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HITLER'S CHOIR: ROCK & ROLL FASCISM
By David Lethbridge
(This article is from the Jan. 1-15, 2000, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, Canada, V5L 3J1.)
IN 1991, at the age of 21, George Burdi became the Canadian leader of the Church of the Creator, an ultra-violent neo-fascist organization with connections to Canada's Heritage Front and to the National Alliance, the leading Nazi organization in the USA. Burdi was the son of wealthy parents and attended private schools in the Toronto area. While still a youngster, he became associated with Nazi propagandist Ernst Zundel and far-right activist Paul Fromm.
Burdi was also the lead singer for RaHoWa (Racial Holy War), a white power racist rock group. His songs were openly fascist, as the lyrics from Third Reich demonstrate: "Kill all the niggers and gas all the Jews, Kill a gypsy and a coloured too, You just killed a kike, Don't it feel right, Goodness gracious, darn right."
In 1993, along with Jason Snow and Joseph Talic, Burdi formed Resistance Records, an organization that sold white racist music, published a magazine, and hosted an Internet website. What made Resistance particularly dangerous was the high quality of their products. Their music CDs were the equal of any mainstream label. Resistance magazine, a full-colour, glossy periodical, was easily available in major urban centres. Their Internet site allowed visitors to listen to selected tracks, and to purchase CDs by simply clicking on credit card logos.
Burdi ran Resistance across the border in Detroit to avoid possible conviction under federal hate crime legislation. But by 1997, it looked as though Resistance had come to an end. Burdi was sentenced to a year in jail for criminal assault during a 1993 racist rally. In the same year, Michigan tax agents seized Resistance assets for failure to pay state sales tax.
But the organization was too valuable a recruiting tool for the fascists to let it die. Willis Carto - the millionaire fascist behind Liberty Lobby, the largest US antisemitic organization - hired Todd Blodgett to pay off the Michigan taxes and take control of Resistance. Blodgett was a White House staff assistant in the Reagan administration, a Republican Party strategist, an advisor to George Bush's election committee, and a friend of a wide circle of neo-Nazis.
Carto was soon in financial difficulties, however, over a struggle to maintain ownership of the Institute for Historical Review, a Holocaust-denial propaganda organization. He was forced to declare bankruptcy, and Resistance passed to Blodgett.
By March 1999, Blodgett had sold Resistance to William Pierce, leader of the National Alliance, for $US 250,000. Pierce was jubilant. "As Resistance Records regains strength, that acquisition should add an increasing number of younger members in the 18 to 25 age range to our ranks," he wrote.
Blodgett was to continue as the operations manager of Resistance, now relocated to Washington, DC. But last October, aggravated by delays in Blodgett's management, Pierce moved Resistance to National Alliance headquarters in West Virginia.
Resistance magazine is now on the store shelves, at least in the USA, and the website is in full operation. On its home page, Resistance bills itself as: "The largest producers of White Power music in the world. Our online catalog is the biggest and baddest ever! Order the best releases by your favourite bands and the most bad-ass new music from around the world."
Besides hundreds of racist CDs, the website offers the following material for sale: "The New Dawn Calendar - celebrating White women and children," by an "Aryan" artist; the Nazi battle flag, the Nazi SS flag, the Confederate battle flag, and the Celtic Cross flag; postcards of Nazi rock bands; books by William Pierce, including the notorious Turner Diaries - made famous by Oklahoma City bomber Tim McVeigh - and White Power, by George Lincoln Rockwell, the deceased leader of the American Nazi Party; posters of Hitler; a computer mouse pad with Hitler's image; and taped speeches by neo-Nazi leaders. The website "Links" guide viewers to the National Alliance, the David Duke organization, and to Stormfront - the largest Nazi site on the Internet.
National Alliance is undoubtedly the most significant fascist organization in operation today. It has branches throughout the US, Canada, and Europe. With Pierce's takeover of Resistance, National Alliance is making a serious attempt to recruit white youngsters to Nazism. During a time of economic boom for the capitalist exploiting class, North American youth finds itself increasingly driven into poverty and despair. The gap between "rich" and "poor" has never been greater. Unemployment for those with only a high school education is rising sharply. Average real hourly wages have steadily declined for the working class since the mid-1970s, especially for young workers.
For the fascist leaders, and their friends within the State, the time is ripe for building a new fascist mass movement. Their cynically-designed hook for alienated and desperate youth is the power and the raw energy of racist rock.
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