Well it looks like things are coming to a head because they have decided to make their remote workers redundantif they don’t agree to work in their office located in Brighton. I find this interesting because their office used to be in Glasgow. I’m guessing that they let people work remotely instead of having to be in Glasgow, so something major must be happening to move the office to Brighton and to make people physically come into work.
My guess as to what is going on? They are making people come into the office because they want to consolidate positions and make people do more than just one role, which means that the company is more than likely in financial trouble. Since Bertram Capital bought a stake in the company the quality of the clothes has gone south and they have pumped out new clothes every single week, and sometimes several times in a week. Many of the designs look familiar because they keep copying the same silhouettes over and over again.
Killstar really suck for doing this to their workers and are behaving the same as any regular corporate entity. They stopped having any kind of alternative clothing credibility when they let the private equity firm Bertram Capital into the fold. As of right now they are just a corporate entity trying to make a buck off of alternative subcultures. That is it. When you buy clothes from them you are just filling the pockets of the venture capitalists that are running the company into the ground.
Personally, I will not shed a tear for Killstar and they deserve all of the hate they are going to get for doing this to their employees in this economic climate.
Geordie Walker, one of the founders and guitarist for Killing Joke, has died of a stroke at the age of 64. Killing Joke is a band that is impossible to fit into just one music style box, and that is the reason why they have always been such a highly influential band to so many different musicians. My thoughts go out to his friends and family. May his memory always be a blessing.
You can tell what decade I spent my teen years in.
I have complained on here and on my social media accounts about how a lot of modern post-punk bands sound the same; same Joy Division sounding bass, same droning vocals, same Cure sounding guitar. In fact I have had a bunch of people mad at me for talking about this in the past, but am I wrong? No, I am not. Are there good modern post-punk bands out there? Of course, but they are the outliers and not the norm. Being that all of this is the case I have decided to start buying music from the 80’s that I somehow overlooked back then or that I just didn’t know about. I have also bought some newish metal and legacy band CDs.
I can well imagine some people looking at the above photo and wondering why I would buy a bunch of Now Yearbook pop album compilations. The secret is that they never contain just pop songs. Back in the 80’s the British charts would often have new wave and ‘alternative’ songs in their ranks. More so than in the United States. For instance, that above Now Yearbook 88 comp has Voyage Voyage by Desireless on it, which was a big club hit in the alternative clubs in the San Francisco Bay Area back then. Never heard it on the radio, only in clubs so I was quite happy finding it on this CD. Also, there are a bunch of songs on these from bands that I totally skipped over in the 80’s for whatever reason. Remember, there was no internet and it was easy as hell to accidentally forget about bands back then. All of these were below £10 a piece and some were even below £5.
The above left is a Devo: 50 Years Of De-Evolution 1973-2023. I got this because I don’t own anything by them and I thought that it was about time that I did something about that. The above right is OMD Souvenir, a collection of their singles. I owned some of their music on tape in the late 80’s but nothing since. They were the first concert I ever went to back in 86 so they will always hold a special place in my heart for that reason. The bottom left is Toya’s album Anthem. I have been meaning to buy her music for ages now. She is one of those 80’s musicians that I just totally missed back then, mostly because I was in the US where I never heard her music being played. I have been constantly listening to this and she is sooooo good!The bottom right is Fuzzbox’s compilation Bostin’ Steve Austin, that includes their first album and a bunch of singles. I was very, very pleased to find their music on CD, because I had their first album on tape back in the late 80’s.
Yet more compilations! The top two are pretty easy to sus out so really no need for an explanation. I love Lycia and a few other ethereal bands so that middle CD really pleased me. It is a new comp put out on Cherry Red Records called Cherry Stars Collide: Dream Pop, Shoegaze & Ethereal Rock 1986-1995. I barely own any shoegaze or dream pop so this was a bit of a must have for me. Through it I know I’ll discover more bands. The bottom two are synth-pop compilations, one based on 1980 and the second based on 1981. I love old synth-pop music so these were a no brainer for me to get. Again, listening to these two will lead me to older bands that I have totally forgotten about.
I am beginning to explore metal music a bit more. I have always loved early Danzig and thrash music so it is a genre that is ripe for me to explore. The upper left is Omen by the band Moyra. They are a female lead melodic death metal band and holy shit can the woman growl and sing. The upper right is EndEx by the industrial metal band 3teeth. I really want to explore that specific genre more because I really don’t own that much of it even though I do tend to like it. The middle left is Ofnir by Heilung, and the middle right is Futha also by Heilung. They describe themselves as “amplified history from early medieval northern Europe”. They are haunting as hell and they give off spooky pagan vibes which is perfect in my opinion. The bottom left is OMD’s new album Bauhaus Staircase. I listened to it multiple times yesterday and it has got to be the most political music that they have ever made. I highly recommend it! Finally on the bottom right is Danse Macabre by Duran Duran.
Well, that is it for now. I hope you enjoyed this musical journey of my psyche as much as I loved writing about it, and I hope I introduced you to some bands that you will grow to love.
Do you know why whole lot of older goths dislike metal music and aren’t open minded about listening to it? Because metalheads used to threaten and beat the shit out of punks, goths and anybody who looked different back in the 80’s.
I graduated high school in 1989 so I witnessed this shit first hand. I wore skull buckle boots and a bunch of black eyeliner back then so I was targeted. However, it was only the male metalheads who would give me shit. I actually hung out sometimes with those of the female variety so I didn’t get the level of shit that some others got. There was a pecking order at my school. Jocks fucked with the metalheads and the metalheads fucked with anybody else who dressed strange. They were basically punching down.
Things were so bad in the late 80’s that I knew of somebody, who dressed very ‘goth’, whose leg was broken after they were pushed by a metalhead off of a high walkway. Thankfully the dude didn’t die, but the fact that an asshole thought it was okay to treat another person like that speaks volumes about just how bad things were.
I personally didn’t hate metal music during that time, but all of this bullying behaviour made me not want to listen to it. I only started getting into Danzig, Metallica and Slayer after high school partially because of this. The people who used to tease and threaten people who looked like me now want to be like me and that is a total mindfuck. It still trips me out just how many metalheads are also into goth music these days, because if they had liked both back in the 80’s they would have been called ‘faggots’ by those who only listened to metal.
Things are different these days in some aspects, but in some ways things have stayed the same; lately there has been a steep increase of some metalheads bringing their racist bullshit into other alternative subcultures. Not all metalheads are racist but for whatever reason the racist variety really love to jump on the goth train. I swear almost every single racist that I have run into online in goth communities has also been heavily into metal. It is such a real life trope that it has become very predictable at this point.
By the way, all of this happened in the San Francisco Bay Area which was a more liberal area of the United States. If it happened there it sure as hell happened in other areas of the country. I am sharing all of this because I think it is important for people to learn the true history of what happened back then; some male metalheads would physically take their insecurities out on anybody who looked different.
The other day I mentioned on here about how Killstar has fired all of their design team. Well, that was only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what is happening within the company right now. Yesterday I received a detailed email from my source about all of the insane crap going on inside the company and how it is affecting their bottom line. I’m usually not easily shocked when it comes to tales of workplace drama, but this is different.
That American private equity firm Bertram Capital didn’t outright purchase Killstar, like I had previously stated on another post. Instead they bought a majority stake in the company when the original owner, Tequila Star, wanted capital to expand and bring the company up to scratch. To say that she made a bad financial choice would be the understatement of the century. She chose a company who have no knowledge of alternative subcultures and it really shows.
Tequila Star stepped down as CEO of the company when Bertram Capital came into the picture, and they placed their own person into that role. They also brought in new heads of merchandising, products, etc.. This was done to restructure the company so that it functioned better. This is what the company needed; structure that worked more efficiently so that things could be run more smoothly. However, that is not what has happened.
Since the takeover the company has been struggling. Why? Because they are running it just like any other business, thinking that the same tactics would work for it that they have previously used elsewhere. In the autumn of 2021 they brought in a new head of product, and it became obvious very soon that she was overwhelmed by the role and had no clue as to what she was doing. Instead of listening to the employees and the fans of the brand as to what was wanted and what would work they ignored all of the advice and pushed for collaborations. Remember that horrid Avril Lavigne line of products that came out that everybody, including myself, made fun of? That was her idea.
That alone proved that they hadn’t a clue about punk, goth, emo,etc… subcultures. The fact that they thought that Avril Lavigne was in line with what fans of the brand wanted speaks volumes. They tried bragging about how well the line sold but it was very obvious that they couldn’t move the pieces because they looked like crap. The recent really ugly Dario Argento line is yet another example. I love Argento’s films but I wouldn’t wear that crap even if somebody promised me £100 to do so.
Then on top of all of this they put the head of design, who had been with the company for over five years, on garden leave and then outright fired her. They didn’t replace her until the Spring of 2022, and the guy they chose had no knowledge or interest in alternative designs. He was totally unfit for the role and was gone after a few months. They then brought in somebody else whom they also let go after only a few months.
During all of this they brought in people to try to structure the design team. Predictably these people had no knowledge or respect for alternative styles and subcultures. They created a very hostile work environment; so much so that some of the people within the product and design teams quit.
What happened next? Tequila Star came out of hiding and is now CEO once more. So, basically she fucked around and found out. I don’t pity her at all because she made some very badly informed financial decisions. Even I know about how private equity firms work and how detrimental they can be to the running of a company. The head of products was fired this past April and has not been replaced. My source thinks that Star has been working directly with the designers since she came back. However, things must not be going too well since the entire design team has been suddenly let go.
So, basically Star is trying to bring the company back from the brink of financial disaster but it really is too little too late. The reputation of the brand has been in the sewer since Bertram Capital came into the picture. Line after line of badly designed cheaply made clothing has been pumped out and it shows. Most of the newer pieces are the same silhouettes as older pieces with just new graphic designs being thrown up onto them. There is no originality taking place which is pretty telling. Also, their homeware range is now mostly brought in from suppliers and is not designed in house.
My source has some theories as to what is going to happen next with the company. Apparently they have lines designed for up to this Autumn, so my source thinks that they cut the entire design team in order to appear more solvent when they try to sell the company to a new buyer. This makes some sense and could indeed be what is happening. Another theory is that they will just hire freelance graphic designers and slap new designs onto the same old silhouettes. Lastly, they might just bring in everything from outside suppliers.
Apparently Killstar is making way less money this year than they did last year so it may be too late for Star to steer the company in the right direction. The only people that I feel sorry for in this entire situation are the alternative people who worked for the company and were shafted.
This entire situation is what happens when you let a private equity firm run an alternative focused company; you lose credibility with you core customers who no longer want anything to do with you and your inauthentic ways.
What is WGT I can hear some of you asking. It is the huge German goth music festival Wave Gotik Treffen that takes place In Leipzig every year. It is one of the largest goth music festivals in the world and people travel from everywhere to go to it.
Two people named Jean-Luc and Miss X wrote this article specifically for English speaking festival participants since many do not know all of the right wing neo-Nazi crap that has been happening at the festival. Everything from known neo-Nazi musicians being allowed to play at the event to white nationalists being allowed to set up stalls to share their hate filled agendas. The German press has reported on these very problematic issues, but such articles have not really gained traction outside of Germany. According to the article the people who run WGT will ban people from the festival if they speak out against it.
Well, quite frankly, since I have never been into music festivals I really don’t give a shit if I am on their permanently ‘banned’ list. I have included the entire article here, and I will give my thoughts under some of the sections. The section titles were created by the authors and the article can be found here. All working links are theirs as are grammatical mistakes. It was published on June the 3rd of 2023.
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For more than 20 years, one of the largest Goth festivals on the planet is working with artists and publishers that are affiliated with far right extremism, meaning they book them or allow them to run their business on the festival premisses. The company behind the festival is doing this consistently and repeatedly and this is no secret. There is very little discourse regarding this in the goth scene and there has been next to no impact in the few years where it has been mentioned. Newspapers and magazines covered this, everything you can say on the matter is old news, except for the fact that this is not historical information, this is ongoing. The only people that are still really on the matter are local Antifa groups.
Since I have zero interest in attending music festivals I personally have never looked into the history of WGT. Since so many people from the UK and the US go every year you would think that the news about all of this white nationalist shit would have gotten out, but apparently people are scared to speak out?
Why write about this at all?
We believe this is relevant. Far right ideologies have real world debilitating impact. jl grew up with his family exposed in the Yugoslav civil war, a war motivated by nationalist ideology and racism. His family never fully recovered from the propaganda tactics used to promote division. Today most of us are in some way impacted by Russia’s criminal war on Ukraine that is motivated by the ultranationalist ideologies of figures like Alexander Dugin. Sociopolitical developments like these benefit from a soundtrack, from some emotional priming, from social events normalising the motives.
There has been a marked rise lately of this within alternative subcultures and in society in general.
WGT has a history of platforming artists and publishers promoting these motives. At the same time the festival never positioned itself, never distanced itself from the far right, claiming to be apolitical, which in practice meant they don’t wanna talk about it.
Most of the time when somebody says they are apolitical that just means they support a far right agenda and are too chickenshit to share their real views. White nationalists tend to be cowards. I, and others in leftist circles, have witnessed this over and over again.
When X talked about these things in a series of instagram stories on Monday, we learned that surprisingly many non German speakers had no clue about these things, so obviously there are still some people that can consider this whole story news. And maybe some of the Germans are too young to know.
I’m still surprised as hell that this news has been so well hidden outside of Germany.
When we asked ourselves why these people had no clue, we figured there is hardly any non German info on this (unless you wanna do research on some Russian neofolk fan forums or something).
We decided to change this and give our international friends some insights on things German goths don’t seem super happy to discuss.
I give them props for wanting to bring all of this dankness into the light.
So what’s happening at WGT?
This little article does not have the right scope to give you a full chronicle of events. What we’d however like to help you understand is that WGT as a festival is open to far right extremists over years and decades, even over two different companies organising the festival. If we would look at all of the individual occurrences we could claim accidents, but instead this all repeats. It is a constant of the festival, it is a feature, not a bug. We can’t tell whether this extreme right influences are just bound to a some small group of individuals or whether it is a small yet intrinsic element of the scene. No clue. But to give you a bit of background we compiled some facts and events to give a concrete idea what this is about, so you can decide for yourself.
I totally wouldn’t be surprised if this is a concerted effort on the part of German white nationalist groups to spread their message to a larger audience. Obviously somebody has connections with festival organizers in Germany to be able to pull off this level of crap.
In the year 2000, Mayor of Leipzig Holger Tschense feels forced by public pressure to prohibit Joseph Klumb, frontman of “Von Thronstahl”, to perform at the festival. The promoters do not cancel the slot though, so the band plays their CD while standing on stage in protest, holding a shovel and a flag with a black sun on it, a symbol originating in Nazi Germany, first seen in a floor mosaic in Heinrich Himmlers fancy little SS castle. The audience cheers the performance in front of Völkerschlachtdenkmal. This gig is not listed in WGT’s gig history, but if you google it you can still find the limited edition live recording from 2001 on discogs released on Fasci-Nation Recordings. Distributed by VAWS, which we’ll go into later. Von Thronstahl also wrote about the performance on their own webpage – we’re not going to link to that, you can find that yourself if you really want to look at it.
This is just so fucked up I can’t.
In 2009, WGT printed Heinrich Himmlers black sun (see above) on the festival’s “Obsorgekarte”, the ticket you needed for camping and public transport in Leipzig. Goth band ASP wrotea public protest note (in German) and announced they wouldn’t play WGT ever again unless the promoter would give an apology and explanation. The explanation they received was not signed in the name of the company, but rather by individuals. They claimed that none of the cultural creators involved is following any political goals with WGT and that the black sun is somehow about the 2000 year jubilee of the Varus battle. This legendary battle of Germanic tribes against the Romans was used several times throughout history to create an emotional backing for a political unity of Germany, to create some founding narrative of Germany that is predating any modern constitution. While there are in fact similar looking objects used by the tribes of the time, these are not the ones WGT used. They used the 12 S-runes, as found on Heinrich Himmler’s beloved floor piece. ASP wasn’t happy with that explanation and never showed up again. Threads about the issue in the official WGT forum were deleted by admins citing a “no politics” forum policy.
I actually know quite a bit about the ancient Roman Empire. In one form or another it lasted about 2,000 years, while the Nazis were in power for less than twenty. The Nazis were losers, just like modern German white nationalists. It’s gross as hell that they got away with this shit in the year 2009. The organizers of the WGT are pathetic for allowing this crap to happen. Kudos to ASP for refusing to play a show there.
For decades now, publisher VAWS has a booth in the merch area. The people that distributed that Fasci-Nation limited edition Von Thronstahl record according to discogs. The German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution took note of the company in 2002 and reported: “Through special offers and events, the alleged fascination with the aesthetics of fascism and National Socialism is to be revived, thus promoting right-wing extremist views on a cultural level.”. If you must, check out their website, you should be able to figure the general idea. You’ll find yourself somewhere between “Covid is a bio weapon”, “Argentinian exile Nazi isn’t really a Nazi” and “Let’s sell industrial tracks by putting tits on the cover”. Maybe you also wanna buy some Riefenstahl stuff.
They are allowed a booth there and nobody has done anything against it? The festival has the numbers to run this kind of shit out physically so why are people sitting on their hands? If I was wandering around a festival and saw that kind of shit I would have some very heated words and I might accidentally knock things down with my cane.
In 2015, WGT booked Majdanek Waltz, an openly fascist Russian band named after the concentration and extermination camp Majdanek. These are people that like to sing about how much they love their swastika. You can’t make this shit up. A German article looking into the band and its lyrics can be found here.
FFS
In 2022, WGT booked Of The Moon And The Wand, which has long-standing ties to nazi band Der Blutharsch. It was the seventh time the band played the festival. A local Antifa page posted a German article about it here.
Disgusting.
In 1999, 2009 and also this year 2023 Fire + Ice performs at WGT. Frontman Ian Read, when asked in an interview about fascist and racist ideas, utters that he feels that no idea is completely worthless. Read claims that Germans suffer from a post war brain wash and should stop thinking about what is “correct”. He claimed that in this context of this brainwash the German abbreviation for concentration camp (Konzentrationslager) was changed from KL to KZ to make it sound more scary, implying that some kind of post war propaganda is trying to make things seem worse than they are. The thing with the change of abbreviation is even correct, except this change was done earlier as you can read in Eugen Kogons 1946 book “Der SS-Staat”. Kogon, himself a concentration camp inmate, writes that SS Soldiers preferred KZ over the official abbreviation because it sounds more, well, scary. Some more comprehensive background in English can be found here.
That dude who threw that famous punch in Seattle a few years back needs to get his ass to WGT because he is needed there. I can’t believe people just stand there and let this shit happen. That is what blows my mind the most about this.
Also this year, Austrian stand-up comedian Lisa Eckhart was booked. She’s among that breed of comedians who make money by saying “controversial” things, on national TV. Let me give you examples: “The erection of the black person’s penis requires all seven litres of blood that a human being has at his disposal.” or how do you like: “Paying reparations to the Jews is like giving Red Bull founder Mateschitz a Red Bull.”. Lisa likes using the N-Word a lot and believes that Asian people see the world in widescreen blockbuster format. That’s why they’re so afraid of Covid, you know? That’s all not enough to put her in the nazi corner I guess. She however works hard to stretch boundaries.
Somebody should have pelted her with eggs. Just saying.
Who feels like they are getting an advantage out of her work? VAWS had her face plastered all over their booth. This might give a hint. The fact that she, of all German-speaking standup comedians, was booked despite having no known goth scene relationship will give you another.
This is one of the reasons why I think a white nationalist network is behind this shit. Its coordinated.
As previously mentioned, the above list of events is not comprehensive and we could go on for a while, but we’ll leave it like this because we have other, better hobbies.
So what does this all mean?
WGT is a festival that is very open towards the right and even the extremist right. This is not a bug, it’s a feature. For decades it is a selling point of the festival. If you look at their language, their collabs, their general behaviour you will find dogwhistles and hints. If you look at how they whined on facebook in 2022 about how the city of Leipzig offered parts of the festival ground to Ukrainian refugees, inconveniencing their festival planning, there was barely any expression of solidarity. They simply blamed Leipzig. One could say that’s not too surprising for a promoter that likes to book Russians that like their swastikas a lot. Despite all this, people come to the festival like clockwork, every damn year.
What a bunch of assholes. Seriously.
What we see is of course not a right wing subversion of the scene as a whole. What we see is a scene that seems largely indifferent to their openness to the extreme right. People are unwilling to raise any critical voice, don’t care enough or have no clue what to do. Likely many festival goers feel like their culture was taken hostage by people they actually don’t wanna hang with. WGT is the one big party where they meet all their friends and they want to have a god time and there is no reason to deny them a good time. It’s like facebook. It’s kinda shit, but we can’t really agree on where else to go. And of course there are actual nationalists, conspiracy nutters, third reich apologists, blood and soil occultists and tons of boring, conservative boomers on top. This interesting mixture produces bizarre situations.
It is the time honoured ‘not wanting to lose goth scene cred’ excuse. Nobody wants to step up and say shit because they are afraid of losing that cred and I find that pathetic as hell. Especially when it involves excusing away neo-Nazi talking points. Remember kids, it is more important to attend a festival and be ‘seen’ than to openly act against neo-Nazis.
Recently I saw that one Tobias Theiss is making a free android app (WGT-Guide) that helps visitors to organise their party schedule. WGT has a lot of venues and stages, so this app is helpful. Since Tobias righteously doesn’t like these fascist tendencies, he omits certain acts from the app and doesn’t show them. This way he produces an independent app, for free, that adds value to a festival with above track record and calls this anti-fascist action. We can’t blame Tobias and I salute him for his service for the community, and for not going crazy because of the 1-Star reviews right wingers give him on the google play store. Still, that’s an interesting kind of mental gymnastics, that might be familiar to many people that participate and feel not perfectly well about it.
That is cool that he refuses to list the neo-Nazi crap on his WGT app. He shouldn’t have had to make it in the first place, but this is the world we are living in right now.
So what do?
We don’t go to WGT because we’re tired of that crap and do not want to put money there. It’s not even that someone books a Nazi band in Sachsen, that happens all the time. It’s rather the jarring indifference of the the scene, audience and artists alike. We very much understand that not going isn’t a good option for other people. But if you’re not indifferent as a festival goer and are just wondering what you actually can do about this, we have a few ideas.
Proves that parts of the goth subculture are still apathetic as hell. This shouldn’t come as a surprise because the same shit was happening over thirty years ago.
First off: share this information. This is not for the fame and follows, but certainly it would be helpful to let people know. WGT deems itself “unpolitical” in the sense that it doesn’t want to discuss politics. This does not apply to us. The goth scene is not discussing these things enough – we assumed everyone knew, but judging from the amount of very concerned DMs we got, that’s not the case. As mentioned in the intro, on some of this stuff we couldn’t even find sources in English. Feel free to share any of the things we made available or use them as a reference. If you do decide not to go to WGT, and people ask why you’re staying home, tell them why.
Please share the article, because more English speakers do indeed need to learn about this.
Inform yourself about how to spot a neo-nazi, which symbols and dogwhistles are in circulation etc, so you can act on it if you see them.
A link all about the symbols and groups is further down..
If you’re an artist and WGT tries to book you, we understand that this is a good career opportunity for you and it’s difficult to say no. Please consider that being on a stage gives you a platform, and you can use that platform to make a statement. Nobody said your performance can’t include some educational content or that you can’t curate your audience by telling certain people to leave. Nobody said you can’t do a diss track. Nobody said you can’t publicly stand up for something.
I wish more bands would speak out while on stage.
Make it uncomfortable to be a neo-nazi or to be in close proximity to them. Leave the situation or conversation and tell people why. If you feel up for it, you can confront people directly, but only do this if you feel it’s safe for you to do so, and remember you don’t owe these people a debate about their batshit ideas. In Germany, you can actually call the police if you see a suspicious symbol. There’s a good chance the symbol is illegal or restricted and you don’t even have to be there while the cops sort it out.
Good advice. Some neo-Nazis are very violent so if you are going to confront one in person make sure you have friends with you who will back you up.
You will possibly find more familiar stuff in there than you would like.
Contact any organisation that allows this stuff on its premises and demand an explanation and apology for why it is there. Demand that they correct the situation. You can write them an email or call them out publicly, whatever suits your comfort level. Again, if you feel safe, you can ask people at the festival directly.
This is so important. If people do not confront neo-Nazis they feel safe which is something that should never be allowed to happen.
Be however informed that people criticising WGT are reported to have lost access to festival accreditation over it before, so if you are a journalist or photographer, keep this in mind.
I don’t give a shit since I will never go to it. Plus, calling out neo-Nazis is more important than going to a festival. Especially when the festival is allowing neo-Nazis on stage and in booths.
“People like us need to stop fuelling dystopias only because we grew up loving its aesthetics.”
Marco Visconti distilled it all down to this one very handy statement. It is not wise to help make negative expectation and dystopian outlooks a reality. Not on an individual, not on a sociocultural or political level. While this is a different and pretty complex issue that can be addressed another time: our stories and images matter. Our relationship to them matters and it shapes out reality. We hope this resource will help you to navigate all this for yourself and will help you to take charge if you feel you should.
From the title of this blog you know I love dystopian and post-apocalyptic media, however I would never support neo-Nazi crap. Plague? Sure. Earthquakes? Sure. Space alien invasion? Sure. Neo-Nazi crap? Hell no!
I hope sharing this article has helped people learn the truth as to what is really going down at WGT. Please share this or the article itself so that people can make an informed decision as to whether they want to go next year or not.
This is one of the first times I have heard a musician in the pop-punk/metal-core/alternative music sphere actually majorly call out sexual predators who go after underage fans. It is a dirty ‘secret’ that has been going on in alternative circles for literally decades. It happens in punk, goth, metal and every single alternative type music genre you can think of. Predatory musicians who want to screw underage girls, and boys, get away with it way too often because their music is deemed too ‘important’, or their music connections are deemed too ‘important’. Nobody should be deemed untouchable, or ‘too important’, when it comes to calling this shit out.
This is a brilliant song and video and I stand with her.
Welcome to the very end of my series of articles all about Madi Danger’s very problematic, and now taken down, goth Discord server. If you have not read parts 1-5 I would suggest that you check them out because what happens in this article is the culmination of everything that had happened previously. The links for them will be at the bottom of this article. Just a warning, some of the screenshots in this article can be distressing to read. In the almost twenty-five years that I have been actively online I have never ever encountered somebody with so little self awareness. So, with that being said let us begin our journey!
We start off with the continuation of the paragraph that C had started at the end of the last article. They are correct, the issues that they and others had in that server were not just about politics. They complain to Madi about all of the crap that the moderator G has pulled; banning people for no reason, and deleting topics that the members thought were important. As you have read in the other articles every single time that somebody tried to start a post talking about how racism doesn’t belong in the goth subculture G would delete them. I am assuming that HK is J, Madi’s now husband. Again, C mentions how it was a bad idea for both G and R, a couple, to be moderators of the server together; they backed each other up and created drama where there wasn’t any. I have been in communities online in the past where this kind of crap happened and it always sucked big time. Madi’s moderators pretty much didn’t know how to properly run an online community and should never have been given that kind of power. Especially since Madi wanted that server to be a place for people to learn about the goth subculture. Madi, if you want people who don’t know that much about the true history of the goth subculture to be in charge like that then that reflects badly on you because you are the one who created that space. The people trying to claim that it had nothing to do with her are delusional as hell.
As I have stated before in an earlier article C makes an accusation that G said some anti-Semitic crap to somebody and then banned them. However, there is not a screenshot of this so I cannot verify this accusation. Judging from all of the racist white nationalist flags planted all over the place on the server it really wouldn’t be a stretch to believe that something like that happened though. Come to your own conclusion. This next part very much angers me because I was diagnosed with MS just over five years ago. If a moderator of an online community tried to tell me that I couldn’t ever talk about it until I was officially diagnosed there would have been hell to pay. Somebody seeking a tourettes syndrome diagnosis needs support from the community, not told to shush up about it until an official diagnosis is made. That is just straight up cruel. Again, there is no proof that this happened, but yet again it’s not a stretch to think that it could have occurred. C then tells Madi that they have actually done academic research into music subcultures; metal, goth and punk included. They are saying that to show Madi that they actually are knowledgable on the subject; some facets of which Madi cannot truly understand. Her lack of self awareness cripples her and holds her back from developing into a meaningful participant of the goth subculture. Remember, you crack open her frippery and she is hollow inside.
It is pretty telling how incensed Madi appears to be over C and the others not approving of the supposed ‘changes’ that were going to take place on the server. Obviously the only correct action that should have taken place after the accusations of G being racist should have been G getting insta-banned from the community. They should not have been coddled by Madi and the other mods. Madi and J’s new ‘rules’ come far too little far too late, and remember that banning G for all of this crap was immediately taken off the table even before the others shared screenshots proving what took place. J, Madi’s now husband, cared so much about the safety of the marginalized members of the community that they didn’t think that taking away G’s moderating duties was the right thing to do. Considering that Madi took that server down sometime after all of this took place is very, very telling; she did not want all of this news coming out and reaching the wider public. Remember, she is a goth grifter and wants to become an influencer so that she can make money off of the community and gain subculture clout. All the while not truly understanding how the subculture has always had political elements and is not welcoming of people who actively defend friends wearing Burzum shirts. ‘That’ screenshot is coming up in a few minutes, I promise!
Again, C apologizes to Madi for still talking about this. Madi is the one who should be apologizing to C and to all of the members of that community; since she was the founder of it she had an absolute duty to protect her marginalized fans from racist white nationalist rhetoric. Madi took that trust that they had in her and ground it into the ground with the broken heels of a pair of Demonia boots. C even tells her that they could send all of the screenshots to her of when J argued with them over the issues that C and the others came forward with. Those screenshots are included within my articles so you can read them for yourself.
How dare they assume that your husband is a cis male…how dare they! After all of this and she gets the most angry over that? Do you know why all four of them left Madi? Because both you and J did not take their complaints seriously…at all. She actually admitted that she saw those screenshots and yet she still thinks J handled it fairly?
C continues that paragraph trying again to tell Madi that their concerns are serious and that she should at least try to understand where they are coming from. However, what C doesn’t quite grasp or understand about Madi is that she totally lacks self awareness. She doesn’t listen to advice from others, instead she loves to skip down her own little yellow brick road that is tarnished with pieces of misinformation that are detrimental to both herself and her followers.
Now we come along to a different discussion that Madi initiates with C. If you remember C talked about some online encounters in their story, which occurred a bit after those on the server took place. It was about how both Madi, her husband and their friends stalked C’s comments on different social media sites for any mention of the events that had occurred on that server. Madi claims that C called her a racist even though they didn’t. I also have not stated that she is a racist in any of these articles so if she is saying that I did she is a liar. All C said was that they had heard about Madi defending a friend who was being racist by wearing a Burzum shirt, and that she was gaining a problematic reputation in the online goth community. For those of you who do not know about the black metal band Burzum, it is a band that was founded by the murdering racist white nationalist Varg Vikernes. So, if a person is wearing a shirt with this band’s name on it you can quite easily conclude that said person also has racist white nationalist sentiments. Don’t want to be seen as a racist piece of shit then don’t wear a shirt representing that band. However, Madi is a person who lacks self awareness so she doesn’t see how badly this in turn reflects upon her. You are the company that you keep.
Madi actually goes full on into defending her friend’s choice of wearing a Burzum shirt. It does in fact make your friend racist Madi, since Burzum is a band founded by a racist white nationalist. I don’t care what that murderer sings about in his band, he is still a racist white nationalist. Anything that Varg sonically touches should be avoided because who the hell wants to be affiliated or associated with that piece of shit? Oh, apparently Madi thinks that somebody who wears a bootleg Burzum shirt, and who listens to the music, couldn’t possibly be racist! Madi actually thinks that the ‘logic’ that C is presenting doesn’t add up? Wow! Through the years I have heard idiots say much the same thing about the racist white nationalist punk band Skrewdriver. People would say things like ‘their first album isn’t racist and it’s good’. That kind of crap. C already knows that the other mods of that community weren’t racist too? Madi, that logic that you are presenting doesn’t actually add up.
So, because Burzum’s lyrics, in Madi’s words, are about ‘nerdy shit and a little paganism’ there is no way that Burzum could be considered racist. I’ll let you ponder that for a few minutes. Burzum have never been an unknown underground band. In fact there have been books, films and documentaries that have shown Varg Vikernes to be a murdering racist piece of shit, and yet Madi somehow doesn’t think that listening to his music or wearing Burzum band shirts is in any way racist? C then goes into how multiple people have tried telling her to not defend such things and she just ignores them. I have actually seen her in action online ignoring people when they try to gently correct her about things like bands. For instance, when others told her that certain bands were post-punk and not goth, what does she do? Totally ignores them and then deletes their comments. That might appear to be a minor thing but she does this over and over and over again creating a huge snowball filled with misinformation that is hurtling towards baby bats looking to her for guidance into the subculture.
Just like C I don’t want my goth scene to be infested with racist white nationalists. Her behaviour in the face of all of these red flags in my opinion is very, very suspect. C is right, racists aren’t always the ones who say overtly racist things. A lot of people, including myself, learned that from the whole Sonsombre debacle that happened almost two years ago. We were all used to racist Nazi skinheads trying to barge their way into goth spaces, not somebody who dresses like us and who makes music that we like. To be truthful the blending in that Brandon Pybus attempted is what made me look sideways at Madi. Here is a twenty-six year old metalhead woman coming out of nowhere making videos about ‘goth’ music and the subculture while only having a shallow surface knowledge of the topics. People try to help her and warn her and she puts her fingers in her ears and acts like a a toddler having a tantrum. She is not the kind of person who should be allowed to sit down with baby bats and tell them about the subculture, because she herself is tone deaf and lacks any kind of self awareness. That was the last screenshot in the info dump, but I took a very interesting screenshot the other day of something I found on Google when I typed in ‘madi danger burzum’.
Above is that screenshot in all of its glory. Spotify is notorious for being very slow when it comes to updating playlists and the information contained within them. See that black metal playlist that Madi has? Well, she apparently at some point had at least two different Burzum songs on it. I have underlined them in green. Sometime between then and now she took those songs off of her playlist because if you look at the current version of it they are nowhere to be seen. Did Madi wise up and finally realise that listening to that music made her look like a racist, or did she take them down because she didn’t want people going after her for liking the music of a racist white nationalist? Since Madi lacks any sort of self awareness I’m guessing that she got tired of people not believing her insipid explanations.
If you are online friends with her and are just finding out about all of this information I know how much it sucks when you put your trust in somebody and they betray it. It is never an easy thing to go through. The best way to move on from something like this is to see it as a lesson learned and to grow from there.
There are people and bands online trying to make me out as some sort of villain, that I am ‘bullying’ poor little innocent Madi. It is really obvious to me that they have not read any of my articles and probably never will; they are blinded by all of Madi’s frippery. Do you know what is even more sad than that though? The fact that none of these people learned any lessons from the Sonsombre incident. After a week I am going to make a list of every band and every ‘influencer’ who is still supporting her and put it on this blog. Why? Because others deserve to know the names of those who think that Madi listening to and supporting Burzum is just peachy-keen and a joke. EDIT: After talking to a friend I have decided to be more forgiving to people in this situation, especially to those same people who never forgave me in the Sonsombre conflict. Sometimes you get taken in by somebody and even though shown some evidence your mind can’t quite grasp what is really happening and you just can’t believe that somebody would betray you like that. If you want to talk and try to hash something out I am here and open to having a conversation.
EDIT: I totally forgot to thank all of the people before me who tried to make this information about Madi Danger known to everybody but who were shut down by threats of violence, among other things. All of you deserved to be believed by everybody, instead of being ignored by the majority. I did this partially for you so that you could have some justice. I have your back.
Again, I want to give a big huge shout-out to those who have been supporting me behind the scenes and whom I know have my back. Thank you so very much! I feel very proud to have you as friends. xxxx
Welcome to part four in my series about the very problematic history of Madi Danger’s now defunct goth Discord server. If you have not read 1-3 of this series yet I would suggest doing so because they show a clear pattern of behaviour. Links to those earlier posts will be at the bottom of this article. Again, I am showing these screenshots in the order in which I found them. None of them have been left out. Just a warning, this and the next article in this series are composed of just conversations that took place that prove that what C has been saying is true. Again, there will be racist white nationalist flags planted all over the place
This looks like yet another conversation that has started between C and Madi, one of which that C had previously talked about in their story. Yet again C tries to explain why they, and others, do not feel safe in the community because of J’s lack of action against G. J apparently made some excuses such as ‘I don’t know anything about you’ trope. Why the hell does J even need to know the background of anybody; if the members say that a moderator had repeatedly said and done racist type things to them they should be 100% believed, especially when they have some receipts to prove it. Madi says something that makes absolutely no sense so let us continue on.
That above message that you cannot see the entirety of? It is of G saying that they are not a racist white nationalist. EDIT: Madi has kindly shared all of G’s statement and it is at the bottom of this article. :EDIT That is way too little way to late for C’s comfort and for mine as well. G was asked over, and over, and over again by C if they had racist white nationalism type views and G repeatedly refused to answer. There is no backing up and retroactively saving yourself from this sort of situation. If a leftist, such as myself, was asked if they had racist white nationalistic type views the resounding answer would be a huge no. Also, more than likely, a leftist would explain why racist white nationalism is wrong. Unfortunately, it really feels like we are dealing with people here who reside on the other side of the aisle.
C explains why they do not feel safe in the server; they personally know people who have been doxxed and one that was a victim of a hate crime. C was not being overly sensitive in this situation, they had an absolute right to not feel safe in that community. They were just beginning to make YouTube videos about mainly goth type topics, but C also wanted to include videos about trans issues since they themselves are trans. They had wanted to link it to the server, but because of all of the unanswered questions about racist white nationalism in the community they took it down. I do not blame them one bit.
C’s paragraph continues here; their explanation of why they do not feel safe because of all of the red flags that have been planted throughout this entire ordeal. Again, C deserves a lot of praise in this situation because they will not lie down and take this crap. Madi Dearest responds by saying that C shouldn’t share any personal information in the community if they do not feel safe. Her excuse? That it is a large server that she keeps open for anybody to find out information about goth. Since she and the other moderators refused to make rules against bigotry you can easily come up with your own concludion. As I have stated previously in this series there has been a long held tradition in both the punk and goth communities of punching racist white nationalists and banning them from both online and ‘real world’ spaces. From what I witnessed over thirty years ago the punks, and Sharps(skinheads against racial prejudice), did a lot of the heavy lifting, but since that time the goth community has stepped forward and has been more actively involved in pushing racist white nationalists out. As a reminder J, Madi’s now husband, had previously stated that politics don’t belong in the goth subculture and that their inclusion would ruin the ‘scene’. Spoken just like somebody who doesn’t know what the hell they are talking about. If Madi is going to put herself forward as some sort of fountain of knowledge about the goth subculture she, and those mods, should actually learn about the truth of the subculture instead of making shit up as they go along. Again, I find all of this disturbing as hell since her audience tends to skew younger. People are putting their trust in the hands of others who in no way deserve it.
C then starts talking about their experience of also being into punk music and being a member of the punk community. This gets me teary because I have also always loved punk music along with goth music. Over thirty years ago I would go to punk shows and alternative clubs during the same week. I was not alone because a good amount of people back then got into what would become the goth subculture in the San Francisco Bay Area through also liking punk music. Just like C I learned all about racist dog-whistles and crypto-fascists through listening to bands like the Dead Kennedys and from attending shows. C is right, all of the behaviours that Madi, her husband, and those two other moderators are showing would not be tolerated in the punk community. In fact there would be a concerted effort to push them out, I guarantee it. By the way Madi claims to love 70’s-80’s punk music and she has even made a Spotify playlist including songs from the Dead Kennedys and the Subhumans, which tells me that she is not actually ‘listening ‘ to the music. This type of thing happens pretty frequently. It’s like when right wing morons claiming that punk music has become too ‘woke’ and that politics don’t belong in punk. Gee…that sounds familiar doesn’t it?
C goes on about the paradox of intolerance; that if a group of people accept everybody, including the intolerant, eventually the group will be destroyed and taken over by the intolerant. Do you want people such as Madi and her husband holding power in alternative subcultures and destroying them from the inside out? I sure as hell don’t, and they shouldn’t be allowed to freely roam online teaching baby bats what their idea of the goth subculture is all about. All of the frippery and teased hair in the world can’t hide the truth of her actions, and inactions, when it comes to all of this. C also mentions the old saying that if eleven people sit down at a table with one Nazi then there are twelve Nazis. You are the company you keep.
C again tells Madi that all they want is a place to talk about goth without having to worry about being targeted for abuse by people who are anti-trans. Their concern is totally understandable and if I were in their shoes I would feel the same way. I would never be comfortable sharing what I love if I had to worry about literal racist white nationalists wanting to hurt me. Madi, G chose not to answer that very simple question an endless amount of times. Yet you want C to feel safe now just because G finally says that they are antifascist? Seriously? Is she just that dense to think that a statement that came too little too late would just solve everything?
EDIT: That was going to be the end of the article but Madi responded with some screenshots that I supposedly purposely skipped using. In reality I had used the first photo she shared in my first article already and I did not have access to the other two because they were not in the info dump. So I will share those two with you and give my opinion as to the contents of them.
I think the person responding to G is Z from the second article but I am not sure. Z doesn’t find Varg Vikernes funny and neither do I. Varg is a vile murdering racist piece of shit that should be taken seriously and not laughed at. Condemning racists such as Varg should be the priority, rather than laughing about him. Again, how are people in a goth server supposed to know about a metal meme? Laughing about Varg like he is a drunk uncle, rather than condemning him, throws up yet another flag for me. Sorry not sorry
What the hell has G actually explained? As you have seen from the other screenshots in these articles G always evaded the questions thrown at them and repeatedly refused to answer the question as to whether or not they held racist white nationalistic views. Plus, on top of all of that G had been accused by multiple people of deleting talk of racism on the server. Oh, and G and the other mods didn’t think that a rule against bigotry would be be a good idea. Do you know who I am going to believe after reading this entire sorry mess? Not him.
That is the end of part four. Part five will be up on this blog on Tuesday the 24th and it will be the last article in this series. Thank you for reading!
Welcome back! This is the third article in my series all about the problematic history of Madi Danger’s now taken down goth Discord server. I would suggest getting caught up before diving into this one, and the links for those first two parts are at the end of this article. Mainly because everything is interconnected and it shows a pattern of behaviour. First we are going to go over the rest of C’s statement about the situation, which we began in the first article. Afterwards the screenshots proving the accusations will be shared. As always I will make comments under each photo.
In the continuation of their explanation of what occurred C once again gets into G and R actively shutting down any conversation about what happened. Just the fact that the two mods, G and R, are deleting any mention of what happened raises yet more big huge red flags. They actively wanted to hide any mention of the community’s concerns over the simple unanswered question as to whether or not they had racist white nationalist beliefs. C mentions that they brought all of these concerns to Madi but that she was dismissive. Do you know what that tells me? That she perhaps also wouldn’t answer that question truthfully if asked and that is very concerning considering that teens are beginning to flock to her for information about the goth subculture. Turns out that the third mod, whom we named J in the last article, is definitely her now husband. I assume that he was sent by Madi into the community to deal with all of the complaints since she couldn’t be bothered. After C and others shared screenshots of what happened with him he claimed that there was not enough evidence to take any sort of action against G, even though some of them made claims that G had been openly racist in the past on the server. C wasn’t able to save the conversation that happened between them and Madi, BUT they did save all of the conversations about this that they had with J.
J wanted to ‘compromise’ about it but every suggestion that C and others made fell on deaf ears. J said that kicking G out of the group was off that table and that taking away his mod duties was also not going to happen. C and others suggested a rule against bigotry but J deemed that too complicated and unenforceable. That very large online punk community that I used to be a mod for had that kind of rule and it was very easy for me to enforce. Any mention of racism in a post, be it a band such as Skrewdriver or far right wing sentiments in general, I would instantly delete. How the hell is that ‘difficult’ to enforce, unless you want to pander to literal racist white nationalists? That isn’t even jumping to a conclusion, that is just a logical thought process in affect. I honestly don’t know how anybody could dismiss all of this crap and only tell G to give people a warning first before banning them. Oh, did I forget to mention that G was banning people left and right over all of this? The huge cherry on top of this shit filled sundae is the fact that when C told Madi their concerns for a second time she said that she stood by her now husband. She then proceeded to tell C that she had asked G if he had racist white supremacist beliefs and that he had told her no. She then shared a sceenshot as proof. Madi stated that since C and the others now had their answer that they should be satisfied. OH HELL TO THE NO! Madi thinks that people are actually going to believe that asshole after he refused to answer the question for so long? Others then told C that she had a sketchy past history; including defending a friend who was caught wearing a Burzum shirt online. That is Varg Vikernes’ racist white nationalist band, in case you didn’t know or forgot. There are no screenshots from those people, but considering how far down the racist white nationalist rabbit hole we have been venturing so far it is not a very hard thing to believe. Oh, and believe me…..it gets much worse from here on out.
Next, C explains how Madi and her husband harassed them across several different social media platforms. C says that they posted over on their Instagram account, warning baby bats not to follow or trust her. She then sent C a bunch of different messages accusing them of calling her a racist, which he actually never did. If you have noticed I have also never called her a racist. So, if she tells people that I have she is grasping at straws and relevancy. A few days after that C commented to somebody not to support her after seeing a post in their timeline of her. Somebody told Madi and J, her husband, and they went after C yet again accusing them of slander and calling them a liar. C couldn’t save J’s messages because of being blocked right afterwards, but C got to save the ones from Madi Dearest.
So, C says that J stalked their Twitter posts. C had blocked Madi so they are assuming that J went spying on them for her, to see if C was still talking about the incidents that took place. C then states that J responded to a tweet of theirs with a screenshot showing C’s ‘uncensored discord name and image’. They then had to change that info because they did not want Madi’s stans stalking and threatening them. There isn’t a screen shot of this, but judging from all of the other crap we have seen so far this really isn’t outside the realm of possibility.
Now that we have read C’s entire story we are going to move onto the screenshots. Some of them may distress you because there are racist white nationalistic flags planted all over them. When I first read them I thought back to the time in which I saw the whole inside of the punk club 924 Gilman empty and chase a bunch of WAR(white aryan resistance) skins down the street to beat the crap out of them. White suprematists come in many forms besides Nazi skinheads; they are your neighbours, office co-workers and some are even people who attend goth clubs.
We are starting right where we left off, these screenshots are a continuation of the ones in PART 2. After having no success when trying to appeal to J about why they felt unsafe C then turns to Madi hoping that she can help. C mentions that several of them think that G is a crypto-fascist. I am guessing that a lot of people reading this are on the same page as them. Then C mentions that another member claims that their posts about racism in the scene were deleted by G. Yet again, gee I wonder why?
C offers to send somebody’s message as proof of what happened. Apparently C had been banned from the group, along with some others, by G. Madi then unbans C. This next part really pisses me off. Madi telling somebody to ‘keep cool’ in this situation? The fact that C still trusts her at this point really breaks my heart. Trust me, it gets worse.
C then contacts Madi again. They urge her to look at what is happening in the server because G is taking anything down that pertains to the situation at hand; that some people in the server think that G is a crypto-fascist. Just the fact that they have to bring this up to her yet again speaks volumes doesn’t it? What it tells me is that Madi is not concerned at all about it and doesn’t really give a shit, yet again.
C then messages Madi again about how they think that it is a bad idea for G and R to both be mods of the group together because they are partners. R keeps apparently shielding G from members complaining about him and that this is causing a lot of drama to occur. Personally, I think the only solution to this was something that Madi was not willing to do; kick both G and R out of the community. Golly gee, I wonder why she refuses to do this?
Dude, you don’t have to say you’re sorry for bothering her at this point. I love how C just won’t drop it. If I was feeling unsafe in an online community I would do the same. However, I would have left ages ago because I am jaded and have seen how this kind of crap plays out in person and online over and over and over again. Don’t think you are witnessing some type of brand new phenomenon that has never happened in the goth subculture before. Racist white nationalists have been trying to infiltrate both the goth and punk scenes from the very beginning, with varying degrees of success.
Madi has the audacity to say that she doesn’t see any issues that would make people feel uncomfortable? Um…..how about those mods who refuse to answer that simple timeless question as to what their political views are when it comes to racist white nationalism?
C tells Madi the names of the other members who have had bad encounters with G. Why the fuck is all of this even happening? The first instance of racism in that community should have been met with an insta-ban, even if they were a moderator. The very fact that the act of banning G was completely off the table, before any evidence was even shown, tells the whole story, doesn’t it?
That is it for Part 3. The 4th article in this series all about Madi Danger’s late great goth Discord server will be put up this coming Sunday the 22nd. Thank you for reading!
