Fellowship
March/April 2001

In the fall of 1998, a young man with short-cropped hair walked into a record store in Chicago. After nervously browsing through the store, he selected a CD and brought it to the counter. While being rung up, he tried to hand the clerk white supremacist literature. This being a small, independent record store, the clerk had been approached before by racist skinheads trying to distribute literature. She refused his pamphlet, gave him his change, and thought little of the encounter until the July 4th weekend of that summer.

That weekend, pictures of the same young man flashed across CNN and other news outlets. His hair had grown out and the "Sabbath Breaker" tattoo emblazoned on his chest was covered up. The young skinhead who had tried to pass her literature was now dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, after going on a two-state shooting spree that had left two dead and eleven wounded. The young man, Benjamin Smith, had shot himself rather than be apprehended by the police.

Smith, by all outward appearances, lived the good life. He attended one of the best high schools in the country, grew up in a good neighborhood in the affluent Chicago North Shore area, and was attending college. What could drive a young man with seemingly every advantage to murder an African-American basketball coach and a Korean-American graduate student and injure eleven others?

As a high school student he was recruited into a white power group called the White WAR Commission and provided with ideological ammunition to carry out acts of racist violence. Like an increasing number of young people being attracted to organized bigotry today, Smith didn't read about it in a book or see it on TV. He heard the sounds of hate.

Soundtracks to the White Revolution

When many of us think of white power music, we think of skinheads: shaved heads, tattoos, skinny suspenders, and shiny Doc Marten boots. Few of us know that, in actuality, most skinheads are not racist. Not many realize that white power music has established roots in a number of youth music subcultures, ranging from heavy metal to folk. We are horrified to learn that white power music is a highly profitable, multi-international industry that is increasingly popping up on the shelves of local record stores.

And that is precisely why it is so dangerous.

Since its rather humble beginnings, white power music has grown exponentially. It now consists of an international scene with hundreds of bands, record labels, and distribution outlets. What started with one band in London in the late 1970's has grown into a multi-million-dollar enterprise that is now the number one fund-raiser for organized white supremacists, surpassing bank robbery and counterfeiting. In the process, it has created a new, international network of haters. For White power music has also become the number one recruitment tool for organized white supremacists. Targeting new subcultures -- including punk, hardcore, metal, darkwave, ambient, experimental, and even folk in its quest for new recruits -- white power music is working to produce the next generation of bigots.

While still in high school, Benjamin Smith was recruited into the white supremacist movement through this music. In his tragic story, it not only recruited him into the movement but also provided the soundtrack for violence. By demeaning Jews, people of color, and gays and lesbians, white power music provides volatile young bigots with the ideological ammunition to commit hate motivated crimes. Since they first appeared in the US in the mid 1980's, white power skinheads have been responsible for over fifty murders, thousands of assaults, and countless acts of vandalism and mayhem.

There are, however, a number of young people who have decided to respond to white power music. Working in their schools, congregations, communities, and subcultures, these dedicated individuals are struggling to ensure that youth culture is free from the hatred and violence that white power music represent.

Working with young people around the country, the Center for New Community, an anti-bigotry organization based in Chicago, has taken the lead in responding to white power music by starting "Turn It Down: A Campaign Against White Power Music." Turn It Down's goal is to equip young people, parents, teachers, civic leaders, and the record industry with the tools to challenge the threat of white power music. Thus far, thousands of young people have participated in various Turn It Down events. In addition, hundreds of bands, record labels, distribution outlets, record stores, and radio stations have joined Turn It Down, pledging to protect youth subcultures from organized bigotry.

The Turn It Down Campaign feels that there are three key components to responding to white power music. First, education. Anyone who is concerned with protecting youth culture must know what white power music is and how to identify it. Second, action. It is vital that white power music be countered at every turn. If here is a concert, it needs to be shut down. If a record store is selling white power music, it needs to be encouraged to change its store policy. Third, culture. Responding to white power music cannot simply be reactive, it must be proactive. Young people need to build a culture of anti-racism, a culture that is immune to the repeated recruitment efforts of white supremacists.

Styles of White Power music

The first step in responding to white power music is being able to recognize it. The different styles of racist and anti-Semitic music are more than just lyrics and musical notes: they represent entire ways of life dedicated to promoting hatred. Recognizing the lyrics of hate rock bands is easy. Understanding their networks' subtle signs and symbols is not.

Youth subcultures are, for some, a home. They provide support, community, and a sense of identity to people who may not feel part of the mainstream. For others, they are foreign and incomprehensible worlds filled with loud music and bizarre fashion. In responding to white power music, it is easy to simply demonize entire youth subcultures. Consider, for example, skinheads.

To many of us, skinheads are the epitome of hatred. Along with the Ku Klux Klan, they represent the most commonly held image of organized bigotry. In reality, however, most skinheads are not racist. There are three types of skinheads in America: racist, anti-racist, and "traditional" or non-racist: the subculture must be understood as contested terrain. Racist skinheads battle for control, working to recruit from the ranks of the non-racist and anti-racist, while anti-racist skinheads labor to promote human rights and dignity.

It is this struggle that characterizes all subcultures plagued by white power music. The solution is not to demonize youth subcultures, but rather to work to understand them and support those courageous men and women who compete with white supremacists on an almost daily basis for control of their scenes.

In the late 1970's, a British band called Skrewdriver began making waves in the skinhead scene. With lyrics like "white power, for England, before it gets too late" and a catchy beat, Skrewdriver became the founding father of white power music. By the early 1980's, racist skinheads managed to nearly destroy the skinhead scene in Great Britain. Roddy Moreno has been the singer of the anti-racist skinhead band The Oppressed for over twenty years. According to Roddy, "If you don't care, they will take your scene, they will ruin it and suck the lifeblood out of it. When we started off, we had songs on compilation albums and were making the national charts. But once you had bands like Skrewdriver singing 'white Britain' and stuff, all of a sudden nobody would touch any skinhead bands. If you were a skinhead, you couldn't play anywhere, nobody wanted to put your records out. It was all because the Nazis came in and most people stood by and let it happen."

First appearing in the US in the mid-Eighties, it wasn't until the early 1990's that the white power skinhead scene began to mature. Ironically founded in Detroit, a city known for the music of Motown, a white power record company named Resistance would move the scene from photocopied fanzines and third-generation copies of cassette tapes to glossy magazines and professionally produced CDs.

Resistance, in effect, started the march out of the underground and into local record stores. When the Michigan tax authorities raided Resistance in 1996, they had over 50,000 compact discs in stock. Resistance magazine, published by Resistance Records, had a circulation of 15,000. After the raid, the growth of Resistance and the white power skinhead scene slowed.

Resistance changed hands a number of times, and no other label or distributor stepped in to take its place. In the summer of 1998, however, William Pierce (the sixty-eight-year-old head of the most significant neo-Nazi group, the National Alliance) purchased the label and managed to rehabilitate the white power music scene. Pierce understands the role of culture. He's the author of the racist pulp novel, The Turner Diaries, the book that inspired the Oklahoma City bombing.

Pierce quietly purchased Resistance and moved it to his West Virginia headquarters. "As Resistance Records regains strength, that acquisition should add an increasing number of younger members, in the eighteen to twenty-five year age range, to our ranks," Pierce explained. It wasn't only recruits that attracted Pierce, however. With a catalog of over 150 releases by white power skinhead bands like Bound for Glory, the Blue Eyed Devils, and Attack, he expects Resistance to net over $1 million in profits by the end of this year.

While Resistance worked diligently to professionalize the white power skinhead music scene in the United States, a new style of heavy metal music was making waves in Scandinavia. Combining grinding heavy metal, keyboards, and operatic vocals, black metal is certainly an acquired taste. It has become known for its extreme lyrics and bizarre outfits. Black metalers are known to dress up in "corpsepaint" -- white face paint with black circles around the eyes and mouth -- or Viking gear such as loincloths and swords.

They are also known for a small subset of the black metal scene that identifies itself as the "national socialist black metal underground," a tightly-knit international scene of bands, record labels, distributors, and fanzines dedicated to promoting racism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia within the heavy metal subculture. Bands like Burzum, Absurd, and Graveland lead the way, combining hate-filled lyrics with grinding heavy metal.

The final style of white power music is often called 'experimental' or 'noise.' Much like the other two, it is a subculture that is not exclusively racist. Rather, a few individuals within the experimental scene have worked to promote their unique brand of hatred. Bands like NON, Blood Axis, and Blut Kampf stay away from the swastikas and violent lyrics of national socialist black metal and white power skinheads. Rather, they push the cultural envelope, using the cultural trappings of hatred. In the process, they create the cultural space in which racism, anti-Semitism, and fascism become acceptable ideas.

Responding to Hate

Youth music subcultures represent a safe haven of sorts. They provide many a place to feel welcome and supported outside of mainstream culture. It is vital that these subcultures be protected from organized white supremacists seeking new recruits. Youth who work for peace and justice must take the lead by monitoring their local music venues, record stores, and campuses. This means that white power music must be confronted on all levels.

In February of 1999, a group of high school and college students learned that a suburban Chicago record store called Record Breakers was selling white power music. When these kids called the record store and asked them to take the music off of their shelves, the owners and managers responded with insults and innuendos, stating that they would continue to sell white power music.

Rather than simply give up, this small group of concerned individuals decided to do something. They organized a campaign called "We Will Not Share the Shelves." First they organized an industry boycott of the store, eventually convincing twelve record labels and distributors to refuse to sell to it. In phase two, they took their message to the community, handing out fliers to shoppers alerting them that their community record store was selling white power music, sometimes to children as young as ten years old.

Nearly two years after the "We Will Not Share the Shelves" campaign, Record Breakers is still selling white power music. However, they are now more commonly known as "Racist Records." Sales are up at other record stores in the area. Bands have cancelled in-store appearances. In many ways, the store has become a pariah in Chicago's youth subcultures.

Record stores are not the only targets of white supremacists. Even live performances can be disrupted by organized bigots seeking to overtake youth subcultures.

In September of 1991, two weeks before the band Fugazi, a popular punk band from Washington DC, was to play at a local community hall in Eugene, Oregon, a white power skinhead was arrested. When searched, a flyer was found in his back pocket calling for racist skinheads to come and disrupt the concert. White power skinheads were upset that Fugazi had, during this tour, refused to play if racist skinheads were allowed into the shows. Sadly, the community panicked and the show was canceled. Several young people decided to meet together to ensure that bigots would never again dictate the choices of the local alternative scene. It was from this meeting that Communities Against Hate was born.

The new group quickly attracted volunteers from the alternative music scene and began to educate the community on white power and how to respond to it. They also began publishing a quarterly 'zine that frequently exposed white power organizers in the community. Eventually the publicity became too much for the white supremacist recruiters, who left southern Oregon just as quickly as they had come.

A little over a year later, Communities Against Hate welcomed Fugazi back to the same local hall where the show had been canceled. This time, instead of an empty hall, the club was packed to capacity. Fugazi showed its support by donating a percentage of the door proceeds back to Communities Against Hate.

Communities Against Hate continued its organizing by distributing its 'zine and holding a two-day "Ska Against Bigotry" concert. Eight ska bands joined together with Communities Against Hate at a local music venue to send a message that Eugene would not be intimidated by organized bigotry. Nearly 600 people came together over the two-day period to listen to some great music and discuss long-term solutions to countering racist organizing in their communities.

As the young people who responded to hate in Chicago and Eugene demonstrated, ad hoc responses to white power music are a vital part of efforts to turn down the sound of hate. They offer young people a unique opportunity to confront hatred, demonstrating the strength of youth who work together toward a common goal. These responses are also the perfect impetus for the formation of organizations dedicated to promoting tolerance and nonviolence.

A Culture of Anti-Racism

Peer-based organizing is key to responding to white power music. With the support of older, more experienced activists, young people need to create youth-based efforts that will challenge the growth of white power music. Anti-racism, however, cannot simply be lectures and books. Anti-racism needs to move out of theory and into culture, out of the abstract and into reality, out of books and into our lives. To put it simply, countering racism needs to be fun.

In the fall of 1997, Mike Park and Tad Thomas, both under the age of thirty, decided that they wanted to help raise awareness about racism in the punk and ska subcultures. They launched a national tour featuring twelve bands and stopping in more than twenty cities. The Ska Against Racism Tour brought bands, information tables, and a clear message of anti-racism to tens of thousands of young people in cities like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Seattle, and Atlanta.

Two years later, Mike and Tad did it again, this time organizing the Plea for Peace Tour. The tour began in Japan, then crossed the Pacific and stopped in twenty cities across the US during the summer of 2000.

In addition to the Plea for Peace tour, Tad also traveled across the country with summer "festival" tours, such as Van's Warped Tour, promoting an anti-bigotry message through the Stop Racism Booth, a traveling tent that sells t-shirts, pins, patches, and other paraphernalia with an anti-racist message. The Stop Racism Booth also distributes free information about young people working together to respond to hatred.

Tad, who is so committed to anti-racism that he lived in a Ryder truck for nearly two months while following the Warped Tour, feels that his efforts are well received. "Response to our booth is always both positive and exciting. Every day tons of kids stop by and support the booth by buying something or grabbing some of our free literature or a sticker. The idea behind the Stop Racism booth is to spread ideas and education through cool gear like tees, patches, stickers, and buttons, as well as educational materials. These items make people think and grab the attention of others."

Tad and Mike have a clear understanding of the role that music plays in creating an anti-racist youth culture. In their efforts to promote tolerance and non-violence, they have had an impact on the lives of thousands of youth across the country and set a perfect example for young people who want to counter hatred. Organize a Rock (or Ska, or Hip Hop, or Trance, or Pop, etc) Against Racism concert in your congregation or school. Contact your favorite nightclub or music venue to host a table with information about anti-racism, tolerance, and nonviolence. Host a three-on-three basketball tournament to raise money for local or national anti-bigotry efforts. The possibilities are endless; the key is to keep it fun.

The final step in countering white power music is working to create a culture of anti-racism. Those who care about youth culture must labor raise awareness about political issues as they relate to young people. What does this mean? Bands ought to take public stances condemning racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and white power music. Magazines should highlight efforts by young people who struggle for equality. Young people need to look beyond themselves and, in the process, transform youth culture from a soap opera into a soap box.

These are just a few examples of how a few individuals can make a real difference in the struggle against white power music. Organized white supremacists have set their sights on, as William Pierce puts it, "the eighteen to twenty-five age range." If youth culture is to be preserved, it is vital that more join in the effort.

As white power music continues to grow and seep into the mainstream, it becomes increasingly important that it be challenged at every turn. Parents, teachers, clergy, civic leaders, and the record industry all play a role in responding to this growing threat. The ultimate responsibility, however, belongs to young people. Because white power music seeks to infiltrate and overtake youth culture, it is up to young people who hunger for tolerance and nonviolence to take a stand. As history demonstrates, the power of young people united is nearly unstoppable. Rolling up your sleeves and getting involved is the key to ensuring that youth culture is free from the threat of organized bigotry.

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http://www.forusa.org/Fellowship/Mar-Apr01/JustinMassa.html