Privileged Intersections: the Race, Class, and Gender Politics of Prussian Blue
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Privileged Intersections: The Race, Class, and Gender Politics of Prussian Blue NANCY S. LOVE Western liberal democratic nation-states are currently experiencing a rise in right-wing extremism in response to the challenges globalization poses for their economic security and cultural identity. 1 In the United States alone, the total number of right wing extremist groups—hate groups, nativist groups, and Patriot groups—rose 40% in 2009.2 An 80% surge in anti-immigration nativist groups and a 244% rise in Patriot groups, most of them paramilitary organizations, accounted for the bulk of this increase. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, U.S. Patriot groups have mobilized in anger against changing demographics, rising public debt, declining economic opportunities, and a series of Obama initiatives which they perceive to be “socialist” or even “fascist.” Contemporary right-wing extremist groups have also adopted new tactics that reflect an increasingly global political strategy. These include reliance on apocalyptic or millennial images of a global race war; international alliances between Neo-Nazi, white- supremacist, and Christian Identity organizations; sophisticated use of mass communications technology, including Internet sites and short-wave radio; and recruitment efforts focused on so-called vulnerable populations, such as prisoners, teenagers, and women. 3 In this article, I adopt an intersectional approach to analyze how the Neo-Nazi folk duo, Prussian Blue, uses images of the idealized American family to recruit teens, especially girls. I begin with a general discussion of the role of music in the white power movement today. Then I turn to Patricia Hill Collins’ concept of the idealized traditional family as an exemplary site where race, gender, class, and nation intersect. By extending her concept of intersectionality beyond mainstream politics to the “family values” extolled by Prussian Blue, I (re)focus attention on the intersecting privileges that create the forms of oppression Collins discusses. In the process, I also show how white supremacist ideology illuminates more subtle forms of white privilege found in the political mainstream. I conclude that Prussian Blue’s music blurs the line between mainstream and right-wing extremist politics, and presents a powerful combination of narrative and strategic violence intended to recruit the next generation for global white supremacy. I would like to thank Tausif Khan, Coty Hogue, and Travis Smart, who assisted with the research for this article. I am also grateful to my campus writing workshop colleagues and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2009 Western Political Science Association Convention. 1 Betty A. Dobratz and Stephanie L. Shanks-Meile, The White Separatist Movement In The United States (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); Peter H. Merkl and Leonard Weinberg, eds., Right-Wing Extremism in The Twenty-First Century (London: Frank Cass, 2003); Carol M. Swain and Russ Nieli, eds., Contemporary Voices of White Nationalism in America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 2 Mark Potok, “Rage on the Right: The Year in Hate and Extremism,” Intelligence Report 137 (2010), Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed March 2010, http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2010/spring/rage- on-the-right. 3 Kathleen Blee, Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 189– 191. Music & Politics 6, Number 1 (Winter 2012), ISSN 1938-7687 Article DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/mp.9460447.0006.102 2 Music and Politics Winter 2012 Hate Groups, Hate Music, and Prussian Blue Many scholars have recognized the importance of popular culture, including music, for recruiting teenagers to political causes, movements, and parties. Today a growing white power music scene plays a major role in efforts of the radical right to recruit teenagers. 4 Unlike Christian soft rock and most country music, white power music explicitly targets historically oppressed groups and advocates violence, including racial genocide. 5 White power music genres include racist skinhead, national socialist black metal, fascist experimental music, and Neo-Nazi folk music. 6 Approximately 350 white power bands are active in the United States, Western Europe, and post-communist nations today; 120 of them are currently based in the United States. This g/local music industry is a multi-million dollar enterprise that funds white supremacist movements and national front parties. Resistance Records, the major U.S. distributor, has reported an average of fifty Internet orders per day of approximately $70 each, with most white power music CD’s priced under $20. In 2004 Panzerfaust, another major distributor, launched “Project Schoolyard USA” and issued a $.15 sampler CD targeting middle school students. 7 In 2006 RadioWhite, an online white power music station, offered six different 24-hour music feeds and a playlist of five thousand songs. 8 Not surprisingly, Kathleen Blee points to music to illustrate how the radical right has begun to mainstream the cultural politics of white supremacy. 9 Arts-based cultural politics may be associated more commonly with progressive movements, such as civil rights, labor, and peace. Eyerman and Jamison regard the “active use of music and song by social movements” as “…a natural outgrowth of the multilingual background of the American people….” They note, “this is especially visible in the case of white folk music, which was very early on used by movements of social reform for getting the message out.” 10 American folk songs have shaped working-class struggles against systems of domination and, in the process, forged new individual and collective identities. 11 However, folk music is also understood to express the cultural identity of isolated, and hence authentic, 4 Heléne Lööw, “White-Power Rock ’n’ Roll: A Growing Industry,” in Nation And Race: The Developing Euro-American Racist Subculture, eds. Jeffrey Kaplan and Tore Ojorgo (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998); Nick Lowles and Steve Silver, “Turning Down the Sound of Hate,” in White Noise: Inside the International Nazi Skinhead Scene, eds. Nick Lowles and Steve Silver (London: Searchlight, 1998); Elinor Langer, A Hundred Little Hitlers: The Death of a Black Man, the Trial of a White Racist, and the Rise of The Neo-Nazi Movement in America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003); Robert Futrell, Pete Simi, and Simon Gottshalk, “Understanding Music in Movements: The White Power Music Scene,” The Sociological Quarterly 47, no. 2 (2006): 275–304; Paul Becker, et al., “From Rebel Records to Prussian Blue: A History of White Racialist Music in the United States,” (paper presented at the American Sociological Association Convention, New York, August 2007; Ugo Corte and Bob Edwards, “White Power Music and the Mobilization of Racist Social Movements,” Music and Arts in Action 1, no. 1 (2008): 4–20. 5 Keith Kahn-Harris, “The Aesthetics of Hate Music,” Antisemitism and Xenophobia Today (2004), Institute for Jewish Policy Research, accessed September 2005, http://www.axt.org.uk/HateMusic/KahnHarris.htm. 6 Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “Neo-Nazi Hate Music: A Guide,” posted November 4, 2004, accessed September 2005, http://www.adl.org/main_Extremism/hate_music_in_the_21st_century.htm. 7 ADL, “Neo-Nazi Hate Music”; “The Consequences of Right-Wing Extremism on the Internet: Making Money Online; Selling Goods,” accessed June 2008. http://www.adl.org/internet/extremism_rw/sell.asp.; Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), “Neo-Nazi Label Woos Teens with Hate-Music Sampler,” Intelligence Report 116 (2004), accessed February 2011, http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2004/winter/youth-recruitment. 8 ADL, “A Resurgent Movement,” Racist Skinhead Project, accessed June 2008. http://www.adl.org/racist_skinheads/skinhead_resurgence. 9 Blee, Inside Organized Racism , 176. 10 Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison, Music and Social Movements: Mobilizing Traditions in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 52. 11 José E. Limón, “Western Marxism and Folklore: A Critical Reintroduction,” The Journal of American Folklore 97, no. 385 (1984): 337–44. Privileged Intersections: The Race, Class, and Gender Politics of Prussian Blue 3 linguistic, racial and/or national groups. 12 With its Neo-Nazi folk genre, the white power movement joins, co-opts, and shifts a long-standing reformist tradition of folk and protest music in America. It embraces folk music as a racially pure expression of white culture and uses it to reinvoke a cultural past rooted in racial segregation and white supremacy. As we will see, the music of Prussian Blue fits this mold. Lamb and Lynx Gaede are known widely as “the Olsen twins of the White nationalist movement.” 13 Their songs are usually characterized as folk, folk-pop, or folk rock. As one commentator puts it, “their music isn’t teen-pop in the Brittney Spears/Hilary Duff/Jessica Simpson sense, but rather, folk-rock.” 14 Studies of pop culture also identify gender differences in how teens consume music, including a greater tendency for girls to internalize musical meanings and use them to create a distinct and often resistant teen culture. 15 One young California skin girl describes how white power music recruited her to the movement: “How I really started believing, thinking, in that white separatist