The anti-migrant march in Faversham last November led to some unfortunate consequences for up-and-coming local musician Dylan Kirk after he was unwise enough to take part – and to pose for a photograph with Paul Golding, the visiting leader of the far-right group Britain First. Kirk, a Rockabilly singer and pianist with a band called […]
Culture
Fascist singer’s London gig axed after protests
The Underworld in Camden, London, has cancelled the scheduled gig by Michale Graves, the far-right aligned American rock singer. We reported on Thursday that music fans were protesting at his proposed appearance at the well-known London venue, following his declared support for fascist groups like the Proud Boys in the US. Today, apparently following a […]
London venue to host US fascist singer
Next week The Underworld in Camden is scheduled to host a solo performance by Michale Graves, a musician whose early fame came from fronting the horror-punk band the Misfits in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But more recently Graves’ name has become increasingly linked with the American extreme right. Graves’ career began in the […]
How purple-haired cartoon ‘Amelia’ became a far-right icon
Amelia was never meant to be real. She began life as a cartoon character in a government-backed game designed to help young people recognise and resist extremist ideology. But she has been reimagined online as something far darker: a far-right fantasy figure, fetishised, politicised, and repurposed by thousands of men who see in her both […]
Golding selfie gets rockabilly singer banned from Cavern Club
Liverpool’s iconic Cavern Club has cancelled a performance this weekend by rockabilly singer and pianist Dylan Kirk and his band after anti-fascist campaigners raised concerns over Kirk’s recent appearance in a photograph alongside Paul Golding, the leader of Britain First. Laughing together The picture was taken at the rally which concluded an anti-migrant march earlier […]
Artur Gold: the violinist of Treblinka
In the summer of 2013 I interviewed Samuel Willenberg, at the time the last surviving participant of the Jewish revolt at Treblinka, the Nazi death camp in Eastern Poland. During the interview, he reminisced about Artur Gold, the famous Jewish violinist, and leader of the Treblinka orchestra. He told me: “As we stood during evening […]
Review: Celebrating Billie Holiday, jazz great and civil rights activist
A great night at the Jazz Café, Camden, on 7 April when we were transported back to the Jim Crow era and Billie Holiday’s concerts at Carnegie Hall in 1956, with Riketté Genesis really embodying Holiday and Alex Webb on piano with a fantastic band supporting. Holiday was born on 7 April 1915. Webb read […]
‘Lili Marlene’: the song that haunted the Nazis
One song and two singers came to represent opposition and resistance to Hitler in the Second World War. The most beautiful and certainly most popular song of the Second World War was Lili Marlene. A poem written in 1915, it was first recorded by German singer Lale Andersen in 1939 and was titled Das Mädchen unter […]
Berlin and the red triangle
The red triangle was in the news recently when the city of Berlin senate banned its use on activities related to the Middle East after the image was appropriated by Hamas supporters. There is some confusion as to the origins of the use of the red triangle in this context with some saying it represents […]
Theatre Review: The Accidental Death of an Anarchist, by Dario Fo and Franca Rame
The Accidental Death of an Anarchist is a play that arose from events in December 1969, when Italian fascists bombed the Piazza Fontana in Milan, killing 17 people and injuring 88. It was the deadliest of several bombs planted that day by the group Ordine Nuovo (New Order) as part of the far right’s ‘Strategy […]