Book reviews & Hitchens quotes

Black Collar Crimes – An Encyclopedia of False Profits and Unholy Orders by Michael Newton
Loompanics Unlimited, 1998
One of the better titles in the Loompanics catalog. Loompanics called it quits last year so you’ll have to go here to get some of their titles: http://www.paladin-press.com/loompanics.aspx

Unfortunately, Paladin only bought their survivalist type of books. So, the “fucked up religion/politics/ideas” titles are gonna be harder for you to find. Though Albris and Amazon will probably be the place to find them along with the usual (at least for me) used book stores & garage sales. Which brings me to this – Black Collar Crimes. This is a rogue’s gallery of tax scammers, money launders, murders, anti-abortion zealots, pedophiles, rapists, arsonists, pimps, and adulterers. All of these are based on actual settled cases. While the crimes may vary all these criminals mentioned in the book are all “holier than thou”. All believe that “god was on their side” and thought that there way was the “righteous path”. Everyone from televangelists to Boy Scout leaders to Wicca high priests are here. The book is all done in an alphabetic, encyclopedic form - which makes it easy to follow. Some useful information for your Black/Death Metal or Power Electronics band, nerd-o. Seek it out.

Christopher Hitchens:

Pg 60. “God is NOT Great” (2007)

“The element of the wish for obliteration can be seen without disguise in the millennial sects of our own day, who betray their selfishness as well as their nihilism by announcing how many will be “saved” from the ultimate catastrophe. Here the extreme Protestants are almost as much as to faults as the most hysterical Muslims. In 1844, one of the greatest American religious “revivals” occurred, led by a semiliterate lunatic named George Miller. Mr. Miller managed to crowd the mountaintops of America with credulous fools who *(having sold their belongs cheap) became persuaded that the world would end on October 22 that year. They removed themselves to high ground –what difference did they expect that to make? - or to the roofs of their hovels. When the ultimate failed to arrive, Miller’s choice of terms was highly suggestive. It was, he announced, “The Great Disappointment.” In our own time, Mr. Hal Lindsey, author of the best-selling The Late Great Planet Earth, has betrayed the same thirst for extinction. Indulged by senior American conservatives and respectfully interview on TV, Mr. Lindsey once dated the start of ‘The Tribulation’ - a seven year period of strife and terror – for 1988. “

Pg. 79, ibid

“Well, I too have marveled at the sweet little ears of my female offspring (my daughter), but never without noticing that (a) they always need a bit of a clean out, (b) that they look mass-produced even when set against the inferior ears of other people’s daughers, ( c) that as people get older their ears look more and more absurd from behind, and (d) that much lower animals, such as cats and bats, have much more fascinating and lovely and more potent ears.”

from his “Arguments from Design" chapter

Laibach on America

"We know that America likes us and we shall therefore come back; nonetheless, we have seen it and we agree that it is that only nation in history which has miraculosly lapsed from barbarism to degeneration without the usual of civilization."

My Music, Metal and Politics paper (from 2008)

You can now (finally) read the paper I presented in Salzburg, Austria last November entitled "Extreme Metal and Extreme Politics - Strange Bedfellows or Fellow Travelers?" The first part was actually written for the non-metal person in mind. Also, considering the use of music sharing/sampling sites such as MySpace & YouTube, it's quite easy for them to investigate what these bands sound like along with the multiple video and additional web sources I've noted. I'm not the most scholarly or academic writer, my speciality is in history-specifically the history of the far ends of the political spectrum as it relates to music. I'm also have included in the 2nd link the handouts which underscore the visual side of the extremity and some of them are regular dude band photos. PLEASE note these are rather big files, so download time might take up to 10 minutes depending on your harddrive (mine's a crappy 2004-era Mac, so I'm sure you have something better/faster/stronger).


Das ist Paper

Das ist Visuals

Enjoy and don't be a lame-oh, leave COMMENTS!

American Porn-in-oia

Top States For Online Porn

"Published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, a report released earlier this year entitled "Red Light States: Who Buys Adult Entertainment" highlights where the revenues for pornographic entertainment on the Internet actually come from. According to AVN Media Network , Internet sales are the second largest piece of the $12.6 billion adult entertainment industry, drawing $2.84 billion in 2006."

It would be interesting to see what types of porn they also consume. For some reason I'm thinking hetero-anal is big in anti-gay marriage states. Seems like that's the what things work in the United States of Hypocrisy.

"We're the Sex Pistols of British politics and we've just scored a number one."

...or so says British National Party head and Hugh Grant lookalike, Nick Griffin. Griffin & the BNP have scored not a number one but a number two. An important number two that signifies the two members of their party are now sitting in the European Union Parliament along with additional national and regional representation in the British Parliament. Despite criticism of UK politics moving to the ultra-right, the BNP itself claims to not be a right-wing party. Daniel Hannan, British Conservative Party (aka: Tory) MEP, writes more about their "fusion politics": (1)

The BNP doesn’t call itself Right-wing, of course. It favours nationalisation, higher taxes, protectionism and (though it keeps quiet about this) republicanism. It markets itself as “the Labour Party your parents voted for”. Its manifesto calls for “the selective exclusion of foreign-made goods from British markets and the reduction of foreign imports,” and promises to “restore our economy and land to British ownership” and “to give workers a stake in the success and prosperity of the enterprises..."

Getting back to music, it's possible that Griffin is invoking Johnny Ramone's idea that "punk should be right wing". However, the BNP isn't just some kind of sarcastic right wing, "shock-punk" band such as The Meatmen or Fear. Nor are they a sarcastic, "small 'l' libertarian group such as the Sex Pistols themselves or Rancid Vat.

While Johnny Ramone believed that punk should be a right-wing thing, his own anti-immigrant and "America, fuck yeah!" politics mirror mainstream dolts like Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. "Correct or incorrect" there IS a difference between this thinking (however crazy it may seem) and getting cozy with real fascist political movements and domestic terrorists.

The absurd things that Beck, Limbaugh, and their minions have said about Obama makes them seem like hippies compared to this.

The bigger question is if the BNP really ARE the Sex Pistols of politics then is Griffin the Sid Vicious or Malcom McLaren of the group? And who is their Johnny Rotten, Paul Cook and Steve Jones? Maybe the the National Front's John Tyndal is their Glenn Matlock? If this holds true, it could also mean one of the BNP will end up stabbing his girlfriend in a hotel room and then ODing on heroin. Or maybe as some of these ultra-righters go, will they rot from within?

Griffin's analogy is nothing but absurd. Granted the Sex Pistols wearing swastikas (actually just 1/2 the band) for the shock value is vastly different than the likes of Griffin's right hand man, and EU member from Yorkshire, Andrew Brons. Brons is directly connected with Holocaust denying authors and nail bombers. He has also been seen marching with boneheads shouting "death to Jews".

Big Difference

Swastika Sporting Shock Value Punks (2)
Lydon, Cook & Jonesy taking the piss in Oslo, 1977.

vs.

Swastika-less Fascist Shock Troops Andrew Brons (left) and Nick Griffin (right, holding mic)

Alluding back to the Pistols ideology, if we only look at Johnny Rotten's politics, you'd find he's a more of a cynical-yet-often on the money, small 'l' libertarian. Plus, Rotten unlike Vicious (cliched, rotting) has like Henry Rollins kept himself doing some very interesting things while keeping themselves in the albiet smaller media spotlight.

Ending on a different note, where DID the BNP come up with this shit logo?

BNP design guy: "I gotta great idea, I saw the PBS logo and thought, 'hey let's merge this with a Def Leppard shirt!' It'll be brilliant!"

ENDNOTES:

1. Speaking of these grey areas of the two the poles of extremity, Nick Griffin's background includes a well-known association with the National Front along with a lesser known association with the International Third Position movement. The latter of which according to the London Independent believe in:

advocating a blood-and-soil alternative to communism and capitalism. In it he praised the black separatist Louis Farrakhan, met David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, travelled to Libya at the expense of Colonel Gaddafi and expressed support for Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini – who also had a strong dislike of Jews, women's rights, homosexuals, liberal democracy, international capitalism, Coca-Cola and McDonald's.

2. For more on punk's appropriation of the swastika, see "Punk and the Swastika" here.

The band (Sex Pistols) wore swastikas as well as upside down crosses, pictures of Karl Marx and (Spanish anarchist) Buenaventura Durruti quotes. Funny how no-one ever asks me if they were communists, maybe that's because that particular form of totalitarianism is more accepted? They also wore a lot of different very explicit homosexual images but I have yet to hear anyone ask about that.

This hodge-podge of ideological and sexual asthetics circles back to Malcom McLaren's earlier experiment with the New York Dolls.

One photo show below shows guitarist Johnny Thunders with a swastika


While the next shows them as red patent leather commies.


Certainly the Dolls were ALL about gender-bending. Not so much on the upside-down crosses. Lastly, I'm utterly fascinated to find more punk bands to did this sort of thing in an anti-religion sort of way before metal made it code de rigueur.

Nasty Ronnie saw the financial future in 2004!

"whatever happened
to my 401 K?
a costly state
no fixed return
that's the plan
the betrayal system"

Also, here's some appropriate lines earlier in the tune for the news I got today when I found out my temp gig just bit the dust:

"Work that job
to earn
your pay
40 hours
another week
the rush
to get there
every day
to punch the clock
its
ticking away
your late my friend
one more time
and not again
12 months
another year
you have fallen
into
the system"

Both from "Betrayal System" via "Psycho Psycho" by Nasty Savage.

I'm not saying I'd go to this guy first for financial advice:


...but I'm just sayin' he'd be a LOT cooler to work with than this tosswad:


Stein, you can have all the money & fame you want BUT were you EVER part of something THIS awesome & legendary?

Antifa Protest against Kroda

Ukrainian Pagan Metallers Kroda were recently attacked by a bunch of Anti-Facist Action activists in Warsaw. The original link regarding Kroda's statement is here. The band makes mention of "telescopic cudgels" which sounds like a band of 60's psych unknowns. Granted, I have way more in common politically with Anti-Fa than with NSBM creeps. However, I don't feel that anti-authoritarian organizations should physically attack a band because they heard some rumors on the fucking Internet. Not to belittle the violent reaction but the protesters did have more than just rumors to go from. (I'm also NOT advocating being passive towards nazis, rather violence towards them only seems to work in self-defense. Attempting to attack them soley because their ideas are absurd (pun intended) is just as dumb as they are. At we can know who these idiots are if they're in public and their patheic, ultra-repetitive slogan will be as boring as they are offensive and really it's best to avoid them directly at all costs.

Back on topic though, Kroda's lyrics are a mixed bag. One forumite on Metal-Archives said that there's apparently some viruently anti-Jewish lyrics in one of their songs. Although, the only things I could find were Ukranian only lyrics that were poorly translated or things that deal with typical but still sketchy nationalism/pride lyrics that a lot of pagan albeit not really fascist or nazi bands use. One such song, "Мак Цвіте (Частина I)", roughly translated as "Mack Crvite Part I" (from the 2005 split with Oprich), falls under this category:
"By our steppes, turks and tartars
On horses like black clouds ride,
And ground breathing burning smell –
Lasso of fires all around,
And hordeman whirls his lasso rope:
He found there living prey – "

Furthermore, the band's statement claims Antifa's ignorance on the topic of NSBM:

"It seems antifa don’t know what is NSBM, if they use this stereotype towards our band. NSBM are bands like DER STURMER or THOR'S HAMMER, for example; i.e. formations where basic themes are political and social aspects, aesthetics of Third Reich etc. But KRODA (even purely stylistics-..wise) is Pagan Metal. In difference from NSBM, in Pagan Metal (just look at the name, it’s obvious) there’s no political component. Lyrical side of Pagan Metal is Antiquity, Traditionalism,.. Ancestral Roots Pride (those able to read – just look at KRODA texts published on our official site). And still we want to say that our group is OUT of modern politics."

Later on, we read:

"Summing up: We call all the listeners, musicians, labels, zines connected with Pagan and Black Metal to answer every antifa boycott of our music and bands with counter boycott. Don’t let them manipulate you! Don’t let them to destroy Pagan Metal subculture and our European traditional culture. Strike them back on psychological and bureaucratic level, as well as by physical action. Gangs of that scum must be recognized as criminal and determined as «outlaw» as they already done it with you for a long time. Guilty will be punished."
That said, their reputation or guilt is directly associated by the fact that bassist/vocalist Ogneslov plays in an NS Black Metal band called Volhv. Kroda also has affiliations with the "NS Heavy Metal/Rock Against Communism" styled group, Seitar from the city of Kyyiv.
Additionally, Kroda is part of Противостояние (or "Opposition), a "union together with Chugaister and the above mentioned Volhv. All three are also aligned with Lut'. All three affiliated bands are White Power/National Socialist. Therefore, it doesn't support their claim that Kroda is "only a pagan metal band". When all your records come out on NSBM labels and all your side bands record NSBM or every bill your on is filled with NSBM/other neo-nazi bands, then it's time to put your waders on 'cause you're knee deep into some brown (shirted) waters.

There's some interesting comments further into Metal-Archives' forum. (See first link). Forumite, Tantalus of the band Caïna said:

"...Kroda are an excellent band, but should keep their mouths shut about this stuff, as it not only makes them look hypocritical...but simply foolish. If you put a huge swastika (albeit one made of flowers) in the tray card of an album that has at least two songs directly referring to how glorious it would be to rid Ukraine of Jews, you haven't really got a leg to stand on. "Oh, we're Pagan nationalists, not Nazis" - pull the other one, it's got a balaclava and pepper spray on."

Later in the thread, forumite, PhantomOTO writes:

"The problem with most of these bands is that they can't seem to advocate "cultural preservation" without also openly or passively advocating racism and oppression and directly or indirectly glorifying Nazism.

Also, an American (or really any member of a group living in a place where that group is in the majority or plurality or has historical "claim" to the area or has simply managed to dominate other groups in the area) claiming society "forces" whites to embrace other cultures is laughable. American society is thoroughly infused with institutional racism and white privilege and you haven't experienced anything other."