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« on: March 06, 2010, 09:41:48 AM »
The rise of a racist folk music scene shows how the far-Right has extended the breadth of its cultural embrace to include a range of musical forms that one would not traditionally associate with fascism and which many traditional fascists would doubtless find a challenging listen. These include Neo-Folk, Darkwave and National Socialist Black Metal [NSBM].
- Searchlight Extra on Neo-Folk February 2007
A note on this column:
This is an edited version of the original column. I knew from the start that it would be somewhat controversial and had stated in the first paragraph that I would willing redact, edit and publish any rejoinders to anything that was disputed and am now doing so.
In the original column I used a small label release of two neofolk records as a stepping off point to criticize the fascist undercurrent present in the scene. Despite what the individuals or bands involved with that label may think, it was not done out of any personal vendetta or mean-spiritedness on my part, but merely used as what amounted to a rhetorical device with which to structure the column. I couched my language in a way that, while not accusing the label or any of the bands on the label of being fascist, unjustly linked them to that element of the neofolk scene.
For that I apologize.
After speaking with one of the owners of the label and being assured that neither they nor any of the bands on the label support far right politics by any means I agreed that the column had unfairly singled them out and it has been rewritten to reflect that.
Lesson learned. I will be more careful in the future.
The essence of my argument has not changed though. I have noticed an increased interest in neofolk and I find that troubling. Let me start by first giving a bit of history.
Neofolk, as it exists now is largely due to the musical careers of two individuals, Douglas Pearce and Tony Wakeford. Pearce and Wakefords first band was the punk band CRISIS. The early singles had a sound reminiscent of the post-punk of WARSAW era JOY DIVISION as well as the early peace-punk of bands such as THE MOB and ZOUNDS. The singles were political, being explicitly anti-racist and anti-fascist, and the band was politically active, being associated with both Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League.
By the time of the release of their album, Hymns Of Faith, in 1980, CRISISs sound and thematic content had started to become more experimental. The band soon split, with member going on to several post-punk bands with Pearce and Wakeford creating the most famous of the lot, DEATH IN JUNE.
The name DEATH IN JUNE itself is a reference to the Night of the Long Knives, an early Nazi purge, and the band itself was, explicitly, an exploration of the fascist aesthetic. In Douglas Pearces own words:
When we first formed we were investigating fascism, no bones about that. Its interesting to see what this tainted ideology which has been so powerful had to say in the beginning.
Pearce, the only continuous member of DEATH IN JUNE, has been dogged by accusations of Nazism the entire length of the bands career, largely because of the continued romanticization of fascist ideology and the Nazi aesthetic, ongoing collaborations with known fascist artists (e.g. Boyd Rice and Michael Moynihan) and support of white power acts, such as DER BLUTHARSCH, to name a few.
Tony Wakeford left DEATH IN JUNE in 1984, supposedly because of a disagreement over his ongoing involvement with the National Front, an involvement that allegedly often included street level violence. His next band ABOVE THE RUINS, contributed a song to a National Front benefit album,
No Surrender, along with RAC (Rock Against Communism) bands such as SKREWDRIVER and BRUTAL ATTACK. Though supposedly a break with his far right past, his following band, SOL INVICTUS included other known fascist activists, such as the bassist from the RAC band NO REMORSE.
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