Far right racists use anti-fascist music

June 19, 2015
Issue 


Rammstein.

The racist United Patriot Front (UPF) have used German industrial metal band Rammstein in a new video to promote a racist march on July 17.

The UPF are a splinter group from a Reclaim Australia that seek to harass Muslims and promote Islamophobia and violence.

The video opens with the UPF member declaring “I am not a Nazi”. The UPF video has excluded images from Reclaim Australia rally in April of participants with swastikas.

The video includes a clip of a man at the rally with a swastika tattoo on his head, as was featured in photos by several media outlets, but filmed from an angle that hides the swastika.

The video also shows the participants punching anti-racist protesters.

Rammstein are on record as saying they used to fight neo-Nazis when they were younger.

Their song “Links 2-3-4” (Links being German for “left”) was written in response to accusations of right-wing sympathies. The song features the line: “My heart beats on the left”.

Band member Richard Kruspe said: “If you want to put us in a political category, we're on the left side, and that's the reason we made the song.”

German online music magazine laut.de pointed out that Rammstein had borrowed the line “my heart beats to the left” from a founder of Die Linke (the Left) Oskar Lafontaine. The song also features a line from a workers' song by communist writer Berthold Brecht.

Perhaps next the UPF will use left-wing revolutionaries Rage Against the Machine as background music?

[There will be a Melbourne anti-racism rally on July 18 at Victorian Parliament House at 10am.]

Video: Rammstein - Links 2-3-4(live Völkerball) "HD". tertsiini.

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