thank you so much for being here today I
am really excited to have a chance to
talk with you about hate pop music and
politics and I want to begin with this
question do you listen for the politics
in music because most people don’t most
people think about politics as what the
government does passing laws running
elections implementing policies and then
in terms of citizens people think about
politics as self-interested rational
behavior who gets what when where and
why and then music is understood as
entertainment its lyrics may communicate
a message but the sounds and the rhythms
of music have an ambiguous meaning at
best may seem non rational and so how
could this possibly be about politics so
what I want to suggest is that there are
a lot of ways that music is used in
politics we’ve got campaign theme songs
protest marches military marches anthems
national anthems and controversies about
them and that the things that may make
music seem marginal in politics it’s
appealed to the emotions its effects on
the body at least in terms of
communicating in ideology and a message
are actually the things that make music
most powerful in terms of mobilizing
citizens and coercive regimes have used
music to manipulate citizens
subconsciously to comply with their rule
and protest movements have used music to
get their issues on the political agenda
to disrupt politics as normal and to
sometimes change norms practices and
even whole societies so not to think
about the music in politics is they
think to miss a really important
political phenomenon so that said if you
think about music as politics music is
no longer an art object for entertaining
audiences music becomes
something that we do and Christopher
small has talked about the need to
discuss music Inge rather than music in
order to convey this active component
that even when we listen but especially
when we participate when we rehearse
when we perform when we compose when we
dance to music we’re doing something and
in doing that we may be engaged in
political activity so music as a part of
political discourse I began to study
because I was interested in how
philosophers often use musical metaphors
at crucial points in their arguments to
talk about democracy and the musical
metaphors to give you some examples
voice of the people voices musical it’s
not just words I’m also making sound
here a resonant public sphere a
harmonious society or a dissonant one a
vibrant political leader and what I
noticed was that in thinking about music
as politics one was expanding the
understanding of political communication
in ways that included people who may
have had access to the fora of decision
making but we’re not communicating in
the rational arguments we’re not writing
the books we’re not engaging in the
debates that had dominated the history
of democracy in the Western world
because rational argument was a form of
public discourse historically associated
with white middle-class men and they had
managed through the process of
maintaining that notion of public
discourse to exclude these other forms
of communication that were being used by
many other groups the term for this is
internal exclusions it comes from Irish
young and what Irish young argued was
that we needed to pluralize our notion
of political communication so in
addition to rational argument I’m not
doing against reason in politics I’m
arguing for more young said we needed to
have greetings so I said hello when I
came in which immediately established
some sort of relationship with you we
also needed to consider rhetoric and
that’s where young puts music and then
we needed to hear people’s stories in
what I was young argued was that
chanting and singing for a Cause was for
her the most important aspect of
democratic participation and collective
solidarity that was where she felt
engaged and empowered as a citizen so I
started studying music and politics
looking at the music of progressive
social movements feminist and civil
rights movements and I am trained as an
amateur musician can win voice and so I
was able to study the music as well as
the lyrics but I then discovered that
there was another music and a number of
my colleagues led me to study this music
by asking me what about the other side
of the political spectrum and hate music
is defined in terms of two main
characteristics it’s explicitly
ultra-nationalist and racist and it’s
used to target historically oppressed
groups for violence hate groups have
been rising in the United States and
this is a statistic compiled from
Southern Poverty Law Center data by Al
Jazeera it’s showing you 2015 and 2016
and what you’ll see in particular is
arising anti-muslim groups that has
continued and this rise in hate groups
is partly a function of the challenges
that globalization poses for the
cultural identity and the economic
security of the white West and if you
look at the longer term trends this rise
took off post 9/11 further increases
with the 2008 election of President
Barack Obama and then again in 2012
and a number of issues
contributing to this rise in hate groups
including Obama’s agendas for
immigration reform health care gun laws
patriotic militia groups not shown on
this slide have also been increasing in
numbers they tend to be higher under
Democratic administrations than under
Republican ones because people are more
concerned about losing Second Amendment
rights due to gun control legislation we
may see further change in that following
the shootings in parkland
so I thought I should study this hate
music and distinguish it from hate in
popular music as an extreme that could
illuminate the norm so I turned to that
music from my current project and you
can see here a quote from William Pierce
former owner of resistance Records who
talks about how white supremacist groups
explicitly use music to target what they
regard as vulnerable groups and
prisoners women and especially teenagers
and the argument is that music taps into
the soul it reaches to set a deeper
level than books and speeches now some
recent examples on the left here Wade
Michael Page the Sikh temple shooter in
2012 in the middle unjust Behring
Breivik who engaged in a mass massacre
at a socialist Labor Party camp in 2011
in Norway and then in the right Paul
Craig Cobb who is wearing a t-shirt for
World Church of the Creator and who
brought up a lot of abandoned and
foreclosed properties in Leith North
Dakota with an attempt to found an
intentional white community and host
white power music festivals on his land
white power music has been around for a
long time if you want to look at the
history of it probably a good place to
start is in England in the late 1970s
with a split in punk music and racist
skinhead scenes into rock against
communism on the right
lined by the band screwdriver and its
lead singer Ian Stewart Donaldson and
then Rock Against Racism on the left and
probably the band best associated with
that is the clash but also the Sex
Pistols continuing though the story
these are the bands that I look at in my
book trendy fascism and white power
music is not only the racist skin had
seen coming out of one wing of punk
music it’s also neo-nazi folk music on
the right there you have Prussian blue
which is a neo-nazi folk band no longer
performing but wearing their infamous
Hitler smiley face t-shirts the upper
left is screwdriver
the first explicitly political racist
skinhead band and then on the lower left
you’ve rahowa it’s an acronym for racial
holy war the World Church of the Creator
t-shirt is appearing again there and the
lead singer is George birdy who I’m
gonna say more about in a few minutes so
how this music works the lyrics convey a
message and there’s some consistent
themes across the genres enemies of the
racial nation origin stories and epic
struggles unemployment corruption and
coercion both capitalist and government
legal double standards the notion of a
persecuted white race antisocial
rebellion and some argue that this is
music that’s really part of a youth
culture and shouldn’t be taken all that
seriously politically it’s just about
people acting out um and an stage and
identity formation I think the politics
are more serious than that but that
argument is out there and then nature
worship arguments for racial religion
and then racial heroes are often
celebrated in this music male warriors
and female breeders the argument is that
women are breeding the future citizen
soldiers of the white race in the south
particularly an emphasis on states
rights and then the male Warriors are
often confederate generals who are seen
as martyrs to the race screwed
ever had a spin-off band called the
clansmen which had a rockabilly found
and specifically targeted audiences in
the American South it’s important to
recognize that the music works through
its sounds as well as its lyrics and
some of the characteristics of the
sounds and the rhythms catchy tunes
simple refrains loud hard-hitting music
dominates strong chord modulations
driving rhythms and the music works on
our emotions and our bodies in
particular ways if you are listening to
this music especially at a live concert
but also online the music initially was
in sort of closed hidden spaces private
clubs restricted festivals but it’s now
readily available on the Internet you
will experience changes in body
temperature and increased heart rate
higher blood pressure your face may
become flushed people are amped up on
the music and what it does is appeal to
so primitive parts of the brain
so-called reptile brain the amygdala and
the cerebellum and the hippocampus where
our fundamental flight fight instincts
can be engaged and that happens before
people have a chance to really think
about the music or process the lyrics in
sort of higher levels of the brain in
the cerebral cortex the experience that
people have especially at live concerts
is called ecstasy and the argument is
that music is a powerful drug so you
know it’s a reasonable analogy to make
the drugs are not required though the
music alone can do it and an ecstatic
experience is one that has you standing
outside yourself so ex stasis stand
outside yourself and often that
experience involves a phenomenon that’s
called muscular bonding where people
lose their sense of individual
vulnerability and of personal
responsibility and become one with the
crowd and hence are willing to do things
that they would not otherwise do so
again these are the primitive
fight-or-flight reactions that get
triggered but now as a group phenomenon
and there’s often violence that follows
these concerts that spills over into the
streets the music also is a really
powerful memory device and this is true
of music more generally you probably all
remember learning the alphabet and
counting songs right and it works by
repeating phrases and chunking them and
then the tune can carry you over any
gaps in cognitive memory so if you
forget a few letters you can you know
catch up later on
well this music also works that way with
simple refrains and it’s stored again in
these primitive regions of the brain on
a cellular level and social movements
can recall the set of associations that
people had the last time they
experienced the music and then mobilize
people in the future I should say that
there is a new genre of white power
music which is called fash Wave I’m
curious and be heard of it it comes out
of synth wave and vapor wave from the
1980s but some trace it back even
further to the futurist movement and to
the development of music in the 1930s
it’s music of the alt-right they are
claiming it as their soundtrack they’re
again saying that it expresses the soul
of white supremacy and the music is
instrumental it’s electronic music so it
has less scrutiny than some of the
earlier forms whose lyrics were
explicitly hate-filled
but the hate associations are evident in
the videos the images and also in the
song titles the song that really brought
fash wave
initial attention in 2015-2016 was cyber
Nazis on galactic Levens ROM and on the
right hand side there you can see the
image that is associated with that song
and then on the left side the Trump
victory mean that is associated with
fash wave music now there are people who
perform this music who have renounced it
and who are working against their
previous songs that are still out there
on the internet and have made a
commitment to do that for the rest of
their lives some of these former white
supremacist and specifically white power
musicians have founded an organization
called life after hate which runs an
exit program and these are a few
statements that they’ve made about their
previous performances of white power
music and also what they think hatred
anger and racism do and have done to
them their audiences and their victims
interesting lean enough some of them
left the white supremacist movement
through ecstatic experiences of music
the same experiences that led them into
it led them out of it so they found
another genre some of them formed new
bands but others left because they had
children and they heard their children
expressing the racism that they had
practiced and they were not comfortable
with that some of them saw the effects
of the white power music scene on their
friends and their family they lost
people they loved to drugs and to
violence some of them saw reports of
domestic terrorist attacks on TV and
were shocked into awareness about what
they had in reality gotten themselves
involved in and we’re doing and some of
them were transformed in jail jail for
some was the most integrated experience
they had ever had and playing on prison
sports teams in particular changed their
consciousness so that is
a positive development there are others
Spotify and iTunes have decided to pull
this music from their offerings it is
still though readily available and not
only underground it’s available on
Amazon
I don’t argue for censorship I don’t
argue for market censorship or state
censorship I argue instead for education
I think people need to know that this
music is out there and what its
potential dangers are how it works on
not only our minds but also our bodies
and our emotions and I also think that
citizens in a democracy have a
responsibility for the cultural politics
that we create and we sustain so I want
to leave you with that thought and with
the question whether the stories of
these former white power musicians who
have left the movement and are now
working against it might be able to
create some sense of empathy between
poor whites and communities of color I
also want to ask when in the United
States white citizens in particular are
going to confront this longer and deeper
history of white supremacy that has
created the space for this music to
arise and continue and complete the work
of post-civil war reconstruction and
stand together on the side of justice
and so I will leave you with a thank-you
and I skipped over the thank you slide a
thank you from the participants in some
of the community programs of life after
hate and with the URL for their website
and with the question are you listening
and if so to what music and what music
would you want American citizens to hear so thank you