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Should Retailers Sell Racist Hate Music?
As Barack Obama prepares to become our first African-American president, SPIN’s David Marchese weighs in on white power musicians.

By David Marchese 01.12.09 8:33 AM

Should Retailers Sell Racist Hate Music?
As Barack Obama prepares to become our first African-American president, SPIN’s David Marchese weighs in on white power musicians.

By David Marchese 01.12.09 8:33 AM

On January 20, when Barack Obama is sworn in, millions of Americans will appreciate the event as proof of racial progress, and deservedly so.

But in the course of reporting “Ugly Hate Machine,” the story I wrote about the availability of white power music online for SPIN’s January issue, I learned that racist Obama haters aren’t a media invention. They’re real, they’re angry, and they play shitty hardcore.

I got my first clue of this when one white power musician responded to my interview request with the phrase, “Eat a dick.”

That guy aside, I was surprised by how eagerly people like Jeff Schoep (head of the National Socialist Movement and its affiliated record label) would denounce Rage Against the Machine as “communists.” Or how calmly veteran English white power musician Ken McLellan explained that his call for a second Holocaust (e.g., “It’s our turn / They’ll burn”) was simply the equivalent of “pro-Black” rap lyrics.

Less surprising was how easy it is for these guys to sell their music. Basically, for a band like Grinded Nig to be prevented from selling an album called Freezer Full of Nigger Heads, its songs would have to feature explicit and specific exhortations to cause harm. So a lyric like this from Final War’s “Defenders of the Reich” — “Skinheads / Standing proud and true / Skinheads / We fight the Jew” — would be legal; “Let’s kill a Jew at 7:30 p.m. this Saturday night at Ray’s Bar” would not.

The general consensus among online retailers who stock white power bands like Brutal Attack and Skrewdriver is that they shouldn’t be in the position of making moral decisions about what consumers can and can’t buy. The argument goes that if they banned Final War’s “Land of the White,” then they’d also have to do the same for Ice T’s “Cop Killer.” And a common refrain among the white power advocates I spoke with was that it would be “un-American” censorship for retailers to refuse to stock their music.

But that’s not true. Freedom of speech guarantees the right to disseminate ideas. It doesn’t mean other people are obligated to help you. Wal-Mart, for example, has in the past chosen not to sell albums it deemed offensive. Retailers are copping out when they wash their hands of the moral implications behind the sale of their products.

I had an easier time with an idea offered up by CD Baby President Brian Felsen, who explained that it helps to think of the music industry as an economy of ideas as well one of goods and services. The thinking goes that in an economy of ideas, the best ones win out.

If that’s true, and I think it is (see: Obama), hateful music will lose. And it won’t be because of Jews, communists, or censorship. It will be because their ideas, and their music, are no good.

Racist Music Goes Digital
Where can one find the latest white-power band? iTunes, Amazon, and other online retailers.
By David Marchese 12.23.08 10:15 AM

Like any musician, Brutal Attack’s Ken McLellan wants to be heard. Only, what he wants people to hear are self-described “white power” anthems with lines like “This is the Final Solution / Our turn / They’ll burn.”

Unsurprisingly, McLellan, whose group has been labeled by the Anti-Defamation League as “one of the oldest hate bands in continuous existence,” has run into some obstacles. Most record stores don’t sell his music. Ones that do risk protest by activist groups like Turn It Down and the ARA (Anti-Racist Action), both of which target retailers that distribute white-power music. “Because stores wouldn’t carry us, selling records used to be laborious,” says McLellan, 44. “We relied on mail order. We relied on concerts.” Not anymore.

For $9.99, you can download Brutal Attack’s anti-immigrant, pro-white Tales of Glory from iTunes. It’s a buck cheaper on Amazon. A physical copy is yours for $16 on CD Baby. For McLellan and others like him, white-power music’s availability through mainstream online retailers holds the promise of a success immeasurable in money. “We’re far more interested in spreading our point of view,” explains Jeff Schoep, manager of NSM88 Records, which sells music online by bands like Grinded Nig and Inborn Hate. (Schoep is also the leader of the National Socialist Movement.) “If people can hear communist sympathizers like Rage Against the Machine on iTunes, then they should have the right to hear music that celebrates white culture. The Beastie Boys and other Jewish artists might support banning ideas, but we don’t. We support the American way.”

According to University of Dayton sociologist Paul Becker, who’s written about white-power music, the presence of bands like Brutal Attack, Skrewdriver, and Final War on high-profile music sites is no surprise. “White power follows societal trends,” he says. The real concern is accessibility. “In the past, someone interested in the music may not have wanted to go into a store looking for it.” Now it’s a click away.

A legal click. “The United States isn’t as strict about censoring hate speech as some other countries,” explains New York University law professor Amy Adler. “Unless a song says, ‘We are going to hurt these people, at this time, on this day,’ it’s probably going to be okay.”

But for Turn It Down’s Nora Flanagan, morality, not legality, is the issue. “Companies could choose not to sell this stuff ,” she says. “Instead, they hide behind the First Amendment. Refusing to make money from racism isn’t censorship; it’s the right thing.” Flanagan points to MySpace, which removes racially off ensive pages from the site, as an example of commendable behavior.

While CD Baby has donated to charities and nonprofits portions of its proceeds from albums it calls “troubling,” neither the company nor Amazon plans to limit its sales of possibly offensive music. (iTunes, which often stocks this music via third-party digital distribution, declined comment.) According to spokesperson Patti Smyth, Amazon “doesn’t feel it should be deciding what’s right for consumers. That’s a slippery slope that we don’t want to be on.” Similarly, CD Baby president Brian Felsen cautions against overreaction: “This is still a micro-niche we’re talking about. It’s competing against a huge diversity of voices.”

McLellan, though, thinks his music’s subculture status is due to change. “Being sold in mainstream places shows that white power isn’t so taboo anymore,” he says. “Attitudes are changing.” Of course, recent election results suggest being taboo isn’t nearly as much a problem for McLellan as is being, well, wrong.

I think all National Socialists in Germany know where this new law will lead. I think it’s a great idea to block out the child pornography websites, but this technology will surely be applied to our website content eventually. Not only will this law not make a dent in the child porn underground, it will give people a false sense of protection. Instead of these knee-jerk reactions, they should increase the penalties for anyone convicted of the crimes!

The bill, due to be voted on later Thursday, will give the government the right to censor internet sites that distribute child pornography. Internet service providers will be required to restrict access to such sites and surfers trying to call up web pages on the government’s watch list will encounter an online stop sign warning them of the consequences of going further.

The proposed law championed by Family Minister Ursula von der Leyen, who belongs to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democrats, has proven controversial because it empowers the federal criminal police (BKA) to decide which sites are dangerous and which aren’t. The list of sites would also remain secret.

Critics of the plan say it gives the government too much power and won’t really address the problem of child pornography. Von der Leyen dismissed those accusations in a speech before parliament Thursday.

“It’s cynical to speak to censorship in relation to this case, then the rape of children will be accessible in the mass media,” she said in her speech. Restricting access to the sites is simply a measure that only has a “preventative character,” she said, that won’t affect ordinary internet users.

But some in the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the centre-left junior coalition partner of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), are uncomfortable with the proposed law. Hessian SPD head Thorsten Schäfer-Gümbel said the bill will do nothing to stop the circulation of child porn and will “make the party unelectable for the digital generation,” in a letter he wrote to the SPD’s leadership.

Obtained by the website of Der Spiegel magazine, the letter lambasted the proposal.

“The citizens’ fears that this mechanism will be misused, is, in light of the many demands to expand the number of sites to close, highly justifiable. Independent of the intentions of the lawmakers is the danger that courts will apply an already-completed censorship structure to other crimes,” continued Schäfer-Gümbel.

Peter Schaar, the government’s privacy commissioner who would oversee the BKA’s efforts to close child porn sites, was also critical of the measure.

“It has nothing to do with my responsibilities to ensure the freedom of information and electronic privacy,” Schaar said in an interview with the daily Berliner Zeitung.

The opposition parties in parliament have all expressed their resistance to the plan, meaning that the CDU needs the support of the SPD and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union for the measure to pass.

Passing the legislation late Thursday evening as part of a marathon session, the lower house the Bundestag made gun owners subject to random checks not requiring any specific suspicion of wrongdoing.

They will also face heavier penalties should it be found they are not keeping their firearms according to regulations. Those owning guns illegally have until the end of the year to surrender them without consequence under a limited amnesty.

The new law also aims to have a national firearm registry by 2012.

The changes were sparked by the Winnenden school massacre in March, when 17-year-old Tim Kretschmar murdered 15 people with a gun taken from his father’s bedroom.

The tighter gun controls are widely supported in Germany and the opposition criticized the new law for not going far enough.