Campaign targets 'white power music'—and provokes store owners

Chicago Reporter, The, March, 2003 by Ben Aaronson

Interspersed among the 20,000 titles at Record Breakers, an independent music store in northwest suburban Hoffman Estates, are albums by bands with names like Hatemonger and Final Solution.

According to analysts with the Center for New Community, an anti-bigotry organization based in Chicago, these bands are part of the relatively unknown, but steadily growing, white power music industry. White power espouses racism, anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry, and helps fund white supremacist groups. It has a presence in many popular musical genres, from hardcore and heavy metal to country and folk, the analysts say.

Since December, the organization has led a campaign against the sale of what they call white power music in Record Breakers and two Chicago stores, Metal Haven in the North Side's Lakeview neighborhood and Crow's Nest in the Loop. But Record Breakers has resisted pressure to pull music from its shelves, and the other stores have disputed some of the campaign's claims.

John Coakley, the manager of Record Breakers, said the store has sold white power music for 12 years. "Our standpoint is very simple: We do not pull anything for anyone, period," he said. "Racism is wrong, but censorship is also wrong. I don't agree with what [the bands] say, but I do agree with their right to say it."

"They don't have to sell every record that comes across their desk," said Rebecca Steinmetz, 22, a student activist who lives in Chatham on the South Side. "[They should] make a conscious decision not to support white power music."

In their lyrics, white power bands often openly encourage violence against Jews, African Americans, homosexuals and others. In their song "Let's Start a War," Attack, a Tampa, Fla., band whose music is sold at Record Breakers, declare, "Everyday they beat in our heads / That Niggers and Jews are our friends / Everyday women's lib and equality / Homos and commies marching down our streets / Let's start a war for Aryan purity / Let's start a war for our children to be free / Wipe your people from sea to shining sea / I'll make you watch as your family bleeds."

White supremacists "are using [music] to fund, to recruit, to motivate people to commit violence, and to make new international connections to network bigotry worldwide," said Justin Massa, coordinator of Turn It Down: A Campaign Against White Power Music, a project of the Center for New Community.

Since 1987, members of the white power music scene have been linked to 56 murders as well as thousands of acts of vandalism, assault, and desecration of cemeteries and places of worship nationwide, according to the organization.

Of more than 300 white supremacist groups in the Midwest, the most significant membership growth between 2000 and 2002 was among the approximately 100 organizations involved in the production and distribution of white power music, Massa said. Current and former members of white supremacist groups who are under the age of 30 almost universally indicate that it was music that got them into the movement, he said.

"It's becoming a lot more professional, a lot more polished and a lot more profitable," said an expert in extremist groups for the Anti-Defamation League who asked that his name not be divulged because he is currently doing field work.

However, he disagreed with Massa's assertion that white power music is a recruitment tool. "It's too difficult to obtain--you really have to seek it out."

It's the concerts, not the recorded music, that bring people into the movements, he said. "You can watch the ripple effect from their concerts--you will see little flash points of [hate] crimes immediately following a lot of these concerts because it's the first time for these people to be around large numbers of their own kind."

Spewing Hatred

In December, Steinmetz and four other Chicago-area students, all of whom are white, joined Turn It Down's campaign to confront record stores they accused of selling white power music.

"So many people don't even know that this is an issue," said Steinmetz, a women's studies major at DePaul University who closely follows punk and hardcore rock. "It wiggles into our scene and pollutes the environment"

The students sent letters to the management at the three record stores that read, "You are selling white power music." After a week, the students visited the retailers and tried to convince them to pull the music from their shelves.

The group initially threatened to return with leaflets and demonstrations at the height of the holiday shopping season. But the protests were postponed to give the stores a chance to comply. Turn It Down is still negotiating with Crow's Nest and Metal Haven, Massa said, adding that the group is hoping to organize Hoffman Estates residents to pressure Record Breakers.

Brad Hathaway, manager of Crow's Nest, believes his store was wrongfully accused. "If we have it, it's unknown to us," he said.

Hathaway said the student activists had spoken with one of his employees, but not with him. But he went through a list of white power bands the students had provided, and could only find one in Crow's Nest, by the band Bludgeon. "I looked at the CD [and] there's no way to tell that it's white power music," he said.