Kiwi Farms

The term was first coined in the late '70s by Young National Front (YNF) organizers in Leeds, UK, hoping to counter the successful efforts of left-wing organizers who launched Rock Against Racism (RAR), with the goal of co-opting Punk to energize the youth. YNF operated a short-lived club called Punk Front, which featured several live-only bands that quietly broke up towards the end of the '70s. The idea for RAC lay moribund, but then came the Skinheads.

Street violence between Skinheads, both black and white, and Indians/Pakistanis was frequent to a point where "Paki bashing" entered colloquial use. With the increasing racial tensions, the National Front found a perfect opportunity to recruit from the nascent Skinhead scene.

Contrary to popular belief, Skrewdriver wasn't the first skinhead RAC band to exist since Ian Stuart wasn't involved in far-right politics until the beginning of the '80s. That title would go The Ovaltinees whose first release "British Justice" which features a neat little ditty called "Argentina", celebrating Britain's victory in the Falklands.


The band failed to gain much traction and quietly disbanded.

Then Skrewdriver came on the scene, rising out the ashes with a new line-up to produce "Hail the New Dawn". Thanks to Ian, the scene exploded and suddenly white power Oi! was an identifiable genre of music.

There's much more to cover, but since I'm keeping things as brief as possible, I'll defer you to The White Nationalist Skinhead Movement by Robert Forbes and Eddie Stampton, a book that delves into the finer details about dozens of bands the world's never heard of.

Since Ian Stuart's death, RAC has undergone several shifts in style and is generally used as an umbrella for any far-right, Third Position or Nationalist Skinhead music. Originally, the style was a mix of Hard Rock and Punk/Hardcore/Oi!. Older bands tend to be Hard Rock or Oi!/Punk whereas newer bands tend to be more oriented towards Hardcore or Metal. The music tends to be upbeat, frequently anthemic, rock with a hard edge - there are usually gruff vocals mixed with chanted/sung choruses. There are often prominent melodies which can be folky and/or triumphant. The songs generally have a focus on a triumphant sound, manifested through ballads, chanted choruses, and the folky melodies.

As you would surmise, RAC is distinctly anti-liberal and especially anti-left. Many bands are against Communism not only for economic reasons, but also from the humanism and liberal aspects of socialism. The irrelevance of race and/or nation in socialism is the salient point they're against in all their anti-left rhetoric. Consequently, most bands are explicitly White Nationalist despite the scene having spanned the entire globe with musicians hailing from the Anglosphere, the Americas and Europe.

Early on, RAC was strictly about British Nationalism. There's more than a fair number of '80s RAC bands that weren't necessarily Nazi and some never were in the course of their careers. As time went on, bands became much more openly Nazi, especially with Skrewdriver's later albums becoming more obvious in their references to the Third Reich and Norse Neopaganism.

Today, RAC is as much synonymous with Neo-Nazism as it is with White Nationalism.