became part of the far-right Kulturkampf themselves. Fans who sincerely don’t want to have anything to do with it often have real difficulties parting with 'their band'. Again and again, we could observe genuinely painful parting processes, which anyone can understand who imagines 'having to' disassociate themselves from their own favourite band.
Originally from D-A-S-H.org
(Note: despite several attempts to contact D-A-S-H, I heard nothing back. Consequently, this article is used without permission)
To start out with, an explanation of the term, 'wave and gothic scene', or subculture: in the following essay, this term refers to the whole spectrum of the so-called 'black scene' with all its sub-genres like dark wave, gothic, EBM, industrial, fetish, etc. This is done knowing that some will therefore be forced into a niche where they don’t belong.
Since about the end of the 1980s, far-right tendencies have been observed again and again in the bands of the wave and gothic scene. But neither general (far-right) developments can be defined in the wave/gothic scene (WGS), nor can the attitudes of or statements made by groups or individual people be seen to be representative of the musical and cultural scene as a whole. This article addresses accepted phenomena and appearances within the scene.
Far-right influences in the wave and gothic scene
Neo-Nazi attempts to infiltrate the wave scene have been around as long as the musical genre has. The wave/gothic scene developed out of the punk movement of the seventies – it saw itself however as an apolitical counter-culture. Every opinion that possessed connecting elements to the wave scene was tolerated (thereby allowing the extreme right’s first successes). It is striking in this context that tolerance is often confused with ignorance, disinterest and lack of criticism. It is the lack of criticism towards neo-fascist opinions and content that makes the contradiction within the scene so obvious – on the one hand, the WGS sees itself as a critique of and counter-culture to a technocratic society that is contemptuous of human life; on the other hand, it flirts with symbols that cannot be more contemptuous of human life. It shares with the neo-Nazi subculture elements of esotericism, occultism and neo-paganism.
When The Cure released the song 'Killing An Arab' in 1979, the British neo-Nazis (belonging to the BNP or British National Party) made their first attempts to break into the punk/wave scene and to claim the song and band for themselves. These attempts failed, however, thanks to The Cure’s immediate and vehement opposition to this development and due to regular conflicts between neo-Nazis and goths at concerts.
As so-called neo-folk bands became popular towards the end of the 1980s / beginning of the 90s, the WGS’s iconography was increasingly marked by paganism and elements of fascist ideology. A clear interest in the goths’ counter-culture could be seen on the part of the so-called 'new right' (and especially the far-right newspaper, Junge Freiheit or Young Freedom).
Roland Bubik, recipient of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung’s grant and a writer for the Junge Freiheit (JF), wrote in JF’s Culture section in the fall of 1993: "the youth culture of today offers promising approaches (..) A curious consciousness of living in a phase of decline is virulent. The 'age of destruction' is spoken of. Parties in the techno scene are like macabre funeral ceremonies for the era. One (…) mistrusts the explicability of the world, turns backwards even, for example in the forms of the various independent scenes." In his texts, Bubik refers to the Italian cultural philosopher and representative of Anti-Modernism, Julius Evola (1898 – 1974), whom Umberto Eco called a 'fascist guru'. Bubik believes he recognizes Evola’s Revolt against the Modern World in the dark wave scene.
After Bubik’s dreams of the techno scene ('Stahlgewitter als Freizeitspaß', or in English, 'Storm of steel (i.e. battle) as a leisure activity') turned out to be nonsense ('mental rape by beat-computers and the masses'), he thought he found links in the neo-folk and gothic scene. He points to bands like Dead Can Dance or Qntal, whose 'medieval ’music’ [speaks] a different, non-modern language'. The truth is that neither of the bands has anything to do with far-right ideology. Qntal belongs in the same category as German dark wave bands (e.g. Deine Lakaien, Estampie, Das Ich), which repeatedly and vehemently speak out against the far-right Kulturkampf (cultural war) (see also 'Aufruf zum Dark-X-Mas-Festival 1992'). And Bubik’s co-editor, Peter Bossdorf (see below) had to concede that Dead Can Dance know no (musical) borders and cannot be reduced to the category of medieval music. On the release of their CD 'Spiritchaser' (4 AD/Rough Trade 1996), he is disappointed to find that: "the Orient is parodied in an affected pose, (…) accompanied by unsurpassably boring, jungle-type percussion. (…) If this is supposed to be world music, the world is not to be envied." (JF 29/96)
But the scene did have real connections to the extreme right: Bubik’s girlfriend, Simone Satzger (alias Felicia), singer in the gothic band called Impressions of Winter, propagated far-right cultural instrumentalization in 1995, recommending that one "open oneself to current cultural and political phenomena in order to use them for one’s own purposes"(1). Beyond that, there existed even then a number of bands which were genuinely far-right. The gothic scene’s tendency towards mysticism was of particular interest to the 'new right'. The relation to romanticism, paganism and esotericism on the part of certain gothic subcultures is also of interest to the right, as it can be exploited for the purposes of far-right propaganda.
(1) from 'Elemente', published in Bubik’s (ed.) Wir 89er, 1995, Bands, publishers, fanzines – the combination of commerce and ideology.
'Operation Dark Wave' took its course in the Junge Freiheit (a far-right newspaper). A writer who was familiar with the dark wave scene could be found via a 'competition for new blood'; she soon threw in the towel. In an open letter to Rainer 'Easy' Ettler, the publisher of a fanzine called Zillo, she urgently warned of a far-right culture war and advised the goths that, for the right, they are only "useful wackos on the path to power." (Unfortunately the letter was never published by Zillo, although it belonged right there in 1996 and a wider debate on the issue still hasn’t taken place.)
In the mid-90s, Peter Bossdorf, a Junge Freiheit editor who can look back to a long history with, among other institutions, the Thule Seminar and the Republikaner Party, was hired by the magazine, which had the highest circulation in the 'independent scene': Zillo was not above repeatedly printing far-right ads, among others for the Junge Freieheit (Zillo 2/96). Cooperation between Zillo and Junge Freiheit was well known due to protests within the scene: the Hamburg wave label, 'Strange Ways', (producer of the band, 'Goethes Erben', among others) and the distributor, Indigo, made the scandal public. After Rainer Ettler, Zillo’s editor-in-chief, died, Peter Bossdorf was finally thrown out in the spring of 1997.
But that does not signal the end of the far-right Kulturkampf. In the meantime, solid structures and networks have been developed. Publishers, magazines and a great number of bands have gained attention for their continued work for a far-right 'cultural revolution'.
Excursus: Death in June
Death in June are the most important name in this context. They achieved a 'first': in 1997 an article on the band appeared in RockNord, the Nazi skinhead equivalent of Bravo (German teen magazine). The band’s name is their platform: they openly refer to the 'national Bolshevik' wing of the NSDAP, led by the head of the SA, Röhm, who was killed in the so-called Night of the Long Knives on 30 June, 1934, by order of the NSDAP leadership.
Also worthy of mention is the fanzine, Sigill (subtitled 'Magazine for Europe’s Conservative Cultural Avant Garde'), which in its conception is perhaps the magazine most worthy of being taken seriously in the so-called 'black scene'. The nucleus of the dark wave scene’s far-right faction expresses itself here: Death In June, Sol Invictus, Radio Werewolf, Kirlian Camera, Orplid, Strength Through Joy, Allerseelen, Forthcoming Fire, The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath a Cloud, etc. Even if Sigill places great value on not being seen as a Nazi publication, the choice of authors, including Markus Wolff (Waldteufel), Kadmon (Allerseelen) and Martin Schwarz, who also writes for the NPD (the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany) publication, Stimme, tells another story. So do their articles, fed as they are through the 'German machine': compact discs are not called CDs as they usually are, but the German literal equivalent of 'Lichtscheiben'. This is linguistic preparation for what Sol Invictus has joyfully sung about: 'The Death of the West'. The far-right label with an affiliated book publishing house, VAWS, is another example.
Many members of far-right neo-folk and industrial bands also work part-time for far-right publishers and magazines that intellectually deepen the far-right ideology already present in their lyrics. In the long run, fans don’t just buy the records of their favourite artists, but are also interested in what they have to say in writing. Almost all the magazines named above share a mix of reporting on new far-right band projects from neo-folk, black metal and industrial genres; pagan issues; Germanic, Celtic and Viking cults; the study of runes; and more or less clearly Nazi, anti-Semitic or national/revolutionary issues. They recurrently appeal to 'freedom of expression', 'artistic freedom' and 'free thought' independent of 'clichés' like left and right. At first glance, this makes things very confusing and contradictory, when people like Moynihan called themselves 'anarchists' while at the same time using liberal and democratic freedoms to spout Social-Darwinist, anti-Semitic and racist 'Blood and Soil' drivel, and to associate or even found far-right circles.
>Even if the circulation of all far-right 'wave' magazines are not a cause for panic, they are still important links between the far-right Kulturkampf and goths who are interested in featured bands or in paganism. The extreme right uses these links to rehabilitate the whole esoteric/mystical side of the Nazi regime (for example the SS Ahnenerbe and the school connected with it, Wewelsburg bei Paderborn); the national/revolutionary factions of the NS, like the SA; Italian fascism and the artistic genre of futurism that is so closely connected with it; the fascist Iron Guard from Romania and its founder, Corneliu Codreanu; Nazi artists like Riefenstahl, Thorak and Speer; Germanic cults; Social Darwinism; and anti-Semitism, and thereby the decisive ideological components of fascist, national/revolutionary and national socialist groups and organizations. Through the often playfully disguised removal of taboos associated with symbols like the swastika and the cross potent, and the establishment of Germanic runes, the extreme right is also trying step by step to change views on the Third Reich and ultimately world history in accordance with their own.
The magazines that have been mentioned can be obtained at certain festivals, like the International Wave Gothic Meeting in Leipzig, at concerts and in record stores. The records can be also be found in stores whose owners or managers are neither far-right nor unaware. Commercial interests make it especially easy for the far-right Kulturkampf.
It must be mentioned in this context that a large number of fans of bands like Death in June, Sol Invictus or Kirlian Camera are themselves not far-right, but simply enjoy these neo-folk bands’ music. Most people are aware of the bands’ 'far-right image'. But especially in Germany, the fans fall back on the bands’ excuses and statements of disassociation that are published in music magazines and that claim their critics 'misunderstand' them. There are, however, documented cases of fans who, through their involvement with neo-folk bands, suddenly became interested in sponsored ideologues like Ernst Jünger or Julius Evola and, as a result of their fascination with them, became part of the far-right Kulturkampf themselves. Fans who sincerely don’t want to have anything to do with it often have real difficulties parting with 'their band'. Again and again, we could observe genuinely painful parting processes, which anyone can understand who imagines 'having to' disassociate themselves from their own favourite band.
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.
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.
Sunday, 7 November 2010
What Ends When the Symbols Shatter? My Time as a Death In June Fan
Guest Post by John Eden
One of the devices used by people who defend neo-Folk is the claim that its critics are outsiders who don’t understand the nuances of the genre. I’ve written this piece for a number of reasons, but mainly to show my perspective as someone who was there as a fan at the outset. Another argument is that none of the rhetoric and imagery matters, that it’s all a bit of a laugh which doesn’t make any difference in the real world. I would counter this by saying that it certainly made a difference to the beliefs of some of the people I knew.
What's Behind the Mask?
In 1987, at the ripe old age of 17, I asked the bloke behind the counter of Our Price if I could hear The Brown Book, an LP by a band called Death In June. I knew nothing about the group except that people from slightly less obscure bands in the industrial music scene made guest appearances. The sleeve gave very little away – a skull and the title of the album, embossed in gold leaf. The inserts were seriously weird – leaflets about occult supplies and some very sinister T-shirts. It sounded fantastic – nice and loud over the shop’s great system and headphones: dark ballads, weird imagery and simple folky songs.
The final track on side one was a dreamlike spoken word piece over a haunting soundscape. When it finished I handed over my cash. Death In June were one of the ultimate bands for fans who liked a bit of a treasure hunt. Very few clues were ever given away. Before Google or Discogs had even been thought of, this was quite exciting.
Putting the pieces of the jigsaw together became my new obsession, but when I saw the finished picture I was older and wiser and didn’t like what I saw. The skull on the cover was a Totenkopf and one of the songs on the album was an acapella version of 'Horst Wessel'. These were the first steps in the “are they dodgy or aren’t they?” game that Death In June plays with their fans. The consensus seems to be that those in the know can get off on this elitist / faux-Nazi imagery without actually being a Fascist.
And of course, I wasn’t a Fascist. I’d spent a typical British seventies childhood playing with model soldiers, Action Men and Airfix models. I read 'Commando Comics' which were available in all the local newsagents. Me and my mates played 'war' and we knew that the Nazis were the bad guys. Not least because my grandfather had died fighting them in World War 2. I’d had my first encounter with actual Fascists at the tender age of 11. I was in the school canteen for lunch and the only available seat was next to three older boys who I didn’t know. When I sat down one of them asked me, with a disgusted sneer on his face, if I liked “little black boys?”. To my eternal shame I replied that I didn’t. I guess it was partly his tone of voice and the fact that they were bigger than me. I certainly had no problem with the black kids in my class. My reply animated my fellow diners. They told me it was cool to sit with them and asked if I interested in joining the Young National Front. One of them started listing, from memory, the NF’s manifesto. I realised this was pretty fucked up and started making my excuses. They didn’t seem to mind that much.
Lots of the desks at school had 'NF' written on them and you’d see their stickers on bus stops, as graffiti etc. It was part of the landscape, along with anarchy or CND symbols and the iconography of various bands. As I got older and bolder I used tear down racist stickers and cover up the graffiti.
I Ain't Nuthin' But A Gorehound
I had an enquiring mind. Actually that’s a rationalisation. I had (and still have) a tendency to be slightly obsessive. This is a trait I have in common with a lot of people who collect records or are involved with other subcultures. I used to devour the music press, trying to find out everything I could about music I liked the sound of. If it was attached to an extreme ideology then all the better, more stuff to delve into.There were swathes of other music I liked – synthpop, punk, postpunk, hip hop, goth, indie, reggae, whatever. But industrial music was unique in giving me access to an entire subterranean world of strangeness – art, magick, revolution, sexual deviance. There was a lot to get your teeth into.
I felt that Throbbing Gristle’s concept of an Information War was useful – that some things were kept hidden because they were so powerful. This was a good rationale, before the internet, for checking out all manner of extreme phenomena.
I liked the starkness of Death In June’s imagery, words and music – probably in that order. I guess there might have been something in there which reminded me of those childhood war games. Something heroic and male – romantic and bleak. I bought their records and defended them in discussions with friends. I rationalised, with lines fed from interviews in fanzines, that they were simply exploring the darker side of human nature – they didn't believe any of this stuff themselves. And anyway, Douglas P was gay, so there was no way he or anyone he worked with could be a Nazi, right?
When I moved to London in the late eighties I regularly visited the Vinyl Experience record store in Hanway Street. The shop was a focal point for the emerging 'apocalyptic folk' genre (it later evolved into World Serpent Distribution). I picked up a bunch of records and ended up going to what I guess are now legendary gigs like Current 93 and Sol Invictus at Chislehurst caves. I was also involved with the fringes of anti-Fascist campaigning at that time. The Nazi skinhead group Blood & Honour had opened a shop near my college and its bonehead customers were causing some grief in the area. I remember getting some funny looks off people I was protesting with when they saw my Death In June totenkopf badge. I removed it, telling myself that they wouldn’t understand the ambiguity of it all.
I suppose it’s fair to say that I had a fascination with the aesthetics of Fascism but was, like most people, repelled by the ideas and practise. Unfortunately it soon emerged that not everyone was quite so discerning.
Don’t Eat That Stuff Off The Sidewalk
In the early nineties some cassettes of US Christian radio talkshows circulated around the underground scene I had immersed myself in. Evangelical preacher and self-publicist Bob Larson had taken it upon himself to interview Nikolas Schreck (of the group Radio Werewolf) and industrial noise stalwart Boyd Rice (who had launched a 'think tank' called the Abraxas Foundation). Both were involved with the Church of Satan, which I knew little of. The cassettes were very entertaining, with Nikolas and Boyd being relentless in their criticism of Christianity and a whole heap more.
So far so good, but Schreck and Rice also expressed social Darwinist ideas and a 'might is right' philosophy. Boyd described himself as 'an occult Fascist' but went on to say that he didn’t mean that in a political way. These concepts also formed the basis of his album Music, Martinis and Misanthropy. At the time they seemed quite exciting: daring, but also troubling. I don’t remember fully embracing it all, but it certainly piqued my obsessive curiosity.
I inevitably stocked up on Church of Satan reading material to have a look. Other books like Apocalypse Culture and Schreck’s Manson File added a new slant to what I’d previously seen as being an anarchist or left wing perspective. Slowly, friends who were more into this scene than me started spouting a load of old bollocks:
People who might previously have talked about anarchism, or William Burroughs, or Situationist theory were now coming out with the sort of right wing shit you’d read in the Daily Express. This led to a number of heated debates in pubs and at parties, with predictably mixed results. (Each of those quotes is real, I remember them clearly because they wound me up so much. But I'm not going to name and shame people – at least two of them have since expressed regret about talking such rubbish.)
How Far Can Too Far Go?
In the mid-nineties there was a gradual intensification of what was being said in fanzine interviews. I’m still not clear if the artists were trying to outdo each other, or if there was a testing of boundaries involved – seeing how much of an already existing agenda could be revealed without any comeback.
The arrival of Michael Moynihan’s Blood Axis project in 1995 marked a significant gear change. I picked up the notorious issue of No Longer, a FANzine from Tower Records in Piccadilly, and read Moynihan’s comments about wanting to reopen the gas chambers, but how he’d be a lot more lenient in terms of the admission criteria. The 'zine also had an interview with James Mason, an actual Nazi who clearly wasn’t exploring any ambiguities. Blood Axis’ first album got rave reviews in all the right places, but was laughably awful.
Around this time I also found out about Tony Wakeford having been a member of the National Front. He brushed this aside in interviews saying that he hadn’t really been a member – he’d just been knocking about with some people who were into historical re-enactments, some of whom knew some people who were a bit dodgy. Which more recently has been revealed as being an outright lie. The fanzines I was reading also started to pick up on Black Metal. I sent away for some Burzum 'zines and was revolted by Varg Vikernes’ blatant anti-Semitism.
Zombie Dance
Gradually all this stuff started to become de rigueur, like a new fashion. It was actually comical how rapidly the subculture became an identikit set of ideas and themes. I satirised this with a pretend fanzine called Blood & Fire (named after the reggae tune by Niney The Observer, but also very similar to the title of an early NON album). It seemed to amuse the right people, but there wasn’t nearly enough criticism going on.
A lot of the howls of protest were from the mainstream anti-Fascist sources who'd also had problems with Joy Division, New Order, Throbbing Gristle, and even Front 242 in the past. People who were actually fans of the music displayed a staggering lack of political nous. Despite priding themselves on being independently minded (not being part of the 'herd mentality' was the new thing, right?) they swallowed any old bollocks which was on offer as long as it was wrapped up in a limited edition embossed runic cover.
The final straw for me came with the arrival of issue 6 of Esoterra magazine. This had started out as a really good occulture fanzine that had amazing graphics and in depth features and interviews with all sorts of interesting people. I’d been distributing a few copies in the UK (alongside a bunch of other stuff) and had baulked a little at the obligatory Blood Axis feature in issue 5. Issue 6 of Esoterra included a full page advert for Canadian Nazi skinhead band Rahowa. Their name was an acronym for RAcial HOly WAr. Here was a group with blatant connections to political Fascism (in the form of the wacko World Church of the Creator). Rahowa’s singer, George Burdi, founded Resistance Records, the biggest neo-Nazi skinhead label and distributor outside of Europe. He was imprisoned for violently assaulting a female anti-Fascist protestor.
It was clear to me that the more articulate parts of the Nazi music scene were trying converge with the more retarded parts of the industrial/occulture scene. These were people I didn’t want anything to do with. The same shitheads I’d shared a school canteen table with, the same knuckle dragging boneheads who had assaulted Asian students near my college. All of them worshipping the regime that killed my grandfather. I ended up having an argument with the editor of Esoterra and not distributing that issue. He informed me that the group had offered him money for a whole lot more advertising if he published an interview with them, but he had declined.
The next issue featured my interview with Amodali of Mother Destruction – a brilliant group who managed to avoid all the stiff-right-arm posturing which seemed to be becoming the norm. In retrospect this was probably my last ditch attempt to draw a line in the sand and show that it was possible to be concerned with dark, occult material, but not be a Fascist. I was particularly encouraged that the group included Patrick Leagas, formerly of Death In June, who also expressed his frustration to me with the nudge nudge, wink wink nature of what was unfolding. But we were both pushing against the tide. I climbed the cliffs to dry land whilst Patrick seems to have re-immersed himself in the icy waters of neovolkisch runic twiddling.
It gradually dawned on me that the music was becoming less and less interesting. It was pointless hanging about and watching an entire scene go down the toilet musically and ideologically at such an exciting time for dance music. My philosophical needs continued to be satisfied by the whole 'post-situ' scene, including the refreshingly un-sinister Association of Autonomous Astronauts, London Psychogeographical Association and many others.
Tear It Up
I never formally 'left' the industrial / neofolk scene, I just found more interesting things to do. Things which involved people who were less grim and music that was much better. Towards the end of the nineties I’d have a pop at things which came my way, but I no longer went looking for trouble. A good example would be my (quite ranty, in retrospect) review of the third issue of the UK fanzine Compulsion:
Sometime shortly afterwards, the editor of Compulsion started distributing a US industrial fanzine called Ohm Clock which featured Rahowa on the front cover, and had an extensive interview with them inside. Oh, and quite a lot of adverts for them.
In the summer of 1998 someone else who I had considered a good friend called me up to discuss some industrial CDs he was releasing to see if I would be interested in reviewing them. I wasn't. He went on to have a rant about the power of the media and how 'they' never told the whole truth. Sentiments I wholly agreed with, until he started referring to the brutal racist murder of James Byrd Jnr. My friend was outraged that none of the media reports had mentioned that Byrd had been in prison previously with his murderers. I felt that the salient point was that three white men (two of whom were known white supremacists) had chained a black man to the back of their truck and dragged him two miles along a road, killing him. We were clearly getting our analysis and worldview from completely different sources.
Kizmiaz
Since then neofolk seems to have continued in this vein with people getting less and less shy about describing themselves as Fascists, working with former members of the National Front, namedropping Evola, bandying about terms like eurocentrism (aka “white pride”) and dressing up in uniforms like an amateur tribute to “’Allo ‘Allo”. I sold my Death in June / Current 93, etc., collection on Ebay (or tried to; “The Brown Book” is banned for being “hateful or discriminatory”). I did this partly to finance new projects and partly just to get rid of it all. Quite a few of the people who emailed me to discuss my auctions reminded me of my younger enthusiastic self. I wasn’t about to give them a lecture or stop them having fun. If someone had done that to me 25 years ago it would just have confirmed how 'out there' and dangerous I was. Let’s be clear – enjoying Death In June records as a teenager didn’t make me a Fascist. What I hope this piece has shown is that there is a bigger picture, a wider context than that. There is merit in extreme music and culture, but there are also pitfalls.
A lot of people in 'alternative' scenes like to pretend that politics don’t matter to them. To me that means that they just haven’t thought through their politics. It is precisely this kind of ignorance that can provide a cover for people who are explicitly political to operate and influence the cultural landscape.
History shows us that people are attracted to far right politics for all sorts of reasons, some of them ideological, some of them social. Any mass movement will happily incorporate “apolitical” people who like the violence, or the uniforms, or the music, or the kudos of being weird, the feeling of belonging to an exclusive club.
I think the critique being developed on this blog and elsewhere is long overdue. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading the contributions here and the discussions they have provoked. Ultimately it's up to people to decide for themselves where they draw the line, which artists they support and what they believe in. I don't really regret my dalliance with neofolk (bar having given my money to some people I now despise) because I think ultimately I made the right decisions.
One of the devices used by people who defend neo-Folk is the claim that its critics are outsiders who don’t understand the nuances of the genre. I’ve written this piece for a number of reasons, but mainly to show my perspective as someone who was there as a fan at the outset. Another argument is that none of the rhetoric and imagery matters, that it’s all a bit of a laugh which doesn’t make any difference in the real world. I would counter this by saying that it certainly made a difference to the beliefs of some of the people I knew.
What's Behind the Mask?
In 1987, at the ripe old age of 17, I asked the bloke behind the counter of Our Price if I could hear The Brown Book, an LP by a band called Death In June. I knew nothing about the group except that people from slightly less obscure bands in the industrial music scene made guest appearances. The sleeve gave very little away – a skull and the title of the album, embossed in gold leaf. The inserts were seriously weird – leaflets about occult supplies and some very sinister T-shirts. It sounded fantastic – nice and loud over the shop’s great system and headphones: dark ballads, weird imagery and simple folky songs.
The final track on side one was a dreamlike spoken word piece over a haunting soundscape. When it finished I handed over my cash. Death In June were one of the ultimate bands for fans who liked a bit of a treasure hunt. Very few clues were ever given away. Before Google or Discogs had even been thought of, this was quite exciting.
Putting the pieces of the jigsaw together became my new obsession, but when I saw the finished picture I was older and wiser and didn’t like what I saw. The skull on the cover was a Totenkopf and one of the songs on the album was an acapella version of 'Horst Wessel'. These were the first steps in the “are they dodgy or aren’t they?” game that Death In June plays with their fans. The consensus seems to be that those in the know can get off on this elitist / faux-Nazi imagery without actually being a Fascist.
And of course, I wasn’t a Fascist. I’d spent a typical British seventies childhood playing with model soldiers, Action Men and Airfix models. I read 'Commando Comics' which were available in all the local newsagents. Me and my mates played 'war' and we knew that the Nazis were the bad guys. Not least because my grandfather had died fighting them in World War 2. I’d had my first encounter with actual Fascists at the tender age of 11. I was in the school canteen for lunch and the only available seat was next to three older boys who I didn’t know. When I sat down one of them asked me, with a disgusted sneer on his face, if I liked “little black boys?”. To my eternal shame I replied that I didn’t. I guess it was partly his tone of voice and the fact that they were bigger than me. I certainly had no problem with the black kids in my class. My reply animated my fellow diners. They told me it was cool to sit with them and asked if I interested in joining the Young National Front. One of them started listing, from memory, the NF’s manifesto. I realised this was pretty fucked up and started making my excuses. They didn’t seem to mind that much.
Lots of the desks at school had 'NF' written on them and you’d see their stickers on bus stops, as graffiti etc. It was part of the landscape, along with anarchy or CND symbols and the iconography of various bands. As I got older and bolder I used tear down racist stickers and cover up the graffiti.
I Ain't Nuthin' But A Gorehound
I had an enquiring mind. Actually that’s a rationalisation. I had (and still have) a tendency to be slightly obsessive. This is a trait I have in common with a lot of people who collect records or are involved with other subcultures. I used to devour the music press, trying to find out everything I could about music I liked the sound of. If it was attached to an extreme ideology then all the better, more stuff to delve into.There were swathes of other music I liked – synthpop, punk, postpunk, hip hop, goth, indie, reggae, whatever. But industrial music was unique in giving me access to an entire subterranean world of strangeness – art, magick, revolution, sexual deviance. There was a lot to get your teeth into.
I felt that Throbbing Gristle’s concept of an Information War was useful – that some things were kept hidden because they were so powerful. This was a good rationale, before the internet, for checking out all manner of extreme phenomena.
I liked the starkness of Death In June’s imagery, words and music – probably in that order. I guess there might have been something in there which reminded me of those childhood war games. Something heroic and male – romantic and bleak. I bought their records and defended them in discussions with friends. I rationalised, with lines fed from interviews in fanzines, that they were simply exploring the darker side of human nature – they didn't believe any of this stuff themselves. And anyway, Douglas P was gay, so there was no way he or anyone he worked with could be a Nazi, right?
When I moved to London in the late eighties I regularly visited the Vinyl Experience record store in Hanway Street. The shop was a focal point for the emerging 'apocalyptic folk' genre (it later evolved into World Serpent Distribution). I picked up a bunch of records and ended up going to what I guess are now legendary gigs like Current 93 and Sol Invictus at Chislehurst caves. I was also involved with the fringes of anti-Fascist campaigning at that time. The Nazi skinhead group Blood & Honour had opened a shop near my college and its bonehead customers were causing some grief in the area. I remember getting some funny looks off people I was protesting with when they saw my Death In June totenkopf badge. I removed it, telling myself that they wouldn’t understand the ambiguity of it all.
I suppose it’s fair to say that I had a fascination with the aesthetics of Fascism but was, like most people, repelled by the ideas and practise. Unfortunately it soon emerged that not everyone was quite so discerning.
Don’t Eat That Stuff Off The Sidewalk
In the early nineties some cassettes of US Christian radio talkshows circulated around the underground scene I had immersed myself in. Evangelical preacher and self-publicist Bob Larson had taken it upon himself to interview Nikolas Schreck (of the group Radio Werewolf) and industrial noise stalwart Boyd Rice (who had launched a 'think tank' called the Abraxas Foundation). Both were involved with the Church of Satan, which I knew little of. The cassettes were very entertaining, with Nikolas and Boyd being relentless in their criticism of Christianity and a whole heap more.
So far so good, but Schreck and Rice also expressed social Darwinist ideas and a 'might is right' philosophy. Boyd described himself as 'an occult Fascist' but went on to say that he didn’t mean that in a political way. These concepts also formed the basis of his album Music, Martinis and Misanthropy. At the time they seemed quite exciting: daring, but also troubling. I don’t remember fully embracing it all, but it certainly piqued my obsessive curiosity.
I inevitably stocked up on Church of Satan reading material to have a look. Other books like Apocalypse Culture and Schreck’s Manson File added a new slant to what I’d previously seen as being an anarchist or left wing perspective. Slowly, friends who were more into this scene than me started spouting a load of old bollocks:
“All this stuff about how ‘the weak should be crushed by the strong’ – you’d understand that if you sat on the top deck of bus with me in South London.”
“I truly believe in having society run by a nobility – especially when I see all the human waste queuing up to buy their lottery tickets on a Saturday afternoon.”
“Why should I have to come in at night and turn on the TV to see a bunch of stuff about bhangra – this is London!”
People who might previously have talked about anarchism, or William Burroughs, or Situationist theory were now coming out with the sort of right wing shit you’d read in the Daily Express. This led to a number of heated debates in pubs and at parties, with predictably mixed results. (Each of those quotes is real, I remember them clearly because they wound me up so much. But I'm not going to name and shame people – at least two of them have since expressed regret about talking such rubbish.)
How Far Can Too Far Go?
In the mid-nineties there was a gradual intensification of what was being said in fanzine interviews. I’m still not clear if the artists were trying to outdo each other, or if there was a testing of boundaries involved – seeing how much of an already existing agenda could be revealed without any comeback.
The arrival of Michael Moynihan’s Blood Axis project in 1995 marked a significant gear change. I picked up the notorious issue of No Longer, a FANzine from Tower Records in Piccadilly, and read Moynihan’s comments about wanting to reopen the gas chambers, but how he’d be a lot more lenient in terms of the admission criteria. The 'zine also had an interview with James Mason, an actual Nazi who clearly wasn’t exploring any ambiguities. Blood Axis’ first album got rave reviews in all the right places, but was laughably awful.
Around this time I also found out about Tony Wakeford having been a member of the National Front. He brushed this aside in interviews saying that he hadn’t really been a member – he’d just been knocking about with some people who were into historical re-enactments, some of whom knew some people who were a bit dodgy. Which more recently has been revealed as being an outright lie. The fanzines I was reading also started to pick up on Black Metal. I sent away for some Burzum 'zines and was revolted by Varg Vikernes’ blatant anti-Semitism.
Zombie Dance
Gradually all this stuff started to become de rigueur, like a new fashion. It was actually comical how rapidly the subculture became an identikit set of ideas and themes. I satirised this with a pretend fanzine called Blood & Fire (named after the reggae tune by Niney The Observer, but also very similar to the title of an early NON album). It seemed to amuse the right people, but there wasn’t nearly enough criticism going on.
A lot of the howls of protest were from the mainstream anti-Fascist sources who'd also had problems with Joy Division, New Order, Throbbing Gristle, and even Front 242 in the past. People who were actually fans of the music displayed a staggering lack of political nous. Despite priding themselves on being independently minded (not being part of the 'herd mentality' was the new thing, right?) they swallowed any old bollocks which was on offer as long as it was wrapped up in a limited edition embossed runic cover.
The final straw for me came with the arrival of issue 6 of Esoterra magazine. This had started out as a really good occulture fanzine that had amazing graphics and in depth features and interviews with all sorts of interesting people. I’d been distributing a few copies in the UK (alongside a bunch of other stuff) and had baulked a little at the obligatory Blood Axis feature in issue 5. Issue 6 of Esoterra included a full page advert for Canadian Nazi skinhead band Rahowa. Their name was an acronym for RAcial HOly WAr. Here was a group with blatant connections to political Fascism (in the form of the wacko World Church of the Creator). Rahowa’s singer, George Burdi, founded Resistance Records, the biggest neo-Nazi skinhead label and distributor outside of Europe. He was imprisoned for violently assaulting a female anti-Fascist protestor.
It was clear to me that the more articulate parts of the Nazi music scene were trying converge with the more retarded parts of the industrial/occulture scene. These were people I didn’t want anything to do with. The same shitheads I’d shared a school canteen table with, the same knuckle dragging boneheads who had assaulted Asian students near my college. All of them worshipping the regime that killed my grandfather. I ended up having an argument with the editor of Esoterra and not distributing that issue. He informed me that the group had offered him money for a whole lot more advertising if he published an interview with them, but he had declined.
The next issue featured my interview with Amodali of Mother Destruction – a brilliant group who managed to avoid all the stiff-right-arm posturing which seemed to be becoming the norm. In retrospect this was probably my last ditch attempt to draw a line in the sand and show that it was possible to be concerned with dark, occult material, but not be a Fascist. I was particularly encouraged that the group included Patrick Leagas, formerly of Death In June, who also expressed his frustration to me with the nudge nudge, wink wink nature of what was unfolding. But we were both pushing against the tide. I climbed the cliffs to dry land whilst Patrick seems to have re-immersed himself in the icy waters of neovolkisch runic twiddling.
It gradually dawned on me that the music was becoming less and less interesting. It was pointless hanging about and watching an entire scene go down the toilet musically and ideologically at such an exciting time for dance music. My philosophical needs continued to be satisfied by the whole 'post-situ' scene, including the refreshingly un-sinister Association of Autonomous Astronauts, London Psychogeographical Association and many others.
Tear It Up
I never formally 'left' the industrial / neofolk scene, I just found more interesting things to do. Things which involved people who were less grim and music that was much better. Towards the end of the nineties I’d have a pop at things which came my way, but I no longer went looking for trouble. A good example would be my (quite ranty, in retrospect) review of the third issue of the UK fanzine Compulsion:
"The subtitle is 'Surveying the Heretical', which I think highlights my problems with this (and the 'scene' as a whole). Doing a survey suggests that it's just a report of what's going on – someone else has to analyse it all. But obviously this isn't the whole story. Anyone who puts out a 'zine goes through a process of selection, deciding what goes in and what stays out. It isn't like someone went through the racks at Tower Records and pulled out every 10th CD or something, is it? So the editor must either like the material, or at the very least find it intriguing. But, oh no, there's a 'Views and beliefs expressed' statement on page 2, so we have to guess, eh?
This wouldn't be a problem were it not for the fact that Compulsion contains some pretty dubious people, some of whom have worldviews that I consider thoroughly objectionable. For example there's a puff piece on ex-American Nazi Party organiser James Mason and his Manson-inspired Universal Order. I'm sure James is fantastically exciting, but it fucks me off that he can blandly suggest that the Tate killings were great because they were all "drug users, drug dealers, Jews, anti-racists and homosexuals" without even the teeniest bit of editorial comment.
Mason's publisher is also interviewed. Unsurprisingly he's also happy to be called a Fascist and we even get to read his (ooh how heretical!) views, though thankfully we're spared his usual spiel about re-opening the concentration camps this time. Admittedly Compulsion isn't all blokes with an unhealthy fixation with uniforms and the music of Wagner. The Boredoms, Foetus, Jim Rose and the excellent Somewhere in Europe are also covered. It's just that anyone who expresses an ideology in any depth is completely reactionary. That is clearly one of the editor's major interests, but any conclusions he's made or insights he's gained are missing completely.
It's not even as if the editor is a Fascist, it's just the usual laziness that seems to permeate industrial culture these days. Nobody is ever challenged about their views, not because people agree with them, but because people just aren't bothered. The 'scene' seems to have ditched Throbbing Gristle's ideas of actively researching extremes and is now just a darker version of MTV, spoon-feeding extremity for the sake of it. The excuse is always that people can make up their own minds, which no doubt is true – there just doesn't seem to be any evidence of it happening.
Most of the people I've discussed this with have a pretty unsophisticated analysis of it all, despite all the elitist "oh we are so much more intelligent than the masses" bollocks that goes with the territory. The fans either just get off on the 'mystery' of whether such and such a group is 'dodgy', nudge nudge, wink wink, or try to get themselves off the hook by arguing that so and so can't be a Fascist because he isn't racist (as if the two were the same thing). There are too many people who still think that Nazis are all evil, stupid and ugly. That sort of liberalism just leaves them ill-equipped to critically examine anything resembling a considered argument for (for example) racial segregation, or stopping all welfare and letting people starve to death. I'm not suggesting that every paragraph should come with a dogmatic PC analysis, or that such views shouldn't be allowed to appear in print. That isn't a situation I will ever be able to (or want to) enforce.
However, I am not happy to just uncritically consume people's ideas. It is not in my interest to give Fascists or their fans an easy ride. Perhaps that makes me the biggest heretic of all."
Sometime shortly afterwards, the editor of Compulsion started distributing a US industrial fanzine called Ohm Clock which featured Rahowa on the front cover, and had an extensive interview with them inside. Oh, and quite a lot of adverts for them.
In the summer of 1998 someone else who I had considered a good friend called me up to discuss some industrial CDs he was releasing to see if I would be interested in reviewing them. I wasn't. He went on to have a rant about the power of the media and how 'they' never told the whole truth. Sentiments I wholly agreed with, until he started referring to the brutal racist murder of James Byrd Jnr. My friend was outraged that none of the media reports had mentioned that Byrd had been in prison previously with his murderers. I felt that the salient point was that three white men (two of whom were known white supremacists) had chained a black man to the back of their truck and dragged him two miles along a road, killing him. We were clearly getting our analysis and worldview from completely different sources.
Kizmiaz
Since then neofolk seems to have continued in this vein with people getting less and less shy about describing themselves as Fascists, working with former members of the National Front, namedropping Evola, bandying about terms like eurocentrism (aka “white pride”) and dressing up in uniforms like an amateur tribute to “’Allo ‘Allo”. I sold my Death in June / Current 93, etc., collection on Ebay (or tried to; “The Brown Book” is banned for being “hateful or discriminatory”). I did this partly to finance new projects and partly just to get rid of it all. Quite a few of the people who emailed me to discuss my auctions reminded me of my younger enthusiastic self. I wasn’t about to give them a lecture or stop them having fun. If someone had done that to me 25 years ago it would just have confirmed how 'out there' and dangerous I was. Let’s be clear – enjoying Death In June records as a teenager didn’t make me a Fascist. What I hope this piece has shown is that there is a bigger picture, a wider context than that. There is merit in extreme music and culture, but there are also pitfalls.
A lot of people in 'alternative' scenes like to pretend that politics don’t matter to them. To me that means that they just haven’t thought through their politics. It is precisely this kind of ignorance that can provide a cover for people who are explicitly political to operate and influence the cultural landscape.
History shows us that people are attracted to far right politics for all sorts of reasons, some of them ideological, some of them social. Any mass movement will happily incorporate “apolitical” people who like the violence, or the uniforms, or the music, or the kudos of being weird, the feeling of belonging to an exclusive club.
I think the critique being developed on this blog and elsewhere is long overdue. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading the contributions here and the discussions they have provoked. Ultimately it's up to people to decide for themselves where they draw the line, which artists they support and what they believe in. I don't really regret my dalliance with neofolk (bar having given my money to some people I now despise) because I think ultimately I made the right decisions.
Friday, 29 October 2010
Just Say Non: Nazism, Narcissism and Boyd Rice
"Boyd's rather unimaginative sadism used to embarrass me, but then he explained it using words like 'Weltanshauung'"
Lisa Crystal-Carver, Drugs are Nice [LC, p215]
I last saw Boyd Rice play (as 'Non') back in August 1981, alongside Throbbing Gristle (TG), Z'ev, Cabaret Voltaire and Clock DVA as part of the 'Industrial Night Out' at the Lyceum, London, which brought together the big cheeses of Industrial Music in what was to be something of a coming out party for the scene but turned out also to be its swansong (it was TG's last UK concert; they broke up a few months later). At the time Rice presented himself as a Dadaist and prankster though his aesthetic was actually closer to the sub-Futurist 'instant karma for kids' noise-racket that Merzbow has since successfully appropriated and turned into a brand / 'racket' of his own. While TG boasted of making music from ugly noise, Rice tried to outflank them by serving up the ugliness directly, unfiltered by any obvious concern for form. In fairness Boyd Rice could be said to be among the key players of early Industrial Music, and as a result he perhaps has a shade more kudos than some of the complete musical non-entities we're generally concerned with around here (Wakeford, Pearce, Moynihan, et al). Rice has declared his Fascism in a number of statements, in his art, and through public actions such as appearing in full Fascist regalia and holding a dagger in a photograph alongside Bob Heick, taken in 1989 to promote the latter's organisation, the neo-Nazi skinhead party, American Front. He has also appeared on White Aryan Resistance founder Tom Metzger's cable TV show Race and Reason, where he declared that his friends in Current 93 and Death in June were promoting a 'racialist' agenda and emphasised the importance of Industrial and Neo-Folk music for building the 'Aryan youth movement'.
Since the 80s Rice has continued to release records as well as dabbling ineptly in other media (photography, painting) and playing a leading role in the Church of Satan (he has recently been installed as its leader and 'High Priest') as well as getting involved with Grail mythology, Tiki culture, alcoholism and various other similarly moronic pastimes. Along the way he's written essays and articles outlining his evolving concerns and hobbies for a string of publications, which are collected here along with some previously unpublished writings in the book Standing in Two Circles: The Collected Works of Boyd Rice, edited by Michael Clark and published in 2008 by Creation Books. This collection offers an opportunity to pin down the peculiarly slippery Rice; 'slippery' because his defenders claim that he sets out essentially to 'provoke', which lends him a degree of insulation from the charges of Fascism that would be trivially obvious in any other context. The way this works is that Rice can openly declaim and publish Fascist and racist ideas, and yet confused fans and commentators - who have bought into the mistaken idea that provocation in and of itself is the ne plus ultra of artistic radicalism - still refuse to accept that by buying his records and attending his gigs they are financing a Fascist propagandist since, after all, he is 'merely' trying to provoke. Perhaps these people are by now so utterly stupefied that they're just grateful to anyone who can still manage to wring a response out of them - even if it's by promoting ideas that threaten themselves and everyone they know. This was brought home to me earlier this year when a photographer friend attended Rice's gig in New York to record it for a local paper. Despite the fact that this person has a background as an anti-Fascist, having watched an entire evening of Rice dressed in Fascist military gear, surrounded on stage by Sieg Heil'ing Nazi goons while projecting images of the Swastika and Wolfsangel (the SS symbol Rice used for years as his logo) and reading selections from racist, Social Darwinist tracts, and with the support groups being open White Suprematists, the best he could come up with at the end was that Boyd might perhaps be "a little dodgy". I mean, what does a Fascist have to do these days to get the recognition they deserve?
One reason that Rice's ideology is difficult to get to grips with is that he is patently stupid, meaning that people are loath to take him seriously in case it reflects poorly on their sense of humour or proportion. But that is to miss the fact that condescending to Rice's idiocy by not taking him seriously also makes it easier for him to sell his ideas. While Fascist ideology is by its very nature irrational and essentially incoherent - it doesn't seek to understand the social world in order to place it under collective human control but rather to justify post hoc the Fascist's pre-existing drive to annihilate large parts of society in the name of racial and spiritual 'purity' - this is made worse in Rice's case due to his inability to grapple in even the slightest way with history, politics or anything else requiring a modicum of intellectual focus. His arguments are confused and contradictory, and on top of this he shares the Fascist-occult regard for portents and symbols, for 'mysterious forces', innate biological imperatives, occult machinations and Chthonic powers as the determinants of history, which means that his thought necessarily has the chaotic, cobbled-together quality of childhood obsessions and superstitions.
Despite the fact that there is very little logic or sense in his thought there is nevertheless another kind of coherence at work to the extent that his obsessions cohere with those of his comrades, overlapping neatly with those of the other players in the Fascist-occult 'Apoliteic' counter-culture. Their ideas may well be an incoherent mess when considered purely as ideas, but they share them in common in practical terms as they thrust their hands into the lucky-dip bowl of Fascist esoteric idiocy to pluck out those notions they like they sound of and dole them out among their peers. So it's no surprise that in these essays Rice touches on many of the core themes that tie him to the likes of Michael Moynihan, Doug Pearce and other musicians he has collaborated with over the years (both Moynihan and Pearce provide blurb texts promoting the book; Pearce even providing a rare dash of humour when he salutes Rice as an "inspirational genius"). These people may be in different stages of denial or employing different degrees of deception when it comes to admitting their Fascist allegiances, but they all draw from the same pool of half-baked atavistic notions and gladly share what they find, disagreeing only in points of detail (and then largely only on the basis of minor variations in taste or as a matter of mutual brand positioning). Among Fascist ideologues ideas are essentially fuel for the creation of a mobilising myth, so coherence doesn't matter that much. But while it is impossible to take Boyd Rice seriously as a man or a thinker it would be irresponsible not to register the threat his ideas represent.
A good place to start into this mess of a book is Michael Clark's 'Introduction', which runs through a few of the set-piece arguments the Fascists and their supporters use in their defence. First up is Clark's defence of Rice's use of Fascist motifs;
Stalinism did indeed pile up the bodies of its victims, slaughtering millions on the road to conquering and then consolidating its social power. But Stalinism and Fascism do not represent political antitheses in the way that both Clark and Fascist thought like to pretend. They are simply different forms of rule peculiar to different stages and conditions of capitalism. Both Stalinism and Fascism murdered Jews, homosexuals, national minorities,'revisionists' and backsliders, trade unionists and socialists. The difference is that Stalinism in both Russia and China did so as part of a process of primitive (state-) capitalist accumulation similar to that by which Britain, for example, achieved much the same ends at a corresponding stage of development through, eg., the slave trade and Highland Clearances (though Stalinism appears bloodier because it compressed the same phase of development into a far shorter period of time). This does not justify Stalinist violence in any way, but it begins to explain it. Fascism serves a different end and achieves it differently. It is essentially a form of emergency rule at a time of extraordinary capitalist crisis in which the working class is terrorised into submission by unleashing waves of destructive violence against any and all perceived enemies of the state, internal and external. Fascism has its ideological dimensions, of course, but in practice they are ultimately subordinate to its self-appointed task of integrating and stabilising capitalist society at times of danger to the state by liquidating it's enemies, both real (the class conscious working class) and imagined (any and all impure and degenerate elements as defined by whatever myth or prejudice inspires the particular strand of Fascism under consideration and mobilises the masses behind it). This is done in order to create an 'organic' / integral society where all the parts are subordinated to the social totality, existing only to serve it.
All of this is opaque to Clark, who talks instead like a consumer in the shopping mall of history, choosing between competing brands of totalitarianism on the basis of which is less fattening for his notional conscience. He wants to pile up the bodies and count them rather than understand the ideas that coordinated their destruction. Instead of considering the politics of Rice's Fascism he likes to present Rice simply as someone 'brave' enough to challenge the 'taboo' against Fascism, as if he might shake bourgeois society to its core merely by invoking the negative theology it shrouds itself in. But this taboo is, after all, only the socially constructed fetish of a particular epoch and doesn't mean that crisis-ridden capitalism won't reach toward Fascism again in future (there are faint indications of this already in Europe). And this turn will be made easier to the extent that ideologues and propagandists, even feeble ones like Boyd Rice, have helped clear the route back to Fascism by normalising it's anti-democratic, mythic values.
A similar logic is apparent in Clark's defence of Satanism;
As a collection of occasional pieces it's hard to get to grips with Rice's book as a whole. Large parts of it document his obsession with all kinds of ephemera: over the course of the book he discusses things such as novelty soaps, The Lawrence Whelk Retirement Home and Museum, bumper stickers and campaign ribbons, Disneyland, Tiny Tim, 'Leave it to Beaver', Martin Denny and Tiki bars, Mondo films, bubblegum pop and similar avowedly lightweight culture. I've heard it argued that Rice's love of trivia shows that he can't really be a Fascist since he clearly doesn't take anything that seriously (whereas Fascists are presumably permanently dour, focussed solely on their destiny and the tasks of history). But that is to seriously overestimate the Fascist mind which, in reality, feels quite at home with the banal, the kitsch and the maudlin. Rice's debunking attitude is represented as a levelling, critical iconoclasm, but in fact it expresses a much more systematic and thoroughgoing narcissism and cynicism which ultimately sees everything (other than his own übermensch ego) as essentially worthless. This conception perhaps represents the point at which Fascist narcissism blends into post-modern affectlessness. For the Fascist the social world (as opposed to nature) really is a meaningless pit. In Boyd Rice's mind a bar of novelty soap might well be the perfect symbol of the supposed vacuity of existence. The twist in his case is only that he revels in this vacuousness; "it is my view that the best way to inoculate oneself against the prevailing dystopia is to simply decide to love it" [144]. Boyd celebrates the trivial because, as Terry Eagleton put it, "Nihilists and buffoons are allergic to the slightest hint of significance" [TE, 87].
In 'Burning the Ice' (1989) Rice recalls "one of the pivotal episodes of my youth", in which he watches through a picture window as an anonymous man within irons his shirt then makes himself a sandwich and packs his lunch before setting off in his car for work. "I was horrified", says Rice [56]. This experience leads him into a life of desperate opposition to conventional morality, which expresses itself through his stealing money from purses he finds in the cloakroom at parties and breaking into his neighbour's flats through open windows in order to have a sniff around. Terrifying stuff. In 'Sin in the Suburbs' (1994) Rice details his early sexual experiences, including an unintentionally hilarious story about how he was told as a youngster that every time he masturbated he was destroying the millions of potential souls contained in his sperm. This naturally led him to embark on a prolonged course of intense wanking. The image of the red-faced Rice furiously pulling on his cock while fantasising impotently about annihilating non-existent Christian souls seems somehow a fitting tribute to the man and his career.
Things start to take a more genuinely sinister turn when, as the next stage in the planned development of his psychopathy, he decides to stalk a waitress from a local restaurant. He follows her around to learn about her daily movements and then engineers a 'chance' meeting with her on her way home from work. This leads to a date after which, back at the woman's flat, he talks her into letting him tie her up for some S&M fun. Once she is bound he goes into the kitchen to fetch a carving knife then convinces the woman that he is going to cut her open. He then suddenly departs, leaving his victim terrified. Such violent misogyny would become a staple of Rice's life. In 1994's 'Revolt Against Penis Envy' (notice the acronym) he works himself up into a fever of hatred and contempt for women;
Other parts of Rice's book concern individuals who have become icons for the Fascist counter-culture; Anton LaVey, Savitri Devi and Charles Manson. In 'I'll Call You Abraxas' (1994) Rice details his various meetings and interviews with Manson. Indeed, Manson gave this book it's title, having said to Rice, "I'll call you Abraxas, because you stand in two circles at once" [100] (Abraxas being a Gnostic deity which Rice believes, after Jung, is "the ultimate archetype", being beyond all dualities - and therefore 'beyond good and evil'). Rice claims to have been a fan of Manson since his teenage years. He also claims that it was him who took Throbbing Gristle out to Manson's old base at Spahn Ranch to have the photographs taken which appeared in Re:Search's early feature on TG, and which cemented the association between them and Manson. Naturally, Manson is a hero to Rice, and a font of tremendous wisdom;
Rice also has essays here on Anton LaVey and Savitri Devi. Both are important figures in the Fascist-occult underground; LaVey as the fantasist who founded The Church of Satan, and Devi as an obscurantist who tried to combine Fascism with ideas drawn from Vedic culture, arguing that Hinduism is the nearest thing we have today to the Pagan religion of the original Aryans. In her book The Lightning and the Sun she argues that Hitler is 'Kalik', an incarnation of Vishnu destined, according to the Vedas, to end the current cycle of world history and initiate a new age (she was clearly wrong about that, but that doesn't bother her followers). Devi was also an active Fascist, imprisoned by Allied Forces in 1949 for spreading Nazi propaganda in post-War Germany. Her work has been praised by such conspicuously un-diverse figures as repeat-offending aspirant British Führer Colin Jordan, James Mason, and 'Squeaky' Fromme from the Manson Family. As it happens Rice has little of interest to say about either LaVey or Devi, except inasmuch as he gives away aspects of his own mindset. Apart from celebrating LaVey's misanthropy ("He would often speak at great length (and in great detail) of unspeakable acts of cruelty and violence" [133]) he is also impressed because LaVey normally "only deals with millionaires and movie stars" [ 131]. In Devi's case he notes that "she tested as having genius level IQ" [152]. Reified wealth, celebrity and intelligence are all equally attractive to Rice's banal mind.
A number of essays in the book deal with the weighty matter of Rice's 'philosophy' and world-view. In them he touches on ideas that are common currency among his Fascist peers. Rice's 'big' idea, which he returns to over and again, consists of a reactionary-romantic elevation of nature over culture. It is not so much that his view is reductive (in which case culture would be a mere epiphenomenon of nature); he sees everything that is specifically human as an unnatural and arbitrary excrescence on top of nature. His train of thought starts with an idea he quotes from the German naturalist and artist (and Social Darwinist racist) Ernst Haeckel; "Man is not above nature, but in nature" [89]. As far as it goes, this is true. The problem is that Rice's rigidly mechanical mind cannot grasp the thought dialectically, so he draws the mistaken conclusion that "man is synonymous with nature" [65]. But this is a very different argument, and it leads to the conclusion that that part of man which is not strictly natural is abstract to the point of unreality. This is clearly a self-cancelling and redundant philosophy: to see this you need only ask yourself why somebody who believes that nature is everything, and ideas are airless distractions, would bother publishing a book at all. The point is that man, while wholly part of nature, is at the same time distinguished from it by culture, and that this culture is every bit as real and effective as nature.
To see what this implies, consider the next stage of Rice's argument, which involves pointing out that nature has no sense of right and wrong, good or bad; "Nature, unlike man, is utterly indifferent to subjective judgements such as 'good' and 'bad'" [142]. The obvious response is to point out that the converse is equally true - that man, unlike nature, simply is not indifferent to subjective judgements. If that were not true then Rice would have nothing to rant about, and his attempts to persuade you of anything at all would be pointless. In fact, the distinction between nature and culture which Rice's entire 'philosophy' turns on is itself cultural and unnatural (but nonetheless real). It is culture that generates the dialectical distinction between ourselves and the nature that is the 'other' we transform in production: Rice's mistake is to reify this distinction and make it absolute, rather than relative.
Rice claims that "Nature adheres to an immutable order" [63], but in fact nature is very much mutable and has a substantial history of its own. One thing we know with absolute certainty is that nature at some point gave rise to culture. This mechanical idea of an unchanging nature is also at the root of traditional religious metaphysics. If nature was immutable then you might ask; where did humans and their culture - where did 'spirit' - suddenly arise from? The traditional answer is that God breathed spirit into matter as part of his creation, and yet this spirit is still separate from matter and exists in its own right, being 'unnatural'. In this way the crude materialism Rice advocates inevitably gives rise to religiosity and occultism ('spiritualism'), as it does with Rice himself: his book is littered with tales of ghosts (autonomous 'spirits'), uncanny happenings, mysterious portents and other such occult banalities: stupid materialism (mechanical and biological determinism) and stupid spirituality (occultism) are conjoined twins.
While Rice's explanation of his ontology and 'spirituality' are a nothing more than jumble of 19th Century solecisms, they nevertheless form the basis for the further development of his boneheaded narcissistic resentment. Having separated nature and culture his next trick is to argue that nature itself knows nothing of equality or human rights;
Morality too has nothing to do with nature in Rice's estimation, and so he's against it and wants you to slough it off. He believes that "a true understanding of natural law would render conventional morality obsolete." [87]. What Rice advocates is an eternal feeding frenzy in which the strong annihilate the weak in a totally amoral struggle for domination, for "higher men disdain the lives of the weak and cowardly - slave types" [61]. You might call this 'unprogrammatic Fascism', as he doesn't believe that things could ever be otherwise and criticises his Nazi heroes because they "still harboured the naively romantic dream that they could somehow turn the tide around" [141]. So that is Rice's philosophy in a nutshell: Fascism without its noble ideals (like the old joke about Hitler returning to Earth and declaring "this time - no more Mr. Nice Guy").
The only remaining thing to say about Rice's cod-philosophy is how neatly it mirrors that of his hard-core Nazi friend James Mason. Both fetishise extreme alienation and violent misanthropy: Mason's Universal Order has adopted Manson as the ideal Nazi icon because of a combination of this and the fact that he has counter-cultural clout. Both believe that that the process of social 'degeneration' (from a fascist point of view: multiculturalism, democracy, etc.) is so advanced that they will support any and all violence against it. Both prioritise 'instinct' (their prejudice) over reason. And both, in different ways, are finding an audience.
This utterly stupid and offensive book should be warning enough that Boyd Rice is not a prankster and certainly not someone who should be lauded for 'pushing the envelope', but rather a Nazi who uses the cover provided by slack-jawed concepts of what constitutes radical art in order to promote - and create a focus for - the violence and hatred of a small but growing section of the Fascist movement internationally. As such he should be opposed in every possible way in order to stop his operation in its tracks, precisely as we would with any other Fascist shithead.
Unless noted otherwise, references are to Boyd Rice, Brian M Clark (ed), 2008, Standing in Two Circles: The Collected Works of Boyd Rice, Creation Books, London.
LC: Lisa Crystal Carver, 2005, Drugs are Nice, Snowbooks, London.
TE: Terry Eagleton, On Evil, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
JM: James Mason, 2010, Siege: The Collected Writings of James Mason, edited by Michael M. Jenkins (Michael Moynihan), introduction by Ryan Schuster, Black Sun Publications, Bozeman, MT.
Lisa Crystal-Carver, Drugs are Nice [LC, p215]
I last saw Boyd Rice play (as 'Non') back in August 1981, alongside Throbbing Gristle (TG), Z'ev, Cabaret Voltaire and Clock DVA as part of the 'Industrial Night Out' at the Lyceum, London, which brought together the big cheeses of Industrial Music in what was to be something of a coming out party for the scene but turned out also to be its swansong (it was TG's last UK concert; they broke up a few months later). At the time Rice presented himself as a Dadaist and prankster though his aesthetic was actually closer to the sub-Futurist 'instant karma for kids' noise-racket that Merzbow has since successfully appropriated and turned into a brand / 'racket' of his own. While TG boasted of making music from ugly noise, Rice tried to outflank them by serving up the ugliness directly, unfiltered by any obvious concern for form. In fairness Boyd Rice could be said to be among the key players of early Industrial Music, and as a result he perhaps has a shade more kudos than some of the complete musical non-entities we're generally concerned with around here (Wakeford, Pearce, Moynihan, et al). Rice has declared his Fascism in a number of statements, in his art, and through public actions such as appearing in full Fascist regalia and holding a dagger in a photograph alongside Bob Heick, taken in 1989 to promote the latter's organisation, the neo-Nazi skinhead party, American Front. He has also appeared on White Aryan Resistance founder Tom Metzger's cable TV show Race and Reason, where he declared that his friends in Current 93 and Death in June were promoting a 'racialist' agenda and emphasised the importance of Industrial and Neo-Folk music for building the 'Aryan youth movement'.
Since the 80s Rice has continued to release records as well as dabbling ineptly in other media (photography, painting) and playing a leading role in the Church of Satan (he has recently been installed as its leader and 'High Priest') as well as getting involved with Grail mythology, Tiki culture, alcoholism and various other similarly moronic pastimes. Along the way he's written essays and articles outlining his evolving concerns and hobbies for a string of publications, which are collected here along with some previously unpublished writings in the book Standing in Two Circles: The Collected Works of Boyd Rice, edited by Michael Clark and published in 2008 by Creation Books. This collection offers an opportunity to pin down the peculiarly slippery Rice; 'slippery' because his defenders claim that he sets out essentially to 'provoke', which lends him a degree of insulation from the charges of Fascism that would be trivially obvious in any other context. The way this works is that Rice can openly declaim and publish Fascist and racist ideas, and yet confused fans and commentators - who have bought into the mistaken idea that provocation in and of itself is the ne plus ultra of artistic radicalism - still refuse to accept that by buying his records and attending his gigs they are financing a Fascist propagandist since, after all, he is 'merely' trying to provoke. Perhaps these people are by now so utterly stupefied that they're just grateful to anyone who can still manage to wring a response out of them - even if it's by promoting ideas that threaten themselves and everyone they know. This was brought home to me earlier this year when a photographer friend attended Rice's gig in New York to record it for a local paper. Despite the fact that this person has a background as an anti-Fascist, having watched an entire evening of Rice dressed in Fascist military gear, surrounded on stage by Sieg Heil'ing Nazi goons while projecting images of the Swastika and Wolfsangel (the SS symbol Rice used for years as his logo) and reading selections from racist, Social Darwinist tracts, and with the support groups being open White Suprematists, the best he could come up with at the end was that Boyd might perhaps be "a little dodgy". I mean, what does a Fascist have to do these days to get the recognition they deserve?
One reason that Rice's ideology is difficult to get to grips with is that he is patently stupid, meaning that people are loath to take him seriously in case it reflects poorly on their sense of humour or proportion. But that is to miss the fact that condescending to Rice's idiocy by not taking him seriously also makes it easier for him to sell his ideas. While Fascist ideology is by its very nature irrational and essentially incoherent - it doesn't seek to understand the social world in order to place it under collective human control but rather to justify post hoc the Fascist's pre-existing drive to annihilate large parts of society in the name of racial and spiritual 'purity' - this is made worse in Rice's case due to his inability to grapple in even the slightest way with history, politics or anything else requiring a modicum of intellectual focus. His arguments are confused and contradictory, and on top of this he shares the Fascist-occult regard for portents and symbols, for 'mysterious forces', innate biological imperatives, occult machinations and Chthonic powers as the determinants of history, which means that his thought necessarily has the chaotic, cobbled-together quality of childhood obsessions and superstitions.
Despite the fact that there is very little logic or sense in his thought there is nevertheless another kind of coherence at work to the extent that his obsessions cohere with those of his comrades, overlapping neatly with those of the other players in the Fascist-occult 'Apoliteic' counter-culture. Their ideas may well be an incoherent mess when considered purely as ideas, but they share them in common in practical terms as they thrust their hands into the lucky-dip bowl of Fascist esoteric idiocy to pluck out those notions they like they sound of and dole them out among their peers. So it's no surprise that in these essays Rice touches on many of the core themes that tie him to the likes of Michael Moynihan, Doug Pearce and other musicians he has collaborated with over the years (both Moynihan and Pearce provide blurb texts promoting the book; Pearce even providing a rare dash of humour when he salutes Rice as an "inspirational genius"). These people may be in different stages of denial or employing different degrees of deception when it comes to admitting their Fascist allegiances, but they all draw from the same pool of half-baked atavistic notions and gladly share what they find, disagreeing only in points of detail (and then largely only on the basis of minor variations in taste or as a matter of mutual brand positioning). Among Fascist ideologues ideas are essentially fuel for the creation of a mobilising myth, so coherence doesn't matter that much. But while it is impossible to take Boyd Rice seriously as a man or a thinker it would be irresponsible not to register the threat his ideas represent.
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Balding alcoholic Boyd Rice (Photo by Brian Clark) |
"To conform to the edicts of contemporary Western social mores one must totally accept or reject controversial taboo subjects... In considering the issue of Nazism, for example, there can be no grey area, no possibility whatsoever that certain facets of such a subject might hold a kernel of merit or glimmer or redemptive worth... The use of Fascistic or Nazi aesthetics and symbolism is resolutely - aggressively - forbidden in all but the most comedic of contexts, while... the Hammer and the Sickle and The Red Star are so ubiquitous as to verge on countercultural corporate branding... Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini are unilaterally and universally anathematised, while their despotic Communist counterparts Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse Tung and regularly given a pass - despite the fact that the latter wrested exponentially more human life from the planet than did the former." [38]The first thing to note about this is that it skirts the fact that Rice not only uses Fascist 'aesthetics and symbolism' but promotes Fascism itself (in the very book Clark is introducing, for example): Clark presumably hopes that the reader is as stupid as his author and won't notice his equivocation. More importantly, this line of argument exemplifies one of the defining characteristics of the book as a whole since it remains trapped entirely within the framework of a bourgeois thought. To put it bluntly, Rice and his friends repeatedly accept a liberal perception of the world and then simply reverse its particular judgements (Fascism is taboo <-> Fascism is grand). This does not allow the individual to escape bourgeois thought in the way that is promised to the consumer, but rather keeps them entirely within its clutches, albeit perhaps looking a little racier now they sport Totenkopf patches and worship Satan.
Stalinism did indeed pile up the bodies of its victims, slaughtering millions on the road to conquering and then consolidating its social power. But Stalinism and Fascism do not represent political antitheses in the way that both Clark and Fascist thought like to pretend. They are simply different forms of rule peculiar to different stages and conditions of capitalism. Both Stalinism and Fascism murdered Jews, homosexuals, national minorities,'revisionists' and backsliders, trade unionists and socialists. The difference is that Stalinism in both Russia and China did so as part of a process of primitive (state-) capitalist accumulation similar to that by which Britain, for example, achieved much the same ends at a corresponding stage of development through, eg., the slave trade and Highland Clearances (though Stalinism appears bloodier because it compressed the same phase of development into a far shorter period of time). This does not justify Stalinist violence in any way, but it begins to explain it. Fascism serves a different end and achieves it differently. It is essentially a form of emergency rule at a time of extraordinary capitalist crisis in which the working class is terrorised into submission by unleashing waves of destructive violence against any and all perceived enemies of the state, internal and external. Fascism has its ideological dimensions, of course, but in practice they are ultimately subordinate to its self-appointed task of integrating and stabilising capitalist society at times of danger to the state by liquidating it's enemies, both real (the class conscious working class) and imagined (any and all impure and degenerate elements as defined by whatever myth or prejudice inspires the particular strand of Fascism under consideration and mobilises the masses behind it). This is done in order to create an 'organic' / integral society where all the parts are subordinated to the social totality, existing only to serve it.
All of this is opaque to Clark, who talks instead like a consumer in the shopping mall of history, choosing between competing brands of totalitarianism on the basis of which is less fattening for his notional conscience. He wants to pile up the bodies and count them rather than understand the ideas that coordinated their destruction. Instead of considering the politics of Rice's Fascism he likes to present Rice simply as someone 'brave' enough to challenge the 'taboo' against Fascism, as if he might shake bourgeois society to its core merely by invoking the negative theology it shrouds itself in. But this taboo is, after all, only the socially constructed fetish of a particular epoch and doesn't mean that crisis-ridden capitalism won't reach toward Fascism again in future (there are faint indications of this already in Europe). And this turn will be made easier to the extent that ideologues and propagandists, even feeble ones like Boyd Rice, have helped clear the route back to Fascism by normalising it's anti-democratic, mythic values.
A similar logic is apparent in Clark's defence of Satanism;
"The Church of Satan is often dismissed outright as illegitimate by practitioners of more established belief systems... it's difficult to deny that conventional organised religion has been responsible for scores of large scale wars, genocides, inquisitions, witch hunts, crusades and other varieties of human strife over the centuries, but one would be hard pressed to find so much as a single example of a major conflict undertaken in the name of Satan." [39]Once again, the ignorance of basic historical processes (if it isn't entirely feigned) is astonishing. Does he really imagine that the Crusades were simply an expression of Christian values, as opposed to social and political struggles for which the language of religion served merely as a smokescreen and ideology? Clark takes religious ideology at its own word and assigns to it a primordial power over events, as if religion created man rather than the other way about. Worse than this, in treating Satanism as merely an abstract negation of Christianity he ignores the positive content that modern Satanism has developed, which is rooted in racist and proto-Fascist ideas. Modern Satanism begins with the work of Howard Stanton Levey (aka Anton LaVey) and his Church of Satan. As is well known, the key text of his church, The Satanic Bible, which has influenced all of the main Satanist cults since, plagiarises the 19th Century Social Darwinist tract Might is Right, by Arthur Desmond (aka Ragnar Redbeard), a work brimming with violent anti-Semitism and racism. Partly as a result of LaVey's promotion of it, Desmond's book has become a favourite of modern racists, right-wing Libertarians and Fascists, and was even republished by 14 Words Press, the company founded by David Lane, the notorious Klan member who also helped lead the armed Fascist group, The Order, and who died in prison after being convicted of conspiring in the murder of Denver Radio talk show host (and Jewish anti-Fascist) Alan Berg. Entire sections of Might is Right are simply transferred wholesale into Levey's Bible. If Satanism has not yet proved as practically malevolent as Christianity in Clark's estimation it is certainly not for the want of effort on the part of those who have taken the core of Levey's teaching to its logical conclusion, such as Lane and, eg., the members of The Order of Nine Angles and other Nazi-Satanic cults.
As a collection of occasional pieces it's hard to get to grips with Rice's book as a whole. Large parts of it document his obsession with all kinds of ephemera: over the course of the book he discusses things such as novelty soaps, The Lawrence Whelk Retirement Home and Museum, bumper stickers and campaign ribbons, Disneyland, Tiny Tim, 'Leave it to Beaver', Martin Denny and Tiki bars, Mondo films, bubblegum pop and similar avowedly lightweight culture. I've heard it argued that Rice's love of trivia shows that he can't really be a Fascist since he clearly doesn't take anything that seriously (whereas Fascists are presumably permanently dour, focussed solely on their destiny and the tasks of history). But that is to seriously overestimate the Fascist mind which, in reality, feels quite at home with the banal, the kitsch and the maudlin. Rice's debunking attitude is represented as a levelling, critical iconoclasm, but in fact it expresses a much more systematic and thoroughgoing narcissism and cynicism which ultimately sees everything (other than his own übermensch ego) as essentially worthless. This conception perhaps represents the point at which Fascist narcissism blends into post-modern affectlessness. For the Fascist the social world (as opposed to nature) really is a meaningless pit. In Boyd Rice's mind a bar of novelty soap might well be the perfect symbol of the supposed vacuity of existence. The twist in his case is only that he revels in this vacuousness; "it is my view that the best way to inoculate oneself against the prevailing dystopia is to simply decide to love it" [144]. Boyd celebrates the trivial because, as Terry Eagleton put it, "Nihilists and buffoons are allergic to the slightest hint of significance" [TE, 87].
In 'Burning the Ice' (1989) Rice recalls "one of the pivotal episodes of my youth", in which he watches through a picture window as an anonymous man within irons his shirt then makes himself a sandwich and packs his lunch before setting off in his car for work. "I was horrified", says Rice [56]. This experience leads him into a life of desperate opposition to conventional morality, which expresses itself through his stealing money from purses he finds in the cloakroom at parties and breaking into his neighbour's flats through open windows in order to have a sniff around. Terrifying stuff. In 'Sin in the Suburbs' (1994) Rice details his early sexual experiences, including an unintentionally hilarious story about how he was told as a youngster that every time he masturbated he was destroying the millions of potential souls contained in his sperm. This naturally led him to embark on a prolonged course of intense wanking. The image of the red-faced Rice furiously pulling on his cock while fantasising impotently about annihilating non-existent Christian souls seems somehow a fitting tribute to the man and his career.
Things start to take a more genuinely sinister turn when, as the next stage in the planned development of his psychopathy, he decides to stalk a waitress from a local restaurant. He follows her around to learn about her daily movements and then engineers a 'chance' meeting with her on her way home from work. This leads to a date after which, back at the woman's flat, he talks her into letting him tie her up for some S&M fun. Once she is bound he goes into the kitchen to fetch a carving knife then convinces the woman that he is going to cut her open. He then suddenly departs, leaving his victim terrified. Such violent misogyny would become a staple of Rice's life. In 1994's 'Revolt Against Penis Envy' (notice the acronym) he works himself up into a fever of hatred and contempt for women;
"At one time all was right with the world. It was lorded over by men who imposed their will by force. Women kept their mouths shut, underlings knew their place... In a once glorious past, woman was a creature without rights; a second class citizen... She was part cook, part whore, part servant and all child... Woman must be put in her place... These days the only way to restore balance between the sexes is by fear and pain... Rape is the act by which fear and pain are united in love... Now is the time to subjugate. Now is the time to dominate. Now is the time to rape. Let the RAPE commence. Go forth! Rise up! Rape, rape, rape!" [81-83]Clearly this was written as a provocation and, according to the reasoning usually applied to Rice, can't be taken entirely seriously. But why not? If the ideas conform to his practice we can assume that for all that these opinions are expressed so as to 'provoke', they nevertheless also represent his thinking. In her book, Drugs are Nice, Lisa Crystal Carver (aka Lisa Suckdog) details the long-term mental and physical abuse she suffered as Rice's partner and the mother of their child, leading to a brutal attack which saw her badly injured and Rice imprisoned ("Boyd strangled me and threw me against walls and bashed my head against the futon frame, [finally he] released his hands from my neck and stood up, dazed, like a big, stupid oaf and smacked his lips with the satisfaction of having given in to impulse" [LC, 309]).
Other parts of Rice's book concern individuals who have become icons for the Fascist counter-culture; Anton LaVey, Savitri Devi and Charles Manson. In 'I'll Call You Abraxas' (1994) Rice details his various meetings and interviews with Manson. Indeed, Manson gave this book it's title, having said to Rice, "I'll call you Abraxas, because you stand in two circles at once" [100] (Abraxas being a Gnostic deity which Rice believes, after Jung, is "the ultimate archetype", being beyond all dualities - and therefore 'beyond good and evil'). Rice claims to have been a fan of Manson since his teenage years. He also claims that it was him who took Throbbing Gristle out to Manson's old base at Spahn Ranch to have the photographs taken which appeared in Re:Search's early feature on TG, and which cemented the association between them and Manson. Naturally, Manson is a hero to Rice, and a font of tremendous wisdom;
"... he seemed to be an expert in many things... He knew about ancient history and current history, and the forces that shaped both. He seemed to posses a comprehensive overview of the history of the whole world; not just the events as they are presented, but all the unseen factors that preceded and resulted from those events." [97]Even Rice cannot fail to notice that Manson is a fantasist (at one point he tells Rice that his supporters have hijacked a fleet of nuclear submarines and are holding the leaders of the world to ransom while negotiating his release). He also notices the disparity between Manson's supposed omniscience and the fact that, apart from anything else, he is by normal standards a hopeless loser. But that only leads Rice to conclude that Manson is "a far more complex and multi-faceted character than even I'd imagined" [100]. What binds Rice and Manson together is a titanic narcissism which leads them to take for granted their own effortless superiority to the general run of worthless mankind (an impression which strikes me as incredible, given the poverty of the human material in question). Rice certainly approves of Manson's violent misanthropy, which mirrors the attitude expressed in LaVey's Satanic Bible and Redbeard's Might is Right. At one point Rice encourages Manson to attempt to get people to understand his point of view, to which Manson responds;
"People? Understand? People don't understand a fucking thing. They have lower awareness than turds. If this table were the world, and it was covered with turds representing humans, and you exercised complete control over them... You could move the turds from here to there... and it wouldn't make a bit of difference. Not one bit. They have no souls. No intelligence. You could flush three fourths of them down the toilet and the planet would never miss them." [99]
"When the person finally comes along to restore the balance in this world... There will be more blood, more death, more destruction and more suffering than there has been in the history of life on Earth. And I don't say that just because it's what all the worthless fuckers out there deserve... but because that is what will be necessary." [99]A love of Manson's systematic misanthropy ties Rice squarely to James Mason and The Universal Order, a Nazi group dedicated to promoting Manson as a Fascist icon. Mason's book, Siege, celebrates Manson's vicious alienation and was published by Rice's friend and collaborator Michael Moynihan (and discussed in a earlier post). In the early nineties Rice appeared alongside Mason and Moynihan on radio evangelist Bob Larson's show, during which Moynihan and Rice not only defended Manson but even taunted the mother of Sharon Tate (one of the victims of the Manson Family's killing spree), who had called in to protest. Mason famously has even defended the murder of Tate's unborn baby, saying that "it was, after all, a Jew" [JM, 328].
Rice also has essays here on Anton LaVey and Savitri Devi. Both are important figures in the Fascist-occult underground; LaVey as the fantasist who founded The Church of Satan, and Devi as an obscurantist who tried to combine Fascism with ideas drawn from Vedic culture, arguing that Hinduism is the nearest thing we have today to the Pagan religion of the original Aryans. In her book The Lightning and the Sun she argues that Hitler is 'Kalik', an incarnation of Vishnu destined, according to the Vedas, to end the current cycle of world history and initiate a new age (she was clearly wrong about that, but that doesn't bother her followers). Devi was also an active Fascist, imprisoned by Allied Forces in 1949 for spreading Nazi propaganda in post-War Germany. Her work has been praised by such conspicuously un-diverse figures as repeat-offending aspirant British Führer Colin Jordan, James Mason, and 'Squeaky' Fromme from the Manson Family. As it happens Rice has little of interest to say about either LaVey or Devi, except inasmuch as he gives away aspects of his own mindset. Apart from celebrating LaVey's misanthropy ("He would often speak at great length (and in great detail) of unspeakable acts of cruelty and violence" [133]) he is also impressed because LaVey normally "only deals with millionaires and movie stars" [ 131]. In Devi's case he notes that "she tested as having genius level IQ" [152]. Reified wealth, celebrity and intelligence are all equally attractive to Rice's banal mind.
A number of essays in the book deal with the weighty matter of Rice's 'philosophy' and world-view. In them he touches on ideas that are common currency among his Fascist peers. Rice's 'big' idea, which he returns to over and again, consists of a reactionary-romantic elevation of nature over culture. It is not so much that his view is reductive (in which case culture would be a mere epiphenomenon of nature); he sees everything that is specifically human as an unnatural and arbitrary excrescence on top of nature. His train of thought starts with an idea he quotes from the German naturalist and artist (and Social Darwinist racist) Ernst Haeckel; "Man is not above nature, but in nature" [89]. As far as it goes, this is true. The problem is that Rice's rigidly mechanical mind cannot grasp the thought dialectically, so he draws the mistaken conclusion that "man is synonymous with nature" [65]. But this is a very different argument, and it leads to the conclusion that that part of man which is not strictly natural is abstract to the point of unreality. This is clearly a self-cancelling and redundant philosophy: to see this you need only ask yourself why somebody who believes that nature is everything, and ideas are airless distractions, would bother publishing a book at all. The point is that man, while wholly part of nature, is at the same time distinguished from it by culture, and that this culture is every bit as real and effective as nature.
To see what this implies, consider the next stage of Rice's argument, which involves pointing out that nature has no sense of right and wrong, good or bad; "Nature, unlike man, is utterly indifferent to subjective judgements such as 'good' and 'bad'" [142]. The obvious response is to point out that the converse is equally true - that man, unlike nature, simply is not indifferent to subjective judgements. If that were not true then Rice would have nothing to rant about, and his attempts to persuade you of anything at all would be pointless. In fact, the distinction between nature and culture which Rice's entire 'philosophy' turns on is itself cultural and unnatural (but nonetheless real). It is culture that generates the dialectical distinction between ourselves and the nature that is the 'other' we transform in production: Rice's mistake is to reify this distinction and make it absolute, rather than relative.
Rice claims that "Nature adheres to an immutable order" [63], but in fact nature is very much mutable and has a substantial history of its own. One thing we know with absolute certainty is that nature at some point gave rise to culture. This mechanical idea of an unchanging nature is also at the root of traditional religious metaphysics. If nature was immutable then you might ask; where did humans and their culture - where did 'spirit' - suddenly arise from? The traditional answer is that God breathed spirit into matter as part of his creation, and yet this spirit is still separate from matter and exists in its own right, being 'unnatural'. In this way the crude materialism Rice advocates inevitably gives rise to religiosity and occultism ('spiritualism'), as it does with Rice himself: his book is littered with tales of ghosts (autonomous 'spirits'), uncanny happenings, mysterious portents and other such occult banalities: stupid materialism (mechanical and biological determinism) and stupid spirituality (occultism) are conjoined twins.
While Rice's explanation of his ontology and 'spirituality' are a nothing more than jumble of 19th Century solecisms, they nevertheless form the basis for the further development of his boneheaded narcissistic resentment. Having separated nature and culture his next trick is to argue that nature itself knows nothing of equality or human rights;
"In truth, the concept of natural equality is not natural at all - and in fact contradicts every dictate of nature." [63]This naturally allows him to launch into a series of bitter tirades against 'inferiors' of every kind, who he believes have no rights and should expect no mercy, since talk of 'rights', 'equality' and so on is rooted in the unreality of culture and out of step with natural law. In an act of extraordinary special pleading he argues that the intellect is nothing to be proud of anyway, and not to be taken seriously because it is out of kilter with 'reality'. Instead he argues that man should rely on instinct alone;
"Nature adheres to an immutable order; humanity to an ever increasing chaos. Nature recognises no equality at any level of its order; humanity preaches an all-pervasive equality and freely hands out unearned 'rights'... In short: humanity is Democratic, nature is Fascist." [63]
"Man follows his intellect, employing logic and reason, and yet in so doing he betrays his most primal, basic desires." [88]His trick here is to try to divide the human being schematically in two, one part (ideas and values) corresponding to culture, the other (instincts) corresponding to nature. Once again he makes absolute what is in reality only a relative distinction. Of course some human responses are more deeply wired into the physical, biological and genetic 'nature' of man than others, but certainly the 'instincts' that Boyd is covertly trying to justify (racism, misogyny, etc.) are in fact very much cultural products, as can be seen by anyone who spends any time at all considering their long development and the way that different societies have taken different attitudes towards them.
"Man's instincts will always and forever reflect the will of the natural order. Conversely, man's intellect has become divorced from the hard realities of life on earth, having instead become lost in a nebulous realm of ideas, theories, beliefs and opinions, which largely have no basis in tangible fact. Unless man's intellect comes to reflect his instinctual, soul-oriented values it will always place him at odds with himself." [61]
Morality too has nothing to do with nature in Rice's estimation, and so he's against it and wants you to slough it off. He believes that "a true understanding of natural law would render conventional morality obsolete." [87]. What Rice advocates is an eternal feeding frenzy in which the strong annihilate the weak in a totally amoral struggle for domination, for "higher men disdain the lives of the weak and cowardly - slave types" [61]. You might call this 'unprogrammatic Fascism', as he doesn't believe that things could ever be otherwise and criticises his Nazi heroes because they "still harboured the naively romantic dream that they could somehow turn the tide around" [141]. So that is Rice's philosophy in a nutshell: Fascism without its noble ideals (like the old joke about Hitler returning to Earth and declaring "this time - no more Mr. Nice Guy").
The only remaining thing to say about Rice's cod-philosophy is how neatly it mirrors that of his hard-core Nazi friend James Mason. Both fetishise extreme alienation and violent misanthropy: Mason's Universal Order has adopted Manson as the ideal Nazi icon because of a combination of this and the fact that he has counter-cultural clout. Both believe that that the process of social 'degeneration' (from a fascist point of view: multiculturalism, democracy, etc.) is so advanced that they will support any and all violence against it. Both prioritise 'instinct' (their prejudice) over reason. And both, in different ways, are finding an audience.
This utterly stupid and offensive book should be warning enough that Boyd Rice is not a prankster and certainly not someone who should be lauded for 'pushing the envelope', but rather a Nazi who uses the cover provided by slack-jawed concepts of what constitutes radical art in order to promote - and create a focus for - the violence and hatred of a small but growing section of the Fascist movement internationally. As such he should be opposed in every possible way in order to stop his operation in its tracks, precisely as we would with any other Fascist shithead.
Unless noted otherwise, references are to Boyd Rice, Brian M Clark (ed), 2008, Standing in Two Circles: The Collected Works of Boyd Rice, Creation Books, London.
LC: Lisa Crystal Carver, 2005, Drugs are Nice, Snowbooks, London.
TE: Terry Eagleton, On Evil, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
JM: James Mason, 2010, Siege: The Collected Writings of James Mason, edited by Michael M. Jenkins (Michael Moynihan), introduction by Ryan Schuster, Black Sun Publications, Bozeman, MT.
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