What’s your image of right-wing politics in music? EC being a tool, Oi and skinheads, country and western rednecks, Bowie doing that interview and gesture, New Order/Joy Division and the uneasy imagery of industrial music. The Quietus has a fairly jaw-dropping set of articles on the continuing and evolving influence of far-right and fascist politics in ‘alternative’ music. The one in this post is the introductory article, which surveys most of the above and sets the scene for the real eye-openers which occur in the second article, posted in the comments. They are not easy, and at the end you’ll know who the Order of Nine Angles are, which is actually a thing rather than a Dennis Wheatley invention. I will be fascinated to hear what you make of it all. I would maybe not click the links at work, as the politics is NSFW.
https://thequietus.com/articles/25682-fascism-underground-music-racism-industrial-black-metal-noise
moseleymoles says
https://thequietus.com/articles/25716-ona-fascism-nazis-folk-horror-underground-occult
Part Two.
dai says
I don’t think Elvis Costello is (was) necessarily a racist. It was a disgusting drunken comment but he claims he was just trying to annoy right-on American musicans.
MC Escher says
I thought the reference was to Eric Clapton…
dai says
Oh yeah, probably. Costello was a bit of a tool too though.
Nick L says
Bowie’s gesture and comment was just attention seeking to promote a new album or something wasn’t it? (“OK David, it’s time for your lay down” etc.) Lots of “Oi” bands have always denied any far right accusations, indeed seek out the more recent Cockney Rejects gig on youtube where the singer stops the show and angrily has a sieg hieler thrown out, but there is no question that much of that movement was probably deemed guilty by association, when you remember they had Skrewdriver in their midst and many of them hid behind some very politically dodgy if not downright stupid and naive sloganeering. The compilation entitled “Strength Thru Oi” being just one, a play on the Nazi slogan Strength Through Joy.
Has anybody ever come right out and said that they were Conservative and proud and meant it? Paul Weller said it in 1977 but he didn’t mean it, he was just winding up Joe Strummer. Or something…
I used to find it quite funny that the far right in this country has never really managed to get many musicians to speak up in its favour, EC excepted of course, although there were rumours of people like Gary Numan and Phil Collins (both since denied I think) and Lulu (probably the same) being Tory sympathisers which is probably the nearest we got to “pop stars” stating a right wing political preference. Gary Barlow seems to be put forward as an example of this but has he ever publicly declared his political allegiance?
dai says
Numan said he was a Tory. Collins said he would leave the country if Labour won the election.
Rigid Digit says
and he did (although I’m not sure if it was as a result of Labour winning the election – he relocated to the States in 2011/12)
Rigid Digit says
Surely there is a difference between expressing allegiance to the Conservative Party, and all that Far Right b*llocks?
(or am I just being too literally prickly)
Twang says
If you’re a proper lefty anyone to the right of Corbyn is literally a fascist.
Black Type says
Bryan Ferry has said he’s a small-c conservative by nature, and expressed a slight preference for Cameron back in the pre-Coalition days. I don’t agree with his perspective at all, but I don’t hold it against him or his artistry.
fatima Xberg says
The article is devalued by adding unnecessary examples like the ones stated above. What does it add by quoting Bowie’s opinion that Hitler was “the first rock star” – he has a point there (he doesn’t even say if he thinks that’s a good thing…). And is it even “far right” if you just mention that you’re voting for a party that’s not among the (two) “acceptable” ones?
And the 30-year-old Norwegian “Death Metal” story about burning churches and other crimes was more about criminals and their anti-christian (or anti-religious) views than any political views. Or Death Metal. It’s like saying guitar music is bad because Joe Meek murdered his landlady.
moseleymoles says
I agree the first article is going over ground well-covered, but the second one really does dig up some stuff totally new to me. Though it’s all incredibly niche in musical terms, in terms of creating mythologies that inspire it’s disturbing.
Tiggerlion says
Last night’s Super Bowl half-time entertainment was interesting. Maroon 5 hardly lit up the airways even with Big Boi’s appearance. Gladys sang the national anthem. Were they making a stand against the kneelers? Were they supporting Trump? Of course not. They still need to earn a shilling and Super Bowl exposure is very valuable (I’m looking at you, Janet). In the end, it was the lowest audience for ten years and the most boring match in Super Bowl history. I bet the advertisers are happy.
Carl says
Unfortunately it was the first Super Bowl I have stayed up to watch since the 1980s (indeed pretty much the first American Football game I have watched since then) and I get the most turgid final in history.
The halftime ‘entertainment’ (to be generous) as noted was excruciatingly dull.
I stayed up as I had never seen Tom Brady in action and thought I should take the opportunity before he retires.
dai says
One for the purist, defences well on top. And Brady isn’t retiring …
Blue Boy says
It’s interesting. I’d never heard of O9A or Richard Moult and the former look horrendous and the latter at best deluded and moronic. But without wishing to minimise the nastiness of whoever these people are, to describe it as ‘infiltration of the UK undergound’ and the experimental folk scene is overegging it somewhat isn’t it? As far as I can judge someone who most of us have never heard of, whose music, such as it is, has been streamed on Spotify less than 1,000 times, whose website has some pleasant if bland looking paintings, and who lives in the outer Hebrides, has been involved with a nasty Nazi/satanic movement in the past and may or may not have disowned them now.
On reflection, it’s interesting that there is so little active right leaning, never mind far right, politics in music. I don’t really understand why it is almost a given that most people in the arts will tend to the left, or feel they have to keep any right wing views to themselves.
Johnny99 says
I quite agree @Blue Boy. I have never heard of these people either – all of whom seem to have taken a course in picking through the assorted works of Aleister Crowley to make a some sort of new religion because they don’t like any of the “normal” ones.
However all this has answered one question which is why I couldn’t find any tin foil in the supermarket this morning – obviously it has all been commandeered to make tin foil hats !
Kid Dynamite says
I used to know one of the people in United Bible Studies quite well (not the Nazi loon, I hasten to add).
Fascism does seem to creep into neofolk quite a bit. It ties in with the blood and soil mythology, I suppose. The likes of Sol Invictus make a superficially pleasant noise, but it’s ugly underneath.
thecheshirecat says
I sing loads of those ‘blood and soil’ songs; attachment to land speaks to me, so I sing them well. But you can expect a folkie to be as left as the next musician or fan; just listen to the protest songs. The scene thrives on multinational, multicultural collaborations too; I reckon it’s as pluralist as any scene. But then again, I can’t think I’ve seen the term ‘neofolk’ in any festival programme; maybe they just don’t get the bookings, blocked out by the liberal elite, no doubt, in their minds.
The Good Doctor says
Just for the record…yet again…New Order and Joy Division were not fascists. Ian and Bernard were, like a lot of young 1970s lads, a bit obsessed with reading books about Nazis hence the band name and the (none-more Skrewdriver) sleeve of their self-released debut EP. Peter Saville took over on the graphic design but he happened to have a thing for Futurism as a design aesthetic rather than a political ideology. Their manager Rob Gretton had a warped sense of humour and liked to wind up Tony Wilson and music journalists and was good at thinking of band names.
Add all that together and you get a band who get accused of being Nazis purely due to their choice of name and some of their sleeve artwork – and then their singer dies so they reform as a new band and……get accused of being Nazis due to their choice of name and some of their sleeve artwork.
Twang says
Why did they choose a name and artwork evoking Nazis though? Actually I think they just got a slightly dim thrill out of it. I remember talking to Steve Morris right before his audition for Joy Division and him telling me they were punks. Out to shock etc.
Carl says
In his book about New Order, Hooky claimed that manager Rob Gretton chose the name New Order after reading an article about a Cambodian rebel group who went under that name.
Reading Hooky’s (somewhat overlong) account of the band’s history there is no evidence presented of fascist affiliations at all. Which one could argue were conveniently edited out, or take him at face value, as I did.
The Good Doctor says
It was in the air, and in the 1970s what better way to piss off an older generation …see Jordan with her Swastika armband in those early Sex Pistols clips for instance …although this is some years after Steve Priest from The Sweet did it on Top of the Pops. If you read up on it, Bowie got far deeper into Facism and got worryingly obsessed with it during the cocaine blizzard years, and then there’s Byron Ferrari…although I think he just liked the boots and the cut of the jackets.
Twang says
Agreed, there was a certain chic about it with the punks etc. Just as a way of upsetting older people. Siouxie too. Idiots.
fatima Xberg says
So what exactly was “right-wing” or “Nazi” with Saville’s sleeve designs?
The Good Doctor says
The biggest culprit is the sleeve for ‘Movement’ which borrows heavily from design work by Marinetti founder of the Italian Futurism movement which had strong links with Fascism.
fatima Xberg says
By that logic “Ulysses” and “Berlin Alexanderplatz” would be fascist novels. And “The Face” would be a right-wing magazine.
The Good Doctor says
I agree – Saville was just appropriating an aesthetic – but because of the previous problems the band had run into with the connotations of the names Joy Division and New Order, that was just more fuel for music journalists to accuse them of having right wing leanings. It stuck – which is why to this day people are *still* going on about it.
Junglejim says
It was definitely in the air all right.
‘ Days in Europa’ by The Skids, anyone? Both the title & the cover flirting with Nazi imagery & terminology.
Always felt sniffy about Jobson as a result.
Joy Division/New Order were both definitely crass choices, to put it mildly, which were then compunded with the sleeve art aesthetics – I’m sure there was a cover with a blurred image of what appered to be a fascist/ Nazi salute. Of course, being Factory, they delighted in the frisson they caused & wouldn’t comment when asked.
While it was all jolly japes, there were plenty of real Nazi types about whose bedroom walls were adorned with that kind of crap. It fitted in perfectly with the whole teenage doom/death cult bullshit fascists love & Factory played upon.
Ultimately, it was all ‘ deep & meaningless’ but actual deeply unpleasant types took is as a cue & an endorsement of their views, which went beyond reading Sven Hassel books.
Nick L says
I’m a massive punk fan but the use of swastikas was completely unacceptable really. It was infantile Kings Road nonsense.
Mike_H says
Ditto The Clash’s Angry Brigade/Brigade Rosse/Red Army Faction shirts.
Vincent says
The Clash (really, Joe Strummer, as Mick was more into Mott the Hoople, Paul into art, Topper just being in a successful band) get far too easy a ride on their knee-jerk leftism, esp “Brigade Rossi” t-shirts. Joe Strummer’s positions viz earlier squat culture (see Richard Dudanski’s autobiography of the times, and “Let Fury have the hour” by Antonio di Ambrosio, both on my shelves) are well known. I suspect Strummer’s naive proto-Corbynism was exploited by Bernie Rhodes, who was a so leftist he paid The Specials just £25 a night when they supported the Clash during the Summer of 1978 and they sold out 4 nights at the Camden Music Machine (and very good they were, too).
The issue of right-wing nastiness in music should really be loosened to a recognition of 20th century collective authoritarianism imagery and attitudes in popular music. The authoritarian left with it’s fine graphic art work (seriously – revolutionary posters can have brilliant design) was bound to be appropriated, for style, not the attitude. The hard left rarely got rock music till it was appropriated post May ’68 by the new left. The Stasi Museum in Berlin has some fine pictures from the 1980s where subversive Iron Maiden and punk fans are photographed for intelligence purposes, and kids were monitored for their listening to Bruce Springsteen and Bowie. “Over the Wall”, indeed.