Expos­ing and coun­ter­ing racist hate on the inter­net is pre­dom­i­nant­ly focussed on social media sites, both main­stream and extrem­ist, which post racist text and images. How­ev­er, one area has not received much atten­tion – racist music. Today, with the inter­net, the racist music scene is chang­ing. There is a pro­lif­er­a­tion of racist, and espe­cial­ly anti­se­mit­ic, music being pro­mot­ed and shared online.

This takes four main forms: Ger­man Nazi music, movie seg­ments, replac­ing the lyrics of known songs, and cre­at­ing new music and lyrics, often rap-style. These are post­ed as videos on video chan­nels such as YouTube, Bitchute, Odysee, and on social media plat­forms such as Gab and Telegram. To illus­trate the prob­lem, exam­ples of music post­ed by Aus­tralian right-wing extrem­ists are pro­vid­ed.

1. Music from Nazi Ger­many

One of the most pop­u­lar songs today with neo-Nazis, from the peri­od of Nazi Ger­many, is ‘Eri­ka’.  Videos of the song are pro­duced and played with var­i­ous back­grounds, most com­mon­ly show­ing film footage of Hitler, Nazi flags, sol­diers and mil­i­tary parades.

‘Eri­ka’, with var­i­ous back­ground ver­sions of Nazi graph­ics, has been post­ed by known right-wing extrem­ists in Aus­tralia such as Thomas Sewell (on 7 April 2021 and 17 April 2021) and Ryan Fletch­er (on 26 Octo­ber 2021). Videos of ‘Eri­ka’ post­ed by Sewell, the leader of the neo-Nazi group, Nation­al Social­ist Net­work, includ­ed exten­sive view­ing of Hitler and Nazi sol­diers march­ing. The video post­ed by Fletch­er is of a car­toon of a Jew hid­ing in bed while lights are flash­ing out­side to the sounds of ‘Eri­ka’ and march­ing jack­boots.

Videos of Nazi-era music, such as ‘Eri­ka’, seek to nor­malise and pro­mote Nazism as an ide­ol­o­gy and to stir up hatred of Jews. Post­ing Nazi-era pro­pa­gan­da music with Nazi-themed visu­als in the back­ground is advo­cat­ing anti­semitism, mil­i­tarism, total­i­tar­i­an­ism and vio­lence.

2. Movie seg­ments

Seg­ments of racist music from movies are also post­ed online. One exam­ple is from the movie ‘Amer­i­can His­to­ry X’, about two broth­ers involved in the neo-Nazi move­ment. A seg­ment from this movie was post­ed online by Aus­tralian neo-Nazi Jar­rad Sear­by (on 25 Novem­ber 2021) on Gab; name­ly, the scene with the char­ac­ter of ‘Seth’ dri­ving an orange Dodge van, where Seth is vehe­ment­ly singing:

“My eyes have seen the glo­ry of the tram­pling at the zoo,
We washed our­selves in nig­gers’ blood and all the mon­grels too.
We’re tak­ing down the ZOG machine, Jew by Jew by Jew.
The white man march­es on.”

The orig­i­nal melody is from the Amer­i­can civ­il war era song, ‘The Bat­tle Hymn of the Repub­lic’. The lyrics are: “Mine eyes have seen the glo­ry of the com­ing of the Lord. He is tram­pling out the vin­tage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He hath loosed the fate­ful light­en­ing of His ter­ri­ble swift sword. His truth is march­ing on.”

While movies such as ‘Amer­i­can His­to­ry X’ (1998), ‘Romper Stom­per’ (1992 and 2018) and oth­ers are not aimed at pro­mot­ing or legit­imis­ing racism, but rather at expos­ing racists, and racist inspired vio­lence, seg­ments are mis­used in the cause of racism. The ‘Seth’ seg­ment is short, con­cise, and intense. The music in the seg­ment is overt­ly express­ing anti-black, anti-mixed race, and anti-Jew­ish racism, glo­ri­fy­ing vio­lence, and is upbeat enough to catch on as a tune, with its racist lyrics – all cap­tured in under 20 sec­onds.

3. Replac­ing lyrics

This method uses exist­ing songs, usu­al­ly well-known ones, by keep­ing the melody but replac­ing the lyrics. (It is sim­i­lar to the ‘Seth’ exam­ple above, but with­out hav­ing been cre­at­ed for a movie). The dan­ger is that, as these orig­i­nal songs are already quite well known, it makes it much eas­i­er for peo­ple to pick up the melody and repeat the new lyrics. Two exam­ples fol­low.

‘The Ris­ing of the Moon’ is an Irish bal­lad about the Irish rebel­lion against the British in 1789. It shares a sim­i­lar melody with anoth­er Irish bal­lad, ‘The Wear­ing of the Green’, on the same theme; both were writ­ten in the mid-1800s. Lyrics include: “At the ris­ing of the moon, at the ris­ing of the moon. For the pikes must be togeth­er at the ris­ing of the moon … By the ris­ing of the moon, by the ris­ing of the moon. And a thou­sand pikes were flash­ing by the ris­ing of the moon.”

How­ev­er, an Amer­i­can musi­cian, Pad­dy Tar­leton, known for white suprema­cist and oth­er racist music and for appro­pri­at­ing tra­di­tion­al Anglo-Celtic melodies, wrote new lyrics. Thus, ‘The Ris­ing of the Moon’ became ‘The Nam­ing of the Jew’. Using the tra­di­tion­al well-known melody, the lyrics now include:

“we strive against the shys­ters, crooks and shy­locks …
And you won’t see the sun rise now until you name the Jew.
Oh the nam­ing of the Jew, Oh the nam­ing of the Jew …
In 1290, our dear Long­shanks had tossed them in the bin,
‘til that round­head scoundrel Oliv­er [Cromwell] had let the kikes back in …
For years these shame­less bas­tards have gone by many names,
From the oli­garchs to upper one per­cent, it’s all the same …
So stand, be heard and say the word, it’s J E W …
We’ll keep up the pres­sure in the west until we bleed the beast …
And you won’t see the sun rise now until you name the Jew.”

‘The Sound of Silence’, the 1964 hit by Simon and Gar­funkel, is anoth­er song that has been hijacked and abused by racists. This song, with its gen­tle undu­lat­ing melody and philo­soph­i­cal lyrics, has been turned upside down and recast into a call for geno­cide. Much of the orig­i­nal lyrics remain, but with select words and phras­es replaced eg the first line of ‘Hel­lo dark­ness, my old friend’. The reword­ed song is named ‘The Ovens of Auschwitz’, and is sung by ‘White Hot Takes’. Its lyrics include:

“Hel­lo mer­chant, you old fiend …
Loot­ing our nations while we’re sleep­ing 
And know cat­tle cars lie emp­ty on the line,
we’ll bide our time heat­ing the ovens of Auschwitz …
then lit the ovens of Auschwitz.
And in the fire’s light I saw six mil­lion Hebrews, maybe more …
send the trains to Auschwitz.
“Fools” said I, “You do not know, Jew­ry like a can­cer grows” …
And the man said, “The lies of the rab­bis can only be stopped by force
And gas of course and in the ovens of Auschwitz”.”

Both these songs, ‘The Nam­ing of the Jew’ and ‘The Ovens of Auschwitz’ were post­ed on Gab by an Aus­tralian anti­semite, “Dan­The­O­r­a­cle” (on 24 Novem­ber, and on 17 and 25 Decem­ber 2021), and on his Odysee video chan­nel (on 5 April and 17 Decem­ber 2021).

The dan­ger with these songs is that the melodies are well-known, the orig­i­nal songs were pop­u­lar, and the new race-hate words are as catchy as the orig­i­nal lyrics. These ‘new’ songs, with famil­iar tunes, become an easy way to demonise Jews, and to incite vio­lence against Jews.

4. New cre­ations – hip-hop/rap music

Anoth­er form of racist music is that of new­ly cre­at­ed music, both lyrics and melody. Often this is in hip-hop or rap style where the per­son does not sing, but instead speaks rhyth­mi­cal­ly to an accom­pa­ny­ing beat. Often these peo­ple use their music to express not only racism but also oth­er forms of big­otry. Exam­ples of such music by two peo­ple fol­low.

Ray­mond Fos­ter has post­ed sev­er­al videos of his music, which he recites rap-style while show­ing the lyrics on the screen. Foster’s hate videos have been post­ed on his Face­book pages (since removed) and on his YouTube chan­nel, with links also post­ed on Gab. His lyrics gen­er­al­ly express vio­lent and mur­der­ous acts.

In Foster’s ‘DON’T NEED THAT SUFFERING’ (16 June 2019), the lyrics vil­i­fy Jews (“kikes”, “heebs”), blacks, Mus­lims, homo­sex­u­als (“fags”), and women (“THOTS” = “that ho over there”). The lyrics include:

“just try­ing to keep these dirty lying kikes away …
begin step­ping in this oven, kike get in
Get in this oven, Kike get in … Sieg heil 88 …
blacks stink­ing out ma home and moan­ing Kebabs …
now I’m gonna bag every fuck­ing fag and drag em naked
behind a horse on jagged grav­el until they’re (sic) limbs
are fuck­ing dan­gling off and feed em to crocs …
cru­sade every Mus­lim on the face of earth
con­vert em by blade or make em drop …
what I got in store for the THOTS, Your gonna bleed a lot …
And heebs you’ll leav­ing as ash, get in the oven.”

In a sec­ond video by Fos­ter, ‘88 MUTHA FUCKAS’ (20 June 2019), he again glo­ri­fies and incites vio­lence against Jews:

“I’ll be drag­ging bod­ies down an alley to stab em
don’t pan­ic only kike mag­gots get dam­aged…
we’re wild Aryans we over­take …
hap­pi­ly put a knife to ya throat …
break through this Jew­ish cage …
fuck ya optics I’ve lost it maybe I’ll Holo­caust it …
I think I got time to drop every last dogshit kike …
always keep the kikes in the eye of your sight …
so I’m like the forth (sic) Reich.”

In a third video by Fos­ter, ‘HONOUR ME’ (21 June 2019), lyrics include: “1488 Race War Gas all the fuck­ing kikes”. A fourth video by Fos­ter, ‘WHO OWNS HOLLYWOOD?’ (12 July 2019), includes the lyrics of:

“… fuck ya optics …  then I men­tion Jews … 
Who owns all the banks Who owns all the oil
Who owns big phar­ma Who owns all the media
They’re try­ing to harm ya Who owns Hol­ly­wood
They’re try­ing to harm ya
I’m nam­ing the Jew every­day are ya?
If not you bet­ter start brah start anoth­er Shoah … 
ride with da Reich … that’s what’s like with these kikes…”

Jar­rad (Jaz) Sear­by is anoth­er rap­per; he has become involved in the neo-Nazi group, Nation­al Social­ist Net­work. He posts his videos on Gab and Telegram. Many of his songs include con­tent den­i­grat­ing or threat­en­ing Jews. The lyrics to Searby’s music video, ‘THE AWAKENING’ (27 June 2021), include:

“… we know the Jews have always hat­ed us
They fuck us up the arse these cunts
are smil­ing while their rap­ing us …
now we’re com­ing with a vengeance and
they don’t know what to do
We will be catch­ing them real soon then
we’ll throw them in a room
you smell that gas? Yeah I do too
And that’s the end of you know who!
I can’t help it I drop J pills every time I’m in the room …
And now all across the world peo­ple are scream­ing FUCK THE JEWS
Now we’re ready for the white Boy Sum­mer 2022
And now these kikes will start to run every time we enter rooms …
I will see Val­hal­la soon…”

These exam­ples of rap-style music are new­ly cre­at­ed works, with orig­i­nal lyrics and using a rhyth­mic beat. Rap is a pop­u­lar style of music that does not require a musi­cal voice or even music. The lyrics of rap-style are often not as audi­bly clear as oth­er forms of music. Yet despite this, as can be seen through the lyrics, this form of music is glo­ri­fy­ing hate and advo­cat­ing vio­lence.

Con­clu­sion

The inter­net allows the easy dis­per­sion and pro­lif­er­a­tion of hate pro­pa­gan­da. Most­ly, online hate is com­posed of arti­cles on web­sites and posts/comments and images on social media sites, as well as videos uploaded onto most plat­forms. The genre of music adds a medi­um of hate that is much more eas­i­ly trans­mis­si­ble and retain­able in the mem­o­ry. Regard­less of whether the pro­duc­tion of such music is for the enjoy­ment of racists or for pro­pa­gan­da and recruit­ment pur­pos­es, it remains a source of hate that is like­ly to grow, and thus is of great con­cern.

Music has an effect on the human psy­che. The say­ing that music soothes the sav­age beast is cer­tain­ly true. It can relax and soothe. Music speaks to the soul. Equal­ly true is that music can also stim­u­late the emo­tions, rais­ing excite­ment lev­els and aggres­sive ten­den­cies.

Here­in lies the dan­ger – racist lyrics, emo­tive melodies and vivid visu­als, can inspire and incite racist acts. Hate music can be just as incit­ing, or more so, than even the most riv­et­ing hate speech­es by dem­a­gogues. One hears such music, and if it con­nects, it is absorbed. And the pro­pa­gan­da seeds have been plant­ed.