2008 Ian Stuart Donaldson Memorial Gigs

“Last year included Final War as the international band and the farewell gig of Aussie RAC legends — Fortress. This year, with a better venue, the much-anticipated return of the awesome Ravenous and our overseas guests being one of the most exciting active bands on the planet at the moment… Not forgetting Viking rock stalwarts, Blood Red Eagle, this one is shaping up to be an absolute blinder.”

Or so claim local boneheads Blood & Honour (B&H) Australia.

In addition to Saturday night’s gig organised by B&H and the Southern Cross Hammerskins at the Central Hotel in Beaconsfield, Victoria, numerous other franchises in the neo-Nazi network have organised gigs to commemorate the death (on September 24, 1993) of Skrewdriver lead singer and co-founder of Blood & Honour (with another dead neo-Nazi Nicky Crane) Ian Stuart Donaldson. Note that there is a split in these networks between two factions: one supportive of another neo-Nazi group called Combat 18 (18 = AH = Adolf Hitler) and the other not; the Hammerskins are aligned with the non-C18 affiliated faction.

In the UK, Ian’s birthplace, the gig is taking place on the weekend of September 19/20. Playing are Avalon, Blackout, Bulldog Breed, Brutal Attack, Last Chance, Legion of St George, Unit 28, Whitelaw and Woden. A bloke called John from a band called Nemesis will also be strumming his guitar, and warbling songs dedicated to the memory of Ian, and possibly even the Nazi pimp Horst Wessel. According to one source:

Horst Wessel was born September 9, 1907, in Bielefeld, Germany. The son of a pastor, Wessel dropped out of law school in 1926 and defied his mother by joining the Nazi Brownshirt paramilitary in the final days of the Weimar Republic. He soon caught the attention of Joseph Goebbels, who sent him to Vienna in 1928 to organize the Nazi youth movement there.

Intelligent and politically astute, Wessel was also extremely violent. Upon returning to Germany, he organized an attack on the local headquarters of the Communist Party in Friedrichshain, Berlin, during which four workers sustained serious injuries. This prompted Heinz Neumann, editor of the Communist Red Flag daily to call on party members to “Beat the fascists wherever you find them,” exacerbating the already tense political situation.

On January 14, 1930, Wessel got into a heated argument with his landlady, the widow of a Communist Party member. Although the exact details of the argument are still debated, what is known is that: 1) she claimed Wessel refused to pay his rent — alternately, she may have tried to raise it and Wessel refused to pay the difference; 2) she claimed he threatened to beat her; 3) Wessel refused to pay rent for his girlfriend, a prostitute (according to some accounts, a former prostitute reformed by Wessel); since the landlady was herself subletting to Wessel, she feared she would lose the rights to her apartment because a prostitute was living there. Rather than approach the police, the landlady went to a local tavern frequented by Communists for help.

The Communists saw this as an ideal opportunity to avenge themselves on Wessel for the earlier attack. Two men, Ali Höhler, a tough with underworld connections, and Erwin Rückert, an active party member, went to Wessel’s apartment. When he opened the door for them, Höhler shot him in the head. He died several weeks later from his injuries.

The shooting was immediately exploited by both the Nazis and the Communists to further their political aims. The Communists portrayed Wessel as a pimp, while the Nazis claimed he had actually saved his girlfriend from a life of prostitution by introducing her to the Nazi Party and its values. Goebbels organized a public funeral for the new “martyr” to the Nazi cause, and 30,000 people lined the streets of Berlin to see the procession. Goebbels delivered the eulogy in the presence of Hermann Göring and Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia. During the Nazi era, his life was glorified in memorials, books, and films.

Some months before he died, Wessel had written the verses to what would become the Horst Wessel Lied but it first gained popular currency when a choir of Stormtroopers performed it at his funeral. It was later recorded, and in 1931 it became the official anthem of the Nazi Party, played alongside Deutschland über Alles at all official occasions. The song celebrates the SA (whom Hitler would soon purge in the Night of the Long Knives).

Speaking of Nazi Germany, the ISD gig took place there on September 6. Bands that played at the knees up included Better Dead Then Red, Empire Falls, E&S, No Remorse, Oidoxie, Razors Edge and Sturm 18. This gig was organised by the C18 faction. Unfortunately for this mob, their website was hacked a few weeks ago, and the entire contents of their disco forum downloaded and made available for public viewing.

Elsewhere, gigs (organised by non-C18 aligned mobs) have taken place or are taking place in Belgium(/Flanders) (October 18), Hungary (September 13), Italy (September 27) and the United States (September 20). In the US, there are two separate gigs: one in Phoenix, Arizona; the other in Florida. The Phoenix event is being organised by White Knights of America, Sons of Aesir MC, Deaths Head Hooligans, and Thor Ink; the Florida gig by Blood & Honour Confederate 28. (On family fun in Arizona, see Three Congressmen call for J.T. Ready’s ouster, the Nationalist Coalition’s PHX “family night,” and Oi Fest! in Tonopah, Feathered Bastard (Stephen Lemons), August 20, 2008.)

“What about the Jews? No mercy.
What about the spics? No mercy.
What about the niggers? No mercy.
What about the faggots? No mercy.
What about the traitors? No mercy.”

~ ‘No Mercy’, Totenkopf Saints, one of several bands appearing at the Arizona ISD memorial gig.

Bah!

Enough already with the Hitler fetishists!

This bloke (c/o David Gibbs) makes heaps more sense:

Wham bam, my cat Splash
is rolling around on my bed. He swallowed
his tongue as he drank all my whisky
As for me, I’ve hardly slept, I feel empty and reprimanded
I had to sleep in the gutter,
where I had a flash of inspiration
In four colours [thus a multi-coloured flash of inspiration]

Ok let’s go, my baby upped and left
She walked out on me, it’s a shitty situation
She broke everything: the sink, the bar
And she left me all alone
Like a total jerk
Stuck here faced with the aftermath

(For Vince!)