Doing Democracy: Activist Art and Cultural Politics

Chapter 9Playing with Hate

201 Chapter 9 Playing with Hate White Power Music and the Undoing of Democracy Nancy S. Love It is a hard thing to live haunted by the ghost of an untrue dream; to see the wide vision of empire fade into real ashes and dirt. —W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folks Music speaks to us at a deeper level than books or political rhetoric: music speaks directly to the soul. Resistance Records . . . will be the music of our people’s renewal and rebirth. —William Pierce, quoted in “Deafening Hate: The Revival of Resistance Records” Early versions of this essay were presented at the 2006 American Political Science Association Convention, the 2008 Global Studies Association Convention, and the 2012 University of Virginia, Department of Politics, Political Theory Colloquium. My thanks to Lawrie Balfour, Charles Hersch, Mark Mattern, Molly Scudder, Stephen K. White, and the anonymous reviewers for their useful comments. Thanks as well to graduate and undergraduate students Coty Hogue, Tausif Khan, and Travis Smart, who assisted with the research for this chapter. 202 / nancy s. love Introduction The official biography of Ian Stuart Donaldson, lead singer of the racist skinhead band Skrewdriver, opens with the following description of how the band’s music affected its author, who is known only as Benny: Ian Stuart opened my eyes, and many others to the Whiteman’s cause. I can still remember the first time I heard his voice come growling out of my speakers, sending a shot of adrenalin through my body and from that day on my life changed. In track after track of hard hitting, boot stomping rock he sang of truth, of clenched White fists, and the pride of our people’s past, and the promise of a bright and glorious future for the youth who dared to dream and dared to fight.1 Benny’s experience is more common than some might suppose. The challenges globalization poses to the economic security and cultural identity of western liberal democratic nation-states have prompted a rise in right-wing extremism.2 A growing white power music scene increasingly supports efforts of the radical right to recruit youth.3 Variously described as the “soundtrack to the white revolution,” “a common language and a unifying ideology,” and, in the case of Ian Stuart Donaldson’s band Skrewdriver, “‘the musical wing’ of the National Front,” hate music now fuels and funds white supremacist groups across the globe.4 A key question in defining hate music is,“when does hatred toward an other become hatred toward the other?”5 Although many country, folk, and pop songs express anger, grief, pain, and even hatred toward individuals, two main features distinguish hate music from these other musical genres. Hate music is: 1) overtly racist and/or ultranationalist; and 2) directly associated with violence toward historically oppressed groups.6 The labels “white rock,” “white power,” or “white noise,” the name of the British National Front recording company that produced Skrewdriver’s music, usually refer to racist skinhead music, along with national socialist black metal and fascist experimental music. Ian Stuart Donaldson preferred to call his music White Rock, and, as we will see, it clearly qualifies as hate music by both of the aforementioned criteria. I argue here that current increases in right-wing extremism are best understood as part of a longer cultural-political project of racial hegemony in western liberal democracies.7 By situating racist skinhead music in this larger context, I would show how it reproduces the historical ties playing with hate / 203 between liberal democracy and white supremacy. In the process, I would also redirect attention from external threats to liberal democracy, such as international terrorists and Muslim extremists, to its internal tensions, especially its history of racism. Although many liberal democrats may see racist skinheads as quasi-outsiders or “lone wolves” surviving on the margins of society, I argue that racialized hatred has shaped and continues to shape the history of liberal democracy.8 Among other things the racist skinhead music scene reveals deep ties between the political aesthetic of liberal democracy and an emerging form of neo-fascism that Sheldon Wolin calls “inverted totalitarianism.”9 My title phrase, “playing with hate,” characterizes this complex, ongoing relationship between white supremacy and liberal democracy. The white power music scene, I argue, shows how liberal democrats and white supremacists are both “playing with hate,” though in very different...