NAZI PUNKS FUCK OFF!

So as a (lower-case l) liberal-thinking lady in a free(ish) nation, I don't regard censorship all that highly. I don’t like it when books are banned, and I like it when I see folks marching down the main street, yelling about things that get their collective goat.
BUT (yes, there's a but), as a general rule I don’t like to support neo-nazi psychopaths.
Herein lies the conflict of this anecdote.
The record shop that I work in is independent, and is no stranger to controversy.  Around the Bjelke era, there was a showdown with the police over albums that had 'rude' words in them.

But we draw the line at racist arseholes.  For some reason, though, these said arseholes seem to think they have allies in us.  I have personally been asked to order in skinhead bands’ CDs on several occasions.  I’m not talking about skinheads that just like to wear combat boots, but skinheads that like to wear combat boots so they can smash skulls.

On one occasion the gentleman that I served wanted to order in a CD by Screwdriver, probably the most prominent neo-nazi group.  I told him, politely as I could, that we didn’t order in that kind of music.

            ‘Why not?’ he said.

            ‘Well,’ I told him. ‘It is pretty overt white supremacist music, and we don’t feel comfortable supporting those kinds of bands, or selling their releases.’

            He looked confused.  His brow furrowed beneath his shaven dome, which was embellished with a pretty lil’ swastika.

            ‘Okay,’ he eventually said. ‘Fair ’nuff.’ He still looked deeply perplexed.

                        To this day, I find this reaction bizarre.  Did he really not know that songs like ‘White Power’ may be considered offensive to some? Did he just rock a swastika in the same way some people wear Ramones shirts without having ever heard their music? He seemed so clueless, and really not that upset by my dismissal. Maybe he was undergoing an American History X-style transformation, and I was just one element in his ultimate redemption.

            His reaction was slightly uncommon.  Generally these types get aggressive, at which point I call on my boss to give ‘em the hard line.

            Regardless, I haven’t had a request for any of that music in a few years, which, on one hand is great.  It may suggest that hard-core racists either don’t exist in such numbers anymore, or that society won’t accept their presence so they are in hiding.

            But – slight tangent alert - a cynical part of me sees the reactions to asylum seekers drowning at sea, reactions that are cloaked in economic rationality, or fears of cultural annihilation (what culture?), reactions that are at their heart deeply xenophobic, and I wonder: maybe racism today is less honest or overt, but it’s no less present.