Educator Alert! Hate Music Label Targets Schools

Updated: November 08, 2004

This is to alert you to an issue with deeply troubling implications for our nation’s schools. Panzerfaust, a white power music company based in Minnesota, plans to target youth through the distribution of 100,000 racist and anti-Semitic CDs to schools and other locations throughout the United States.

Volunteers – including students –

from white supremacist groups are expected to help distribute the CD, with the main focus on reaching kids between the ages of 13 and 19. Panzerfaust hopes to use the hard-driving music to recruit youth to its racist and anti-Semitic ideology, and plans to make the CD readily available on its Web site for just 15 cents, so that white supremacist groups can easily purchase large quantities to hand out to kids.

In hopes of disguising the content of the CD, Panzerfaust points out that it has been designed "to be ...inconspicuous and not overtly racial... so that it will be able to fly below the radar screen of teachers and other people..." A copy of the CD’s track listing and prototype artwork, which can be used to help identify it, is included at the bottom of this message.

Panzerfaust sells thousands of CDs of white power music bands from the U.S. and abroad. The company is largely run by ex-members of the neo-Nazi group, National Alliance. Racist and anti-Semitic rock music is now a major recruitment tool and source of funding for hate groups, with annual sales bringing in millions of dollars to the hate movement. Recent FBI statistics underline the susceptibility of youth to hate: 33% of all known hate crime offenders are under 18; 29% of all hate crime offenders are 18-24; and more than 10% of hate crime incidents reported occurred at schools and colleges.

We encourage you to alert your constituents to this planned stealth action to recruit students into the white supremacist movement. Please do not hesitate to share this bulletin with your colleagues and parents.

Tracks on the Panzerfaust CD:

Bands on Panzerfaust's "Project Schoolyard USA" CD

Aggressive Force: One of many hate bands based in Orange County, California. As is common in Orange County, most of the four members of Aggressive Force play in other white power bands as well, including Youngland and Intimidation One, which is one factor for the band's small output. The band's leader, "Brian," sees their music as a tool, telling an interviewer that "music is a great weapon for recruiting, and for keeping up morale of the troops during this long struggle."

Before God: Through probably inactive now, Before God was a racist black metal band. Four of its five members came from the racist band Bound for Glory, making Before God basically a Bound for Glory side project. whose membership (four out of five members) almost completely overlapped that of the racist band Bound for Glory and was basically a side project for that band. In the late 1990s, Before God released two albums. Bound for Glory allowed Before God's Web site to lapse in 2003, and the URL is now a pornography portal.

Bound for Glory: A popular Minnesota-based hate band that formed in 1989; perhaps the most important U.S.-based hate music group. The band is led by Ed Wolbank, at one time the director of the neo-Nazi Northern Hammerskins in St. Paul, Minnesota. The band members also formed their own production company, Bound for Glory (BFG) Productions, which they recently sold to Panzerfaust Records.

Brutal Attack: A British group and one of the oldest hate bands in continuous existence (its original name was "Dead Paki in the Gutter'). Although it has had dozens of members in its 20+ years of existence, it is still led by the sole remaining original member, Ken McLellan, who writes and sings. In an interview, McLellan responded to complaints that his lyrics were not "extreme" enough by saying that "anyone can write extreme lyrics. I prefer to write stuff that makes you think. Not only for legal reasons, but it has a broader appeal...My records can get into any country, we can play anywhere."

Bully Boys: A two decades old North Texas hate band. Founded in Florida in 1983, it was turned by band members into a racist band shortly thereafter. The Bully Boys are closely linked to the racist Hammerskins skinhead group. In 1990, drummer Sean Tarrant was one of several Confederate Hammerskins sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to civil rights convictions for involvement in the vandalization of a mosque and a Jewish community center in Dallas, and chasing and assaulting minorities in a park. Their current lead vocalist has also spent time in jail on assault charges. In their various incarnations, the Bully Boys have concentrated on playing at venues rather than recording albums.

Day of the Sword: A band formed in Philadelphia in late March 1995 by three skinheads (Michael Brescia, Scott Stedeford, and Kevin McCarthy) who also happened to be members of the Aryan Republican Army (ARA), which robbed over 20 banks in the Midwest to secure funds for a white revolution. Stedeford was the band's drummer and leader, and also produced and recorded their sole album (also called Day of the Sword). The group folded after the federal government caught up with the ARA, arresting all its members. Their album's cover art depicts a pig being disemboweled by a Star of David.

Final War: A white power music band from Orange County, California, which may have the most active white power music scene in the United States. Final War's four members also play or sing in other Orange County hate bands. Racist skinheads applaud the band for its energetic live acts; the band's CD releases have so far been limited. Formed in 2000, it released its first album in 2002. That same year, Final War contributed a song to a compilation CD designed to raise money for Ken Mieske, a racist skinhead imprisoned since 1988 for the brutal murder of an Ethiopian immigrant.

Fortress: Possibly Australia's most prominent white power music band, although it spends much of its time touring in European venues, where it can get larger audiences. Formed in 1991, Fortress has had close ties to the Southern Cross Hammerskins as well as to the racist skinhead group Blood & Honour. The band has not been very prolific, releasing only a handful of albums and appearing on several compilations. When asked in an interview if he would encourage young people to attack nonwhites, band leader "Scott" replied, "Only if there is no other alternative. Realize we are under occupation and our enemy is the system."

H8Machine: Originally called Dying Breed, this New-Jersey-based band changed its name to H8Machine in 2001. The band has consciously tried to tone down some of its racist lyrics lately in an effort to attract young people to the white power scene. In an interview, band member Dennis Dent said, "I think when you attract people to the movement with shock value, as you would with over [sic] racial lyrics, those people will not last. They are only involved because it offends someone, they are not here for a true meaning of White Power." Members of the band are active in racist skinhead groups such as the Eastern Hammerskins and East Coast Hate Crews.

Max Resist & the Hooligans: One of the oldest and most popular white power music bands in the United States in continuous existence, its origins dating back to the 1980s. Headed by Northern Hammerskin members Shawn Sugg and Andrew Miakovic, it plays at racist music concerts around North America and Europe, where Sugg receives appreciation for delivering racist and anti-Semitic jokes while on-stage. The band received some notoriety in 1998, after Sugg and Miakovic were convicted of a hate crime in Sweden after giving a Nazi salute at a racist music concert.

Midtown Boot Boys: A Tulsa, Oklahoma, band formed in 1986 from the remnants of a punk hardcore band. Like many bands that originated in the 1980s, the Boot Boys were heavily influenced by Skrewdriver. Members of the group consider themselves to be "racial activists." In an interview one band member said, "Music is a tool and a weapon on many levels." Some band members belong to the Hammerskins.

Rebel Hell: A Detroit, Michigan, band formed in 1999 from the remnants of another band, Liberty 37. It debuted its first CD in 2002. The band's lyrics glorify violence and present what the band calls "a brutal sound and uncompromising world view."

Skrewdriver: The most well-known, and influential, white power band in the world. The British band, now defunct, started out as a punk band known as Tumbling Dice and metamorphosed into one of the earliest white power bands in 1977. The band reformed a number of times and finally broke up in 1983. Ian Stuart, also known as Ian Donaldson, headed the band; Stuart was active in the far-right National Front and was one of the founders of Blood & Honour, an international neo-Nazi skinhead organization. He also coined the term "Rock against Communism." He died in a car crash in 1993, thereafter becoming a white supremacist icon.

Youngland: This Orange County, California-based band formed in the fall of 1998. The four-member group often plays at white power concerts around the United States and has also played in Europe. It released its first CD in 2001. Their songs focus on "white pride" and a mythical vision of a white-dominated land.