I have a new piece up @thequietus.com about how Boyd Rice, Adam Parfrey, Nikolas Schreck & Michael Moynihan used the 1980s/90s underground scene to promote neo-Nazi terrorist doctrines. Please share with your music friends! thequietus.com/opinion-and-... - ThreadSky

transform6789.bsky.social • 2 days ago

I have a new piece up @thequietus.com about how Boyd Rice, Adam Parfrey, Nikolas Schreck & Michael Moynihan used the 1980s/90s underground scene to promote neo-Nazi terrorist doctrines.
Please share with your music friends!
https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/black-sky-thinking/counterculture-nazi-essay/

Comments

latenightafa.bsky.social•22 hours ago

@skyview.social unroll

gropeforluna.bsky.social•1 day ago

this issue has been on my mind lately as i recently picked up the mute records retrospective book (a favorite label of mine, a beautifully made book) and wondered how daniel miller has never been held to account for supporting boyd rice for so long

transform6789.bsky.social•1 day ago

No doubt

8balljones.bsky.social•1 day ago

I never knew Boyd Rice was down with hate. I had all the Re-Search Volumes when I was in high school. I thought his was great. Just a bunch of stories of practical jokes and clowning the man. I’m crestfallen 😞

iheartnoise.bsky.social•1 day ago

I have a book called Tape Delay that includes early interview with Rice. Not a word about politics.

transform6789.bsky.social•1 day ago

i don't think he got into this stuff before 1986 (or the end of 1985)

grievousangel.net•1 day ago

It certainly wasn’t visible in the early 80s. Unclear if he turned or if he was concealing.

transform6789.bsky.social•1 day ago

RE/search split with him when it was clear that he had become part of the neo-Nazi scene.

guyintheblackhat.bsky.social•1 day ago

I guess I should share: Moynihan was in my cohort in German at UMass, and came across as a pleasant medievalist in a sweater vest. However, his past caught up with him when his Fulbright to Austria was rescinded after he moved there. Then, we learned. The dept let him finish, but that was it.

transform6789.bsky.social•1 day ago

Holy shit! Yes everyone I’ve known who met him said he’s very nice in person. No idea he got a Fulbright tho, much less than it was rescinded. I know he’s been to Austria before: to visit Braunau am Inn.

guyintheblackhat.bsky.social•1 day ago

We both joined the program in 2005, and his BA partner Annabel Lee even took classes with us in 2006-2007. I think he concealed their history well from the US academia side. It was the Austrians who found he was a "known quantity" and then that knowledge spread to the rest of us.

transform6789.bsky.social•1 day ago

Yes, I was always curious about his adventures in academia. I do know that when he worked on his BA in Denver he studied with a holocaust denier who he adored. I go into this in my book, there’s a whole chapter on him.

guyintheblackhat.bsky.social•1 day ago

UMass was a strange fit for him, given the dept's specialties, but Jim Cathey & Robert Sullivan both had the Middle-High German (& Old Norse) knowledge he sought. I guess I ought to read the chapter you wrote on him to corroborate what I knew with what *else* was going on.

transform6789.bsky.social•1 day ago

It mostly ends around 2000. I could’ve kept going on but the point was made and there was another 400 pages of other people!

cathoderituals.bsky.social•18 hours ago

I’m not discounting the fashy content, but it’s reaching to say these folks helped birth anything. Groups like Hammerskins and Volksfront were extremely active back then, and had vastly more reach. Most into Blood Axis, NON, etc weren’t right-wing, but assumed it was artistry, a story, ironic, etc.

cathoderituals.bsky.social•18 hours ago

This is in part because early industrial bands subverted totalitarian imagery in this way. Time wore on, many fell off from that, folks like Coil cut ties with groups that clearly and uncritically believed what they were selling. Douglas P being at the forefront far more than Boyd or Moynihan.

transform6789.bsky.social•2 hours ago

These guys & the American Front all preceded Hammerskins etc by years. In fact a Hammerskins founder blurbed the book & said it was new info to him.

Early industrial bands did not just “subvert” this imagery, it’s clear many has various levels of sympathy

transform6789.bsky.social•2 hours ago

Most importantly these 4 discovered & promoted Mason & Siege. The book wouldn’t exist would them: full stop. And it’s Siege - not industrial fans - that are the driving ideas behind today’s crop of real & aspiring Neo-Nazi terrorists.

lbaum94.bsky.social•2 days ago

Just listened to the @tenepod.bsky.social episode about this yesterday where they used your work!

transform6789.bsky.social•2 days ago

yes, they are doing a great job spreading a lot of this info

luckymud.bsky.social•1 day ago

Wow, thanks for this. Really good work!

transform6789.bsky.social•2 days ago

and if you'd prefer to read the 450 page version
https://www.spencersunshine.com/nntccf

transform6789.bsky.social•2 days ago

if you like my work, please consider supporting me on Patreon! i'm not funded by any think tanks, universities, or security services, and for as little as $2/month you can get exclusive content & support antifascist research.
https://patreon.com/spencersunshine

transform6789.bsky.social•1 day ago

also have a couple talks coming up. there is an ONLINE one on Monday about Nazi-Satanism
https://thelasttuesdaysociety.org/event/satanism-neo-nazis-and-the-us-political-underground-spencer-sunshine/

transform6789.bsky.social•1 day ago

and couple IRL in the Bay Area on May 27 and 29
https://spencersunshine.com/2025/05/08/bay-area-talks-may-27-and-29-2025/

daphnelawless.com•1 day ago

Re: Radio Werewolf on Metzger; I'm told that Evil Wilhelm, the percussionist who appeared with Schreck on that show wearing a monocle (!), quit the band once he realised Schreck was serious about the Nazi shit. As a friend says, if that's true he was Quite Reasonable Wilhelm

transform6789.bsky.social•1 day ago

i saw that online, too, but have to confirm that kinda stuff before i repeat it. btw he popped up in a funny news article later on because he bought this crumbling suburban faux-castle and was fixing it up... have to find that

grundlegung.bsky.social•2 days ago

Its a great piece. Brings back a lot of memories of people who went into these scenes with a love for experimental music and ended up buying into the shittiest of ideologies.

Its important to make explicit how fascism lived on in counter culture.

gianttank.bsky.social•2 days ago

Cannae believe I was so dumb two decades ago as to read that ‘Lords Of Chaos’ book as a true crime story rather than an indoctrination document. 🤦

transform6789.bsky.social•2 days ago

i go into this in the Moynihan chapter of my book. They intentionally made it so you could read it two ways: as a music history or as an introduction to getting into that scene

acelestialbody.bsky.social•2 days ago

thanks for this thorough research. way too many people were convinced to just play off the shit that was a central part of the definition of the new fascist movement so they didn't have to reckon with entryism and worse in their own scenes

anyfishanytime.bsky.social•1 day ago

📌

amy-amarylis.bsky.social•1 day ago

I would never call any reactionary movement "countercultural" but that's just me.

partickle.bsky.social•2 days ago

😶

transform6789.bsky.social•1 day ago

that is the correct face to make

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