Nazi infiltration into the punk and metal scene in Melbourne - report on 2002.
Introduction. Blood and Honour are a small Nazi organisation, which is based in Melbourne. Their aim is to spread Nazi ideas through music. Throughout 2002, they have held a few gigs to try and achieve this. There are a number of Nazi bands connected to Blood and Honour, for example Fortress, Bailup, and Ravenous. The management of the Birmingham Hotel (on the corner of Smith and Johnston Streets in Fitzroy) has helped them. The Birmingham let them put on two gigs (one of them to celebrate Hitler's birthday). The Birmingham also allowed them to meet there regularly. Due to pressure from us, Blood and Honour seem to be looking for another venue to put on shows. However they also seem to still be meeting at the Birmingham. Our activity. Our aim in 2002 has mainly been trying to get around information about Blood and Honour, and especially to try to get a response from the punk and metal scene. We have asked people in the area to stop supporting the Birmingham Hotel. Successes. One major success is that Blood and Honour have said they're not doing any more gigs at the Birmingham. They announced this on the 'Melbourne Punx Forum' website (although they felt the need to say that it 'wasn't because they were scared'). We wrote to Community Radio 3CR and the Friends of the Earth bookshop. Both 3CR and FOE have offices on Smith Street, would've been seen as targets by Nazis, and put on benefit gigs at the Birmingham. Neither of them wrote back to us, but neither of them have had any more gigs at the Birmingham as far as we know. This has meant that the Birmingham has lost two sources of money, and that Blood and Honour no longer have a central location to put on gigs - although they appear to still be using the Birmingham for meetings. The Melbourne Times. We approached the Melbourne Times, a local paper with a reputation for being slightly 'lefty'. They talked to us about it, but refused to run a story. One of their reasons was that "they talked to a lot of local councilors and social workers and they hadn't heard of Blood and Honour". Blood and Honour operates almost completely within the punk and metal scenes. Common sense would suggest that talking to someone in that scene might be a better idea. It's likely that these local councilors and social workers wouldn't know about *anything* that goes on in that scene. It's a bit like us talking to some metalheads and asking them to name some local councilors - and if they couldn't, deciding the local council mustn't exist. The undertone of their attitude was like "if it doesn't effect councilors or social workers it mustn't be important". One of the local Nazis, Patrick O'sullivan, has recently gone to jail for stabbing someone in North Fitzroy. We told the Melbourne Times this but they treated it as if it was totally unimportant. I got the impression that the Melbourne Times didn't care, because of who the victim was. He was 'just' a skinhead who'd turned away from Nazism. I got the impression that if he'd been a social worker or councilor then it would have been treated differently. In a way the Melbourne Times agreed with the nazis, that this person was of no value or importance, because of who he was. There was a real element of classism or snobbery to it; like if 'those people' want to hurt each other then it's OK, as long as they don't turn on 'us'. The sad thing is, if the Nazis ever kill someone, then the Melbourne Times would probably decide it was now newsworthy, run to us begging for an interview, and run a story about how "someone has to do something". We want to stop the Nazis before they kill someone, and they couldn't care less. The best that can be said about this episode, was that it was our own silly fault. We shouldn't have put that much faith in an institution like the Melbourne Times, and in future we won't. The punk scene. Although a lot of people in the scene have supported us, some people have been very defensive about ties to Nazis. A typical comment on the Melbourne Punx Forum website, was that the Birmingham is the only pub that supports the punk scene. This is completely false. Punk gigs happen at the Arthouse, the Pink Palace, the Tote, and several other places. Someone even said that "the birmy is our pub". This is a ridiculous comment. The Birmingham belongs to the owner of the Birmingham. They're not "supporting the punk scene", they're supporting the idea of them getting money. If the Birmingham management decided there was more money to be made by putting on top 40 bands, that's what would happen. It's likely that if our campaign keeps going, the owner of the Birmingham will just cut off all ties with the punk scene, and the punk scene will find that 'our' pub was their pub all along. Punk is supposed to be partly about 'diy'. Even if there were no venues putting on punk gigs, there are always places like youth centres. A lot of techno fans have gone further and set up their own events in abandoned warehouses or even just out in the open. Some people in the punk scene seem to have the opposite of a 'diy' attitude. Their attitude seems to be "we can't do it ourselves, we need a businessman to organise it for us". Punk is also supposed to be about more than 'having a career'. A member of punk band Charter 77 wrote that "my band Charter 77 will continue to play at the Birmingham, as they are one of the few venues that have supported us". In other words, they can get a higher profile by hanging around with Nazis, so they will and that's that. Their career comes before anything else. Charter 77 say that they're not Nazis, and this seems to be true. But were happy to, for example, advertise a gig with pictures of Nazi skinheads from Romper Stomper (they explained this as being 'just a joke'). If the Nazis Stay... Roddy Moreno, lead singer of The Oppressed, saw the early 80s skinhead scene in Britain destroyed by Nazis. He said that "If you don't care, they will take your scene, they will ruin it and suck the lifeblood out of it. When we started off, we had songs on compilation albums and were making the national charts. But once you had bands like Skrewdriver singing 'white Britain' and stuff, all of a sudden nobody would touch any skinhead bands. If you were a skinhead, you couldn't play anywhere, nobody wanted to put your records out. It was all because the Nazis came in and most people stood by and let it happen." A similar thing could easily happen in Melbourne. Blood and Honour paints a picture where they're standing up for the scene and defending it against us. They make out we're a bunch of uni students who want to destroy it. In fact one person in our group is working, and doing uni by correspondence at the same - that's it for our uni connection. The number of people in our group who don't go to punk or metal shows is exactly 1 - and they used to be the singer of a punk band. The first event that APE did was an all day punk and metal show. Our connection to the scene much more real than the Nazis, who are in there purely to advance their politics. In the 70s nazis wanted to get rid of rock music and replace it with folk music. In the 80s in Germany they said that electronic bands were the only 'pure white music'. Now they're jumping on the punk and metal bandwagon. Next year it could be something else. People also should remember that, if they felt confident enough, Nazis would start to 'purge' the scene of people who were against them. After all, Melbourne Nazi leader Patrick O'Sullivan went to jail for stabbing...not a Jew or a hippy, but another skinhead, after he made a vaguely anti-Nazi remark at a party. A Blood and Honour supporter has confirmed this. They wrote on the Melbourne Punx Forum that the Nazis didn't care about the punk scene and "perhaps if a skinhead was fucking a coloured sort then [Blood and Honour] might have a problem". In other words, we don't care about you, and we will use violence against you if you don't do what we want. The worst thing about this comment was that no one criticised any part of it. But some people on that website still act like we are the people who are threatening the scene from outside. As we saw with the Melbourne Times, the 'establishment' couldn't care less about what's happening, as long as they're not personally threatened. If enough people in the punk and metal scene treat us like we're the bad guys, and use the excuse that 'it's the only place we can go', then the Nazis will easily be able to take over. All People Equal - Anarchy Against Bigotry. links: contact us - email [EMAIL PROTECTED] PO Box 1191 Richmond North VIC 3121 Phone (03) 9513 0533 (message bank - call any time) Our website, which included information about the stabbing by Patrick O'Sullivan, and other anti-racist information, can be found at www.angry.at/racists Melbourne Punx forum - http://worldcrossing.com/WebX?.ee9c11b quote from Roddy Merino is from www.turnitdown.com - anti-racist website. -- -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Sub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsub: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink