How Black Flag, Bad Brains and more took back their scene from White Supremacists.

[JHan]

Every hardcore band you loved in the ’80s and beyond, from Black Flag to Minutemen to Fugazi, had one unfortunate thing in common: Nazi skinheads occasionally stormed their concerts, stomped their fans, gave Hitler salutes in lieu of applauding, and generally turned a communal experience into one full of hatred and conflict. Punk rockers had flirted with fascist imagery for shock value, with the Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious and Siouxsie Sioux wearing swastikas in public, but, as early San Francisco scenester Howie Klein, later president of Reprise Records, recalls: “Suddenly, you had people who were part of the scene who didn’t understand ‘fascist bad.’”

By 1980, a more violent strain of punk fans was infecting punk shows. “Pogoing became slam-dancing, now known as moshing, and some of ’em didn’t seem like they were there to enjoy the music, as much as they were there to beat up on people—sometimes in a really chickenshit way,” says Jello Biafra, whose band, Dead Kennedys, put out a classic song about it in 1981: “Nazi Punks Fuck Off.”

Deek Allen (singer, Oi Polloi): We started in 1981. We had trouble with Nazis from fairly early on, sadly.

Henry Rollins (singer, Black Flag): Some skinheads thought the punk rockers were weak or whatever, so they went to the shows to show them who the real men were.

Mike Watt (bassist, Minutemen): The first time Minutemen went overseas, Black Flag brought us over on tour. We’re playing the Paradiso [in Amsterdam] in February 1983. These guys are all wearing green jackets and big boots and baldhead haircuts. With the sieg-heiling and the saluting. There must have been 20 of ’em… They started giving us the cheers and synchronized maneuvers. And we just kept playing. The way the Minutemen played was just like one big song, so they didn’t really get stuff in there. We were kind of answering them with our songs.

Thor Harris (percussionist, Swans; creator, “How to Punch a Nazi” video): I remember being at shows like Scratch Acid, where skinheads would take over a mosh pit, which is generally a really friendly thing. If people fall down, other people will pick them up. And the skinheads would make it a not-friendly thing.

Rollins: Some of the punk rockers hit back, so that became a thing that went on for years. It was a mix of testosterone, Reagan, ignorance, anger, and youth. Some of these guys were just lightweight followers and would only attack in groups, but a lot of them were genuine bad guys who were into Clockwork Orange–scale violence. It was no joke.

By the mid-’80s, kids who wanted to play rock ‘n’ roll to their friends found themselves in the position of having to put up with crowd wars between Nazis and anti-fascists. To make things especially confusing, both groups shaved their heads, and it was only through a complicated code of color-coordinated shoelaces that anyone could tell them apart.

Rollins: In the Black Flag days, we had skinhead problems in the lower half of America. Florida, especially. One night in 1986, they mugged our soundman, kicked his head in and cut the lines to our PA. The cops came, shut the show down, and told us we were the problem and we had an hour to get over their county line. The skinheads were standing behind them, flipping us off.

Kurt Brecht (singer, D.R.I. [Dirty Rotten Imbeciles]): In Canberra, Australia, it was only a handful of them, but they were disrupting the show and standing in front of us. Everybody was kind of standing around, and that’s when I gave a little rant on stage: “Why aren’t you doing anything?” [People in the crowd responded:] “You guys can leave, but we have to see them around, and they’ll jump us later and scratch our cars.”

*snip*

Doug Kauffman (longtime Denver concert promoter): That whole movement was a frightening one to have at a show. The last [Denver punk band] Warlock Pinchers show at the Gothic Theatre, they all came and they were sieg-heiling, and the entire crowd on the main floor just suddenly turned on them. Everybody said, “We’ve had enough of this shit.” All of a sudden, this phalanx of skinheads came running through the front doors and were never seen or heard from again. It was an amazing thing—the crowd just collectively decided, “There’s 700 of us and there’s 40 of you, and we’ve had it.” They ran with their tied-up boots and their gray jackets and their shaved heads, and they ran out of that theater, and I swear to God, it ended the problem.

https://www.cvltnation.com/nazi-punks-fk-off-black-flag-bad-brains-took-back-scene-white-supremacists/

[johnp3907]

1. Reminds me of the time I took a guitar case full of baseball bats to a hardcore show.

In the end no one got hurt, but the nazis destroyed a drinking fountain and flooded a staircase on their way out. Important thing is they were called out and told to leave by the headlining band and the crowd.

[JHan]

2. wow.

Like Kauffman said “There’s 700 of us and there’s 40 of you, and we’ve had it.”

Glad no one got hurt.