Are we the Tories?
Recently we posted a meme linked to Defected Records tribute post over a 96(!) year old person who died after a very long & privileged life. A privilege that she enjoyed off the back of colonialism for decades. Defected and its founder Simon Dunmore have long been known for their political stance so this didn’t come as a surprise. However it raised again the question who these people are who’re profiting from black culture that is House & Techno music.
The question addresses a general problem. How does the Techno “scene” handle the fact that it has allowed people who’ve nothing to do with its core values to buy themselves into and exploit it for their personal gains. How does the Techno “scene” handle the fact that fascists have become an accepted and established part of the community?
Having mentioned it before, a key issue of today’s nightlife community is surely the ignorance of the biggest platforms towards the Black & brown communities and therefore the whitewashing of the nightlife industry. This led to a lot of people coming into the community who’re totally unaware of its values. There are a lot of good articles dedicated people have written about this in the past few years like A letter to RA.
This won’t be a long essay but more of a “FOOD FOR THOUGHT” piece about recent events we’ve had an eye on and felt that it’s time to write it down with more context than a simple Tweet.
In the past decade Red Bull has put a lot of money into the nightlife industry through sponsoring. This money has been uncritically accepted although the company’s founder who recently passed away was known for his support of xenophobes, islamophobes, and fascists.
On April 27th 2021, Marea Stamper called BT “cops” for pointing out that there might’ve been other alternatives than booking someone who happily toured India a few weeks before their health care system collapsed due to skyrocketing COVID19 cases. It takes a lot of ignorance coming from someone who built her career as “The Black Madonna” and cosplayed being an ally of the community for years. If Marea Stamper was in fact Black, she would’ve understood that despite the summer of 2020 Black & brown people are still facing discrimination and are being targeted by the police. As we’ve been able to witness, the mask slips as soon as it comes to making space for the black women she pretended to support.
On July 9th 2021, Technomaterialsm Jean-Hugues Kabuiku wrote about Vatican Shadow and his links to the far right. Yet not a lot has happened since, as no major music media picked it up. Neither Pitchfork, nor Resident Advisor, nor Ostgut Booking that featured Vatican Shadow frequently responded to any of the following demands of the Antifascist Music Alliance: to place an addendum and a link to articles critically addressing the fascist ties on their articles and reviews about him, and to donate to organizations fighting antisemitism and extremism.
In June 2022 Berlin’s KitKatClub made some very questionable & disturbing statements after failing to distance themselves from a DJ who’s spent the past 2 years protesting alongside far-right figures.
In June 2022, Luca Dea an italian video blogger posted a video of what looks like an after party in Ibiza with no one other than now Deputy Prime Minister of Italy Matteo Salvini. Salvini has become a well known politician in the past years majorly on the basis of his hatred towards immigrants & hardliner policy. While some of Luca Dea’s followers commented on the post with disgust, DJ Rebekah commented on the whole scenery with a joke and a laughing emoji. None of the well known followers of Luca Dea took a clear stance on this post.
On October 15th 2022, 23 year old Antonio Neill sent racial abuse to Premier League footballer Ivan Toney. Looking through his Instagram quickly showed that he’s a regular at electronic music events like Creamfields & Parklife.
On September 26th 2022, Luke Turner tweeted that Julian Mathews had been unmasked as the operator of the prolific far-right account “Beyond Woke and Problematic”. Julian Mathews was part of the people on Techno Twitter who repeatedly harassed black people. He seemed to be a huge fan of Berlin’s Berghain using a picture of him in front of Berlin’s Berghain club on his social media.
Berghain has a long history of playing the “non-political” card until this year when, to the surprise of many, they used their social media to post in support of the Ukrainian music community. Looking at the collaborations Berghain had with these highly problematic people it raises questions where they stand and what their objectives are apart from continuing to ride the wave and cashing in the profits. It would be the minimum if they would at least for once take a stance against the fascists who seem to be very comfortable around their brand & club.
These are just a few examples and there’s no scientific evidence that there’s a certain trend however we find it worrying and aren’t really sure how clubs can be safe spaces if so many problematic people have managed to be part of this community.
In 2017, Seth Troxler mentioned in a discussion on Twitter about DJing being a male thing that he has not seen a lot of women & brown people at techno parties. The truth is not only are a lot of marginalized people being priced out (especially at the big raves DJs like Seth Troxler play) a lot of women and Black & brown people don’t feel comfortable anymore spending time at places that are so welcoming to highly problematic (and in some cases dangerous) people.
We all have to ask ourselves some serious questions. What’s our part in this? Who are the people and what are places we should support/avoid?
Ending this one with a quote from Robyn Maynard “Fascism is here, globally, and on the rise — they know it, so it is important that we know it.”
