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All You Need Is Hate
December 3, 2004
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
This fall, Panzerfaust Records embarked on a venture called Project Schoolyard. It's basically a distribution effort for hate music. Based in St. Paul, Minnesota, Panzerfaust is, according to Newsweek magazine, "one of the top 'white power' record labels in the country."
Through methods as simple as direct mail and handing out CDs to kids filing off the school bus, Project Schoolyard aims to hand out 100,000 CDs to kids who may not even realize what they're being handed.
BOB GARFIELD:
Or what they are listening to, once they pop it in. The CD, called Sampler Volume 1, purposely contains some of the more tame material that the label offers. This way the kids will be drawn in by the guitar licks and the beat without necessarily hearing what the lyrics are actually saying.
The goal? Well, the website says, quote, "We don't just entertain racist kids. We make them." Alana Stern from the Anti-Defamation League says:
ALANA STERN:
This is the first step in trying to attract young people, and then obviously when they take, when kids take -- if kids take the bait - it'll get deeper and deeper and more hardcore. This is a recruitment tool, but a very well-organized recruitment tool.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
According to the Panzerfaust website, Project Schoolyard originated in Germany, where it met with an all out effort by government officials to stop it dead. According to the website, police contacted every single school in Germany, warning them to look out for volunteers passing out the CDs.
In the end, Project Schoolyard Germany was basically a failure. But then it hopped the pond, and here its freedom of expression is protected by the First Amendment.
BOB GARFIELD:
Minnesota Public Radio reporter Jeff Horwich profiled Panzerfaust Records last spring, before Project Schoolyard hit the heartland this fall.
JEFF HORWICH:
White power music doesn't have its own awards show or an aisle in most record stores. But it's out there. Bands like Brutal Attack, White Wash and Rebel Hell. Some songs celebrate white racial pride. Others glorify beating and killing minorities. Some call for a global war among the races.
The industry does not publicize sales figures, but the nation's 50 or so white power music labels will sell hundreds of thousands of CDs this year.
St. Paul's Panzerfaust Records is one of the biggest of those labels -- the very biggest, according to the company itself. The label is named after a Nazi anti-tank weapon. It arose in 1997 from an active twin cities skinhead music scene centered around one nationally prominent band called Bound for Glory.
BOUND FOR GLORY:
[SINGING] TO THE LAND OF THE FREE,
TO INSANITY,
TO THE HOME OF THE BRAVE,
IT'S A [KILLING THAT'S RIGHT]
JEFF HORWICH:
As it grew, Panzerfaust literally helped to put Minnesota on the map -- the map of national hate groups put out by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The two men who run Panzerfaust make the Center's list of 40 figures who are the future of what it calls the radical right -- a category that spans neo-Nazis, Klansmen and Confederate pride groups.
One of those two men is Byron Calvert, who agreed to meet in a St. Paul park while his
[CHILDREN PLAYING BACKGROUND]
wife watched their three kids on the playground. Calvert has been in and out of Minnesota since falling in with the skinhead scene here 16 years ago.
Last year, he left Panzerfaust's major competitor, Resistance Records. Calvert has a history as vivid as the tattoos and scars over his massive upper body. But that image belies what even his enemies say is a genuine talent for business.
BYRON CALVERT:
Panzerfaust is kind of known more as a skinhead label as far as its run by skinheads, and it runs from country to folk to rock & roll to just traditional British working class type music. We've got everything from the really hardcore, blatantly, openly racist white power type of music. You've got a lot of stuff that's more subtle.
ROCK
BAND:
[SINGING] STAND ONE STAND ALL STAND UP STAND PROUD
AND RAISE THE WHITE MAN'S FLAG
CAUSE I'M FOR YOU,
AND YOU'RE FOR ME,
AND UNITY IS WHAT WE HAVE...
BYRON CALVERT:
These days, the, the people that are moving into our, our circles are so musically talented, and there's literally thousands of pro-white -- what would be considered, loosely, pro-white or white power bands -- on the planet. You know, there's Czech bands, there's Italian bands. You've got Valkyria, and you've got Saga, who are female Swedish folk tunes.
[CLIP OF WOMAN SINGING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
DEVON BURKHARDT:
Panzerfaust sells a multitude of different musical genres. That's part of the strategy.
JEFF HORWICH:
This is Devon Burkhardt. He runs Turn It Down, an educational and marketing campaign against white power music.
DEVON BURKHARDT:
The strategy is to reach in to different youth music subcultures and try to find a base. That's why they have such a wide variety of acts and artists, so they can appeal to a larger group.
Listening to this stuff 10, 15 years ago, there has been a pretty marked change, actually, in terms of the quality of production, musicianship and in terms of the variety in which they market it. So, you know, they're definitely learning the craft.
Now it can't be easily dismissed as just crappy punk rock.
[CLIP OF ROCK MUSIC]
BRYON CALVERT:
Panzerfaust always had good customer relations. We turn around, and we send orders out the next day. They've always given away tons of free goodies to kids. If there was ever a question with an order, you know, we'd re-send it and that kind of stuff. But, you know, I like to go to the library and read books on marketing, and stickers and literature. You know, we just jam as much stuff into a package as we can.
Those kids, they know who in their school or which one of their relatives or you know, their co-workers or whatever, and they actually, you know, spread the word for us.
It is growing. We've got thousands of customers in, in over 40 different countries. But as far as what we do on a daily basis, we don't really get into that. But I will say that it's, over the last couple of years, it's probably doubled.
DEVON BURKHARDT:
White power music has not only become the single number one recruiting tool, bringing people into the movement. It's also become a multi-million dollar a year international enterprise.
Panzerfaust in particular spends most of their time funneling the money back into the movement to fund concerts and events and literature.
BYRON CALVERT:
We're probably the only genre of music that I've heard of that really couldn't give two shi-- couldn't give a damn if somebody came along and wanted to bootleg or, or do free downloads of a million of our songs. It would just save us the time and trouble and hassle, you know? I mean it's going to get the music to more kids.
ROCK
BAND:
[SINGING] NEVER BACK DOWN FROM THE REDS AND THE BLACKS,
[INDECIPHERABLE] . . .
DEVON BURKHARDT:
Many of the folks who helped found Panzerfaust were at one time or continue to be members of the Hammerskin Nation, which is a violent confederation of neo-Nazi skinheads around the country. They have a whole string of murders, assaults and other crimes going back to the 1980s.
BYRON CALVERT:
When you hear people say well, by, by gosh --you guys are associated with violence. That's just nuts. I can tell you for a fact that I have never once in my life attacked anybody because of their race. I've never done it.
Obviously, we don't suggest to kids that they listen to the CD and go out and do the stuff that's on the CD any more than the people that produced Grand Theft Auto III are sued or held responsible for the, the rate of car thefts in the cities in America.
You know, it's entertainment. My kid's 4 years old. He watches Three Stooges, and he hasn't yet poked out his brother's eye. You know what I mean?
BAND:
[SINGING] MUSICIANS READY FOR VIOLENCE,
LET'S HEAR A LOUD--
[GROUP SHOUTS]
TO ALL DOESN'T SUPPORT US,
[INDECIPHERABLE]
IN THE ROOM THAT WE PRACTICE,
THE PIGS WILL PAY
[INDECIPHERABLE]. . .
DEVON BURKHARDT:
We're talking about lyrics which include things like -- you know, calls for violence against African-Americans, gays and lesbians, Jewish folks and others in explicitly racist and anti-Semitic terms, and it is some of the harshest, most vile language you can imagine.
BAND:
[SINGING] WE STAND PROUD!
BYRON CALVERT:
The rap industry is a multi-billion dollar industry where they sing expressly about hurting white people, and, and I don't see anybody calling them to question, making them justify, you know, why.
DEVON BURKHARDT:
We certainly agree that they've got a free speech right to sing whatever they want to sing. We think it's also therefore important that those of us who are concerned about it, and there are many, use our First resp--Amendment obligation to speak out against it.
ROCK
BAND:
[INDECIPHERABLE SINGING]
BYRON CALVERT:
Eminem and Kid Rock are not the only working class white kids who ha-- who, whose experience is a story that, that needs to be told, you know, there's a lot of other kids. Our customers here in Minnesota, if you saw 'em, you probably wouldn't know it. I mean it's, it's high school kids. It's girls in the suburb.
I probably do over a, a hundred emails a day, and it's just, it's just nuts how many emails I get that are your average 14 or 15 year old kid that came across us by doing a internet search or because he saw a sticker or some friends of his told him about the label.
And they go, and they actually read the literature, they read the articles, they listen to the MP3s, they watch the videos, they see what it is we're saying. And it's like they just soak it up.
[MUSIC]
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Jeff Horwich produced that report for Minnesota Public Radio
[MUSIC]
BAND:
[SINGING] YOUR EYES ARE CRYSTAL BLUE,
LIKE THE GREAT OCEAN.
SO IMMENSELY DEEP AND TRUE,
THAT YOU COULD ALMOST DROWN.
AND YOUR HAIR IS GOLDEN BLONDE,
LIKE A RIPENED FIELD OF WHEAT
SHINING BRIGHTLY PURE AND TRUE,
WHEN THE SUN FALLS ON IT.
YOU ARE MY ARYAN CHILD
[INDECIPHERABLE]
YOU ARE MY ARYAN CHILD...
BOB GARFIELD:
That's it for this week's show. On the Media was directed by Katya Rogers and produced by Megan Ryan, Tony Field, Jamie York, and Mike Vuolo,
[MUSIC UNDER]
and edited-- by Brooke. Dylan Keefe is our technical director, and Jennifer Munson our engineer. We had help from Anne Kosseff. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Arun Rath is our senior producer and Dean Cappello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and get free transcripts and MP3 downloads at onthemedia.org, and email us at onthemedia@WNYC.org. This is On the Media, from NPR. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD:
And I'm Bob Garfield.
[THEME MUSIC TAG]
copyright 2004 WNYC Radio
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