Keeping an eye on the neo-fascists burrowing their way into a subculture near you
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Wednesday, 13 October 2010
Boyd Rice Meets Nazi Tom Metzger
Maybe you've already seen this but, if not, here's Boyd Rice being interviewed by Tom Metzger on the latter's cable TV show. Metzger is a White separatist, former Ku Klux Klan member and Democratic Party Senatorial Primary candidate, and founder of the White Aryan Resistance (WAR) party. He's notorious among other things for his comments on the death of Mulugeta Seraw, an Ethiopian studying at college in the US, murdered in 1988 by WAR supporters. Metzger announced that his men had simply done their "civic duty" by killing Seraw. A court found that Metzger and WAR had encouraged racial violence and imposed the largest civil verdict in Oregon history at the time—$12.5 million—against Metzger and WAR.
The interview is interesting because it shows that Rice is explicit about the fact that music can be used as a "propaganda art form" for encouraging the growth of an "Aryan Youth Movement" - presumably the kind of movement that will go out and murder more Ethiopian students and other "racial enemies". He calls Current 93 and Death in June "racialist bands", and can hardly be said to be slurring them since he was close friends with the key members of both, having toured and recorded with them over a long period of time, and even appearing alongside Death in June's Doug Pearce in the film Pearls Before Swine: there's a cosy picture of them (Rice, Tibet, Wakeford and Pearce) on tour together elsewhere on this blog.
I'll be writing more about Rice soon as I'm currently plowing through his collected essays. In the meantime it's good to be reminded that, whatever half-witted fanboys and apologists say about how the use of fascist iconography by Neo-Folk and Industrial bands is merely aesthetic, some of the musicians concerned know perfectly well that it's also political.
Hat tip to Commando Bruno
Talked to Boyd Rice on the phone once for an extended period of time although I've never met him. I was surprised how he's far less well read than I thought he'd be. He has neo-Nazi connections, but he's said that his ideal past society and government was the Byzantine Empire not Nazi Germany. Which still makes him an authoritarian any way you look at it ; Byzantium was not a free society and was definitely authoritarian (in fact it was as close to being totalitarian as technology of that time permitted)Byzantine nostalgia has also been a theme of Greek fascism over the years (as well as Russian monarchism and ultranationalism, including Putin's authoritarian government as well as more extremist types, due to the "Third Rome" concept and the myth of Catholic betrayal of the Orthodox Christians) ; so even if he's merely tied to neo-Nazis rather than being a neo-Nazi himself his views and background do suggest he's some sort of fascist.
ReplyDeleteIn other places Rice has said that his political ideal is the 'meritocracy' (sic) of Plato's Republic, which I took to be code for the tripartite division of society into ruling philosopher-priests at the top, a warrior caste in the middle and then the mass of producers at the bottom of society. According to Evola this division forms the basis of any 'traditionalist' society, and he believed that it was incorporated into Plato's scheme. In his journal Tyr Rice's long-time collaborator Michael Moynihan pushes the idea that this 'Trifunctionalism' forms the essence of 'Aryan' social organisation. Tyr #1 includes an interview with the philologist, mythographer and Indo-European scholar Georges Dumézil, who has long promoted this idea. Dumézil was also known as a quasi-Fascist, a supporter of Mussolini and Action Française, and the interview itself is conducted by none other than Alain de Benoist, the best-known figure of the neo-Fascist / 'Traditionalist' European New Right.
ReplyDeleteFrom an Evolian point of view I think Byzantium would represent a slightly degenerate example of the Aryan model. But still, at it's head was a 'divinely appointed' Emperor, which fits the Traditionalist requirement that the head of state be someone who connects the material an spiritual world. So, although Byzantium was highly bureaucratic and authoritarian, as the first comment says, it also fits into the Traditionalist-Fascist model.
ReplyDeleteThis, by the way, is what Fascist claims to be 'spiritual' finally boil down to - they worship their ideal leaders as semi-divine beings and Godly avatars ('Hitler as Kalki', as Tibet might put it...)
I was never fan of Boyd Rice's brand of Social Darwinism, misogyny, which have both led me to view him as a fourth rate-Nietzschean, or worse, Objectist.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I refuse to believe this interview, or any of Rices outings with American White Supremacists, was more than a pisstake. I mean, has anyone ever seen the Tiki bar news spot on Good morning Denver?
Was Boyd Rice beating the crap out of Lisa Suckdog a pisstake too? Was this 'ironic' domestic violence despite the fact is was real enough for Suckdog?
ReplyDeleteI don't think that Rice's subjective attitude is the same as, eg., Moynihan's. The latter is a conscious Fascist ideologue who happens to use music to spread his ideas. Oddly, though, I think Rice's half-winking presentation actually reinforces the very ideas he is being ambivalent about: by promoting Fascism while at the same time not taking it entirely seriously he actually makes it easier for others to accept it. For most ideologies that would be counterproductive, but with Fascism it could well be easier for some people to swallow if taken with a pinch of salt.
ReplyDeleteRice's use of 'aesthetic distancing' makes him a more effective propagandist. His fans are stupid enough to think that his 'smearing shit around while winking' approach actually makes him an 'Artist', whereas I only mean that the aura of ambivalence he surrounds his work with makes it ultimately more effective in promoting his attitudes and ideas. As to what those ideas ultimately are, clearly they are authoritarian in the extreme as well as racist, misogynistic, etc., if nothing else, which is bad enough. I happen to think that they are also actually Fascist.
None of this means that I think Rice is in any way a subtle thinker or interesting artist - he could hardly be more stupid or banal. I think he stumbled across a certain approach and has stuck to it ever since as it seems to work for some people and gets him gigs. I mean, he's certainly a one trick pony.
I should point out that Rice's interests were always in natural hierarchy, social darwinism etc., and nothing to do with race after about 1987. Even in 1989, in his infamous performance in Japan, he changed the words of Ragnar Redbeard's prose to remove any racial connotations, replacing them with connotations of strength instead. As for calling Rice "stupid" or "banal", the inordinate amount of prose you have lavished on reviewing his work suggests that you are not being honest. I suspect you are infatuated, as many homosexuals are, with Boyd Rice.
ReplyDeleteThe strength of your argument is somewhat belied by the readiness with which you reach for the ad hominem... although perhaps that should read ad homo-nem, since there seems to a pattern emerging amongst the fascist sympathiser/denier comments of accusing everyone with whom they disagree of being a homosexual.
ReplyDeleteTo Strelnikov and Commander Bruno: Wow! An old Whitehouse cassette and a forgotten public access cable interview with a young Boyd Rice! What would we do without you bringing the Global Fascist Menace to our attention? If you want to get really radical, I hear a stray cat has been kicked to death by a gang of yobs in Turkey — http://video.mynet.com/habervideo/Boyle-Canilik-Gorulmedi/981345/
ReplyDeleteShout it from the rooftops! They're probably Death In June fans!
I'm a bit unclear of the actual intentions here so I ask what is it that you righteous lefties want? Is it an outright ban on all the artists you deem fascist? Should they be stopped from expressing themselves and their fans barred from enjoying their output or do you simply want to moan about their existence?
ReplyDeletePersonally I'd like to see the outright Fascists stopped from organising and playing; and I would boycott the rest, and boycott those labels, publishers, etc., that promote their music. But the point of this site is to clarify the issues so that people can decide for themselves what position to take with regard to particular artists.
ReplyDeleteBy what means would you try to stop them? How far are you willing to go?
ReplyDeleteJust heard the other day where it was that Racist Rice got his idea for "Do you want - Total War?" from....
ReplyDeleteSun Ra!!!!! "Do you want - Nuclear War?" -
a major insult - the Alky-Clown Rice needs a Major dressing down...
anonymous wrote above - how far?
How-itzer!
Use the state against him! the end justifies these means! get immigration to stop him coming to Britain - if its good enough for Gert Widebeest its good enough for Boyd! let him put that in his monkey suit and smoke it! (preferably with a gallon or two of gasoline)...
ReplyDelete"Personally I'd like to see the outright Fascists stopped from organising and playing;"
ReplyDeleteBecause fuck freedom of speech, that's why!