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Introducing –
Pil and Galia Kollectiv,
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No Room to Move
nils norman

No Room to Move: Radical Art and the Regenerate City
A fistful of research on the state of critical public art in the maelstrom of New Labour's regeneration programmes.
By Josephine Berry Slater and Anthony Iles


Fascist Bands at Slimelight OpenPublishing | News & Analysis
Submitted by anthony on Tuesday, 30 October, 2007 - 15:35

Anon

This text, passed on by Stewart Home from 'a guy I know from Newcastle', highlights several links between fascist organisations and musicians playing over the next two months at the Slimelight club night based in Islington, North London. In the cases of Boyd Rice (NON) and Albin Julius of Der Blutharsch both, according to this text, publicly express right wing views, associate with members of far-right organisations and dress themselves in Nazi regalia. Anyone out there with further information about these gigs or the groups involved please post here

On October 31st 2007 North London club Slimelight , 7 Torrens Street, Islington EC1 www.http://www.slimelight.net plans to host a Halloween event organised by www.hinoeuma.org, a promotional venture maintained by Gaya Donadio, Who over the past decade has been jointly responsible for promoting such ‘artists’ as Death In June and Ostara mainly in the London area.

The October 31st event features American group Luftwaffe. www.http://www.kalkisarmy.com/ Originating from Chicago, who have in their decade-long career collaborated with the likes of NON, DIJ and others from the Neofolk scenes. As well as writing and recording material Luftwaffe have also been pictured in military uniform with members of Death In June. Regardless of whether Luftwaffe are merely flirting with fascism or are politically committed to it, they provide a real and malignant catalyst for far right extremists to gather, network and recruit at these concerts.

The idea of waging a right-wing ‘cultural’ ‘war of position’ emerged from the Italian fascist movement also responsible for many of the terrorist ‘strategy of tension’ outrages in that country during the 1970s and 1980s (including the Bologna railway station bombing in which 85 people died and 200 were injured). This cultural ‘war of position’ ideology was taken up by the faction of the fascist British National Front headed by Patrick Harrington and Richard Lawson, and a number of those belonging to the same musical circles as Luftwaffe – including Tony Wakeford, Ian Read and Freya Aswynn – were political activists in organisations (official National Front, IONA etc.) espousing this brand of ‘right-wing Gramscianism’ .

The Slimelight event is headlined by Boyd Rice in his NON guise. An individual with a long and malicious history of fascist provocation and the focus of Anti-Nazi attention worldwide. Particularly alarming is that Boyd Rice, an acknowledged Social Darwinist and member of the neo-Nazi American Front organisation, has actually been given the all clear to enter the UK and perform in London as NON next week. Rice’s politics goes way beyond embracing a seriously negative and racist worldview. To quote, "As far as I am concerned, the intellect is a disease. It imposes values where none exist. Values don't exist in the world, they exist in the mind and are purely imaginary. They're completely fictional and to project them onto actual things or situations can only result in fictionalizing the world and your experience of it." http://www.boydrice.com/INTERVIEWS/FifthPath/INDEX.htm

Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that Boyd Rice developed close ties to fascist philosophers; in fact he claimed himself to be a fascist in art. In 1984, Rice, along with a Holocaust denier, Keith Stimely, started the Abraxas Foundation—taking the name from Jungian philosophy—which he described as a “social Darwinist think-tank.” Abraxas hailed Malthusianism as “Nature's Eternal Fascism.” During performances, Rice has read from the racist and anti-Semitic Might Is Right, by Ragnar Redbeard. The book's forward is by Anton LaVey, its afterward by George Burdi, founder of Resistance Records and former singer of the neo-Nazi band RAHOWA (Racial Holy War). Rice has also written a controversial article "R.A.P.E (Revolt Against Penis Envy)" in which he seemingly encourages men to rape women in order to show that men have a superior status. He has, however, stated that the article was written lightly, but still says it is based on facts.

Former Rice partner Lisa Crystal Carver's memoir "Drugs Are Nice" (Snowbooks, London 2006) provides an outline of the time she spent living with and financially supporting Boyd Rice. In her graphic account of their shared lives together Carver recalls how Rice was jailed for assaulting her. Carver finally concludes that Rice, is an alcoholic failure and an 'unemployed fascist'. Before and to an extent even after Carver came along, Rice depended on financial handouts from his mother. In her memoir Carver describes the fascist emblems with which her partner decorated their flat “ A giant Nazi flag is taped to the wall. Right next to the Tomorrowland Disney poster..." (page 146).

Rice’s mistreatment of Carver included physically restraining her and subjecting her to regular beatings and floggings. Carver, despite her growing fear of Rice, stayed with him for the sake of their baby until, in an alcoholic rage, he smashed her head against a nightstand until she became unconscious. This led to Rice’s arrest, trial and imprisonment.

Rice does not conceal his hatred of women. As revealed in this quote from Misanthrope: ‘Back to the rumours. Are you a misogynist? "Yeah." Rice nods fervently for the record. [Laughs.] "Yeah, more and more all the time." What makes you feel that way? "Just a lot of experience with women. I don't think women deserve the same rights as men. I don't think women are on an equal footing with men. I think they're totally different creatures. I think the world operated better when they had less say over how the way things went, had less control." And regarding his piece "R.A.P.E.", which is appallingly pro-rape but allegedly tongue-in-cheek: "I was poking a bit of fun, but it's like there's more than a grain of truth in everything I said in there. I think all the stuff I said was basically true. Which is why it's funny when it's funny. And it's why it upsets women, when it upsets women. Because, you know, they can't really deny most of that stuff. " "Well that's why when women start having these intellectual arguments with me I say at a certain point, "Listen, I refuse to even argue with a woman." They say, "Well, why is that?" and I say, "Because you overreact, you get all emotional, and fly into a tizzy."

Rice was also close to Church of Satan founder LaVey, and rumoured to be a member of its "Council of Nine" and to have initiated others into it. Rice regularly visited convicted murderer Charles Manson (who had ordered his followers to murder actress Sharon Tate amongst others) and organized a campaign to free him. Through Manson, the group came into contact with James Mason, former member of the American Nazi Party and the National Socialist Liberation Front, currently a member of the Universal Order, which views Charles Manson as the next Hitler. Rice was also a member of the neo-Nazi American Front and was very close to its president, Bob Heick. The pair were photographed together wearing Nazi uniforms http://www.boydrice.com/gallery/friends_gallery/1980-08.html

This photograph was additionally published in the book Blood in the Face: The Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi Skinheads, and the Rise of a New White Culture by James Ridgeway.

Heick was influenced by the racist National Front in 1980’s Britain. Indeed Heick’s group was unique in that it advocated a "third positionist" ideology combining both racism and a right-wing ‘cultural’ ‘war of position’. The American Front led a nationwide rally December 9, 2006, on behalf of incarcerated members of The Order, a 1980s white supremacist terrorist group. While the largest gathering occurred in southern California, several banners describing Order members as "prisoners of war" were found around Orlando and Maitland.

Heick was present at an event, "8/8/88," that Rice explained "was a recapitulation of a destruction ritual that Anton LaVey performed on August 8, 1969." It was shown on Geraldo Rivera's "Satanism" special. Perhaps not coincidentally, the eighth letter of the alphabet is H, and 88 is considered by some to signify the words "Heil Hitler."

Rice was interviewed in 1986 by the white supremacist leader, Tom Metzger of White Aryan Resistance. In it he was asked whether industrial music is the "beginning of an Aryan underclass movement." He is quoted as saying, "I think so. It's engendering a new will among people. That's what I'm interested in." See video clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5aDHs0XuFc

Also mentioned by Rice within the context of this interview is the band Above The Ruins, featuring one Tony Wakeford now of London-based Sol Invictus. A London concert Wakeford’s band gave in 2006 was according to a blog posting attended by Troy Southgate (another former National Front activist and Neo-Folk musician and more recently founder of the English Nationalist Movement and the National Revolutionary Faction; Southgate describes the latter as "a hardline revolutionary organisation based on an underground cell-structure similar to that used by both the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and the IRA", operating on the principle of leaderless resistance. For information about the Wakedord concert attended by Southgate see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Southgate - while for more about Southgate see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Southgate .

Albin Julius of Der Blutharsch http://www.derblutharsch.com/ scheduled to perform at Slimelight on Saturday November 24th has also made no secret with regards to his and Der Blutharch’s involvement in ultra-right politics. Der Blutharsch, whose members invariably perform in black clothing and military belts, was formed around Austrian Julius, whose open interests include nazi occultism. Der Blutharsch have also utilised visual signifiers linked to nazi aesthetics. For a long time, the group logo was a Sig rune, the stylised S in the SS insignia, but it has since been replaced it with the Iron Cross, a German military symbol originating from the Prussian liberation struggle against Napoleon at the beginning of the nineteenth century. After 1939, Hitler retained the Iron Cross as one of his most important Nazi military decorations and all kinds of Iron Cross-emblazoned nazi kitsch is touted for sale on Der Blutharsch's website.

Julius is keen follower of the Austrian right-wing extremist, Jörg Haider. Julius has also stated that he did not regard Haider as extreme right-wing. In another interview, with the German Gothic magazine Black, he stated that he hoped that Europe would consist again of 'national states' and that there would be 'finally a halt to migration'. Albin Julius has also collaborated with Boyd Rice and Douglas Pearce (also known as Douglas P, Doug P and Douglas Peace www.deathinjune.net ) . Pearce has called Hitler "the most influential man of the century" who "shaped the world with his death and destruction." Death in June refers to the "Night of the Long Knives" in 1934, when Hitler killed Ernst Röhm and other leaders of the Sturmabteilung (SA), his opposition among the Nazis.

DIJ shows have also been cancelled and shut down or suffered protest numerous times on the grounds that DIJ supports fascism. In cities including Chicago, Portland, Seattle and countries such as Germany, Switzerland and Norway, among others. In Chicago, the Metro venue cancelled a scheduled Death in June show, though it was rescheduled elsewhere (according to a promoter from American Gothic Productions, fascists did indeed attend the show). During Der Blutharsch concerts, Julius is also sometimes assisted by ex-Death in June member, Ian Read. On Death in June's CD 'Brown Book', Read sang the infamous 'Horst Wessel'-song which is outlawed Germany. During the 1980s, Read was involved in rightist circles in the UK, notably the Rune-Gilde. He is founder of the bands Sol Invictus (Black Sun) and Fire + Ice, and was member of the British nazi crank David Myatt's Order of the Nine Angles.

Der Blutharsch recently released a joint album with the Italian fascist band Zetazeroalfa which belongs to 'Rock Identity Italy', a New Right music formation whose main aim is to present fascism in a 'nice' way. This is not Der Blutharsch's first joint venture: it has, in fact, previously released a collaborative album with the Italian New Right band Ain Soph which is fond of quoting the fascist mystic, Julius Evola. Albin Julius also runs the Hau Ruck! music label which has released an album 'Odessa vine ill Bello', containing Italian fascist marching songs from the time of Benito Mussolini.

Julius and his band have also been subject to attention from members of the Israeli parliament. Der Blutharsch were forced to cancel a planned concert in Tel Aviv, Israel, following widespread protests and demands from members of the Knesset, that it be banned. Israeli MP, Yossi Sarid, who had asked the major of Tel Aviv and the country's justice minister, told the Jerusalem Post: It is clear why Der Blutharsch wants to perform in Israel. They want to be legitimate, have an 'Israeli passport' and then become persona grata everywhere else. Against their critics, they can then say 'Who are you to call us fascists? The survivors of the Holocaust invited us.' The cancellation of the Tel Aviv concert was only the latest: in March 2003, a concert was cancelled in Clausnitz in Germany and, in December 2003 a concert was cancelled in Chicago after protests mobilised by Searchlight supporters and Antifa-Net members in the USA.


subject: Music | Politics | Race

Fascist Bands at Slimelight
little_dave - Thu, 13/12/2007 - 5:23pm

From what I understand Boyd Rice is anti-fascist, and a anti-Nazi. He’s more social/political artist/anarchist.

The idea of stimulating the strongest controversial elements of taboo in modern society, by using fascist/Nazi imagery and involvement with neo-Nazi groups is a powerful move.

Using those concepts in today’s western world of extreme political correctness, human rights, freedom of speech and strong anti-racism/discrimination. Intern this evokes some powerful mixed emotions. Which is his full intent, Rice's other involvement with the church of Satan in the strongly Christian United States is another example.

This in itself highlights within some of Boyd Rice’s objectors and critics some true Fascist/Nazi ideas e.g…

Biased persecution of a characterized sub group.
Biased fear of difference and Individuality.

My view.. the swastika has become the new pentagram.

What is the problem with
akwasem - Sat, 05/12/2009 - 5:48am

What is the problem with Swastika. It just because have been used by Nazi. But, more of that, are these symbol is bad anyway? I cannot answer that one.

Bollocks doesn't become truer by spreading it
Ripley - Thu, 15/11/2007 - 11:07pm

'anon' has now posted the above slander also here (minus the introductory paragraph):

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/11/385524.html?c=on

Eating with the 'enemy'
maninblack - Thu, 15/11/2007 - 7:28pm

Today, I actually had lunch with Z'EV, the (Jewish) industrial musician who drummed for NON at the Halloween gig, and we got to discussing this thread. He was incredulous when I told him that this performance was being characterised online as a 'fascist rally'! If it was a rally, it wasn't very well organised! I have attended countless industrial and neo-folk gigs of the kind being slandered in this article, and never once have I encountered any kind of active far-right recruiting, flyers or information of any kind. You need to go to a football match to find that kind of thing!

Fascist apologists in denial
artibella23 - Wed, 14/11/2007 - 5:40pm

Here's an interesting digression from an interview with Naevus on the French 'gothic' webzine 'Emofag'. (Naevus are supporting fascist sympathiser Albin Julius at the Slimelight on November 24th....)

http://emofag.net

Interviewer: "But seriously do you have some kind of Dark Folk fest here in the UK? Here in France all Dark Folk concerts are done in an almost clandestine way because of, well…. You know what I am talking about… "

The point is not elaborated on. Can't think why.

Fascist apologists? Er... excuse me?
Lloyd James - Thu, 15/11/2007 - 12:53am

To "artibella23":

What are you trying to suggest?

Fascist apologists? Er... excuse me?
artibella23 - Thu, 15/11/2007 - 9:16pm

Albin Julius has publicly expressed support for Jorg Haider. He can, therefore, be described as a fascist apologist.

The anonymous interviewer seems to be tacitly acknowledging the allegations of right wing involvement which bedevil the Neo-Folk scene. I think that this is a reasonable inference. This might have been a good opportunity to tackle the issue and offer a clear condemnation before getting on with the main purpose of the interview, but the point was not developed.

The scene as a whole declines, time and time again, to distance itself from these negative connotations... so opprobrium and controversy seem inevitable.

Fascist apologists? Er... excuse me?
Lloyd James - Thu, 15/11/2007 - 11:17pm

Jorg Haider? I have tory-voting friends here in the UK and, while I may not agree with their principles, I am able to engage them in conversation about politics without resorting to insults and innuendo. And I might add, I have met and corresponded with Albin Julius on numerous occasions and never have I heard him display or utter anything that might conflict with my Socialist Libertarian principles.

The anonymous (speaking of which, who are you?) interviewer did not acknowledge allegations of right wing involvement as far as I had noticed. I thought he was referring to the fact that licenses for live music are particularly hard to obtain in France.

An opportunity to tackle the issue and offer a clear condemnation? I’m happy to do so. Who would you like me to condemn? Fascists? Sure, they’re bad. Nazis? They’re very bad, of course. What rational person would think otherwise? Anyone else, while I’m at it? Racists? They’re no good. Misogynists? Not at all keen on them, either.

I have been involved in the ‘neo-folk scene’ for the past eight years or so (which has involved, amongst other things, playing gigs with Death in June, releasing records on Albin Julius’ record label, even - very briefly - drumming for Sol Invictus) and have never encountered anything that I’d regard as objectionable in the attitudes of any of the people I have encountered, which includes many of the people mentioned by name in this ill-informed thread.

Grow up, you saddos!
maninblack - Wed, 14/11/2007 - 6:43pm

Well, seeing as how about half the people I know are weighing in on this thread, I thought it was about time I stuck my oar in. The original article which has provoked this debate is so full of laughable inaccuracies and smears that it's difficult to know here to start, but how about this? I was at the Sol Invictus gig in December 2006 which is mentioned, with a suggestion that Troy Southgate 'may' have been there (he was, in fact). For fuck's sake, what a feeble attempt at creating guilt by association! So a gig is attended by someone who may have links to the far right. So what? I happened to go to the show with a friend who's an ordained priest of the Church of England. Did that make it an Anglican recruiting event? Hardly! Can't you people find something more important to get your knickers in a twist about than some people singing folk songs? It wasn't exactly a Nuremburg rally, you know.

I was also at the NON gig on Halloween. Z'EV was drumming for Boyd Rice. Z'EV is Jewish. Why not ask him if he thinks Boyd's a Nazi? They've been friends for 30 years.

As for why I enjoy and support the music of both Sol Invictus and Boyd Rice, I find it infinitely more provocative, intelligent, beautiful and rewarding than anything Stewart Home has ever or will ever produce, for all his spiteful little barbs about all his former friends and associates.

The Feeding of the 5000
Ripley - Sun, 11/11/2007 - 2:46am

You hateful people, how about that: You invite the people coming from the Crass gig on Saturday to come to the Slimelight - that way we would have an easy chance to meet many dear friends despite there being those two interesting events on the same night. In fact, probably quite a few of 'us' weren't sure where to go on that weekend.

Steve Ignorant once liked Current 93, btw. For instance, the discography for C93's album 'In Menstrual Night' lists as personnel:

David Tibet, Steven Stapleton, John Balance, Rose McDowall, Boyd Rice, Steve Ignorant, John Murphy.

And there's this detail from C93's album 'Earth Covers Earth':

12 The Dreammoves Of The Sleeping King: I. He Falls Into Fields Of Sleep II. The Dreamer Dreams A Dream (19:40)
Performer [All] - David Kenny , David Michael Tibet , Steven Stapleton
Vocals [Laughter] - Douglas P.
Vocals [Screaming] - Steve Ignorant
Vocals [Whispers] - Boyd Rice
Vocals [Whispers], Guitar [Stick] - John Balance

All fascists, clearly.

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