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· Blood & Honour: After moving from Britain two years ago, the largest, best-organized and most influential European white power music organization is now headed by Erik Blücher of Helsingborg, Sweden. Blood & Honour (B&H) publishes magazines, organizes concerts, distributes music, and has links to neo-Nazi political parties throughout Europe.
The primary B&H label, Ragnarock Records, is run by Blücher from Sweden, but there are at least 10 other labels associated with B&H, according to Stieg Larsson of the Swedish anti-fascist group Expo.
An American branch of B&H was active in California and Minnesota in the 1990s, but went dormant several years ago until this spring. Today, it has chapters in California, Georgia, Ohio and Texas.
Trying to maximize distribution, the California chapter now sells a sampler CD of white power music at what it says is cost. Many of the international B&H Web sites are registered on a server in Alaska.
B&H is active in most European countries, but is strongest in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Switzerland and throughout Scandinavia. The group had a large presence in Germany until it was banned last fall, after simultaneous government raids on the homes of 30 members.
Since then, German B&H has organized concerts in the nearby Czech, French, Swiss and Hungarian border regions. German officials said Blood & Honour was guilty of "the poisoning of minds and hearts."
· Hammerskin Nation: The extremely violent, U.S.-based Hammerskin Nation had 19 chapters across the U.S. in 2000. But it also enjoys a major European presence, including strong factions in the Czech Republic, Germany, Slovakia and Switzerland.
In addition, within the last year in Poland, the Hammerskins have organized several concerts and started up a color magazine that features interviews with foreign bands. The level of cooperation between chapters is unclear.
The Hammerskins first appeared on the white power music scene with Minnesota-based Panzerfaust (in German, "armored fist") Records in 1998, picking up the slack in the United States from then-struggling Resistance. Quickly, Panzerfaust became the premier label for virtually every significant American racist Skinhead band.
Even today, with Resistance once more a major player, more U.S. white power concerts are organized by the Hammerskins than by any other group.
"Wherever Hammerskins pop up, they are always the most professional, the most dedicated and the best at what they're trying to do," says Justin Massa of the Center for New Community. "They're the ones that scare me the most."
· National Socialist Black Metal: Anti-Christian National Socialist Black Metal (NSBM) music has only recently made connections to the older Skinhead music scene.
NSBM fans are likely to embrace paganism or satanism, dress in Viking garb, wear "corpse paint" makeup, and carry coffins or skulls to concerts — behavior that alienates many more traditional racist Skinheads. But NSBM is as fascist and racist as any other genre of Skinhead music.
"National Socialism," explained one NSBM performer in an interview published in the book Lords of Chaos, "is the most perfect synthesis of the Luciferian will-to-power, and neo-heathen principles & symbolism."
NSBM began in Scandinavia in the early 1990s in a birth of fire — literally. Over 100 churches were set afire in Norway and nearby countries in an arson campaign against Christianity; evidence for many fires pointed to the "Black Circle" of black metal principals.
One of them, Burzum band leader Varg Vikernes, was convicted of arson and also of murdering his musical mentor. In prison, his politics moved from anti-social and anti-Christian satanism to explicit national socialism.
Still in prison, Vikernes remains central to today's international scene, which is increasingly tied to the racist Skinhead music industry. The main NSBM organization is the Pagan Front, a confederation of bands, labels and activists in the U.S., Australia and across Europe.
NSBM bands have been featured in the traditionally Skinhead Resistance magazine, and NSBM labels have reached licensing agreements with Skinhead labels in Europe and with Resistance Records in the U.S. The largest NSBM scene today is probably in Poland.
"No More Brothers' Wars"
Today's racist Skins have a vision — and it is a vision that is clearly picking up adherents and energy on both sides of the Atlantic.
More and more, neo-Nazis around the world are seeing their movement in international terms, a cause that cannot succeed in one country alone. And the trans-Atlantic contacts spurred by the white power music scene have only served to intensify that view.
One recent article, posted on a Blood & Honour Web site, seemed to sum up these developments when it suggested that whites needed to "scrap the whole idea of nationalism for the sake of White racialism. ... The term 'No more brother wars' [a white supremacist reference to wars between white people] can only be achieved through international cooperation and understanding between White people."
"The ideal," this writer adds, "is naturally a pan-Aryan army with divisions wherever White people dwell. ... The days of pure patriotic xenophobia and imperialism are over. They have spilt enough Aryan blood."
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