Punk and the Swastika

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The use of the swastika in punk imagery has several roots. Perhaps the first people to be defined as punks who used the swastika were a band who hailed from Cleveland, Ohio, called The Electric Eels.

These wackos are credited with having released one of the first ever punk singles called "Agitated"/'Cyclotron' in May, 1975, although the actual songs never made it onto an official release till 1979 (Rough Trade seven-inch, RT008).

As early as 1974, The Electric Eels were causing outrage by wearing White Power T-shirts and putting swastikas on their posters. They described themselves as art terrorists and nihilists, intent on upsetting as many people as possible. Another of their tricks, for
example, was causing fights in bars by pretending to be gay tee hee.

Of course these were preceded by Ron Asheton of the Stooges fixation with SS uniforms.

Also in America, at around the same time, The Ramones were just starting out. For their record sleeves, they were using the gay Mexican artist, Aturo Vega, whose work often incorporated Day-Glo swastikas. In the US fanzine, Punk, which is often credited as having
given the movement it's name, an interview with Dee Dee Ramone revealed that he liked "comic books and anything with swastikas on it"; a comment that was often thought to be clearly designed to further the band's carefully (smelanin-American) controlled image of dumb, blank teenagers who cared about nothing.

What these early punks were really doing was trying to annoy their parents and authority figures by being rebellious and unpleasant. As the not very well respected (in some punk circles) Mary Harron, who wrote an interview with The Ramones in Punk put it, "Punk embraced the things that cultured people, and hippies, detested."

https://punkrocker.org.uk/punkscene/swastica.html

He named the performance The Murder of a Virgin, and before too long, the crowd were asked by Pop, "Do you want to see blood?", who resoundingly affirmed his question. The frontman then urged the guitarist, Ron Asheton, who was wearing a full Nazi uniform, to whip him repeatedly.

Things got even worse, though. Iggy allegedly started to yell racial slurs at a black spectator, hoping that he'd respond and stab him with the steak knife he'd brought on stage. Thankfully, Pop didn't get what he wanted out of this vile behaviour and instead resorted to carving the letter 'X' into his own chest, which poured with blood.

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/iggy-pop-7-wildest-moments/

Some of punk's antics seem weathered and stupid in retrospect; take, for example, Asheton's account of wearing Nazi regalia and flying a Nazi flag, seemingly without any real point, at Iggy's wedding to a Jewish woman nicknamed "Potato Girl." (That and more from Legs McNeil's excellent oral history of punk, Please Kill Me—and, by the way, no word on whether Potato minded.)

https://www.gq.com/story/rip-ron-asheton

RON ASHETON [ex-Stooges guitarist, 1975]: I'd made contact in L.A. with Dennis Thompson of the MC5 and we put New Order together. I found a backer and guys started filtering in and we found a place to practice. The downside was the trend of music was changing so dramatically that we got caught in the middle of a shit storm. It was disco time, and people weren't going for the hard-rock shit anymore, so it was like, "Uh-oh, screwed again." Plus, we'd play gigs in front of my big swastika flag. I wasn't a Nazi, the flag was just part of my collection . . . I had Jewish girlfriends and black buddies. It had nothing to do with promoting Nazism or condoning it. I just enjoyed flash uniforms. But other people freaked–they were like, "It's fascist." New Order didn't mean to put out a Nazi vibe at all. I knew it was probably a bad idea ... how not to get a record deal in an industry run by Jewish people. "New Order? Let's sign 'em up right now."

= = =

from Marc Spitz & Brendan Mullen, We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001), pp. 30-31.

https://radicalarchives.org/2015/04/05/ron-asheton-new-order/

Led Zeppelin guitar god Jimmy Page Nazi-fied himself during at least one 1977 concert, wearing knee-high jack boots, black shirt and pants, a white scarf, sunglasses, and an SS officers cap, complete with the Nazi "death head" insignia. According to über-groupie Pamela Des Barres, who spent many a night with Page, his fetish extended beyond the stage; she said he liked to visit transvestite clubs dressed in full Nazi regalia.

In the mid-1970s, Third Reich symbols became part of the uniform of the burgeoning punk rock movement. You can put some of the blame on designer and Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren. Imagine, a bar mitzvahed boy who spent 6 years in a private Jewish school churning out Nazi-inspired fashion! His Jewish grandmother told him, "to be bad is good, and to be good is boring." He and his partner, now-Dame Vivienne Westwood, sold items such as swastika-embellished clothing, SS handkerchiefs, and Gestapo buddy rings in their shop called Sex. Westwood said they aimed to de-mystify the swastika. That subtle concept was lost on the likes of headline-grabbing Sex Pistols Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious, who loved Nazi gear.

https://hipquotient.com/heil-heil-rock-n-roll-whats-with-brit-rockers-and-the-reich/

Do we have any foreigners in the audience tonight? If so, please put up your hands. Wogs I mean, I'm looking at you. Where are you? I'm sorry but some fucking wog...Arab grabbed my wife's bum, you know? Surely got to be said, yeah this is what all the fucking foreigners and wogs over here are like, just disgusting, that's just the truth, yeah. So where are you? Well wherever you all are, I think you should all just leave. Not just leave the hall, leave our country. You fucking (indecipherable). I don't want you here, in the room or in my country. Listen to me, man! I think we should vote for Enoch Powell. Enoch's our man. I think Enoch's right, I think we should send them all back. Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white. I used to be into dope, now I'm into racism. It's much heavier, man. Fucking wogs, man. Fucking Saudis taking over London. Bastard wogs. Britain is becoming overcrowded and Enoch will stop it and send them all back. The black wogs and coons and Arabs and fucking Jamaicans and fucking (indecipherable) don't belong here, we don't want them here. This is England, this is a white country, we don't want any black wogs and coons living here. We need to make clear to them they are not welcome. England is for white people, man. We are a white country. I don't want fucking wogs living next to me with their standards. This is Great Britain, a white country, what is happening to us, for fuck's sake? We need to vote for Enoch Powell, he's a great man, speaking truth. Vote for Enoch, he's our man, he's on our side, he'll look after us. I want all of you here to vote for Enoch, support him, he's on our side. Enoch for Prime Minister! Throw the wogs out! Keep Britain white!

https://flashbak.com/1976-david-bowie-nazi-salute-and-eric-claptons-wogs-created-rock-against-racism-5645/