Why is it that anytime a disaster strikes, Gothic / Darkwave / Metal artists seem to have fingers pointed at them from establishment?

And now the finger is being pointed again twelve years later.

http://www.whomakesthenazis.com/2011/06/far-right-tendencies-in-wave-and-gothic.html

The other bands mentioned in the above article I know nothing about, but I know for a fact that Kirlian Camera are not right wing extremists.

Despite the fact that Kirlian Camera have an oriental violin and keyboard player, Sarah Crespi, have had memebers who include Paul David Sears, a Jewish Guitarist and Nancy Appiah, a dark skinned Ghanian and despite the fact that they have worked with a Jewish producer, Allan Goldberg and sang lyrics from Jewish-German poet August Stramm, the band are being accused of subscribing to right wing extermism and white supremacy.

This seems to be based on accusations made in in 1999 (twelve years ago) by a German Sociologist called Albert Schobert

The band do have a quasi-military looking stage presence with the members, including the two women, Fossi and Crespi often wearing shirts and ties for their shows and Bergamini having very close cropped hair.



In fact Emilia Lo Jacono, Simon Balestrazzi and Elena Fossi have actually expressed left leaning viewpoints in interviews over the years.



That doesn't sound terribly fascist to me.

According to Schobert "The Gothic movement is attractive to unsteady and doubtful characters." but beyond this he manages to establish no causal links between darkwave and the Littleton massacre.

By this kind of reasoning, one would have to conclude that Shania Twain is in part responsible for the fire bombing of Fallujah since Country and Western Pop music is attractive to chickenhawks.

Edit: Image permitted at request of poster. -- Nephele

I stopped reading after the 3rd paragraph - whoever wrote this article is either insane or trolling.

1) "WGS sees itself as a critique of and counter-culture to a technocratic society"

This subculture never tried to be a counter culture, and it was never considered to be one. There's a difference between sub and counter cultures, and saying that a subculture = counter culture is nonsense, and making arguments based on this statement is a clear sign of stupidity. It's like... saying that dogs are in fact cats, (beacuse both of them has four legs), therefore dogs should chase mice.


2) "It shares with the neo-Nazi subculture elements of esotericism, occultism and neo-paganism."

I gave up reading the article after this sentence. Has he really just accused goths of being nazis, or "pro-nazis" based on the fact that some goths practice pagan religions that has been around for hundreds or even thousands of years? WTF? Would he also call someone a nazi who wears clothes by Hugo Boss? It's the same logic... If bad people liked/did x, and you also like/do x, you're a bad person!

I'm betting on insane. It's one of many he's went to great lengths to churn out on this subject.



I couldn't agree more.

It's absurd. You can put any culture, subculture, musical genre or whatever under a magnifying glass and you'll always find good and bad. No one is all good and no one is all bad, and that reflects in culture.

Looking at the Neo-Pagan movements, I can see no evidence at all of links to Nazism. In fact, Adolf Hitler professed to be a Roman Catholic and he was never excommunicated by the Church. Whether Neo Nazi's practice paganism or not I don't know. It seems to me that their agenda has more to do with racial extremism and nationalism than religion.

It's simply the look I suppose. Antifa often is a very superficial kind of movement. So they call a scene Nazis for the look of some people, or the military trend in EBM for example. This was the reason why the WGT 2009 was opened under the symbol of the black sun. Himmler's (the boss of the SS) dearest symbol. Fascism is one of many taboos beside sado-masochism, satanism, cannibalism, sexism, fetiscism and heresie. The scene is trying to stay a subculture, so its playing with the the symbols and the look of this taboos, to gain more freedom and to stay interesting for the youth. It's part of the game and fascistic influences in central parts of the organisations were fought as much as attempts to infiltrate the big internet boards. Some Antifas don't understand the difference. Gothic is using symbols of opression and bondage to extend individual freedom. That makes it difficult for simple minds to realize the difference between the usage for inhuman purposes and the way gothics use them.

I think you're absolutely right...

They're easy targets for scapegoating by people who are using very simplistic scare tactics to try to promote an agenda. Even an admirable agenda like antifascism can be pursued irresponsibly.



Elena Fossi and Sarah Crespi do look very sexy in a uniform...

I'm no expert, but as far as I know some historians suggest that nazism may have had some occult aspects, or Hitler may have been influenced by occult theories/ideas.
But it's ridiculous and absurd to stigmatize absolutely everything that might have influenced the nazis - according to the article writer's logic, people shouldn't read Nietzsche either ..... Also, what about buddhism, hinduism, etc? Should the followers of these religions stop using swastikas altogether because nazis decided that a random obscure religious symbol would look oh so nice on their flags and whatnot?

Ah yeah, another thing has occured to me: maybe part of the writer's quite apparent confusion comes from that he fails to understand how goth was born. Apparently he doesn't really get that it grew out of punk, and the subculture preserved a fair share of the punk aestethic. This basically leads us to what demon17 has said: we're trying to challenge taboos and conventional views. Of course this attitude was even more dominant back then in the eighties, for instance Siouxsie sometimes wore swastikas - but she wasn't doing so because she was nazi, and goths didn't tolerate her because goths were also nazis. She was a rebellious half-punk, goths were also rebellious half-punks, and they went out their way to outrage their parents, conservative people and generally everyone around them. This is why they also wore bondage gear, ripped and torn clothes, tigh-high leather boots etc...

There certainly was a great deal of effort made to link Aleister Crowley to the Nazi movement, but the evidence for it is very thin.



Well, under the writers rationale, Christian Rock bands should be stopped from using Christian symbols because of the many atrocities committed in the name of Christ.

Not to forget the New York Dolls show where they literally paraded Communist (EDIT: caught myself there, as I originally put Nazi) imagery and colors with the logo, "Better red than dead." One can see where somebody would get the wrong idea.

I dunno much about politics in the neo-folk scene, or why I keep hearing about fascism and stuff related to it. I have to admit I'm fairly ignorant about this aspect, especially for somebody who fancies Death In June. There's always some kind of comment that pops up about them being somehow associated with Nazism, or what have you.

Personally I've never even associated goth with any politics. There's a fair range of political stances, though I suppose one could state that ultimately goth is individualistic. Hence, free to interpretation and personal expression. It does dabble in some of the more questionable themes of society here and there, but beyond that I've yet to run into anything outright hostile.

There's been a current of military fashion in the scene back in my hometown, however beyond looking sharp in military-inspired gear I can't say I've heard any rumors of politics coming into play. (That said, there's been a clash between them and another faction.)

Everyone likes a man in uniform...as specially if it's black. ;0)

I have personally encountered neo-fascists in the Gothic ommunity who use the scene as a cover where they can wear their Nazi crap and get away with it. Wearing Nazi insignia and regalia is, at best, in bad taste, and a worst it empowers real Nazi's.
It's also ironic that Goths would wish to wear symbols of a regime that was very intolerant of any sort of social deviancy.

ok i will say this on the matter: the people that keep bashing all of us makes me sick i mean i really thought that society had gotten past all this ya know?

It makes you wonder just why the antifascists believe they're any different to the people they oppose, when they spread lies and fear about people without any evidence of wrongdoing.

i agree with you Prometheus i mean whats next? an inquisition?

I agree with you on this, 100%.

I don't think anyone is labouring under the misapprehension that all WGS followers are saints, but that does not alter the fact that the allegations made against Kirlian Camera by d-a-s-h.org and various other organisations and bloggers who've based allegations against the band on the opinions of Schobert were completely unfounded.

This calls into question the judgement of the people who made these allegations when they propagate the meme spread by Schobert that "The Gothic movement is attractive to unsteady and doubtful characters." This is an opinion based on prejudice, not on fact.



Siouxsie Sioux wore a swastika as a teenaged girl to shock people. It may have been a silly and misguided act but it was not because she was a right wing extremist.

"If I believed in that kind of society I'd probably be one of the first to get sent off to the gas chambers. Don't be stupid!" -- Siouxsie Sioux.

Siouxsie Sioux also wrote the songs Metal Postcard (Mittageisen) in memory of the anti-Nazi artist John Heartfield and the single Israel to counter allegations that she was a Nazi.



I don't listen to any WGS bands that wear Nazi Paraphernalia or endorse right wing extremism, I can't actually think of any off hand. I'm sure there possibly are some, but none that I'm aware of.

-- Sat Jul 16, 2011 8:32 pm --



I was making a video for my band last winter, which involved standing on top of a big rock on the sea shore next to the A77 in South West Scotland dressed in black trenchcoat with a bass guitar.

The amount of abuse I got from passing cars actually made me feel a little bit scared and I'm not even your quintessential dark person who wears eyeliner and black lipstick and all that good stuff.

A lot of people seem to be very frightened of anything that's different, and it sure as hell doesn't make them running scared.

There are and there were some neo fascists in the scene. Ten years ago, there was fired an official of the fascist party in germany from Zillo, one of the 3 big gothic magazines in Germany . We had dozends of very questionable threads about bad experiences with migrants on the German Gothic Board at a time were it was really big. 1000 regular Users visited it daily for years. It was difficult to decide were freedom ended and propaganda started. But we fought them with arguments and banned the worst of them. I mean the scene is a free zone, but it stops there were people of a different ethnical background starts to feel pursued. I'm sure we have jews in the scene and I want to feel well when I meet them. Last but not least, please let us differ between stupid antifa which haunts people for symbols and antifa which fight inhuman racists. There is a big difference between witchhunters and freedom fighters.