Every year in December,
hundreds of neo-Nazis flock to attend
an annual white power music festival in Ukraine.
Over the course of a weekend in Kiev,
more than a dozen bands take to the stage,
spewing hate-filled anti-Semitic lyrics
praising Nazi figures and calling for violence.
Among the crowd, white supremacist imagery
from Celtic crosses to swastikas and black suns
are displayed on T-shirts and tattoos.
They've become a vital recruiting ground for hardcore extremist groups
and a major income stream.
In Germany alone, far-right concerts
were estimated to have generated 1.4 million euros in 2018,
money used to finance political material, organize events,
or cover legal fees for extremists who fall foul of the law.
Now, as the scene recovers from the pandemic,
experts worry that the return of these concerts
will give a major boost to Europe’s far right.
[Decade of Hate]
My name’s Tim Hume,
and I cover the far right for VICE World News.
Sieg heil! Sieg heil!
..We have to take control of our land
Which is soiled by Jewish rules
I call my brothers to war
For resurrection of our movement...
Outside Ukraine, dozens of similar events have sprung up,
from major neo-Nazi festivals
that draw extremists from across the continent
to smaller underground gigs that act as a vital social hub
for local far-right networks.
There's Pro Patria in Greece,
known for its MMA fights,
Hot Shower in Italy,
a grim reference to Hitler’s gas chambers,
and Rock gegen Überfremdung, or rock against foreign infiltration,
attended by some of Europe’s most hardcore extremists.
Just like mainstream political parties
meet up at dinners and speakers events,
Europe's far right are using these festivals as a key networking tool,
with members of different stripes looking to learn from each other
and potentially plot further action.
So you can meet like-minded people,
you can establish connections to other persons from the scene,
and you can mobilize people who are not involved in
the organized structures of the scene.
Most of these festivals take place outside public view,
with cameras and cell phones banned inside.
Sieg heil!
They function as spaces in which Nazis can live out their ideology.
So these are spaces where they can feel safe amongst their own,
they can show the Hitler salute, which is illegal in Germany,
and they can loudly voice their hateful ideology.
The music played is generally heavy rock music with neo-Nazi themes.
There’s a lot of glorifying national socialism,
a lot of white supremacy.
But it’s more than just a bunch of neo-Nazis getting together
to make friends and have a good time.
The only opportunity that we have to build up our structure
is through commercial success.
It’s estimated that these festivals can bring in up to 200,000 euros,
money which is then funneled back into the neo-Nazi scene.
This money goes straight back into far-right structures
within Germany and beyond.
So this also means training, support, logistics.
All of this money is going from the far-right rock scene
directly back into an organized far right.
And aside from the cash, it's about recruitment and organization.
I would say this is mostly the radicalized core
of the far-right scene.
If you look at videos and photos
and people who are going to these events,
these are people predominantly with openly far-right tattoos.
These are people who have swastikas tattooed on them.
If you look at the audience or the visitors of the festivals,
you will see very, very, very few young people,
so the function is not to recruit young people.
What is happening is that
you can try to recruit new members for your organization,
like Blood and Honour or like the Hammerskins.
Beyond the far-right rock scene,
some extremists have branched into new genres
to try and generate a wider audience.
Far-right rap music has emerged with rappers like Makss Damage,
a German neo-Nazi who’s been interviewed
on mainstream German radio,
..I want to become a father one day
And I fight so that my children
Don’t have to grow up in a foreign country...
Chris Ares, who managed to enter the iTunes chart
with tracks referencing racist concepts like the Great Replacement,
...
Carry the flag of unity and freedom in your hand...
and Mr Bond, a mysterious figure who emerged in 2016
posting racist hip hop covers in online forums,
developing a cult following.
..Met her in the crowd at a right wing rally
Body like an athlete
From the way she acted I knew she wants a fascist...
Mr Bond is a separate entity, a different phenomenon.
He has a more international fanbase based online.
He has support, for example, within the incel community
or on imageboards.
Mr Bond is essentially like a far-right Weird Al Yankovic,
more of a parody artist that takes well-known pop songs
and then subverts them
with a horrible far-right message full of hatred.
Breaking news out of Germany,
where at least two people have been killed
in a shooting near a synagogue in the city of Halle.
This comes on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish faith.
The cultural relevance of this music to violent extremists
was highlighted in 2019 when Stephan Balliet,
a heavily armed, far-right terrorist,
attacked a synagogue in Germany
before killing a female passer-by and a man at a kebab shop.
Balliet livestreamed the attack
and soundtracked it with a Mr Bond song.
He later said in court that the song choice
was a commentary on his terror.
This is someone who was playing to an audience
and playing for his own community,
We often falsely talk of lone wolves and lone killers,
but he was very much part of the community.
Him playing this song is also a shout out
to all of the people watching on imageboards
sort of saying “Hey, I’m one of you, and this is for you, this attack.”
Mr Bond remained anonymous until February 2021,
when Austrian police raided his home,
seizing a mixing desk, hard disks, weapons,
and a military flag from the Third Reich era.
It’s clear that the far-right music scene
is an insidious cultural weapon.
If we take a look at the last couple of years,
we can say that the neo-Nazi music scene is permanently growing,
so we get more and more concerts per year,
with the exception of corona, of course.
We expect that they turn to these concerts again afterwards
because it's a source of income
and they’re quite successful
in mobilizing people from the subculture.
Free speech laws and questions over censorship
make it a hard thing to regulate,
and as the far-right live music scene looks to make its return
after a Covid-induced hiatus,
all eyes are on the authorities
to find ways of dealing with this dark and twisted subculture.