In the Heart of Darkness

This happened on February 20th, 2010.

All names have been changed to protect the innocent.

I knew this was going to be a terrible idea, even outright dangerous.

But let’s start at the beginning. At work, I had a colleague named Jens who always wore black clothes. Occasionally, his shirts would have a black sun logo, a symbol associated with the SS and neofascism. He would sometimes wear New Balance sneakers, a brand of shoes popular with neofascists because of the prominent letter N, which they use as a code for “Nationalismus” or “Nazi”. In Germany, symbols of illegal organisations, such as the Nazi Party or the SS, are illegal to wear, so there is a whole body of codes, like the number 88 or wearing Alpha Industries shirts, their logo being by chance reminiscent of the illegal SA

Be that as it may, Jens was a decent guy, never talked about his political views, and left the minorities at work – blacks, jews, muslims – alone. We even befriended him, not like his quasi assistant Mark, who was openly right winged but also a bit simple and just 20 years old, not that that excuses such a worldview. Now, Jens would sometimes talk with my office mate David and me about music, as we all liked weird subcultural stuff like death metal or industrial. One day, Jens told David, who is Jewish but not practicing, that he was going to have a neo folk party at his place, a suburb of the town where we lived.

For those who don’t know neo folk, it’s atmospheric music with a slight folk touch associated with the gothic movement and heavily infiltrated by neofascists. In fact, it’s one of the music genres identified with nazis, in this case more the “intellectual” ones, not the nazi skinheads. I think I had never listened to neo folk before, but I decided it would be a really stupid idea to go there, so I invited myself to the party, put on a black t-shirt with an anti-American slogan, and met David and Mark at the main train station to ride to the suburbs.

After a long walk past a brothel and a lot of snow, we reached Jens’ apartment in a small house just outside the city limits. Jens, wearing a black shirt and tie with a clip showing the black sun, opened and smiled. He had been drinking since four in the afternoon and it was eight PM. As expected, his appartment was rather conservatively furbished, there was a small wooden train spelling “Jens” above the TV, pictures from the wedding, and apart from a huge black flag with the iron cross surrounded by oak leaves and the TV with videos by Death in June or Boyd Rice, everything seemed normal. There were thirteen of us. Jens, his wife Anna, David, Mark, and I, two skinheads with girlfriends, one without, Anna’s teenage sister Conny and her boyfriend, and some weird guy I couldn’t place, apparently a truck driver.

 

Neo Folk Music Video, one without Swastikas

Jens introduced us to his friends and family and each of us got a horn for Odins Trunk (Odin’s Drink – honey beer) and Wikingerblut (Viking’s Blood – mead with cherry juice). Anna sat next to us and told us how exiting she thought it was that we listened to death metal and the band Deine Lakaien (David) or industrial and noise (me), just like her husband, because her own colleagues happened to be boring people who were only into what was on the radio. David, always the gentleman, said: “What I like about neo folk is that it’s not just music but also has some content to it.” “Yes, I like the nature and folk aspects”, Jens said. “And the Fatherland!”, Anna added. She walked on, David and I looked at each other, and giggled.

Later, we were standing in the kitchen checking out the good old German bread, when Conny started a very boring conversation with David about how awful work as a nurse had been. After one or two sentences, she started to rerpeat herself and it seemed that she wasn’t one of the brightest people at the party. Just when it got unbearable, Mark ran into the kitchen and shouted “There is a bird room!!!”

The bird room, Vogelzimmer in German, was just what the name suggests: A room with a bird cage for six parakeets, some more “bird furniture”, and that was it. Jens’s face turned red and he couldn’t tell us the names of the birds. He rather showed us the electric dog with the glowing green eyes and the dancing cow in the kitchen. It was time to get out some of that Kümmerling (herb liquor/ digestive). I also gave Jens a bottle of cheap Macedonian wine I still had from a trip there, which he commented with something about the singer of Deine Lakaien being from Macedonia.

It's easier to take Pictures of Skins when they are asleep...

 

I usually try to mix with the guests and not just hang around with the people I already know. So I sat next to one of the skinheads and we talked about our work – he was a carpenter – and I told him about Schokakola, the famous chocolate with coffee and cola nut that was already used in the War to stay awake. Funnily enough, his Nazi knowledge didn’t include that story.

Not being in a situation where they would have to prove themselves, there was no talk about politics whatsoever, they just sang one or two songs by the Nazi band Landser, and some song to the melody of Yellow Submarine about not being right wing. “Wir sind gar nicht Rechtsradikal, Rechtsradikal, Rechtsradikal.” I never knew that fascists where into irony, but David and I couldn’t stop laughing when these songs were sung.

Sometime around one AM, a neighbor showed up to complain about the music. Conny, who, like most of the people, was hopelessly drunk, decided it was a good idea to run upstairs and tell him that he was a boring party pooper, while Mark went missing. While everyone in the living room started a debate on how stupid Conny was in their opinion, David and I finally found our colleague lying on the floor in the guest room.

 

"David" beats "Mark" with a Pillow

He had just thrown up in the bathroom, because booze and pot didn’t mix well, and now he wanted to sleep. “No way!”, David shouted, “You have to make a move on that sister in law of Jens. You have to become his relative!” So he beat Mark with a pillow, while I noticed the rune pictures and the cabinet with an extensive fireworks collection in the room.

 

Prepared for Ragnarök?

Later, Jens made David drink some spicy sauce, but then he and I also had some of it, with bread. We turned on Body Count’s Evil Dick, a song mixing heavy metal and hip hop that I had last heard in 12th grade when we wanted to shock our English teacher. David and I discussed who at work was a MILF. It was almost like a normal party with a lot of drinking.

Around two thirty AM, most of the people had gone. The truck driver started some porn movies on the computer screen. Mark complained about muslims in Europe and that they should stay in their countries. Jens went to bed. Mark, David, and I still had half an hour before the next train would drive us to safety, so Anna sat next to us, because we were the last guests who weren’t sleeping. She seemed to be quite nervous, maybe because she couldn’t quite decide who or what we were. Suddenly she started complaining about how we hadn’t liked the music. Sure, right now, for chill out, we were listening to death metal, but before that, it had been her husband Jens who had DJed. So David told her that we liked neo folk and had asked many questions about the particular songs and bands. Anna said that she orignally was into techno, but had learned to love this kind of stuff after meeting Jens. It seemed to be a compromise between his taste for industrial and noise and the stuff she liked. She still seemed a bit uncomfortable, so we left when it was time and almost missed our tram at half past three.

 

The Leftovers

When we parted at the main train station, I put on my headphones and started listening to Asian Dub Foundation for a change. Mark would catch the wrong train and have an odyssee across the villages around our city. I was groggy for two days, because I am not used to alcohol. I am not sure if the whole party was worth it, but it certainly was something to remember.

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