No surprise here
May. 25th, 2006 04:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wombat_sochoFrom the country that effectively deported one of its own MPs because of her whiny neighbors comes this story about how bad taste can get you thrown in the slammer. Ironically, this sort of thing is nothing new in the world of industrial music, as this essay and this Wikipedia entry point out.
While you don't often see it taken to this extreme, the use of Nazi/fascist imagery by punk and industrial bands ties right in with the whole anti-establishment attitude these bands projected, and in fact it should come as a surprise to nobody that the line between actual neo-Nazis and punks could get blurred at times. The essay I linked to above, which is mostly a critique of the industrial band Thee Gray Wolves, bemoans this fact but ultimately can't mnage to draw a clear line between bands that are using the imagery in selfconscious mockery of the bourgeois and bands that are using the imagery to evoke the kind of hate that neo-fascist groups feed on. Is there a difference? How far can you go with the former before it becomes the latter, or before those groups start using your band and your music as rallying points in their own corner of the ongoing culture wars?
Here in the US, where that sort of politics has always been out on the lunatic fringe, we're pretty laissez-faire about the whole Nazi imagery thing. Europe, where the whole Nazi issue brings up ugly questions about collaboration and latent anti-semitism, governments tend to take a harder line on that sort of thing.
Via Tinkerty Tonk.
While you don't often see it taken to this extreme, the use of Nazi/fascist imagery by punk and industrial bands ties right in with the whole anti-establishment attitude these bands projected, and in fact it should come as a surprise to nobody that the line between actual neo-Nazis and punks could get blurred at times. The essay I linked to above, which is mostly a critique of the industrial band Thee Gray Wolves, bemoans this fact but ultimately can't mnage to draw a clear line between bands that are using the imagery in selfconscious mockery of the bourgeois and bands that are using the imagery to evoke the kind of hate that neo-fascist groups feed on. Is there a difference? How far can you go with the former before it becomes the latter, or before those groups start using your band and your music as rallying points in their own corner of the ongoing culture wars?
Here in the US, where that sort of politics has always been out on the lunatic fringe, we're pretty laissez-faire about the whole Nazi imagery thing. Europe, where the whole Nazi issue brings up ugly questions about collaboration and latent anti-semitism, governments tend to take a harder line on that sort of thing.
Via Tinkerty Tonk.
