Germany’s WOLFxDOWN have incited a lot of controversy and protest after they posted their new t-shirt design (see below). Recent decades in music have seen a lot of controversy over the interpretation of history and the past. This new case once again proves two things: 1. a lot of people need to strongly educate themselves; 2. such debates are very often caught up in national identity and that’s how we argue about such issues. Check out the aforementioned design and read DIY Conpiracy’s commentary on the matter below.
Germany’s vegan straight edge band Wolf Down’s desire to be always radical in the political messages they distribute this time proved their extensive lack of education. The band’s freshly published merch showcases a hammer and a sickle next to the circled a – anarchist symbol, probably in a poor attempt to express anarcho-communism. Too bad the band didn’t go to school or read enough books to know the hammer and a sickle was certainly not related to this but was invented by people whose regime led to the deaths of millions and millions of people, a regime that actually murdered thousand of anarchists worldwide.
The crushing of Makhnovists, the Kronstadt Uprising, etc. are just a few historical examples of how the Bolshevik regime has always been in opposition of any attempts to bring about a social revolution in a truly libertarian sense. Here in Bulgaria thousands of anarchist and (non-communist) anti-fascists have been murdered, imprisoned, sent to labour camps, disappeared, and their families repressed by the Bolshevik regime after 1945. The same fate followed countless of antiauthoritarian anarchists, writers, teachers, fighters, etc. in the Soviet Union itself and all the other countries in the Eastern Bloc.
Just after the Bolshevik coup here in 1945 the Federation of Anarchist Communists in Bulgaria (FAKB) used to have a congress in the capital Sofia, but communist militia arrested all 90 delegates and put them into forced labour camps. The next annual congress of the FAKB in 1946 had to take place clandestinely. In 1948, the last mass round-up of anarchists netted 600 militants who were sent to concentration camps such as Cuciyan (near Pernik, called by its inmates the “Caresses of Death”), Bogdanovol (called the “Camp of Shadows”), Nojarevo, Tadorovo and Bosna. By that date, hundreds had been executed and about 1,000 FAKB members sent to concentration camps where the torture, ill treatment and starvation of veteran (but non-communist) anti-fascists – some of whom had fought fascism for almost 30 years – was almost routine. Anarchist prisoners were singled out and worked to death, being forced to work 36-hour shifts compared to the 12-16-hour shifts of other inmates. A partial list of 33 detained anarchists released that year by those working underground in Bulgaria is revealing in terms of its class composition: eleven school and university students; four urban anarcho-syndicalist workers including a technician; four teachers including a schools inspector; four rural workers (remnants of the Vlassovden syndicalist movement); three print-workers; two journalists including Georgi Kurtov (Karamikaylov), the often-detained editor of Rabotnicheska Misal; a librarian; and several others whose occupations are not given. The youngest whose age was given was 21, presumably politicised under fascism, and the oldest 49, the tobacco worker Manol Nicolov, who had initiated Vlassovden syndicalism in 1930. Most had been imprisoned or even sentenced to death by the fascists, three were former guerrilla fighters, and one had been involved in a military conspiracy against the fascists. The Bolshevik regime has nothing to do with the anarchist communism of Kropotkin and Soviet Union is just as a totalitarian state as the Nazi Germany. As the famous Bulgarian anarchist Jacque Grancharoff says:
The dark veil of communism used to entomb anarchism was also the same that buried … genuine communism and all revolutionary hopes for the emancipation and liberation of the downtrodden.
Dear Wolf Down, please go and hide somewhere and tell your fanbase this was a huge mistake and you’re canceling your future tours so you can go back to school. Otherwise we’ll be eagerly looking forward to you putting out a USSR (CCCP) t-shirt or maybe a one with swastika? It’ll suit your radical politics, yes.
Fore more info, please visit http://gulaganarchists.wordpress.com/
Here’s another commentary showing the disappointment:
So it seems the WOLF x DOWN camp is never a dull and boring one. I have ran into some of the internet banter earlier this year and I can repeat myself – hardcore kids need to read more books. The members of this band included. Probably the members of this band mainly, so they can at least try and educate their pretty fucking stupid fanbase. We can debate probably for weeks about the real meaning of the hammer and sickle and the true essence of communism, but what this band seems to forget: the imagery used on their merchandise is the very same imagery that’s been used to send millions of people to their senseless deaths. I couldn’t care less normally of a below average band and how they think they should market themselves for financial gain, but we’re talking about the very same group of individuals, who often like to play judge, jury and executioner from their high horses of morality. Renegades? What renegades, stop fucking kidding me… / Zoltan Jakab
