Wade Michael Page was steeped in neo-Nazi ‘hate music’ movement

Whatever caused Wade Michael Page to massacre worshipers at a Wisconsin Sikh temple on Sunday may never be known. But this much is clear: For at least a decade, he had been steeped in a neo-Nazi “hate music” scene that espouses white power and racial superiority and occasionally promotes violent acts against people of other races and religions.

The existence of this music subculture surprised many Americans, but law enforcement agencies and civil rights organizations that monitor hate groups have been paying attention to these groups and their followers since the genre began to emerge in the United States in the early 1980s. The Anti-Defamation League estimates that there are approximately 100 to 150 active or semi-active bands that perform and release such music in the United States.

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(Myspace.com/via REUTERS) - Wade Michael Page, seen in this undated picture from the MySpace page for End Apathy, was a founder of that band.

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Civil rights group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, says Wisconsin shooting suspect Wade Michael Page was a member of the most violent parts of the white supremacist scene: the racist, skinhead music scene.

Aiming to energize followers and intimidate others, many of these bands boast names that favor shock over subtlety — Jew Slaughter, Grinded Nig, Angry Aryans, Ethnic Cleansing. Page, a guitar player and singer, was once a member of 13 Knots, a name that refers to the number of knots in a noose.

“The main theme of these groups is to create anger and direct it toward perceived enemies: Jews, blacks, other minorities,” says Mark Pitcavage, director of investigative research at ADL, who has been tracking hate music since the early 1990s. The music, he adds, is also intended to “create a group sense, praising or glorifying skinheads or white supremacists like themselves.”

The music these bands play takes various styles, but the most prevalent are racist variations of some of rock’s most aggressive forms, such as Oi!, an early punk style that emerged in Britain in the 1970s; hard-core punk; and death metal, a particularly bludgeoning style of heavy metal punctuated by storming guitars and guttural howls.

Concerts and festivals are held periodically across the country, the most well-known of which is Hammerfest, a concert put on by the Hammerskins, a white supremacist skinhead organization that is actively involved with white power music. (Although many followers of white power bands are commonly called skinheads, there are also skinheads who are anti-racist. They are often referred to as SHARPs, which is short for skinheads against racial prejudice.)

End Apathy, a band that Page founded, had released songs on a Maryland-based record label, Label 56, that also distributed recordings by dozens of white power bands from the United States and Europe, including such groups as Bound for Glory, Luftwaffe Raid, Youngland, Skrewdriver, Definite Hate, Children of the Reich and Stormtroop 16.

Page may have been involved in organizing and promoting a white power concert in March in Richmond, according to postings on Stormfront.org, one of the most active white supremacist online forums, made by a person under the name End Apathy.

On its Web site Monday, Label 56 distanced itself from the Wisconsin shooting and removed all End Apathy content. One of the label’s owners, Clemie Richard Haught Jr., did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A statement on the label’s Web site said: “please do not take what Wade did as honorable or respectable and please do not think we are all like that.”