by Kory Grow
Until last week, every Spotify user could access a playlist titled “Musikkorps Der Leibstandarte – SS Adolf Hitler Radio” – named after the Nazi leader’s personal bodyguard corps. The streaming service created the track listing itself, and several ROLLING STONE staffers each received a different mix when the list loaded. Depending on Spotify’s algorithm, the streaming service selected different – often harmless – national anthems from history, but two playlists featured music from “Das Luftwaffenmusikkorps 3” (named after the Nazi Luftwaffe).
A day after ROLLING STONE asked Spotify why the service was offering, let alone generating, an “SS Adolf Hitler Radio” playlist, and why it was running a RaHoWa podcast (short for “Racial Holy War”) and several other examples of The streaming service removed music that represents neo-fascist ideologies.
Spotify Platform Rules prohibit “content that incites violence or hatred against any person or group of people based on race, religion, gender identity or expression, gender, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, veteran status, age, disability or… other characteristics associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization”. But despite those guidelines and previous cases in which the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) have slammed the company and other streaming services for allowing “hate music,” musicians calling White Power, Supporting anti-Semitism and neo-fascist ideology, continuing to have a home on mainstream platforms.
Burzum has 223,000 monthly listeners
Some groups, such as NSBM (National Socialist Black Metal) band Übermensch, have more than 30,000 monthly listeners, while Burzum, a Norwegian NSBM pioneer who recently took to Twitter to complain that he was fired for recommending Mein Kampf. for its readers, has 223,000 monthly listeners.
A three-month survey of ROLLING STONE across Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal and Amazon Music catalogs revealed a surprising number of purveyors of so-called hate music. Each service had musicians playing NSBM and “fashwave” (a fascist form of electronic music), while some also played Nazi hardcore punk, RAC (“Rock Against Communism,” a form of right-wing punk formed in response to the ” Rock Against Racism concerts in the UK in the 1970’s) offering literal Nazi music from the 1930’s and 1940’s.
Many of the musicians in question don’t try to hide their political leanings: the most-played song on Spotify by fashwave musician IronMensch – previously highlighted in the ADL survey – is titled “Aryan Fury”; his second most popular track is “Reich Machine”. Some artists who violate Spotify’s terms of service have even been flagged by the streaming service in the past. Even after an ADL investigation last September, music by IronMensch, fashwave musicians Elessar and OBNX, and NSBM group Übermensch is still available on Spotify.
“Music has long been used as a form of radicalization,” Calum Farley, an investigative researcher for the ADL Center on Extremism, tells ROLLING STONE. “Having a platform like Spotify that has such a wide reach makes it very easy for individuals to find the type of music and be drawn into these spaces.”
Sometimes that money has gone straight into the hands of terrorist organizations and networks
“Countless acts of prejudice-motivated violence — from hate crimes to terror campaigns — have been committed and staged in connection with the hate music scene in dozens of countries,” Aaron Flanagan, associate director of prevention and partnerships at the SPLC Intelligence Project, told ROLLING STONE. “Such acts of violence have been particularly concentrated where hate music intersects with the racist skinhead scene.
“Hate music was also a route for millions of dollars that flowed into the global white supremacist movement and related movements and music scenes,” he continues. “Sometimes this money has gone straight into the hands of terrorist organizations and networks. For those who produce and write hate music, it’s impossible to achieve the kind of simple, easy, and relatively free visibility without online streaming services. It is imperative that these platforms enforce their terms of service and remove such hate propaganda: this can literally help stem the tide of hateful terrorist material.”
ROLLING STONE’s investigation into the streaming services revealed, among other things, albums and tracks by groups known online as fashwave (Elessar, OBNX, Xurious), Nazi hardcore (Still Burnin’ Youth, removed from Spotify and Apple Music after ROLLING STONE removed them identified) and NSBM (Infernum) were identified. On Apple Music, a search for “fashwave” turned up eight user-generated playlists and “NSBM” six; the search terms “fashwave” returned 38 user-generated playlists on Spotify, and “NSBM” was found in the tracks of 20. Tidal had the fewest number of neo-fascist groups that could violate the Terms of Service.
Each of the streaming services has similar provisions prohibiting hate speech as Spotify. (See the Apple Music, Tidal, and Amazon Music Terms of Service.) So how do these musicians get around the supposed rules? The full answer remains hazy.
“In the last year alone, Spotify has taken action against tens of thousands of podcast episodes, playlists and hundreds of tracks for violating our platform rules, which prohibit content that incites violence or hatred against any person or group of people.” a Spotify spokesman told Rolling Stone. “Spotify has made – and will continue to make – significant investments in human and algorithmic detection measures to ensure our platform provides a safe experience for all, and we remain committed to rigorously enforcing these platform rules. In this case, Spotify reviewed the content in question and removed the content that violated our policies.”
Tidal and Apple Music representatives responded to ROLLING STONE’s inquiries about which music violated their terms of service, but did not provide explanations or make anyone available for an interview. Amazon Music did not respond to requests for comment. (At the time of publication, Apple Music has removed some of the music identified by ROLLING STONE, while remaining available on Tidal and Amazon Music).
“Measures must be taken to proactively identify malicious content as it emerges on their platforms, in addition to reactively responding to takedown requests from users and experts,” said Megan Squire, associate director of data analytics and open source intelligence at SPLC Intelligence Project. “As the hate music scene has developed since the early 1980s, some bands and labels have become adept at circumventing hate speech and ethnic discrimination laws enacted in countries like England, Canada, Germany and elsewhere. Bands willing to disguise their beliefs with watered-down lyrics nonetheless remain associated with violent and hateful movements and ideologies.”
Although racism has been ubiquitous in popular music for decades – one of the first known recordings by an African American has a slur in the title – the idea of ”hate music” originated in the 1960s with racist country songs attributed to “Johnny Rebel,” whose Recordings are still available on CDs through neo-Nazi websites. The Rock Against Communism movement, which ran white power concerts across the UK, thrived in the late 1970s, drawing skinhead fans to bands like Skrewdriver and Skullhead. A Skrewdriver song, “When the Boat Comes in (N-r N-r)” states, “We won’t stand by and see our land taken without a fight/N-rn-r out out!” (The song is still indexed on Spotify but not playable.)
The latest manifestation of hate music in recent years is the “fashwave” – and there is also a “Trumpwave”
In the 1990s, the rhetoric of white power found its way into the work of some extreme heavy metal musicians, particularly in Norway, where one of the most popular, Burzum’s Varg Vikernes, glorified Nazism while in prison for murder. The most recent manifestation of hate music in recent years is the “fashwave” (there’s also a “trumpwave”). The messages of these musicians are far less obvious than those of their predecessors and are often hidden beneath EDM beats. Though mostly discussed on internet forums, fashwave musicians have found an easy home on streaming services.
“Streaming services continue to fail with the content of those who make efforts to tone down or scramble their lyrics or album art, and those who don’t recite or print their lyrics in English, if they share them at all,” Flanagan said the SPLC.
“Fashwave was a good example of how neo-fascist music grows by having these providers take a genre or type of music that [bereits] popular and then try to co-opt them into their movement,” says Farley of the ADL. “Fashwave started with vaporwave and other forms of ambient electronic music, which then took over into extremist realms.
The SPLC also offers several resources for identifying hate speech in art and plans to expand their offering. “In addition to our regular monitoring using both digital and analog methods, the SPLC is currently testing a variety of methods to proactively remove content,” said the SPLC’s Squire. “One of those products is a tool that helps us actively look for hateful audio and video content on websites and social media platforms, and allows us to request the host site to remove content.”
“However, surveillance organizations should not be solely responsible for monitoring content and demanding its removal after it has already caused harm,” she continues. “This software is just one of many similar products and is widely available.
Ultimately, both the ADL and SPLC officials hope the streaming services will comply with their content policies and become better at detecting hateful content. “The problem is that private companies allow hate and extremist content that has an undeniable impact on people’s daily lives,” says Squire. “When corporations provide a platform for harmful content and capitalize on it, they bear responsibility for promoting hateful violence.”
Translated from the American by the ROLLING STONE website.
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