How the Counterculture Ushered in Fascism

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Postby John E. Nemo » Fri Oct 12, 2007 2:09 pm

yathrib wrote:It seems that the (nazi) skinhead scene evolved pretty organically out of the punk scene in a number of places. I was marginally involved in the early 1980s punk scene in college. By that, I mean that many of my friends and more-than-friends were more deeply involved, and I went to shows and got as punked out as possible without permanently (like the next morning) altering my appearance. It wasn't long before many of the (mostly) younger and (always) stupider among us started affecting swastikas and other Nazi iconography. At first it was a fashion statement and a way to shock one's parents in a hurry, but it wasn't long before they began to express hatred of different social and ethnic groups. As Nemo notes, many of these people were hardly pure Aryans themselves, and actually most of the hatred and violence was directed toward gays. Also, anyone who got in their way while drunk. My boyfriend, for example (a bassist) had his left arm shattered when these goons pushed him off a wall out of (I guess) scientific curiosity. One of the most terrifying individuals in this "movement" was actually a black female. Seriously.


Was this in D.C. and was the girl named Lefty?
I had a few run-ins with her and her crew many moons ago and it wasn't fun.

I've met Mexican and black Nazi skinheads all over the country, but few had a whole crew of about 50 (or more) white Stormtroopers, like Lefty did.
She and her friends wrecked punk shows all over the DC/Baltimore metro area.

It got so bad that all the punk labels and people who booked punk shows got together and decided that the best way to keep skinheads from coming to shows was to change the music.
Thusly, emo was born.

Personally, I still blame Ian MacKaye and Dante for bringing the Nazi skinheads in the punk scene in first place. Having a band named Iron Cross, whose members dressed like skinheads, is just asking for Nazis to show up and cause trouble.
Ian's cleaned up his image over the years, but I still remember him as the guy who dressed like a skinhead, sang "Kill The Faggot" in the middle of their cover of Wire's "12XU" and sang "Guilty of Being White", all of which brought in armies of skinheads and helped turn the punk scene, which was very non-violent and leftist, into the hardcore scene, which became very violent and right wing.
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Postby John E. Nemo » Fri Oct 12, 2007 2:37 pm

8bitagent wrote: Ministry has devoted the last three albums to exposing the neocons, 9/11, the wars, and the powers that be...and thats not including his famous "NWO" song of 1992. So I seriously doubt Ministry are fascists.

Both punk and early industrial embraced fascist imagery for "shock" value in the art sense, but yes it does appear that some of the early adopters of modern experimental noise embraced fascism and crap like the "process church" a little too much.

So its a strange line.

Bands like Skinny Puppy, Ministry, KMFDM, Suicide Commando, etc have made a modern career of devoting whole albums to opposing the Nazi like powers that be and war, but...their predecessors seemed to almost embrace it.

I NEVER understood why it was "hip" for youth to embrace Satanism.
The powers that be are very big into that sort of thing.


Ministry's exposure of 9/11,/NWO, etc. is them aping what Killing Joke have been doing for 20+ years.

Those guys really jump on whatever trendy bandwagon comes along, which explains Lard and Pailhead.

They started out as a trendy new wave band and then, after hearing Voivod's "Killing Technology", decided to become a metal/industrial band.
After Voivod fell off, Al started aping bands like Killing Joke and Chrome.

I blame Al for the death of some people I know, as he turned them into crackhead junkies like he is.

BTW, in case you don't know, alot of the samples on Skinny Puppy's "Bites" are from the movie Videodrome.

The band that really dropped the ball, (in addition to KJ becoming Masonic Luciferians) from my perspective, was Coil.
They had a unique "goth" sound when they first started and did a haunting cover of Cohen's "Who By Fire" on Horse Rotorvator.

They released ALOT of material after that, but , IMHO, it never even got close to what they did on Horse Rotorvator.
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Postby IanEye » Fri Oct 12, 2007 3:04 pm

Hi John E.

well, I guess saying Coil have never done another album like "Horse Rotorvator" is a bit like saying Scorsese has never done another film like "After Hours". It is a statement I wouldn't disagree with, but at the same time I don't consider it, "dropping the ball". But I certainly find no fault with you for saying "Horse Rotorvator" is your favorite Coil album [which is what I think you are saying], that has some great tracks on it, like "Ostia" which I have quoted on this board before.

I really like "Musick To Play In The Dark Volume 1" which to me sounds like the soundtrack to "Eyes Wide Shut" if Gus Van Sant had directed the film instead of Kubrick.........
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Postby Truth4Youth » Fri Oct 12, 2007 3:28 pm

Jeff wrote:
Truth4Youth wrote:
I'm also curious as to why everything that the far right does is a conspiracy in the eyes of so many RI'ers. I actually have contact with someone you'd all call "far right", he's a man by the name of Mark Glenn. He's said stuff that I disagree with- he's not fond of Judaism and certainly doesn't have kind things to say about the Talmud. Now most people here will take that as evidence he is part of a conspiracy to wipe Jewish people off the the planet. Why is that nobody here ever comes to this conclusion:

Some people are simply misguided!


I think I've stated that a number of times. The problem and the question I see is that the misguided are being guided by someone, for some reason - why?

By the way, to say Mark Glenn is "not fond of Judaism" is rather an understatement:

"JUDAISM, the cancer that is eating the body away and left it a skeletonized hull of what it once was. JUDAISM, the root of all mankind’s present evils.... Get rid of it. It is a cancer. Cut it out and throw it away, as Jesus instructed that we do. It has never and will never be of any benefit to mankind. We cannot live in any kind of ‘peaceful co-existence’ with it. It is a declaration of war, and as long as it exists out there, mankind will never have peace."

Now most people here will take that as evidence he is part of a conspiracy to wipe Jewish people off the the planet.


He's not part of a "conspiracy," but he's quite upfront about what he'd like to see happen.


I'm just trying to say- Live and let live guys!


With militant racists, anti-semites and neo-Nazis? We're not playing for the same team.


I understand that what Mark Glenn's says is VERY, VERY, VERY upfront and he does go a bit far with what he says in my opinion. But I've talked to the man on the radio and have had some other contact with him as well, and I just don't see him wanting to kill Jewish people. This is from personal experience. In addition to Mark Glenn I've met a person at an ancient mysteries (David Hatcher Childress) conference, who said much of the same things as Glenn. So I've talked to some of these people, and I just don't thnik we should use a broad brush in this case. The issue of anti-semitism (as with most anything else we examine) is not a simple one, and more complex than that. I think we can agree to disagree on this though because neither of us would conform to Nazi or white supremacist ideas anyway, and there's no way I can convince you otherwise of your viewpoint based on my personal experiences.
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Postby John E. Nemo » Fri Oct 12, 2007 4:05 pm

IanEye wrote:Hi John E.

well, I guess saying Coil have never done another album like "Horse Rotorvator" is a bit like saying Scorsese has never done another film like "After Hours". It is a statement I wouldn't disagree with, but at the same time I don't consider it, "dropping the ball". But I certainly find no fault with you for saying "Horse Rotorvator" is your favorite Coil album [which is what I think you are saying], that has some great tracks on it, like "Ostia" which I have quoted on this board before.

I really like "Musick To Play In The Dark Volume 1" which to me sounds like the soundtrack to "Eyes Wide Shut" if Gus Van Sant had directed the film instead of Kubrick.........


I'll elaborate on Coil "dropping the ball".

Coil had a unique sound on Horse Rotorvator, that formed a mental picture in my mind's eye of a group of Gregorians chanting and singing melodically, while slowly being lowered into the abyss. The sounds of demons and damnation coming closer and closer, until they overtake the Gregorians and rend them limb from limb.

Coil's music, after that, seemed to sounds of the damned, crying out from their tortures in the bowels of Hell.

Or, to put it less dramatically, Horse Rotorvator was much pleasure and some pain, and their work after that was mostly pain without pleasure.
They exchanged torchsongs for dirges and it all got a bit too Diamanda Galas for me.

Their later work makes me believe that music CAN be used for mind control, as I would rather stab my best friend than listen to their cover of "Tainted Love".
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Genesis Breyer P-Orridge's lover has died.

Postby Uncle $cam » Fri Oct 12, 2007 4:35 pm

Lady Jaye P-Orridge passed away Tuesday in the arms of her partner, industrial/acid house music pioneer Genesis P-Orridge at their home in New York:

http://genesisp-orridge.com/index.php?s ... album_id=1

How phreaky is that?


NOTHING SHORT OV A TOTAL WAR
—Old TOPI Proverb.
Last edited by Uncle $cam on Fri Oct 12, 2007 4:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby IanEye » Fri Oct 12, 2007 4:37 pm

ok, John E.
wow, great description of your mind's eye impression of "Horse". I like it!
Having said that, their cover of "Tainted Love" which indeed is a dirge, came out a year before "Horse Rotorvator" was released.

And, if you care to listen to some later era "Heavenly" sounding Coil, might I suggest "Queens of the Circulating Library"?

ok, RI readers, sorry to get off topic - back to Fascism! right?[/url]
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Postby Truth4Youth » Mon Feb 23, 2009 8:13 pm

Thought this may interest some folks here, a snippet of an interview with industrial musician Z'Ev about a project he is/was doing with Boyd Rice:

I wanted to ask you about your take on Boyd’s supposed fascist tendencies.

Yeah, this question comes up. The one thing you have to remember about Boyd, and this is exactly what I said for my interview in Larry Wessel’s film, I don’t know if it made it into the finished film – one of Boyd’s favourite words is “infantile”. Boyd likes and appreciates and explores and supports the infantile. Boyd likes to provoke, OK? You have to remember, back in the punk era, Boyd used to like to walk around looking like a Hare Krishna, because it drove the punks crazy. When all of the punks at the beginning started using fascist symbols and all that, Boyd wasn’t doing that. Boyd was doing a whole other thing to provoke and piss people off, being more like this peace and love hippy. Then at a certain point, he got into a more particularly fascist image, rather late in the game, actually. A lot of it is just image.

You don’t think there’s any substance or serious intention there at all?

Well, he’s certainly not racist. So what does ‘fascist’ mean? He’s a civil libertarian, close to an anarchist. I don’t take him seriously when he comes out with this stuff. Like in 1988, he was working with this guy Nikolas Schreck on the 8-8-88 concert in San Francisco, and he was coming out with all this social Darwinist stuff, and I thought it was just pathetic. I said to him, “Boyd, if there really were some kind of fascist regime coming into power, you degenerate artists would be the first fucking thing to go, for Chrissakes!” And the other thing that happened around that time was that Boyd would go and visit Charlie Manson in prison. And Manson was very involved with the Aryan Brotherhood, this racist prison gang. So people would see Charlie being visited by this weird guy, and they’d ask him about it, and he’d say, “Oh, that’s Boyd Rice, he’s cool,” and they’d talk about it, and then people would show up at record stores looking for Boyd Rice stuff. And of course if you take your typical guy who works in a record store, and you have some hardcore Aryan Brotherhood people come in, the record store guy is going shit his fucking pants, right? Boyd was never directly involved with the Aryan Brotherhood, but these kind of incidents happened, and they gave him a certain reputation. This is one of the reasons why Boyd doesn’t want to do interviews anymore. We were talking at the Mute offices the other day about our project, and we agreed that I’d be the public face of the project, as it were. Because when people interview Boyd, this stuff is all they want to talk about, and as far as Boyd’s concerned, they want to talk to someone from 20 years ago. He’s not that person anymore, but no matter how much he tries to talk about what he’s been doing recently, people just want to talk about the fascism thing. At one point, there was a German radio show which had me put together a programme for them, and then they heard about my connections with Boyd, and I got an email saying, “Very sorry, you can’t do it, Boyd Rice is banned, and anyone who has anything to do with Boyd Rice is banned.” I didn’t even answer them, I just thought it was totally insane. That’s fucking fascist, if anything! But we’ll see what happens when the Boyd Rice / Z’EV thing comes out. Maybe I’ll find out that Boyd knew what he was doing when he said, “I’m not talking to any press.”


http://monkeyhouse-recordings.co.uk/JK2 ... &Itemid=38
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Postby SonicG » Wed Feb 25, 2009 9:16 am

Yes, sigh...I have FINALLY registered here to post after reading since basically the beginning of RI...
Anyhow, stuff tossed on this thread really bothers me...O-MI-GOD, obscure counterculture figures are responsible for fascism in our time...Too bad Mr. Nemo is no longer around...Ian M. and Iron Cross are responsible for punk skinheads!? I guess Screwdriver and active recruiting ot the NF among UK skinheads never occurred- say wot? Genesis P. Orridge is an evil satanist!?
How many people in this world have ever heard of or heard Boyd Rice? Look, the modern-day fascist, racist right is pretty easy to observe and they would never cotton to any of these freaks and their f--ked up music. Go to stormfront and prove me wrong...go on then....
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Postby nathan28 » Wed Feb 25, 2009 11:21 am

SonicG wrote:Yes, sigh...I have FINALLY registered here to post after reading since basically the beginning of RI...
Anyhow, stuff tossed on this thread really bothers me...O-MI-GOD, obscure counterculture figures are responsible for fascism in our time...Too bad Mr. Nemo is no longer around...Ian M. and Iron Cross are responsible for punk skinheads!? I guess Screwdriver and active recruiting ot the NF among UK skinheads never occurred- say wot? Genesis P. Orridge is an evil satanist!?
How many people in this world have ever heard of or heard Boyd Rice? Look, the modern-day fascist, racist right is pretty easy to observe and they would never cotton to any of these freaks and their f--ked up music. Go to stormfront and prove me wrong...go on then....


Thanks Sonic, it's worth remember that people like Boyd Rice and Gen P-Orridge and Ian MacKaye are totally unknown to the world at large. I was at a show once. The singer was a black dude, and made a joke about how they were going to do Screwdriver covers all night... and he had to explain the joke since no one got it, and that was at a show. I think Nemo had a point though elsewhere on the board he went insane over Moloch, it happens.

Could Ian MacKaye (or Boyd Rice) posing as a reactionary fuck up a scene for good? Yeah, of course. Did he inaugurate Ronald Reagan? not quite. To get intellectual, a lot of subculture theorists have pointed out that most subcultures are male-dominated to begin with and have a cartoonish aesthetic, which pretty much ensures they'll descend into violence etc.

I was reading somewhere, where a UK punk rocker was walking around wearing a Nazi swastika in '78 and getting nasty looks from everyone. Then some BNP guys came up to him and told him they thought it was cool, and in his words he "realized [he] had made a mistake." Which gets back into the high-brow critique. If you adopt symbols that are highly charged with negativity, like Nazi stuff, because the mainstream culture inevitably co-opts from the subcultures, it's going to take the form--i.e., the swastika--but distort the meaning (punks wearing swastikas means "fuck you"; Stormfronters wearing swastikas means "kill the Blacks and Jews").
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Postby Joe Hillshoist » Wed Feb 25, 2009 9:11 pm

hi Sonic.

Hows it hanging?
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Postby OP ED » Wed Feb 25, 2009 10:00 pm

Genesis P. Orridge = Officially Old and Boring For Some Time Now.


The singer was a black dude, and made a joke about how they were going to do Screwdriver covers all night... and he had to explain the joke since no one got it, and that was at a show.


do you remember names for singer/band? [ringing bells]

just curious.
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