clever and appropriate title

silly old neo-nazis

As noted previously, former moderator of Stormfront Down Under Rhys McLean and his partner have left the building, and the battle to replace them is between a disgraced middle-aged former editor from Queensland called Carl D. Thompson and a plasterer from Perth called Paul Innes. Carl thinks he’s being pursued by anti-racists, ASIO, Lebanese gangs, UFOs and ZOG. Paul, on the other hand, is a bonehead, brother to David, and brother-in-law to Lilith (Emma), the disgraced former moderator for whom Rhys was the replacement. Paul’s other claim to fame is that he wants to build a ‘Pioneer Little Europe’ — basically, a white enclave — in the Perth foothills; which goes to show that he’s not just a pretty face. (No doubt refrigeration services for the small but intrepid Europeans has also been arranged.)

In Germany, AFP reports (January 13) that ‘Concert by neo-Nazi band shut down’, which is sad, and more than can be said of Australia: “GERMAN riot police battled with neo-Nazis holding an illegal rock concert in a disused brewery, police said. Five of the concert-goers were injured and 15 were taken into custody during the mayhem at Luebben, 70km southeast of the capital Berlin.” Also in Germany, “A German court on Monday jailed the lawyer of a convicted Holocaust denier [and fan of hard hats Ernst Zündel] for calling the Nazis’ World War II slaughter of European Jews “the biggest lie in world history”.” Sylvia Stolz will no doubt welcome letters of support from Welf Herfurth (German Neo-Nazi Lawyer Sentenced for Denying Holocaust, Deutsche-Welle, January 14).

In the US, meanwhile, the former leader of the National Alliance, Kevin Alfred Strom, after having been cleared of other, related, charges, has plead guilty to one charge of possessing child pornography (and a passion for kitsch). According to one report:

During the hearing, Strom said he is neither a white supremacist nor a neo-Nazi and maintained that he’s been threatened in jail after media accounts described him as such, said defense lawyer Andrea Harris. “The bottom line is that he feels like those terms don’t accurately reflect what his beliefs are,” Harris said. “He adamantly denies being either one of those things.”

However, others said Strom’s denial lacks credibility.

“I find that the most ludicrous comment I’ve heard this decade,” said Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, which tracks hate groups.

On the other hand, the dirty rotten stinking lousy Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe (1911–1934) had his conviction for setting fire to the Reichstag overturned by a German court. (van der Lubbe was a council communist.)

trendy fucking wankers

Cool Hunting has given the new book Punk House: Interiors in Anarchy (Penelope Green, ‘Anarchy Rules: The Dishes Stay Dirty’, The New Yawk Times, January 3, 2008) the kiss of death, nominating it as being “cool”. Which is, like, doubleplusuncool:

The punk house is a curious and sometimes beautiful habitat, the expression of a music scene and do-it-yourself culture that went underground decades ago, in an attempt to opt out of just about everything that smacked of the mainstream: cities, clubs, bars, alcohol, processed foods, agribusiness and the record companies, for example, not to mention all media larger than a photocopied zine. With its roots in old-fashioned counterculture communes (like Findhorn in Scotland, but really messy, and with a thrash-hardcore beat), the punk house is a multifunctional dwelling: typically a place for like-minded males in their 20’s to live and to make and hear music. This is not to say that there aren’t all-female punk houses (there are) or ones with girls living among the boys. As with punk itself, the punk house eludes a tidy definition. “Punk Is (Whatever We Made It To Be)” is the title of a song from the Minutemen, a punk band in the early ’80s…

Y’know, this shit kinda reminds me of when wearing flannel became briefly popular via ‘grunge’ — a stoopid genre which also gave us Nirvana in Pyjamas (Silverchair). Of course, one interpretation is that flannel was worn by hardcore kids anyways, ‘cos it was cheaply available from your local supermarket. And yeah: There’s people crying / There’s people dying / But someone’s taken it all, yeah.

a good fascist

Speaking of people crying, dying, not flying, and possibly even lying and conniving, here’s a cautionary tale about a quack who’s gone to the dogs. Or — alternatively — the dangers of listening to your old man’s bullshit and wanting a cool tattoo just a little bit too much.

Bonehead‘s spider web
David J. Kraicek
New York Daily News
January 13 2008

Jimmy Burmeister Jr. had no good reason to feel superior to anyone.

He wasn’t smart or good-looking. He was a lousy athlete, even though he was one of the tallest kids in his hometown of Thompson, Pa., in the hills northeast of Scranton.

He tried to be a tough guy but lost every fight he started.

Burmeister was weaned on racism. His father, a mechanic, was a bitter, big-talking bigot who fed his son a steady diet of redneck ruminations about how minorities had stifled white progress.

His namesake matured into the apple of the father’s eye – a young man seething with racist phobias and resentment.

With no particular prospects, he joined the Army after finishing high school in 1993. He did not stand out there, either.

He was assigned to Fort Bragg, N.C., and the storied 82nd Airborne Division – “the All-American.” But Burmeister washed out as a paratrooper, and the Army stuck him in a corner as a menial firearms clerk.

Failing as a soldier, Burmeister used his father’s pretzel logic to blame blacks for holding the white man back. He vented his bigotry by picking a fight with a much smaller black soldier – and promptly got a broken nose.

Signs were telling

He fell into a clique of some 60 [bonehead] soldiers at Fort Bragg, where the Army had a curiously liberal attitude about freedom of expression.

Some decorated their bunks with swastikas and replaced their dog tags with the German Iron Cross. One sported a chest tattoo of Hermann Goering, commander of the Nazi Luftwaffe.

Burmeister scrawled a popular white power platitude on the wall near his bunk: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

When off duty, the soldiers proudly displayed [bonehead] trappings – shorn pates, red suspenders, red laces in their Doc Marten boots and Nazi patches on their bomber jackets. They passed around copies of “Mein Kampf” and neo-Nazi tracts like “The Turner Diaries,” and they cheered when the federal building in Oklahoma City was bombed in April 1995.

Fort Bragg [boneheads] later said Burmeister became obsessed with obtaining a [bonehead] emblem: a spider web tattooed over an elbow, which according to white power legend is said to identify someone who has killed a minority group member.

Another misfit white soldier, Malcolm Wright, had the tattoo on his left elbow, and Burmeister followed Wright like a puppy.

On Dec. 6, 1995, Burmeister, Wright and another [bonehead] soldier, Randy Meadows, visited a strip club, then drove to a trailer outside Fayetteville where Burmeister rented a room from a [bonehead] friend.

They sat amid Burmeister’s collection of Nazi flags and amped themselves with the head-banging tunes of Skrewdriver, the iconic white power band.

Burmeister told his pals, “Maybe I’ll get my spider web tonight.”

He grabbed a 9-mm. pistol – a gift from Dad – and led his friends out the door. They stopped for a 12-pack of beer, then cruised a black neighborhood in Fayetteville, shouting epithets and threats.

At about midnight, the men crossed paths with Jackie Burden, 27, and Michael James, 36, friends who were out for a walk.

Burmeister and Wright got out of the car and walked up behind the two African-Americans. Burmeister executed James with two shots to the head. He then chased Burden, knocked her down with a shot to the back and pumped three more bullets into her head as she lay at his red-laced boots.

Meadows, the driver, had parked a block away. Burmeister and Wright fled in the opposite direction and eventually caught a taxi home. Meadows, meanwhile, got out of the car and walked toward the gunfire.

Cops picked him up within minutes of the murders, and he gave up the names of his [bonehead] comrades before he was in handcuffs.

Police roused Burmeister and Wright at the trailer a few hours later. They found the 9-mm. murder weapon under Burmeister’s pillow.

Racism targeted

The white power pals were charged with murder, and the American military – already reeling after former soldiers were implicated in the Oklahoma City mass murder – faced new questions about whether the armed forces mollycoddled racists [Blood Oath!]. The Army eventually discharged 22 [bonehead] soldiers, including Burmeister and Wright.

Burmeister faced trial in the spring of 1997, with Randy Meadows as star accuser.

The former soldier solemnly led jurors through the demented events in Fayetteville that December night, and he told of Burmeister’s fixation with the spider web tattoo.

Prosecutors forced Malcolm Wright to the witness stand to display his version of the tattoo, although Wright said that he had never killed anyone before the Fayetteville case.

Burmeister was convicted of first-degree murder, and a single juror – a woman who announced during deliberations that she opposed capital punishment – spared him from the death penalty. He got life.

Burmeister was blustery at his sentencing, saying, “If the state has chosen to blame me in this case, so be it. I’m not conceding, and I’m not going to quit. This is not over by any means.”

“He has a heart of cold steel,” said Julie Burden, an aunt of one of his murder victims.

Two months later, Malcolm Wright was convicted of murder. He was more contrite, apologizing to the victims’ families and acknowledging that he was “guilty of being a bad person.”

He, too, was sent away for life, and he is still in prison a decade later.

Burmeister spent his prison time isolated from black inmates because he was terrified they would retaliate for his race murders.

His well-being became moot last March, when he died in a prison hospital in Missouri. The federal Bureau of Prisons refused to reveal the cause of death, citing inmate confidentiality issues. But a [bonehead] Web site said his family was informed that Burmeister died of cancer.