Understanding Music in Movements: The White Power Music Scene

Abstract

Relying on the analysis of ethnographic and documentary data, this article explains how U.S. White Power Movement (WPM) activists use music to produce collective occasions and experiences that we conceptualize as the movement's music scene. We use the concept “music scene” to refer to the full range of movement occasions in which music is the organizing principle. Members experience these not as discrete events, but as interconnected sets of situations that form a relatively coherent movement music scene. We emphasize three analytically distinct dimensions of this scene—local, translocal, and virtual—and specify how each contributes to emotionally loaded experiences that nurture collective identity. Participants claim that strong feelings of dignity, pride, pleasure, love, kinship, and fellowship are supported through involvement in the WPM music scene. These emotions play a central role in vitalizing and sustaining member commitments to movement ideals.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We want to thank the UNLV Huntridge Writers Group, Peter Kivisto, and the anonymous TSQ reviewers for their helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this article. Research support for this project was provided by the National Science Foundation (SES—0202129), the UNLV Graduate College, and the Office of Sponsored Programs at the University of Nebraska, Omaha.

NOTES

Notes

¹ Denisoff (1971) also describes what, by our conceptualization, is the early American folk music labor movement scene—a highly politicized amalgamation of performers, their songs, performances, performing spaces, organizers, music bulletins, and 'zines (e.g., Sing Out!), production companies (e.g., People's Songs, Inc., People's Artists, Inc.), and radio broadcasts (also see Eyerman and Jamison 1998). However, he does not give much analytic attention to the wide range of collective occasions and experiences available in this scene and, instead, focuses on lyrical analysis to assess movement music.

² There is fairly common usage of the term “scene” as related to music, art, and fashion across the fields of sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, communications, and history. However, few have attempted to spell out what it means analytically.

³ Although “scene” is sometimes used synonymously with subculture, we do not intend this. “Scene” is not coterminous with the concept of subculture. As Bennett (2000, 1999) notes, the concept subculture has lost much of its sociological validity as scholars use it in contradictory ways and it takes on a plurality of meanings. Regarding music and sociability, subculture seems to now exist as “little more than a convenient ‘catch-all' term for any aspect of social life in which … people, style, and music intersect” (Bennett 1999:600). Moreover, the traditional use of this term suggests that subcultures are much more coherent and homogenous than they often are. This is important for us, as activist commitments to movement communities vary widely and involvement can be very fluid. Indeed, one of the important features of the WPM music scene is that it offers multiple ways to gear into the movement that require differing levels of commitment and allow for fluid participation. Second, social movement scholars often use subculture to describe a much broader aspect of movement culture than our use of the scene concept. Subculture often refers to the entirety of a movement (i.e., a social movement is a subculture). Following this definition, if music scene is equivalent to subculture it would be a subculture of a subculture. Additionally, equating music scene with subculture would ignore the various genres in the scene and would not take us very far analytically. A movement music scene is subcultural, but not a subculture per se. At most, we use scene to refer to a dimension of a movement subculture. All those who participate in the movement do not necessarily also participate in a movement's music scene. Indeed, not all racist groups agree on what forms of racist culture are appropriate (Blee 2002:165). Finally, what we conceptualize as scene also cannot be captured by the concept ritual. Although movement music scenes may certainly exhibit features of formal ritual (e.g., ritual boundaries, group performance, symbolic enactment), to limit what happens in the scene and how people experience it to ritual oversimplifies the matter.

⁴ Participant observation concentrated on Christian Identity activists in the southwest, Aryan Nations activists in Idaho, WPM participants in Southern California including major leaders such as Tom Metzger (founder of the White Aryan Resistance), several WPM promoters and band members, and numerous skinhead groups. These contacts resulted in, among other things, observations of live Web site/radio broadcast productions, various social gatherings, WPM bar concerts and music festivals, and 21 home visits with activists, each ranging from one day to three weeks.

⁵ Of the 59 interviews, 43 were with male activists and 16 with female activists. Their ages ranged from 15 to 25 years (n7), 26 to 35 years (n28), 36 to 45 years (n9), 46 to 55 years (n9), and 55 and over (n6).

⁶ Newspaper articles on the WPM were drawn primarily from the Los Angeles Times, The Salt Lake Tribune, The Spectrum (St. George, Utah), and the Las Vegas Review Journal. Articles were selected through a structured, exhaustive search of the Lexus–Nexus database and microfilm indexes of the Los Angeles Times and Las Vegas Review Journal to 1985 using search terms such as skinhead, neo-Nazi, white supremacy, white power, hate- (including hate-crime, hate group, etc.). Other articles are drawn from data provided by watchdog groups (e.g., Southern Poverty Law Center, Political Research Associates). We also examined 48 WPM Web sites.

⁷ The states are: Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Texas, and Washington.

⁸ In the case of widely known white power groups, the names of the organizations and their representatives are left unchanged. In other cases, pseudonyms are used.

⁹ There are many attitudes held by members of skinhead subcultures. Some are explicitly antiracist. Here we refer only to those explicitly racist skinheads directly involved in white power activities.

¹⁰ Though typically characterized as a supremacist movement (Ferber 1998), Dobratz and Shanks-Meile (1997) argue that a separatist philosophy has become a central theme within some networks of the WPM. Additionally, Berbrier (1998) points out that “new racist” rhetoric seeks to emphasize white power legitimacy through arguments for cultural pluralism and some are even claiming whites as victims of discrimination, stigmatization, and racial genocide (Berbrier 2000).

¹¹ Examples of doctrinaire song titles and lyrics by two of the most popular white power bands include: Race and Nation by Skrewdriver (n.d.)

I believe in the White race,

A race apart,

We've got a mile start,

I believe in my country,

It's where I belong,

It's where I'll stay,

Chorus:

For my race and nation,

Race and nation,

Race and nation,

Race and nation.

Hate Train Rolling by Bound for Glory (n.d.)

Chorus:

Hate Train Rolling on the rails of an insane world,

Hate Train Rolling a non-stop collision undeterred,

Hate Train Rolling leaving wreckage in our path,

We're Bound for Glory,

Hate Train Rolling, Built to forever last.

¹² Examples of song titles and lyrics focusing on themes of “brotherhood,”“volk,”“white pride,” and “Aryan heritage” include:

Geile Macker(Keine Kacker) by Max Resist (n.d., 1998b)

Freikorps for Deutschland,

andthe love of the fatherland,

Max Resist for brotherhood is the reason we exist,

Standing together with our strength and pride,

Our true feelings for us it's hard to hide.

Chorus:

Skinhead unity, it's the way it should always be,

Friends from all over the world that's you and me,

Aryan brothers hands across the sea,

Skinhead pride—White unity.

It's Okay to Be White by Aggressive Force (n.d.)

It's okay to be White,

Strength through pride,

You have inside,

It's okay to be White,

It's okay to be White,

Loyalty within you,

Have with your kin.

Stand One, Stand All by Youngland (n.d.)

Stand one, stand all, stand up, stand proud

and raise the white man's flag,

Cause I'm for you and you're for me,

and unity is what we have.

Don't listen to what they say,

Don't ever fall away,

Don't listen we'll have our day,

When our nations have their way.

¹³ It is important to note that claims by both WPM leaders and antiracist watchdog organizations may exaggerate the level of sales and consumer demand.

¹⁴ According to a 1997 survey by the Centre for Migration Studies and the National Council of Crime Prevention in Sweden, out of 8,000 young Swedes between the ages of 12 and 19, 12.2 percent reported listening to white power rock “sometimes or often” (Lööwe 1998b).

¹⁵ Throughout the paper, references to “Panzerfaust” refer to activities and statements prior to the 2005 reorganization. “Panzerfaust/Free Your Mind Productions” will be used for all post-reorganization references.

¹⁶ Chants are relatively simplistic and straightforward. For instance, the most common we observed is “sieg heil, sieg heil,” which is sometimes repeated for 5–10 minutes, usually in unison with a Nazi salute. Another is “white power, white power” or the variation “white fucking power” used the same way. Periodic shouts of “88” or “14” are also common, as is singing along with popular chorus lines, such as “I'm an 88 rock ‘n’ roll star.”

¹⁷ European music shows often attract several thousand and represent an ideal that U.S. organizers seek to attain.

¹⁸ Of course, exposure to the scene can also produce or enhance feelings of revulsion, fear, and hostility from those who do not inhabit it toward those who do. Here we concentrate on the emotions of committed activists.