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Old Nov 22nd, 2004, 01:23 PM        White Power Punk Rock
Isn't this an oxymoron?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6542890/site/newsweek/

The Hot Sound of Hate
A fast-growing CD outfit hawks white power at school

By Sarah Childress and Dirk Johnson
Newsweek

Nov. 29 issue - In a cramped upstairs den in South St. Paul, Minn., a CD blares with fury. "Hang the traitors of our race," the singer screams, "White supremacy! White supremacy! Whiiiite supremacy!" Byron Calvert, 33, leans back in his chair, smiling and snacking on veggies. Calvert is a mountainous man with a swastika tattoo, a prison record and a racist dream. He runs Panzerfaust Records, a five-year-old company that has quickly become one of the top "white power" record labels in the country. Hundreds of bands in America and Europe produce such hate music. If Calvert has his way, their fans will soon be multiplying. In September he launched Project Schoolyard, a plan to snag kids 13 to 19 by distributing 100,000 free CDs of such bands as Day of the Sword, H8 Machine and Final War. Calvert cares less about the melody than the message. "We hook 'em with the music," he says, and then kids learn—and buy—more online. As his Web site declares, "We don't just entertain racist kids, we create them!"

To Calvert, the mission is nothing less than survival of the white race, and it's helped the label succeed and likely surpass its influential rival, Resistance Records. Though Calvert's reluctant to give numbers, watchdog groups estimate that Panzerfaust pulls in about $1 million a year.

The white-power movement is looking for young people like Tom Lindstrom, a 22-year-old tile layer from West St. Paul. He first heard the furious music three years ago, and it made him glow. He realized there were angry kids like him—angry at blacks, Jews, homosexuals, immigrants. "There's a general plague of anti-whiteness going on in this country," he says. "When I heard the white-power rock, I thought, 'Right on!' " Calvert says America is full of p---ed-off white kids sick of having multiculturalism stuffed down their throats, and resentful of gangsta rappers who rip on white boys like them. "You can be black and racist and have an illustrious career. If you're white and racist, you might end up going to jail."

The CDs have started to find their way into schools in smaller towns around the country. In rural Madison, W.Va., a pair of twentysomething kids clad in black silently handed out CDs to middle- and high-school students as they stepped off their buses one morning. When school officials learned what had happened, they asked kids to hand in the discs. Lauren Snyder, 13, was insulted that racists had targeted her county, like a lot of kids she knows. Still, she says many kids still played the CD at home out of curiosity. The discs have alarmed organizations that monitor hate groups. Project Schoolyard is especially dangerous because it poses as mainstream music, says Daniel Alter, director of civil rights at the Anti-Defamation League. "The kids go right for the music, and the lyrics, at first, are almost secondary," he says. "It's a very insidious way of indoctrinating kids into a whole lifestyle." Watchdog groups agree they've never seen white supremacists make such a targeted recruiting effort. The group Citizens Against Hate is working feverishly to combat the music's spread by alerting school officials and law enforcement around the country through their program, Project Hands-Off.

Experts say most kids who heed the music's message feel alienated from mainstream culture, unsure about their future or place in society. White-power rock groups seize on their insecurities, and make them feel that they're worthy—indeed, superior—simply because their skin is white.

Wendy, 22, works long hours as a housecleaner. All her life, she's preferred to hang out with other white kids. "I'm not as radical as you think I am," she says softly, tucking a strand of platinum-blond hair behind her ear. "I'm white, I'm proud to be white and I don't think there's anything wrong with that." She goes to white-power rock shows. But she seems conflicted, talking about an Indian friend and a mixed-race friend. "They know deep in their hearts that I love them for who they are," she says. But if Smith gets drawn deeply enough into the white-power movement, Calvert and other racist promoters are betting she'll change her tune.
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