Most of the songs I write about are songs that I love, and which connect with history or society in a particular way.
This is a song I don’t like at all.
This is Laibach, an industrial rock band from Slovenia, although at the time they made this record it was part of Yugoslavia. Their name comes from the German name for Ljubljana which was occupied by the Nazis during World War Two.
The song, like many of theirs from this period, is apparently a comment on growing nationalism and militarism, a camp send up of growing nationalist movements.
The problem is that the video in particular doesn’t look like a camp send up, it looks like authoritarian nationalism, with perhaps enough tongue in cheek to allow them to pretend that they aren’t just far right nationalists. This tactic, a camp ironical embrace of fascism is a technique the new alt-right have perfected.
The record was hotly debated at the time, and I don’t think there was ever a consensus whether it is crypo-fascist or a send up of fascism.
In the end that debate didn’t really matter, because while we were arguing about a Laibach video elsewhere in Yugoslavia camps were being built, genocides planned.
I was reminded of the debate about Laibach while I watched people argue about Musk’s Seig Hiel, While we are debating the nature of his gesture elsewhere in America camps are being opened, immigrants rounded up.
Of course there is a huge difference between the USA today and Yugoslavia in the early 90s. But at the time we were arguing about Laibach the idea of Yugoslavia breaking up in a genocidal conflict was equally absurd.