Hate Music

Hate music groups are typically music labels that record, publish and distribute racist music of a variety of genres along with products that promote their hateful, often terroristic worldview.

Top Takeaways

In 2023, there were 11 active hate music chapters. Hate music has been a powerful vehicle for recruiting young people into the white power movement internationally since its emergence within the racist skinhead scene in the early 1980s. In recent years, hateful black metal – particularly National Socialist black metal or NSBM – has proven a potent recruiting force, especially among youth. Though most are small and piloted by lone individuals, labels promoting hateful black metal continue to be more engaged with their scenes: issuing new releases; partnering with other like-minded labels and distributions, even internationally; intermingling this racist subgenre with other metal subgenres and bands with lyrical themes and aesthetics that are not bigoted; and holding more of a presence on social media. Long-running racist skinhead labels based in the U.S. generally operate more static catalogs, often going months or even years without updating their websites or issuing a single new release.

Key Moments

The affiliation between hate music and racist skinheads remains prevalent, with numerous members of racist skinhead chapters actively involved in hate music bands. Notably, the podcast White Power Hour has exhibited significant activity and expanded its reach across multiple platforms, helping to promote hate music bands and performances.

Moreover, labels such as Tinnitus Records and Brotherhood of Light Recordings have released new material. These labels, along with others, are actively marketing merchandise via their websites and social media platforms, perpetuating and profiting from the dissemination of hate-driven content. White power bands like Skrewdriver, led by the late Ian Stuart Donaldson, remain cultural staples in racist right subcultures. White power adherents, young and old, can be spotted sporting the band’s T-shirts.

What‘s Ahead

Hate music will continue to serve as a potent tool for white supremacist recruiters internationally. Overlap between long-standing racist skinhead crews and bands with new efforts to promote hate music across other musical genres will likely also continue. These efforts are niche, though, and are not attracting large audiences. That said, such efforts reflect how the subculture of hate music has evolved over four decades to promote both distinct and overlapping subgenres of racist music. Deeply antidemocratic, those reflections project dehumanizing lyrics, imagery, symbolism and sometimes organizations that encourage violence and terrorism against communities and identities that have been and continue to be marginalized.

As a broader subculture, the scene will continue to spread the aesthetics and esoteric as well as the bigotry and brutality of the Nazi party and more contemporary white power groups and figureheads internationally, including convicted murderers and terrorists. Through the 1980s to mid-2000s, concerts organized by racist skinhead crews represented the scene’s core, occasionally attracting hundreds of individuals in the United States. Today, hateful black metal events such as Asgardsrei Fest, held nearly every year in Ukraine since 2014 before the military invasion of that country by Russia, have eclipsed the relevance of racist skinhead concerts. At the intersection of racist skinhead and hateful metal subcultures in recent years, individuals organizing and promoting hate music concerts in the United States have solidified relationships with counterparts in Mexico, Chile and elsewhere. This network has been promoting concerts scheduled for early 2023 to be held in both Chile and Mexico.

This subculture views concerts as important venues for networking and movement-building.

Hate music bands and labels will also continue to attempt to evade enforcement parameters and mechanisms of companies like Spotify, Apple Music and others. Bands outside the United States whose lyrics are sung in languages other than English are generally more successful at remaining on streaming platforms. This subculture is generally incapable of introducing its hate to wider audiences without the complicity or ignorance of music streaming services.

Background

From the early 1980s to the early 1990s, hate music grew from a cottage industry into a multimillion-dollar, international industry that was a primary conduit of money and young recruits flowing into the radical right. Although the subculture originated in Britain in the early 1980s, became popular among hardcore racists throughout the world.

The scene grew up around the English band Skrewdriver, led by the late Ian Stuart Donaldson, and has spawned hundreds of bands. Hate music spans numerous genres of music.

For several years beginning in the late 1990s, Resistance Records, a label owned by the once-powerful neo-Nazi group National Alliance, dominated the hate music landscape. The label made hundreds of thousands of dollars for the group, formerly led by William Pierce. But as the National Alliance shriveled, so did Resistance Records. Today, the music scene is no longer dominated by a single label but is instead fed by scores of smaller labels and distributors. Some have catalogs of hundreds of releases, while others only print small, limited runs of records and/or tapes and maintain catalogs of less than 10 releases. The SPLC lists hate music labels based on their catalogs and not necessarily the politics, beliefs and/or the identities of their owners.