Trendy Fascism

Nancy S. Love

Description

Popular music plays a major role in mobilizing citizens, especially youth, to fight for political causes. Yet the presence of music in politics receives relatively little attention from scholars, politicians, and citizens. White power music is no exception, despite its role in recent high-profile hate crimes.Trendy Fascism is the first book to explore how contemporary white supremacists use popular music to teach hate and promote violence. Nancy S. Love focuses on how white power music supports "trendy fascism," a neo-fascist aesthetic politics. Unlike classical fascism, trendy fascism involves a hyper-modern cultural politics that exploits social media to create a global white supremacist community. Three case studies examine different facets of the white power music scene: racist skinhead, neo-Nazi folk, and goth/metal. Together these cases illustrate how music has replaced traditional forms of public discourse to become the primary medium for conveying white supremacist ideology today. Written from the interdisciplinary perspective on culture, economics, and politics best described as critical theory, this book is crucial reading for everyone concerned about the future of democracy.
Preface
Acknowledgments

1. Mobilizing White Power: Music, Culture, and Politics

2. Playing with Hate: Racist Skinheads, Skrewdriver, and Liberal Tolerance

3. Imagining A White Nation: Neo-Nazi Folk, Family Values, and Prussian Blue

4. Building A Church: Rahowa, Heavy Metal, and Racial Ecology

5. Recycling White Trash: Aesthetics, Music, and Democracy

Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Musique
• Culture musicale
• Histoire de la musique
• Heavy Metal
• Popular music
• Popular culture
• History of classical music traditions
• Metal

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 31 mai 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438462059
• Langue: English

Extrait

TRENDY FASCISM
SUNY series in New Political Science
Bradley J. Macdonald, editor
TRENDY FASCISM
White Power Music and the Future of Democracy
NANCY S. LOVE
Cover image of concert scene from Fotolia.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2016 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Diane Ganeles
Marketing, Michael Campochiaro
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Love, Nancy Sue, 1954- author.
Title: Trendy fascism : white power music and the future of democracy / Nancy S. Love.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2016] | Series: SUNY series in new political science | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016005716 | ISBN 9781438462035 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: White supremacy movements—Songs and music—History and criticism. | Popular music—Political aspects. | Popular music—Social aspects. | Neo-Nazism. | Hate groups.
Classification: LCC ML3916 .L69 2016 | DDC 305.809/073--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016005716
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
There are certain cultural trends which both belong to the presuppositions and to the effects of Fascism.
—Theodor Adorno, “What National Socialism Has Done to the Arts”
Contents Preface Acknowledgments Chapter 1. MOBILIZING WHITE POWER: Music, Culture, and Politics Chapter 2. PLAYING WITH HATE: Racist Skinheads, Skrewdriver, and Liberal Tolerance Chapter 3. IMAGINING A WHITE NATION: Neo-Nazi Folk, Family Values, and Prussian Blue Chapter 4. BUILDING A CHURCH: Rahowa, Heavy Metal, and Racial Ecology Chapter 5. RECYCLING WHITE TRASH: Aesthetics, Music, and Democracy Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index
Preface
D uring the past few years, many colleagues have asked why I decided to write a book about hate music and, more specifically, white power music. A simple answer is that after writing about the music of progressive social movements in Musical Democracy (2006), I wanted better to understand the role music plays in politics across the political spectrum, including the radical right. My more complex answer regarding the relationship between the cultural politics of white supremacy and hegemonic liberalism will gradually emerge in the pages that follow. Writing about the white power music scene was difficult for me, and readers should expect to find some of the material here offensive and even painful. For that reason, I want to state clearly my intentions at the outset. I do not intend to cause any further harm to those whom the white supremacist movement targets or to disseminate white supremacist views by providing an ideological platform. I undertook this project because I think democratic citizens cannot afford to treat the anger, hatred, and violence of white supremacists solely as the abnormal, deviant, or psychotic behavior of isolated individuals. In this book, I situate these so-called “lone wolves” or “wingnuts” in relation to the broader and deeper cultural politics of the radical right.
To the best of my knowledge, this is the first book-length study of the role of aesthetic politics, more specifically, white power music, in contemporary white supremacists’ efforts to create a transnational white community. This gap is troubling given the increasingly frequent references to hate music in mainstream media accounts of racially motivated political violence. According to T. J. Leyden, a former racist skinhead, “As a nation, as a global society, our children simply are not safe until they know the destructive power of hate, what it continues to do, and what it could bring to our great nation, if it is not healed by tolerance.” 1 By including the voices of those who have renounced white supremacy, such as Leyden, I also attempt to counter stereotypes of individuals who once promoted its anger, hatred, and violence. This is a delicate balance and I can only hope that where I fall short readers will recall my intentions.
To sustain that balance, I made the following decisions about terminology. I have capitalized Black, Black Americans, and Native Americans as terms of racial solidarity and self-identity. I use lowercase for white, white Americans, and white supremacy unless these terms are capitalized in quoted passages, so as not to validate white power and privilege. I have also chosen to use the more general terms, white supremacy, white supremacist, and white supremacist movement, rather than draw the finer distinctions between white nationalism, white separatism, and white supremacy. I made this decision for two reasons. First, contemporary white supremacists have formed international alliances between Christian Identity, Ku Klux Klan, and neo-Nazi organizations that make these internal movement distinctions less relevant today. Second, given the longer history of hegemonic liberalism as white supremacy, I find attempts by members of white supremacist groups to distinguish their white nationalism and white separatism from white supremacy disingenuous, at best. Nonetheless, I indicate where these distinctions remain relevant for understanding the ideas and actions of a specific branch of the global white supremacist movement.
Trendy Fascism: White Power Music and the Future of Democracy is written from the interdisciplinary perspective on culture, economics, and politics best described as critical theory. It integrates the relevant literatures in democratic theory, musical aesthetics, cultural studies, popular music studies, critical race theory, and feminist theory. It also includes popular sources, such as autobiographies and biographies, fanzines, interviews, videos, reviews, songs, and websites. Although this is first and foremost a work of critical theory, I am trained as an amateur musician and also bring that musical knowledge and experience to this project.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful for earlier opportunities to present these ideas at the Virginia Tech ASPECT Graduate Conference, Representations of Resistance; the University of Virginia Political Theory Colloquium; as the Samuel I. Clark Lecturer at Western Michigan University; and for STAR: Students for Social Theory and Research at Bard College at Simon’s Rock. Drafts of some chapters were first presented as papers at the American Political Science Association Convention, the Western Political Science Association Convention, and the Global Studies Association Convention. I am especially grateful to William E. Scheuerman for multiple invitations to present papers at the annual colloquium on Philosophy and the Social Sciences sponsored by the Institute of Philosophy at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. The conversations that emerged from those presentations were invaluable in developing my arguments here.
Numerous colleagues also provided helpful comments on early versions of several chapters here. I want specifically to thank Asma Abbas, Paul Apostolidis, Janni Aragon, Lawrie Balfour, Jennifer Disney, Alessandro Ferrara, Cary Fraser, Charles Hersch, Chad Lavin, Timothy W. Luke, Mark Mattern, Maria Pia Lara, Molly Scudder, and Stephen K. White. I am also grateful for the feedback from two anonymous reviewers for State University of New York Press, whose thoughtful comments have improved my argument.
I want to thank my colleagues at Appalachian State University for granting me what is a most precious academic resource today, that is, the time to read, think, and write provided by an Off-Campus Study Assignment (aka sabbatical leave). My department has also supported my work with graduate and undergraduate research assistants, who have helped me locate source materials and analyze song lyrics. For their contributions to this project, I want to thank Nathan Arnold, Melissa Balk, Amanda Cannon, Anne-Solene Cazanave, Travis Smart, Coty Hogue, and Tausif Khan.
My thanks to Michael Rinella, senior acquisitions editor at State University of New York Press, for his continued support of my work and, more generally, for supporting research that joins politics and culture. In particular, I thank him for selecting anonymous reviewers whose comments made this a better manuscript. Thanks as well to Rafael Chaiken, assistant acquisitions editor, who made sure that the review process went smoothly, and to Diane Ganeles, senior production editor. Finally, words cannot express my gratitude to Bradley Macdonald, editor of the SUNY series in New Political Science, and to the progressive scholars of the Caucus for a New Political Science, who continue to sustain my hope that the study of politics really can contribute to making this a better world.
I accept full responsibility for any errors that may remain here.
The following chapters are revised from previously published material. My thanks to the original publishers for permission to reprint.
Chapter 2 is a revised version of my authored chapter, “Playing with Hate: White Power Music and the Undoing of Democracy,” in Doing Democracy: Activist Art and Cultural Politics , ed. Nancy S. Love and Mark Mattern (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2013), 201–230. Some material from that previously published chapter also appears here in chapter 1 .
Chapter 3 is a revised version of “Privileged Intersections: The Race, Class, and Gender Politics of Prussian Blue,” Music and Politics 6, no. 1 (Winter 2012), n.p., http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mp/9460447.0006.102/—privileged-intersections-the-race-class-an