On December 31, 2018, white nationalist YouTube personality Jean-François Gariépy invited multiple guests for a New Year’s Eve special. One of them, another YouTube white nationalist who goes by the name “PhilosophiCat,” told Gariépy that she had formed a white power “neo-folk” group called Überfolk, and had released their first song, “Hyperborean Sun.”

And while it’s not nearly as terrible as some other white supremacist songs — see the easily mockable “It’s Okay To Be White” song — it’s still pretty bad, and ends with the unintentionally silly chant of “We climb the mountains to the Sun!” PhilosophiCat described that particular track as being about “seeking, like, the organic wisdom of our ancestors from the distant past.”

She also discussed a song called “Waning Days” — a clip of which Gariépy played on the show. PhilosophiCat called it a “slightly more political song” which had originally been written in 2010. She said that it “was written in a universal spirit of sort of evoking the rebel in all of us, you know no matter what cause we support,” and added that it carried a strong populist theme.

After a snippet of “Waning Days” was played for viewers, PhilosophiCat referred to it as “George Burdi’s project.” Burdi was the founder of Resistance Records, a Neo-Nazi music label, as well as the white power band RaHoWa. RaHoWa stands for “racial holy war” and is a key concept of the Creativity Movement — formerly known as the World Church of the Creator — a racist pseudo-religion.

RaHoWa released two full-length albums between 1990 and 1997: “Declaration of War” in 1993 and “Cult of the Holy War” in 1995. The band’s songs were typically about murdering Jews and people of color, praising Nazi Germany, denying the Holocaust, and calling for a violent “white revolution.”

In their song “Avenge Dresden,” about the firebombing of German civilians in WWII, band defended Holocaust denier David Irving and sang “Don’t tell me lies about the Holocaust/’Cause I’ve got some news for you/Don’t tell me lies about the gas chambers/’Cause I ain’t crying over no Jews.”

And the song “Race Riot” — a reference to the 1992 Los Angeles riots that were sparked by the acquittal of Rodney King’s assailants — includes the lyrics:

Bloody riots on the streets, the niggers run amok
Tremble in fear, white man, the reaper’s in the shadowland
Save your children, lock your doors
You can’t come out here no more
On this eve, blood shall be shed
The streets and rivers run deep red

And:

Scream in vain as all comes down
All your sons cannot be found
Watch your wife and daughter raped
But you can’t stop those wild apes
You know you should have realized
When you looked into their eyes
What they had in store for you
Now there’s nothing you can do

During a May 29, 1993 RaHoWa concert in Ottowa, Burdi led his bandmates and fans in a charge against a group of anti-racist counterprotesters. In the ensuing riot several people were injured, including an Anti-Racist Action (“ARA”) member named Alicia Reckzin. Reckzin was knocked to the ground and allegedly kicked by Burdi, who was convicted two years later of assault causing bodily harm.

In 1997 Burdi’s conviction was upheld by the Court of Appeal for Ontario, and Burdi continued to serve his 12 month sentence. Following his release from prison Burdi cut ties with the white power scene, and even gave an interview with the Southern Poverty Law Center (“SPLC”) in 2001.

A repentant Burdi told the SPLC about his upbringing and path to white supremacy. Burdi said he read a copy of George Lincoln Rockwell’s White Power which was owned by his girlfriend’s father. In college a protégé of Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel (1939-2017) gave him a copy of Creativity Movement founder Ben Klassen’s book The White Man’s Bible which, Burdi said, “makes Rockwell’s White Power look like an Aesop fable.”

He expressed disappointment with racist skinheads and the Neo-Nazi music scene and claimed he hadn’t written some of his band’s most violent lyrics, such as those in the song “Third Reich” which promote the murder of blacks, Jews, Communists, and Roma. He also said, “Hatred and anger are wrong because they consume what is good in you. They smother your ability to appreciate love and peace.”

That, it turns out, was a steaming pile of horse manure.

In a 2017 interview with FSN.tv, a German Neo-Nazi outlet, he claimed the reason he “left” the movement was because “probation and parole conditions” forbade him from contacting anyone in the movement for a “three or four year period.” He took that time, he said, to focus on weightlifting, eating healthy, and improving himself spiritually. But he never really gave up his belief in white nationalism. “I never became left-wing or started to view things the opposite way that I did,” he admitted.

David Duke, another guest on Gariépy’s special, told PhilosophiCat that Burdi was “an old friend of mine” whom he had known “for years and years and years.” And he described that music of RaHoWa as “pretty radical” but also added that it “sound[ed] as good musically, I think, as The Who or Pink Floyd or anybody” — which is pretty much the wrongest sentence ever uttered by Duke that didn’t involve slandering Jews.

“Well George has written all the lyrics and everything on this album,” PhilosophiCat boasted. “So I can definitely say he’s a very genuine person. His heart is very much in the right place.” Duke asked her if she talked with Burdi recently, and she admitted that she “talk[s] to him every day.”

Duke went on to say that music is a great way to attract white people to their racist cause, and PhilosophiCat appeared to agree. “Absolutely, music is — it is a key tool in the culture war, I think,” she said. “Maybe I’m just biased because I’m a musician, but I think that music reaches far deeper than you can penetrate with just pure intellect. It really speaks to people on the level of their soul.”

PhilosophiCat said her goal is to have “high-vibe songs for our people” with lyrics that are “100% love for our people,” adding that “it’s not about hating on anybody else, it’s just about generating positive ideas that our people can take and hopefully use to inspire them in their own lives.”

And what better way to do that than with noxious garbage written by a guy who served prison time for assault and who once wrote the lyric “So listen, slimy Jew/You’re gonna wish you were never born when I get my hands on you!” This is the guy whom PhilosophiCat praised as a “very genuine person” whose “heart is very much in the right place.” Inspiring.