Yup -- "apocalyptic folk," a lot of the power-electronics/death-industrial (Genocide Organ, etc.), and NSBM (Nat'l Socialist Black Metal), and "martial pop" -- a lot of this treads sketchy grounds. Are they supporting fascism blatantly, are they performance artists using imagery a la "shock rock" of the 1970s -- what is the deal? Whatever it is, within this realm of music, there is definitely heavy use of fascist imagery.
A recent controversy was with the group Death in June, whose logo is the SS's death's head and who come out onto stage strumming acoustic guitars while dressed like Nazi SS officers, many of their songs having to do with a very heavily romanticized picture of Germany and Germanic culture. Sounds funny and it kinda is. When Death in June toured the US and met some resistance, the founder of the band, Douglas Pearce, seemed to retreat a bit, claimed it all archetypal/mystical metaphor, etc., and invoked his status as ex-member of the very, very left-wing punk band Crisis. (Who were indeed a great, Crass-like leftist and anti-racist punk band.)
That's why, like I mentioned, I'm in this one group, "Black Metal Anarchists." Basically that groups tries to ferret who the hell the neo-fascist musical groups are, and who aren't, int he sort of music we like. The problem is that some of this music is unlistenable (a lot of the "noise" stuff -- to me, anyway), but some of it, musically, is actually pretty good. And sometimes you end up listening to, liking something only to find out a month later, fuck, these guys are into the NBM or "neo-folk"/sketchy pan-Germanic pagan stuff.
I'd like to mention Crass were also at times accused of being "secretly fascist" because they wore nothing but dyed black military surplus gear -- and their logo, which attempted to incorporate symbols of various ideologies, did have a swastika entwined with it (alongside a crossed-out christian cross).
-B.
Chip Berlet wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Sorry for the linkspam mess--it looked fine on my
screen.
>
> :-)
>
> See especially the sections on
>
> BLACK METAL
>
> and
>
> INDUSTRIAL/NOISE/APOCALYPTIC FOLK/GOTHIC
>
>
>
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3719/is_200607/ai_n16855770/print
<http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3719/is_200607/ai_n16855770>