I
n the film
Cabaret
,
set just prior to World War II, there is a chilling scene where
a cherubfaced young boy is framed in a tight close-up as he sings
the lilting song “Tomorrow Belongs To Me” at an outdoor
German café. The camera pulls back slowly to reveal him in
the uniform of the Nazi youth. All but one person in the café
joins in the song.
Today, in the United States, we have the real thing: blonde and
blue-eyed Lynx and Lamb Gaede, fraternal twins who perform as the
musical group Prussian Blue. They began singing at white supremacist
festivals at age nine. At age 11 the little darlings of the xenophobic
Kulturkampf attended a rally in matching “Stop Immigration”
T-shirts.
Lynx and Lamb, now 14, told an interviewer that the most important
social issue facing the white race was “not having enough white
babies born to replace ourselves and generally not having good-quality
white people being born. It seems like smart white girls who have
good eugenics are more interested in making money in a career or
partying than getting married and having a family.” These views
are reflected in their tunes. One of their catchiest titles is “Aryan
Man Awake.”
Lynx thinks “immigration is changing our schools because the
Mexicans’ behavior is rubbing off on the white kids. Like spray
painting and laziness and bad grammar.” Lamb thinks the U.S.
should give “nonwhites an area to stay if they were born here
and if they haven’t done anything wrong. If they are here illegally
or if they moved here then send them back.”
For several years the Prussian Blue homepage linked to the website
of National Vanguard, variously described by watch groups as white
supremacist or neo-Nazi. “If you tolerate multiracialism,
then your children will suffer and die,” warns Kevin Alfred
Strom, founder of National Vanguard, one of several white supremacist
groups posing as “white nationalists” who only want equal
rights for white people. Their allies and apologists constantly
patrol Wikipedia changing the terms “neo-Nazi” and “white
supremacist” and “racist” to “white nationalist.”
Ken Toole, co-director of the Montana Human Rights Network, sees
Prussian Blue as part of a campaign to de-toxify white supremacy,
by masking bigotry as “white pride” and using a softer
approach as a recruitment tool.
For groups like National Vanguard, pride is linked to genetic racial
nationalism. Strom is angry because, while “Mexican immigration
threatens the survival of the White race and White civilization,”
most anti-immigrant groups hide behind cowardly platitudes like
“overcrowding,” “assimilation,” and “the
failure of new immigrants to learn English.” National Vanguard,
along with the National Socialist Movement, Volksfront, and similar
white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups, has eclipsed the KKK in the
role of preserving the precious bloodline of the “white race”
in the United States.
Lynx and Lamb are the poster sisters for the right wing of the anti-immigrant
Aryanist revival. One of their “official” websites proclaims:
“In a day and age when most bands are working hard to remain
within self-imposed limits of Politically Correct Thought, Prussian
Blue pushes the envelope. Within the fold of White Nationalist Rock,
one of the only true alternatives to the corporate music and recording
business, these two little girls have filled thousands of their
fans with love and hope for the future.”
White fans, that is. Prussian Blue sings one song co-written by
David Lane, who crafted the “14 Words” slogan popular
among neo-Nazis: “We must secure the existence of our people
and a future for White children.” Here’s a snippet from
some Prussian Blue lyrics:
If the White men won’t battle for
Life
and Race
The
women and children,
the
Terror will face….
Catchy.
Alas, Lane can’t attend a live Prussian Blue concert since
he is currently serving a 190-year sentence for his role in the
machine-gun killing of Denver talk jock Alan Berg in his driveway
in 1984, after Berg denounced white supremacists on his radio program.
Prussian blue is the name of a specific color of blue in oil painting—the
same color as the sparkling northern European eyes shared by Lynx
and Lamb. Prussian blue is also the name of one of the residues
left in gas chambers after the Nazis used the cyanide formulation
Zyklon-B to murder the victims of their genocidal visions at the
Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps. A group that markets racist
and Nazi clothing on the website hired the twins to model their
T-shirts with smiley faces—modified to include Hitler’s
iconic mustache and cowlick.
The sisters are now trying to overhaul their image. What appears
to be their newer mainstream website does not have frontpage links
to the National Vanguard; or a website promoting the biological
superiority of the “white race”; or holocaust denial books.
Last summer Lynx and Lamb moved from California to Montana along
with their mother, April Gaede, and their stepdad, Mark Harrington.
When local human rights activists put up signs in their windows
proclaiming “No Hate Here,” some received harassing phone
calls and letters. The Montana Human Rights Network received a death
threat that asked “Have you ever wondered what a high-caliber
rifle bullet would do to a human head?”
A
pril Gaede is encouraging
other white supremacists to move to Montana where everything is
whiter and brighter. According to April’s post on the Stormfront
website: “The local cost of living is 7% lower than the US
average and the demographics are 96+% white…the local schools
are 98+% white, most of the people claim Germanic or Scandanavian
ancestry.”
April only wants clean-cut racists though: “I am not interested
in helping anyone who wants to come up here to cause trouble, act
like a Hollywood Nazi or make a nuisance of themselves to the locals.
This is a nice community with polite, kind people who still hold
true many of our races [sic] best ideals of family, honor and justice.”
This caveat apparently leaves out Prussian Blue’s former ally
Kevin Alfred Strom, who took a leave from leading National Vanguard
last summer. Strom was arrested in Virginia in January 2007 on child
pornography charges.
Chip
Berlet is senior analyst at Political Research Associates, www.publiceye.
org. This article grew out of the author’s report for the Nation
Online on anti-immigrant activity by white supremacists. For more
on Prussian Blue see Montana Human Rights Network (www.mhrn.org).
