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March 2007

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Prussian Blue

By Chip Berlet
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March 2007
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I n the film Cabaret , set just prior to World War II, there is a chilling scene where a cherubfaced young boy is framed in a tight close-up as he sings the lilting song “Tomorrow Belongs To Me” at an outdoor German café. The camera pulls back slowly to reveal him in the uniform of the Nazi youth. All but one person in the café joins in the song. 

Today, in the United States, we have the real thing: blonde and blue-eyed Lynx and Lamb Gaede, fraternal twins who perform as the musical group Prussian Blue. They began singing at white supremacist festivals at age nine. At age 11 the little darlings of the xenophobic Kulturkampf attended a rally in matching “Stop Immigration” T-shirts. 

Lynx and Lamb, now 14, told an interviewer that the most important social issue facing the white race was “not having enough white babies born to replace ourselves and generally not having good-quality white people being born. It seems like smart white girls who have good eugenics are more interested in making money in a career or partying than getting married and having a family.” These views are reflected in their tunes. One of their catchiest titles is “Aryan Man Awake.” 

Lynx thinks “immigration is changing our schools because the Mexicans’ behavior is rubbing off on the white kids. Like spray painting and laziness and bad grammar.” Lamb thinks the U.S. should give “nonwhites an area to stay if they were born here and if they haven’t done anything wrong. If they are here illegally or if they moved here then send them back.” 

For several years the Prussian Blue homepage linked to the website of National Vanguard, variously described by watch groups as white supremacist or neo-Nazi. “If you tolerate multiracialism, then your children will suffer and die,” warns Kevin Alfred Strom, founder of National Vanguard, one of several white supremacist groups posing as “white nationalists” who only want equal rights for white people. Their allies and apologists constantly patrol Wikipedia changing the terms “neo-Nazi” and “white supremacist” and “racist” to “white nationalist.” Ken Toole, co-director of the Montana Human Rights Network, sees Prussian Blue as part of a campaign to de-toxify white supremacy, by masking bigotry as “white pride” and using a softer approach as a recruitment tool. 

For groups like National Vanguard, pride is linked to genetic racial nationalism. Strom is angry because, while “Mexican immigration threatens the survival of the White race and White civilization,” most anti-immigrant groups hide behind cowardly platitudes like “overcrowding,” “assimilation,” and “the failure of new immigrants to learn English.” National Vanguard, along with the National Socialist Movement, Volksfront, and similar white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups, has eclipsed the KKK in the role of preserving the precious bloodline of the “white race” in the United States. 

Lynx and Lamb are the poster sisters for the right wing of the anti-immigrant Aryanist revival. One of their “official” websites proclaims: “In a day and age when most bands are working hard to remain within self-imposed limits of Politically Correct Thought, Prussian Blue pushes the envelope. Within the fold of White Nationalist Rock, one of the only true alternatives to the corporate music and recording business, these two little girls have filled thousands of their fans with love and hope for the future.” 

White fans, that is. Prussian Blue sings one song co-written by David Lane, who crafted the “14 Words” slogan popular among neo-Nazis: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.” Here’s a snippet from some Prussian Blue lyrics: 

If the White men won’t battle for 
   Life and Race 
The women and children, 
   the Terror will face…. 

Catchy. Alas, Lane can’t attend a live Prussian Blue concert since he is currently serving a 190-year sentence for his role in the machine-gun killing of Denver talk jock Alan Berg in his driveway in 1984, after Berg denounced white supremacists on his radio program. 

Prussian blue is the name of a specific color of blue in oil painting—the same color as the sparkling northern European eyes shared by Lynx and Lamb. Prussian blue is also the name of one of the residues left in gas chambers after the Nazis used the cyanide formulation Zyklon-B to murder the victims of their genocidal visions at the Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps. A group that markets racist and Nazi clothing on the website hired the twins to model their T-shirts with smiley faces—modified to include Hitler’s iconic mustache and cowlick. 

The sisters are now trying to overhaul their image. What appears to be their newer mainstream website does not have frontpage links to the National Vanguard; or a website promoting the biological superiority of the “white race”; or holocaust denial books. 

Last summer Lynx and Lamb moved from California to Montana along with their mother, April Gaede, and their stepdad, Mark Harrington. When local human rights activists put up signs in their windows proclaiming “No Hate Here,” some received harassing phone calls and letters. The Montana Human Rights Network received a death threat that asked “Have you ever wondered what a high-caliber rifle bullet would do to a human head?” 

A pril Gaede is encouraging other white supremacists to move to Montana where everything is whiter and brighter. According to April’s post on the Stormfront website: “The local cost of living is 7% lower than the US average and the demographics are 96+% white…the local schools are 98+% white, most of the people claim Germanic or Scandanavian ancestry.” 

April only wants clean-cut racists though: “I am not interested in helping anyone who wants to come up here to cause trouble, act like a Hollywood Nazi or make a nuisance of themselves to the locals. This is a nice community with polite, kind people who still hold true many of our races [sic] best ideals of family, honor and justice.” 

This caveat apparently leaves out Prussian Blue’s former ally Kevin Alfred Strom, who took a leave from leading National Vanguard last summer. Strom was arrested in Virginia in January 2007 on child pornography charges. 

Chip Berlet is senior analyst at Political Research Associates, www.publiceye. org. This article grew out of the author’s report for the Nation Online on anti-immigrant activity by white supremacists. For more on Prussian Blue see Montana Human Rights Network (www.mhrn.org). 
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