red-and-anarchist-black-metal:
Common neonazi symbols, an incomplete list. Correction: The sign listed as Pegida is not commonly used by Pegida but is used by the northwest Europe based neonazi Identity Movement.
Especially relevant for people moving within the Black Metal-Scene
Yes yes yes yes yes, while there are nazi’s in other music genres, they’re huge in metal and actually get booked at non-political metal festivals like it’s no big deal! Disgusting shit. Also keep an eye on:
- Album titles and band names that have two words both starting with the letter S.
- Nazi number symbolism (18 means Adolh Hitler, 88 means Heil Hitler, 14 means a lot of bullshit and the three get mixed together to make numbers like 1488, 8814 etc)
- Songs with nazi phrases like ‘blood and honour’, ‘ blood and soil’, ‘
My Honor Is Loyalty’
- References to German military units. If a band is called Panzerdivision… yeah…
There’s more but these are some obvious starting points to spotting nazi metal.
The iron cross is not a nazi symbol if it doesn’t have the swastika
IT’S BASICALLY GERMAN MILITARY HONOR-All these symbols have other meanings too.
What they all have in common is that they are ALSO used by neonazis to recognize each others. As always, context matters.If a person protesting against migration has an odal rune on their banner, they’re probably a nazi. If a person looking like a hippie sitting in the park has a dozen weird necklaces including an odal rune, they’re probably just a hippy.
If a person at a nazi metal band in France is wearing an iron cross, they’re probably a nazi. If an old guy at a veterans meeting in Germany is wearing an iron cross, they’re probably just militaristic trash getting paid to distribute violence for the state.
Odai runes are basically only nazi iconography it they’re in that thick black style right there, otherwise it’s probably just a troll cross which is also shaped like an odai but used by superstitious adherents to Asatru (the not racist version of Odinism because people who call it Odinism tend to be less informed and more racist). The Odai rune, when forged from iron or cold steel is supposed to ward off trolls and huldras and things. It really caught on with hippies in the 1970s because there was this influx of nordic folk magic roughly about the same time America was introduced to shit like the troll doll, scandinavian cuisine, Ikea, and Abba.
I’m not claiming the members of Abba were huldra and huldrekall, but I’m not not claiming it.
The thing you mention about style and fonts is important. Most nazi tattoos and logos use thick fonts and only black, or black, white and red. They also use a lot of straight lines and strong angles and tend to avoid more flowery motives. When they combine runes and images, those images are usually of warriors, eagles and hammers.
So for example: thin runes as part of a highly decorative tattoo and curvy troll cross necklace. Probably not a nazi. (unless they say nazi shit of course)
But a thick black odal and celtic cross, in the exact same font used by the nazis. Yup, definitely a nazi.
Context matters.
QueerAnarchism 