*DISCLAIMER: I did not successfully infiltrate the HammerFest skinhead festival. Not even close*
[Photo by Erik Mclean from Pexels]
Back when I began studying journalism at University of
Queensland in 2012, I learned of a music festival called HammerFest. It was a
private music event – technically a “private party” rather than a concert or
festival for legal reasons – run by a local chapter of US-based white power
organisation called the Hammerskins, in conjunction with dominant international
skinhead organisation Blood and Honour, based in the UK.
Australia has a lurid history with white supremacy which
finally came to a horrific boiling point with Australian Brendan Tarrant’s
murder spree at a New Zealand mosque in 2019. The undercurrent of bigotry,
jingoism, and implicit hatred of minorities has existed in the nation’s
character since Englishman strode ashore in 1788.
This dark aspect to the nation’s personality has been hidden
or passed off as harmless colloquial larrikinism for generations, but what that
has allowed to fester is an impermeable crust of racism that collects in some
of the nation’s dirtiest recesses. They find ways to exist away from the public
eye, and they find ways to exist within it – just in the corners where people
aren’t really looking.
There are few better or clearer examples of this working
dichotomy, where the menace is seen and unseen, than the secretive neo-Nazi
music world.
A Brief History of Neo-Nazi Music in Australia
[Pictured: Doc Martin boots, a staple of Skinhead fashion]
Australia’s culture of racism and distrust is
long-since engrained, and early colonialist’s treatment of the native
Aboriginal people and many minorities visiting the country has been
historically horrific. Policy reflected these horrors in countless ways, small
and large, but the people who founded this continent never completely
reconciled with how their home could be declared “Terra Nullius”, invalidating
their human existence in two words and writing in lasting ink that it would
take the best part of 200 years for the simple truth of their experience to be
recognised, in lieu of being resolved.
While
white Australians decried the changes that were befalling them through the 20th
century at the hands of an international civil rights movement and feckless
progressives, fear of Nazis shifted to fear of Communists. That fed moral panic
and fear of foreigners for which a newly-connected Australia was unprepared;
from its staid, conservative citizens to the unprecedented authority of the
fledgling media.
Soon
enough, politicians expanded on post-war “invasion” rhetoric and fears of
economic ruin fed by anti-Communist propaganda. A generation of children
brought up with unguided xenophobia and unchecked fear of Leftism came from
their economically and socially barren lives somewhere around the 1980s, where
they emerged in the midst of an economic boom at the advent of what is often
colloquially called the “MTV Era”. Suddenly, disenfranchised youth who were
raised with the myopic conservatism of their parents still ringing in their
ears were seeking refuge in rebellion.
The
juvenile, violent sound of punk music arrived, with some of the genre’s
earliest practitioners emerging in Australia in the form of The Saints at the
Petrie Terrace punk-houses of Brisbane, and in cestuous backyard bands forming
and repurposing themselves into fledgling DIY communities.
Early
introductions to UK Oi! and punk music became available, especially through
mail-order based record labels and distros. The neo-conservative politics and
social fidelity bullishly advertised by these communities began to reach an
audience of more disenfranchised, impressionable young people. Small companies
dedicated to connecting skinheads from around the world began operating in the
UK, the US, Australia, and across Europe. Early skinhead-success stories
include the long-running Rock-O-Rama Records, which came to be exclusively
associated with RAC (Rock Against Communism) music and was supported by UK hate
group Blood and Honour, founded by neo-Nazi musician Ian Stuart Donaldson.
Australian
racists caught on to the bold new subculture coming out of the UK, and indeed
were home to the first international chapter of Blood and Honour. Bands to come
out of Australia in RAC music’s early wave included notorious Perth band Quick
and The Dead (who expatriated a member, Murray Holmes, to the UK to play in RAC
stalwarts Skrewdriver alongside Donaldson for a brief period), and long-running
racist nuisance Fortress, who have plied their hateful trade for somewhere
nudging 30 years.
Early
labels and distros operating in Australia increased access to overseas
materials through mailing-lists and nascent internet message boards. The genre
of racist rock music morphed over the years to include significant heavy metal
influence, spawning subgenres and affiliations that persist in staining the
paths of young music fans around the world. Australian neo-Nazis found
community in the fledgling Black Metal scene, eventually burdening the world
with several bands in the NSBM (National Socialist Black Metal), Death Metal,
and relatively-obscure War Metal genres.
Infamous
early progenitors hailing from Brisbane, Spear Of Longinus have proclaimed
their allegiances to national socialist ideals for a number of years, speaking
in hard-to-acquire NSBM zines and addressing their audiences in an era pre-camera
phones to capture the mess for posterity. Audiences at Spear Of Longinus shows
were not substantial, and due to lack of support and public pressure shows were
frequently forced to occur in private residences, often in ill-prepared garages.
Melbourne
war metal band Destroyer666 have courted controversy in the past. They profess
no overt allegiances to white supremacist doctrine, however critics claim their
music is littered with codes and hidden references to neo-Nazi sympathies and
messaging, and they were forced to cancel an Australian tour in 2019 after
racist and sexist comments from colourfully-named front-man KK Warslut surfaced
online. [1]
Brisbane
has an unfortunate affinity with neo-Nazi bands, with several more prominent
NSBM or Nazi-aligned metal bands originating in the sunny coastal city,
including Hammerskin-approved acts Deaths Head, Ravenous, and Vomitor.
Blood
Red Eagle from Sydney represent a rare visible example of the relative
allegiances of the Australian skinhead community not coalescing, as the band
have allegedly been maligned by the Blood and Honour community and have aligned
themselves exclusively with rival skinhead organisation Volksfront, which was
founded in a US prison in the 1990s. [2]
Neo-Nazi
music made headlines in 2000 when three members of Australian Army unit 3RAR (3rd
Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment) were discovered to be members of
hate-metal band Blood Oath.
The hateful
culture persisted. Independent concerts were held for years in cities across
Australia to mark important events to the white power calendar, loosely
organised and broadly decentralised, timed to commemorate Hitler’s birthday,
Ian Stuart Donaldson’s birth or death, and various fallen martyrs to their
cause such as the ultimate inspiration for Hammerfest, Joe “Hammer” Rowan.
Skinheads
revel in the grand traditional of rock and roll bacchanals to celebrate their
heroes and to foil their enemies. They use music as their strongest recruiting
tool and exploit the connectiveness with impressionable young audiences to
indoctrinate them with rhetoric and inculcate them to their cult. Power, as
they see it, exists in numbers.
Blood and Honour
[Pictured: Blood and Honour logo]
Blood and Honour (frequently stylized as
Blood & Honour with a triskele in place of the ampersand) are a UK based
white power organization founded by Ian Stuart Donaldson in 1987 in the UK. Ian
Stuart Donaldson was a prominent early skinhead and founding member of seminal
RAC/hate-rock band Skrewdriver.
Donaldson is considered an icon of the hate
world. His doctrines and style have become dogma and uniform in the days since
his band helped revolutionize violent bigotry.
The name “Blood and Honour” is taken from the
title-song of Skrewdriver’s 1985 LP. The cover art was created by Bugs Tattoo
Parlour in north London, and the popularity of the album inspired multiple
London skinheads to visit the shop and purchase the “Blood & Honour Viking”
tattoo from the promotional artwork. [3] They are also sometimes recognisable
by their adoption of the number “28”, often as a tattoo or symbolized in
artwork, which represents the common alphabet code of numerical values, where
“2” is “B” and “8” is “H”.
Under this loosely-adopted symbol, British
skinheads and racists began to organize. Ian Stuart Donaldson founded a more
formal cult in 1987 with the publication of the first issue of Blood and Honour
magazine, and dissemination of a “Founding Statement” claiming to be an “independent
National Socialist movement supporting all active NS/Nationalist parties and
groups in the White world”. Donaldson vows to “create units in every city and
every town in every country” and “win our nations back, once and for all”. [4]
Blood and Honour adopted several symbols to
represent their organization. Along with the usual far-right symbolism, they
adopted a flag adorned with a modified tri-pointed triskele substituting a swastika,
frequently laid in a white circle with a black backdrop akin to the Nazi flag.
Similarly, the group has commonly adopted a modified Totenknopf symbol with the
“B” and “H” of the name supplanted above and below the iconic deaths-head
skull. [5]
Blood and Honour began raising funds for
far-right causes, including the British-nationalist National Front, and
promoting the RAC and hate-rock music that popularized the movement and
fashions. They spread across the world, first into Australia where they shared
fanatical adherents and band-members. One of these early connections was
Australian RAC musician Murray Holmes, formerly of Perth band Quick and The
Dead, who joined Skrewdriver for a brief stint as bassist in the late 1980s.
Donaldson was known to relish violence. In
1985 he was sentenced to 12 months in prison for a racially motivated attack at
London’s King’s Cross station against a group of youths. In 1992, a planned
Skrewdriver concert in London became what is colloquially referred to as the
“Battle of Waterloo”, resulting in skirmishes between hundreds of skinheads and
anti-fascists. [6]
In 1992, splinter offshoot group Combat 18
was formed from associated British skinhead factions including Chelsea Wolves
and Blood and Honour. Combat 18 have become known for criminal violence and
escalation, finally becoming a banned criminal or terrorist organization in
several Western countries, including in Germany after a bombing at a
train-station was attributed to members of the group. The group has issued a
statement in their eponymous propaganda magazine “Combat 18” stating their aims
as creating an all-white nation by sending “all non-whites back to Africa,
Asia, Arabia, whether alive on in body bags”. They further make threats against
their perceived mortal enemies, “all Jews” with the usual patina of holocaust-worship
that exists in the more extreme corners of the far-right.
Ian Stuart Donaldson, frequently abbreviated
and codified to just “ISD”, died in 1993 in a car accident in Derbyshire,
England. His organization and his hateful legacy continue, and his death
inspired a tradition of memorial concerts in his name, often held on his
birthday or the date of his death worldwide. Popular among white supremacy
conspiracy theorists and skinhead cultists is the belief that Donaldson’s death
was not accidental, although there is insufficient evidence to support this
theory.
This theory-making distracts from the less
convenient fact of Blood and Honour co-founder Nicky Crane’s death from
AIDS-complications just two months later, soon after confessing his much maligned
homosexuality on television. [6]
Blood and Honour still have an alarming
presence in Australia, and they maintain a website which contains a welcoming
missive suggesting a “need to provide White youth with an alternative to the
‘hip-hop’ culture so eagerly promoted by the Zionist controlled media” and
other such racist-by-numbers tropes. The website proudly proclaims their
promotion of live gigs and events, however COVID restrictions have restricted
legal gatherings so instead there is simply an image with a message promising a
rescheduled “ISD memorial” in December 2020 at the time of writing (in January
2021).
Nonetheless, through these gigs and their
musical associations, Blood and Honour maintain support and dark-allegiance with
the Hammerskin Nation through their Australian chapter, the Southern Cross
Hammerskins.
Hammerskins
[Pictured: Hammerskins logo]
Formed in Dallas and
the small town of Garland, Texas in 1988, their primary ambitions were
initially to produce and disseminate white power music in the US and eventually
through international networks. They are closely affiliated with white power
record label 9% Productions, who produce and promote bands exclusively
associated with white power, neo-Nazi, or RAC music, and content from
ideologically aligned speakers and podcasts. The Anti-Defamation League has
described them as the “one of the oldest hardcore racist skinhead groups in the
United States” [7]. The Southern Poverty Law Centre describes them as “the best
organized, most widely dispersed and most dangerous Skinhead group known”. They
have their own official media, Hammerskin Press, and they are they proudly
“labor with a Race First motto”. [8]
Hammerskins have
maintained this reputation for organization through regular dissemination of
music and materials, as well as recruiting policies that require strict
“face-time” with prospective members and probationary periods for initiates. Recruits
to the Southern Cross Hammerskins require initiates to the organization to
spend time serving in their recruiting faction, Crew38, before gaining entry to
the senior gang. [7]
Their logo is
derived from the fictitious neo-Nazi organization from the 1982 Pink Floyd
movie “The Wall”. Their logo depicts two
left-facing claw-hammers crossed to resemble two goose-stepping boots, usually
laid over a cogwheel. This is frequently laid over a flag or shield bearing the
national colours of Nazi Germany or some identifying regional variant.
Their motto is
“Hammerskins Forever, Forever Hammerskins”, frequently abbreviated/symbolized
as the acronym “HFFH”. They are known to use the number designation/code “838”,
which represents the 8th and 3rd letter of the English
alphabet and is meant to codify as “HCH” or “Hail the Crossed Hammers”.
The Australian
chapter, known as the Southern Cross Hammerskins, maintain a barebones website
hosted at a .org address. The website proclaims the organization “a fraternal
group of like-minded individuals who believe in loyalty, respect,
trustworthiness, strength, commitment and the 14 Words”. The “14 Words” is a
codified phrase solidifying the racist beliefs of white supremacists: “We must
secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”
In 1989 five members
of the recently-formed Confederate Hammerskins, including their founder Sean
Tarrant, were charged with crimes related to race, assault and deprivation of
liberty when they began patrolling a local park, then known as Robert E. Lee
Park, in Garland, Texas in order to exclude minorities from the park by
intimidation and violence. They had elected to enforce a “white’s only” policy
in the public park in response to rumours the NAACP was attempting to change
the name of the park. The defendants appeal was dismissed by an appellate court
in 1991. [9]
Founder, Sean
Christian Tarrant, had played drums in white power band called the Bully Boys.
This link between racist music and the skinhead movement has endured as an
essential element of the relationship ever since, as do the hostile and conspiratorial
anti-Semitic rhetoric and appeals to real-world violence that permeate the
sound. Indeed, Bully Boys played in Australia in 2004 at a memorial concert in
honour of neo-Nazi figurehead and Blood and Honour founder Ian Stuart
Donaldson, alongside stalwarts of the racist Australian scene Blood Red Eagle,
Deaths Head, and Fortress, all of whom carry their own troubling histories. Sean
Tarrant ultimately served 9 years in prison for the 1989 arrest, after
appealing sentence in 1991. [10]
Soon the Confederate
Hammerskins spread across America, becoming known as the Hammerskin Nation.
Chapters appeared across the country, each adopting a regional variant on the
original Hammerskin logo to create identifiable factions. This habit of
adopting regional variants of the original logo has continued as the
organization spread internationally, with versions appearing to denote
different national chapters around the world, including the Southern Cross
Hammerskins in Australia.
The permeation of
this group into the cloth of white extremism in America had further real-world
consequences. Hammerskins have been charged with countless crimes in their
30-plus year history running the gamut of violent and coercive hate-crimes with
multiple convictions.
The promulgation of
white power materials was initially aided by the adoption of mail-order
purchases, with the earliest popular white supremacist literature and music
available to curious persons from ads in the back of newspapers and special-interest
magazines declaring the security of brotherhood and shared ideas, or spread
through personal networks and word-of-mouth. Some of the most notorious and
influential racist and eugenics-laden materials were disseminated through
closed networks of turned-on readers and remain essential-reading for aspiring
white supremacists in 2021. A search of terms like “Day of the Rope” (derived
from a fictional book describing an apocalyptic race-war) or “1488” (using the
common numerical code of white supremacist networks to indicate the dual symbolism
of the “14 Words”-doctrine of modern neo-Nazism, and the numerical
representation of the acronym “H.H.”, meant to symbolise the expression “Heil
Hitler”) on social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook will return some
chilling results.
[Pictured: Twitter screenshot; credit Author, Jan 2021]
9% Productions is a
white power/RAC record label which is run by and with support of members of
Blood & Honour and the Southern Cross Hammerskins, according the Australian
extremist watchdog-website Slackbastard. [10] As of January 2021, 9%
Productions website is regularly active with releases from prominent white
power bands and podcasts in honour of notorious deceased neo-Nazi figurehead Ian
Stuart Donaldson.
This connection
between white power music and proliferation is not accidental. Member of
prominent American “hate rock” band Bound For Glory, Ed Wolbank says, “Music is
number 1. It’s the best way to reach people. Through music people can start
getting into the scene, then you can start educating them. Politics through
music”. [11]
This connection
between 9% Productions, Blood and Honour, and the Australian white supremacist
movement became more substantive when Blood and Honour made early headways into
the country by forming their first international chapter on Antipodean soil.
The organization increased access to racist RAC rock music in the Southern
Hemisphere and helped proliferate an Australian RAC/neo-Nazi punk-rock oeuvre,
which has persisted with long-running bands, secretive shows, and incestuous
member-swapping.
Brisbane and Perth,
on opposite coasts of the country, have long served as epicentres for the RAC
and neo-Nazi music scenes. Perth became home to early bands to link up with the
British and American neo-Nazi scenes, most notoriously Quick and The Dead, who
ultimately shared a member for a short time with infamous British band
Skrewdriver.
Brisbane has had
multiple associations, including many live shows and a glut of early skinhead,
RAC or NSBM (National Socialist Black Metal) bands forming and playing in the
city. Most notoriously are early NSBM band Spear of Longinus (named for the
spear that the Roman soldier Pantera used to pierce Christ’s side as he lay on
the cross at Golgotha), although the city has continued to make news into the
2010’s with long-running punk band Big Bongin’ Baby unfurling a swastika flag
and making Nazi salutes at a show in Brisbane in 2016, causing some national
outrage at the time.
Thanks in part to
their affiliations with RAC music and 9% Productions, Hammerskins made forays
into Australia in at least the early 1990s. The group’s reach with neo-Nazi
music internationally made them a user-friendly proponent of racist music and
materials in Australia in the fledgling days of the internet. This early
connection made for a fertile association with the newly-formed white power
community organized under the Blood and Honour banner. Still, much of the
organizing for Hammerskins-sponsored events occurs on forums associated with Blood
and Honour.
The factionalism of,
and friction between, these groups appears limited, however, as many adherents
to the Blood and Honour or Hammerskins labels also firmly associate with other
known white power organisations. According to Slackbastard and the ADL,
Hammerskins and Blood and Honour have known connections to affiliates such as
Crew38, notorious prison-gang the Aryan Nation, and the “openly terrorist”
Combat 18. [10]
The international
connectiveness of the Hammerskins network came to bear again in a pivotal
moment for the growing skinhead movement when Australian RAC band No Remorse
played a show to commemorate the death of Ian Stuart Donaldson in Wisconsin in
1994. Sometime after the show, vocalist for US band Nordic Thunder, Joe Rowan,
was shot dead during an altercation at the Starvin Marvins convenience store in
Racine, Wisconsin by Naseer Ghani after provocation by Rowan and friends. [12]
According to former bandmate of Rowan, referred to only as “Bob”, in an article
published by German white power website Frontmagazin.de, Rowan was an
“ideologically established skinhead” and describes him as “the driving force
that united all local groups”. [13]
This double-whammy
of martyrdom, with Blood and Honour godfather Ian Stuart Donaldson dying in 1993
and Joe Rowan in 1994, cemented a myth-making surrounding the early days of the
movement which is still represented in symbols, language, and indeed events
such as the internationally-franchised HammerFest, held initially to honour the
memory of Joe Rowan and now repeated ostensibly-annually around the world.
Australian skinheads
had been putting on low-key shows in dive-bar locations and garages for years,
and eventually worked with Blood and Honour to hold Ian Stuart Donaldson commemorative
concerts from about 1997. Infamously, the location of two of these events was
discovered; namely The Birmingham Hotel in Melbourne, resulting in the
management at the time resigning. [14]
The inaugural HammerFest
was held in 1999 in Bremen, Georgia, USA. No listing of the bands is available.
The event caused public furore but was not widely reported. This is the first
Australian event held to commemorate deceased Hammerskin Joe “Hammer” Rowan.
HammerFest 2000
occurred in Bremen, Georgia, USA; featuring the descriptively-named bands
Brutal Attack, Hate Crime, Extreme Hatred, Code of Violence, Dying Breed, and
White Wash. [15]
The festival bounced
between locations in the US, holding secretive concerts in Georgia, Michigan,
Pennsylvania, Florida, and Oregon. In 2005, organizers broke from their
RAC/hate-rock preferences to book infamous Nazi tween-pop duo Prussian Blue.
(In a happy aside, the sisters who formed Prussian Blue as young girls under
the encouragement and management of their parents, have since renounced their
white supremacist ideology and have embraced multi-culturalism and cannabis). [16]
Meanwhile, the RAC,
skinhead, and neo-Nazi movements in Australia were picking up speed, emboldened
by the support from Blood & Honour and the perceived kinship with the
Hammerskin Nation and other white power groups making incursions into Australia
at that time. Minimal information is available about the earliest iterations of
ISD memorial concerts in the country.
In 2007 Blood and
Honour, in conjunction with Southern Cross Hammer Skins, sponsored a memorial
show in Melbourne featuring several of the aforementioned Australian neo-Nazi
musical-offenders, including Fortress and Quick and The Dead, alongside unnamed
“international guests”.
The inaugural Australian
HammerFest occurred on the Gold Coast, in secret in 2010, “proudly presented”
by Crew38 and Blood and Honour. Neo-Nazi bands Open Season and Ravenous were
scheduled to play the event.
“Hammered Music
Festival” occurred in Brisbane in 2012, sponsored by Southern Cross
Hammerskins, Crew38, and Blood and Honour. This was the third annual gig, featuring
bands such as locals Ravenous, Open Season, and Deaths Head. The event was held
to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Southern Cross
Hammerskins. [17] The website proudly advertises the presence of an unnamed
“brother from the Confederate Hammerskins chapter” and began the day after
Hitler’s birthday. [18]
A review of the
event published on Blood and Honour’s Australian website describes a tight-knit
group of skinheads from around Australia and New Zealand partying in a motel
for Hitler’s birthday and then attending a gig at an unknown location.
Federal Race
Discrimination Minister Dr Helen Szoke called the festival “abhorrent” amidst
the furore pre-empting the festival, which was to be held at a secret location
to avoid scrutiny from what the group called the “Zionist-controlled media” and
obstruct efforts to prevent the gathering. [19]
Queensland
Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie said, “While the government does not condone
neo-Nazi or extremist beliefs, it is not illegal hold an event such as this.”
He further said, “The Queensland government will not ban this festival, but any
attendees who incite or commit violence or racism will be dealt with by
police”. [17]
Hammered Music
Festival occurred in Queensland again in 2013, this time at a secret location
at Carrara on the Gold Coast. Posts on notorious neo-Nazi forum Stormfront.org
described the event as “a massive event on the white calender (sic) with great
bands, great atmosphere and a great weekend… in one of Australia’s top holiday
destinations”. Despite calls for the festival to be moved or, again, banned,
the festival went again this year as well. [20]
Hammered VII
occurred in 2016, this time in Tasmania. Information about this event is
scarce.
A post by user
“AustralianMade” on Stormfront.org alludes to “meet & greets for people
that we haven’t met before”, implying a significant level of screening and
security. [21]
Hammerfest appears
to have continued under varied titles, with varying degrees of publicity and
public outcry, for most or all of the years since its inception.
In 2019, a new
controversy began to brew, as Blood and Honour and the Southern Cross
Hammerskins announced plans for a Hammerfest event in Melbourne, this time
called “Hammered Music Festival”. The trouble drew attention from major news
outlets across Australia and the world, as residents fought to have the
festival banned.
In the wake of
several far-right rallies and events around the country and particularly in
Melbourne, there was increased interest and fear surrounding the prospect of a
Hammerskin festival occurring in their proverbial backyard.
“Following a
far-right rally in St Kilda in January this year, the Emmy Monash Aged Care
Facility in Caulfield North, which houses a number of Holocaust survivors, was
targeted with neo-Nazi graffiti; many in my community are deeply concerned that
this group poses a real and present danger to all Victorians and believe we
need to take action to prevent violence before it occurs,” said Opposition
police and community safety spokesman David Southwick in 2019. [22]
A submission filed
with the Victorian Government by multiple organizations (including the Human
Rights Law Centre, GetUp!, Anti-Defamation Commission, Victorian Trades Hall
Council, and the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre) was submitted under the title
of “”Stopping hate in its tracks; Joint submission to the Victorian
Government’s Anti-Vilification Protections Inquiry” in 2019. This submission
was made in direct response to the announcement of the Hammered Music Festival,
stating “Hateful conduct is harmful and contrary to democratic values.” The
submission further states: “Victoria currently prohibits vilification and
serious vilification through the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001
(Vic)(RRTA)” which defines vilification as “conduct that incites hatred against,
or serious contempt for, or revulsion or severe ridicule of, a person or class
of persons based on a particular protected attribute.” The coalition submitted
a petition containing 27,000 signatures supporting the cessation of the
Hammered Music Festival. [23]
The organizations
behind the submission urged for “expanded, best-practice” laws that included,
amongst other items, “(c) Enacting a better criminal test for serious
vilification”, and “(e) Enacting a new criminal offence prohibiting the public
display of vilifying and intimidating materials, including the swastika”. This
brings up a troubling issue with prohibiting events such as Hammerfest, and
that is many of the extant laws do not prohibit the display or demonstration of
hateful ideas. It is legal, at least in Victoria, to display white power
symbols without fear of legal repercussions in many instances. This extends to
the right to hold gatherings of politically aligned, like-minded individuals.
Many of the parameters Blood and Honour and the Southern Cross Hammerskins
undertake to limit exposure to the public are self-imposed, for fear of
incursion, exposure, and various unmanageable legal issues that would arise if
the location of these events was made public. These issues extend from the
obvious, such as litigation and harassment, to the mundane, such as insurance
and licensing. International bands attending Hammerfest performances are
regularly required to navigate strict VISA laws to enter the country, where
they cannot legally perform music as “employment”, so many of these bands enter
the country on tourist VISAs and must perform ostensibly as a “hobby” in
relative secret and without promotion. This is part of the reason international
bands are rarely, if ever, advertised for Blood and Honour events ahead of
time.
According to
Anti-Defamation Commission chairman, Jewish community leader, and member of the
coalition Dr Dvir Abramovich, the event did not proceed. Victorian Police said
they had “no intelligence of the concert going ahead as scheduled”.
Dr Abramovich said
at the time, “Bravo to our community who beat hate. This is a victory for
people power, for justice, for decency, and for those courageous individuals
who acted as a moral amplifier. Who locked arms in declaring threat the words
and ideas of neo-Nazis are counter to everything this nation stands for.” [24]
That Time I Tried to Infiltrate It
[Pictured: Author having regrets]
Upon hearing about this secretive cabal of racists and their
annual shindig in 2012, I realised the whole affair was ripe for investigation.
Finding good fodder for articles seemed like good journalism, so I logged the
idea alongside all my other half-formed ideas, like full-contact cricket and musical
prophylactics, waiting for an opportunity to expand it.
Soon enough, that opportunity presented itself when I learned
through a random comment in a random music message board that the Southern
Cross Hammerskins had begun chatting about another music festival in Brisbane
in smaller forums across the internet.
After some rudimentary snooping, I discovered the first
obstacle to admission: there were no tickets, no bookings, no address to
purchase from. Instead, there was email addresses listed for each state for prospects
to contact Hammerskins representatives and purchase entry directly from the
organizers.
This would, of course, end my expedition immediately, as I
had no racist credentials and any background checks would have revealed a
liberal long-hair posing to gain admission. This would not do.
However, I had learned through these first incursions that
the community existed on a handful of internet forums, most prominently
Stormfront.org and the Blood and Honour forums.
The hegemony created by the general domination of Blood and
Honour and Hammerskins in Australia meant it was simple investigating an avenue
to infiltrate the community. Unfortunately, it also creates the greatest
obstacle to completing this task; the bottleneck created at the initiate stage
means you are forced to meet one of these members, and frequently many at the
same time, in order to pass the basic scrutiny of whether a person is “one of
them”, so to speak. A person may be able to adopt a racist lexicon online in
order to blend in, but the average non-racist person will likely have other
more subtle tells at the least, and possibly significant physiological
fear-responses that will give them away under the pressure of a face-to-face
meeting with avowed white supremacists that is designed specifically to weed
out fakes. I regarded this as a problem for later. As it happens, I needn’t
have worried at all.
I created a burner-email address and joined the forums on Stormfront.org,
initially expecting that my smarts and general arrogance would see me through
to being accepted by the community. However, this proved difficult, as there
was significant use of coded language that remained confounding to me. I didn’t
surmise that I was being excluded from important information, but without
understanding the short-hand I struggled to become a part of the conversation
much at all, which seemed to be a basic, essential requirement of becoming
engaged with this group.
The forum was full of jokes and aggression, with posts about
bands of obvious neo-Nazi leanings and a lot of regular hardcore and heavy
metal as well. There were gigs posted around the country, all with bands I’ve
never heard of at venues that are unlikely to still exist, and forum members
would speak of them as pivotal dates on the social calendar. The language was
severe, although even then I felt weirdly inoculated to the burning racism and repressed
violence thanks in part to the seeping of white supremacist language into all
facets of the social media realm.
I was lost, like a foreigner, and I had started to attract
some attention. Members of this group, who were aggressive with even their most
loyal compatriots, had begun to notice I wasn’t really one of them. I had been
lurking and occasionally posting for approximately two months, and I had
noticed a strange shift. I was no longer getting into the same fights and petty
arguments as everyone else. First, there was a flavour of distrust, as members accused
me of complex ethnic sympathies and eugenic impurities. This distrust quickly
became a sense that I was an outsider, and a constant language-pattern emerged wherein
I was spoken to like a shady foreigner trying to spy (which was a
not-completely unfounded attitude, to be fair). Soon I was being threatened, in
the various ways tough guys on the internet threaten people, and I realised the
jig was up.
I had left the forum alone for some time, knowing that I was
not going to be able to successfully infiltrate the group. However, one night
while buried in homework, I took a break, poured some whisky, and scrolled some
pages online. I don’t know what compelled me, but after several drinks I found
myself back on the skinhead forum, logged in and scanning for news. There were
several people online, all bickering over eugenics theories that essentially
boiled down to “I’m more Aryan than you are.”
I am a difficult drunk. Not an aggressive one, and rarely a
sloppy one. I am good-humoured, and I don’t get angry as much as I do sardonic
and quippy. I think I am Winston Churchill when I’m drunk. I cannot explain why
I joined the discussion beyond that.
What resulted was a brief discussion where I criticized the active
members’ ethnic purity, based on a befuddled insistence that their ancestors
probably slept with Mongols and Greeks and Gypsies for hundreds of years, and
essentially posited that none of them were White enough to be Aryans.
I was banned from the forum. I received a vague and anonymous
threat to my email address. I received a second one using my real first name. I
promptly closed the email address and have never opened it since.
Conclusions
Australians speak of having a complex history with racism. This
is true, although not in the off-handed way it is commonly repeated. We have
morphed from a colonial prison-outpost for the British Empire to a liberal,
multicultural economy predicated on our geographic proximity to Asia. The
nation relies heavily on tourism dollars and international mineral,
agriculture, and exploration conglomerates to bolster the economy. Australia fought
in the war against the Axis powers, and “Nazi” is still shorthand for “bad-guy”
to most Australians.
However, there remains a twisted thread of racism that is sewn
through the fabric of the country. Cronulla was our fledgling Charleston. It
put our racism on the front page of newspapers, and the event cemented the
knowledge that there was a white Australia so fearful of their perceived
extermination that they began to feel entitled to strike first; Blair “I Lost
My Neck In Prison” Cottrel and sympathizers to symbiotic far-right causes like
Avi “Domestic Violence Order” Yemeni since found platforms preaching to
simple-minded Australians who rallied behind propagandist noise and comforting
patriotic sloganeering.
White supremacy is an ugly package. It presents itself as a
sacred fraternity that will protect white brethren, but only if they’ll put themselves
and others in harm’s way. No rationalisation for its existence says it should
be a party. But such is the propagandist foundation of the movement that, by
admission of its proponents, the most effective recruiting tool is music and
events like Hammerfest. Therefore, it is perhaps essential for the fair
application of extant discrimination laws that they address the social harm of
the recruiting tools of white supremacy. The publication of an event meant to
cause fear to and discriminate against minorities may arguably represent a
crime of discrimination or racial vilification in itself, relative to the
nature of the publication or event, if the promoters could reasonably expect
that the public would learn of its existence.
It has been easy for lackadaisical Australia to ignore the
rising prevalence of white supremacy, as neo-patriotic rhetoric and old-timey larrikinism
have increasingly fed into the national identity. The nation fought a war and believes
it knows what the country looks like, and what their countrymen should look
like.
But if this wide brown country has a colour it is the colour
of dust.
KMM
References
[1] “Destroyer 666 cancels tour after ‘racist’ past
unearthed”, Carmody, Broede; Sydney Morning Herald, 2019, www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/destroyer-666-cancels-tour-after-racist-past-unearthed-20190424-p51gur.html
[2] “A Brief History of Neo-Nazi Music In Australia”, Slackbastard,
2010, www.slackbastard.anarchobase.com/?p=22224
[3] “Ian Stuart Donaldson & Skrewdriver Biography
(1957-1993)”, Anonymous, www.bloodandhoourworldwide.co.uk/bhww/isd-biographies/ian-stuart-donaldson-skrewdriver-biography/isd-biography
[4] “B & H Founding Statement”, Donaldson, Ian;
bloodandhonourworldwide.co.uk, www.bloodandhonourworldwide.co.uk/bhww/b-h-founding-statement
[5] “Triskele”, Anti-Defamation League; www.adl.org, www.adl.org/education/references/hate-symbols/triskele
[6] “Ian Stuart
Donaldson and a legacy of hate”, Whelan, Brian; www.channel4.com, 2013, www.channel4.com/news/ian-stuart-donaldson-a-legacy-of-hate
[7] “Hammerskins”, Anti-Defamation League, www.adl.or/education/referemces/hate-symbols/hammerskins
[8] “Hammerskin Nation Emerges From Small Dallas Group”,
Reynolds, Michael, SPLC Intelligence Report 1999 Fall Issue, www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/1999/hammerskin-nation-emerges-small-dallas-group
[9] United States V Christopher Barry Greer, Daniel Alvis
Wood, Sean Christian Tarrant, Michael Lewis Lawrence, and Jon Lance Jordan, 939
F.2d 1076 (5th Cir. 1991); www.courtlistener.com/opinion/565154/united-states-v-christopher-barry-greer-daniel-alvis-wood-sean-christian
[10] “A Brief History of Neo-Nazi Music In Australia”, Slackbastard,
2010, www.slackbastard.anarchobase.com/?p=22224
[11] “The Hammerskin Nation”, Anti-Defamation League, www.adl.org/education/resources/profiles/hammerskin-nation
[12] “Alleged supremacist shot to death”, United Press
International, 1994, www.upi.com/Archives/1994/10/01/Alleged-supremacist-shot-to-death/8600780984000
[13] “Joe Rowan: A Fallen Brother Who Will Never Be
Forgotten”, Anonymous, 2019, www.frontmagazin.de/magazine/?p=8208
[14] “Hammerfest 2007”, Slackbastard, 2007, www.slackbastard.anarchobase.com/?p=868
[15] “White power music festival Hammerfest 2000 draws
international fans to Atlanta”, Southern Poverty Law Center, 2000 www.splc.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2001/white-power-music-festival-hammerfest-2000-draws-international-fans-atlanta
[16] “’Marijuana changed us from Nazis to peace-loving
hippies’: Twin sisters who sparked outrage with pop band named after gas used
on Jews claim they’ve grown up”, Enoch, Nick; Daily Mail, 2012, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2165342/Prussian-Blue-twins-Lynx-Lamb-Marijuana-changed-Nazis-peace-loving-hippies.html
[17] “Neo-Nazi music festival to go ahead”, Feeney,
Katherine; Brisbane Times, 2012, www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/neo-nazi-music-festival-to-go-ahead-20120416-1x3h0.html
[18] “Hammered Music Festival – Brisbane – 2012”, ‘Pommy’; 2012,
www.bloodandhonouraustralia.org/hammered12.html
[19] “Brisbane set for ‘secret’ neo-Nazi music festival”,
Nine News Australia; 2012, www.9news.com.au/national/Brisbane-set-for-secret-neo-nazi-music-festival/52a2c8f8-b2e5-42ed-ab63-9332ddd1a90d
[20] “Neo-Nazis will gather at a secret location on the Gold
Coast for a white supremacy music festival”, Potts, Andrew, 2013, www.couriermail.com.au/new/queensland/neo-nazis-will-gather-at-a-secret-location-on-the-gold-coast-for-a-white-supremacy-music-festical/news-story/800dc6f2d037937a3fd8611944b0e3dc
[21] “Southern Cross Hammerskins present ‘Hammered 2016’”,
User “Australian Made”, 2013, www.stormfront.org/forum/t1144669
[22] “Shut down and investigate: Calls to stop neo-Nazi
concert”, Hope, Zach, 2019, www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/shut-down-and-investigate-calls-to-stop-neo-nazi-concert-20190919-p52t05.html
[23] “Stopping hate in its tracks: Joint submission to the
Victorian Government’s Anti-Vilification Protections Inquiry”,
Anti-Vilification Protections Inquiry, 2019, www.static1.squarespace.com/static/580025f66b8f5b2dabbe4291/t/5e33c00c95862d328a6ca24e/158044981/Submission+-+Stopping+hate+in+its+tracks+-+30+January+2020.pdf
[24] “Melbourne’s neo-Nazi festival stopped, Jewish leader
says”, Goodman, Rick, 2019, www.7news.com.au/news/vic/melbournes-neo-nazi-festival-stopped-jewish-leader-says-c-506975
No comments:
Post a Comment