 | V-Punk crash out |
  An attempt by a German neo-Nazi punk band to tour England has been stopped by anti-fascists reports David Williams.
An attempt by the V-Punk, a neo-Nazi punk rock band from Kiel in Northern German to tour the North East of England has been prevented by local anti-fascists acting in conjunction with Tyne and Wear Anti-Fascist Association (TWAFA).
V-Punk was formed in 1996 by lead singer Zeljko Topic, recently been released from prison after being convicted for people-trafficking. He was a pimp in a brothel known as “Puff Kiel”. When the police raided the brothel in July 2001, they discovered firearms and hand grenades. However, alongside Topic’s personal involvement with prostitution, V-Punk are active in the hardcore nazi and extreme right football hooligan circles in Schleswig-Holstein in Northern Germany. V-Punk have a long history of involvement with the nazi music scene in Kiel dating back to 2001 when their planned gig with Kraftschlag, a notorious nazi skinhead band led by convicted criminal Jens Arpe, was cancelled by the authorities.
Despite the setback, V-Punk continued its close associations with the nazi music scene. They contributed a track to a compilation CD entitled “Club 88” which was to serve as a fundraiser for Club 88, a notorious bar in Neumünster, then in financial straits. The “88” stood for the eighth character of the alphabet “HH” – “Heil Hitler”. Most recently, in January 2007, V-Punk played in Ditmarschen in northern Germany, at a concert organised by the nazi National Democratic Party (which has close links with the BNP) and the local fascist Freie Kameradschaft, better known as the “Ditmarschen National Action Front.” Outside the nazi music scene in Northern Germany V-Punk is completely isolated with the wider punk rock milieu refusing to have anything to do with the band or its poisonous politics.
After eagle-eyed local anti-fascists learned that, starting on 27 June, V-Punk were to embark on a tour of four mainstream venues in the North East, in Sunderland, Peterlee, Durham and Blyth, they swung into action, contacting the venues and support bands involved in the tour, alerting them V-Punk’s true nature. The support bands themselves were completely ignorant of the extremist political connections of the band and when informed were horrified. All threatened to pull out of the tour themselves unless V-Punk were dropped from the bill. The promoters, who had also been ignorant of the band’s politics dropped V-Punk immediately, despite protests from their agent and also closed down the band’s Myspace page which they had set up to promote the tour. The tour went ahead without V-Punk.
The V-Punk website, however, insisted that the tour was still going ahead leading to a flurry of last minute calls to venues who confirmed that the band were not and would not be playing the advertised venues. Indeed, although the V-Punk website insisted the tour was taking place no new itinerary was posted. With no details that the band had managed to secure new venues at this time Searchlight can only conclude that statement on V-Punk’s website was mere bravado designed to hide the embarrassing fact that anti-fascists in the North East had wrecked the first attempt forsome years by German nazis to tour Britain independently without the assistance of the Blood and Honour network.
Dieser Artikel erschien im Searchlight-Magazin 08/2007 |
