Tots of Hate

I was going to write a rant about the Howard Government’s sickening new workplace relations policy (“WorkChoices,” so named because the more accurate “Blow Me, Peasant” tested poorly with focus groups), or maybe the insane new counterterrorism laws which, by calling them “insane,” I’ve probably already violated. But I just can’t. I’m just so exhausted from being angry at Howard these past nine years that I can’t bear the thought of writing another whole spiel about how awful the whole thing is. Perhaps that’s their plan: make us so blind with rage that we get fed up with being fed up and go and do something else, leaving them to do whatever the hell they want.

Well, it’s worked. Instead of talking about what we might euphemistically call “the complete and utter destruction of Australian society,” I’m going to jump on the bandwagon of whaling on two little girls ten thousand miles away.

Not just any little girls, mind, we’re talking evil, bile-spewing, make those ghost girls in The Shining look positively delightful ones.

Prussian Blue are a teenybopper dance act out of Southern California, made up of thirteen year old twin sisters Lamb and Lynx Gaede. I’ve already given you several reasons to hate them already right there, but you should also be aware that they’re white supremacists whose poppy dance songs feature lyrics imploring the “Aryan Man” to “turn that rage to hate.” They already have one album out (with tracks like “Sacrifice” about Rudolf Hess and various songs about Viking mythology), have a music video doing the rounds and attract a crowd wherever they play. Oh, you’ll probably be noticing about now that all your hair just fell out a moment ago, so you might want to go grab a broom or something.

Now, revered US columnist Seanbaby has said pretty much everything there is to say that’s even remotely funny about this, much better than I ever could, so I’ll just add the minor comment that if turning your children into spiteful little bags of hatred is not a crime, calling them “Lamb” and Lynx” definitely should be.

“Mary-Hate and Ashley” quips aside, this is basically a very sad story of what I’d be perfectly comfortable describing as child abuse. Now, when your dad literally brands cows with swastikas all day you’re probably not playing with a great hand to begin with, but these parents seem to have gone out of their way to screw up their daughters’ lives. After a blast of negative publicity, the girls have had to go into hiding, one more thing they can thank mum and dad for when they eventually grow up and realize their parents are dipshits. Because they will one day, but they still won’t be able to put this stuff behind them. You can’t just laugh this sort of youthful embarrassment off. This won’t be like Mrs Spears pulling out old tapes of Britney on the Mouseketeers, or me pulling out the video of the time I was on Sale of the Century: “Hey Lynx, isn’t that you and your sister giving the Nazi salute while singing a song of praise about the Deputy Fuhrer? Awwww, look at your adorable braces! That’s so cute and- hang on… that’s awful!! This job interview is over!!!” Sure, Patty Hearst has managed to get her life back together, but face it, when you saw the words “Patty Hearst” just then, you thought “Newspaper heiress running around with a black beret and a machine gun,” not “Juror Number Eight in John Water’s Serial Mom.”

But what really caught my attention is a comment about some of the venues they play:

The 13-year-old blondes, LAMB and LYNX, call themselves a "white power" band and regularly perform for the neo-Nazi National Alliance at Holocaust denial camps.

Hang on, what? Perhaps I’m missing something critical here, possibly because I’m not a wilfully ignorant delusional bigot, but how do you hold a camp based around something having not occurred? Even if you can perform the grotesque mental contortions necessary to ignore every single piece of evidence (and as regular readers will know, people are awfully good at that), why would you then go to an event premised on the idea that that didn’t happen? Atheists don't go to Atheist Church and sing hymns about God not existing, do they? Do Nonhistory buffs stage elaborate non-recreations of battles that never happened?

This seems to be a hallmark of the American religious right. These people have been known to hold Abstinence Rallies. Freakin' Abstinence Rallies. How the hell do you come together to celebrate what’s not occurring? “Hello West Redwood! Are you ready to not have sex?” Have a rally, by all means, but taking time out from your busy not-having-sex schedule to not have sex with a whole bunch of people all at once makes no sense whatsoever.

Likewise, what do they do at Holocaust Denial Camp? Sit around the campfire singing songs about how nothing bad happened to Jews, gypsies and homosexuals in Europe in the Forties? Actually, scratch that. I don't want to make holocaust deniers look like harmless, fun-loving eccentrics. They're not. They are the ultimate, terrifying example of the way humans can subjugate their most basic epistemic capacities to hatred, and make themselves believe they're not even doing it.

Still, one thing I have to say for America: at the same time as Prussian Blue are being rolled out to draw small crowds of nutjobs to David Duke’s events, Rosa Parks got to lie in state in the Capitol. So maybe they’ll be strong enough to withstand “Back’n’da’Kitchen,” a pair of adorable young scamps who sing about disempowering women, and dreamy boy-band “NTSemITE!”