HATECORE
Combating White Supremacist Messages in Music
by Penny Burns

Music is a powerful form of expression. Through thoughtful lyrics, melodic sounds, or pummeling noise, songwriters and musicians can say a lot in a three-minute song. A driving bass line, a powerful beat, infectious chord progressions - all these things define a song and elicit a response from the listener. If our heads bob in time to the music, or our bodies begin to move uncontrollably to the beat, we are reacting to what we are feeling and hearing. But do we hear everything? Can the music overtake us to the point where the message within the lyrics doesn't completely register? And, when we finally realize that the lyrics to our favorite songs may contain disturbing missives and blatant racist ideologies, is it too late to do anything about it? Can a teenager in the middle of Small Town, USA understand the relationship between a hate crime and a cool new song?

There's a new breed of bands and record labels that are using the music industry to inflict white supremacist doctrines on unsuspecting communities - and making a fat profit to boot. Taking a cue from the MTV style of entertainment, White Power bands are infiltrating youth culture by playing the music industry game - dressing "hip," playing the music of the moment, and using their resources to further their agendas. Most kids have grown up with MTV and mainstream radio stations as their primary sources of music, and are therefore, susceptible to spoon-fed popular culture. The end result is that kids get swept up in the propaganda because they think the music is cool and the messages of hate may get through subliminally.
"Hatecore" is loud, angry music with a message of hatred towards ethnic and religious minorities. Through record sales and tours, White Power groups are making millions of dollars a year to finance their message of hate. On first listen, some of these songs might sound like regular hardcore or heavy metal, but the lyrics are meant to insight rage against any non-white group and encourage kids to join the ranks of the white supremacist army. According to the Web site of Resistance Records, the largest distributor of White Power music:

"The multi-billion dollar hip-hop and rap industry forces race-mixing, drugs, perversion, guilt, and self-loathing into the mind of every White child. Resistance music is the only voice out there telling young White people that ours is not just a culture worth preserving, it is, in reality, the only one worth preserving."