MMA AND STRAIGHTEDGE – NAZI PUNKS F**K OFF

On Oct. 24 the first ever professional Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) held in the Maryland since the state made it legal last year will take place at the 1 Mariner Arena in Baltimore. First off, congrats are in order for this finally happening. There is – or maybe was – an issue with this event, however. We received information that Doug Sonier (0-5-0) of Maryland “Skinheads” (MDS) was supposed to fight Former Maryland State Wrestling Champion Ryan Mackin that night, and that raised a few eyebrows. Here we had a particularly significant event in the history of MMA and a neo-Nazi was probably going to be a part of it. A look at the fight card however, lists Mackin as fighting someone else, so hopefully the promoters resolved the situation by removing him. Sonier, MDS and a few others in the WP circles are doing their damndest to be a part of this scene, and there are a lot of people playing dumb as hell about it. But not everyone. Choccy over at libcom.org wrote this a few months ago, and we thought it should be something we put here. In the meantime, we are going to see about Sonier’s status, because if by some stretch of the imagination he is going to fight, there are going to be some hugely pissed off MMA fans determined to make his record 0-6-0.

libcom.org

This is a just a rant about something that’s bugged me recently – the appearance of openly neo-nazi bands using straightedge as part of the platform for their poisonous message. I’d heard of boneheads aping straightedge in the last year or two – bands like Blue Eyed Devils and Total War had got discussed on a few punk and straightedge forums, universally the response was a big ‘fuck off’ to nazi bands aping straightedge.

Watching a repeat of National Geographic’s ‘American skinhead’ documentary (filmed in 2007 I think) alerted me to a few more neo-nazi hardcore bands; Tear Down and Beyond Sacred – both fucking abysmally as shit musically as they are politically. The show primarily centred on a Pennsylvania neo-nazi group, Keystone United (formerly Keystone State Skinheads, I’ll refer to them as KSS still). The group’s leader, Keith Carney, presents himself as a clean-cut, teetotal conscientious political activist, and has been pictured in a ‘kill your local drug dealer’ shirt – even picks up litter like a good little boy.

While straightedge bands have often had some pretty shit politics, they almost universally been anti-racist, and I remember in my late teens when I had started to check out the older ‘classic’ straightedge bands such as Minor Threat, and later ‘youth-crew’ bands like Youth of Today and Gorilla Biscuits, part of the appeal was the strong anti-racist message that came across.

Some late-80s straightedge kids had even organised to fight the rise of neo-nazis at hc/punk shows – FSU in Boston became famous for their physical confrontations with neo-nazis, but eventually descended into the mobbish gangsterism many anti-fascists affiliated with anarchism have been accused of.

The documentary reveals that Carney has spent time in prison for racist assaults and last year was on trial with fellow neo-nazis over another racist assault. In other segments he tells people that if they support homosexuality or immigration then ‘they should be afraid’ because KSS wants to put an end to that.

KSS were involved in counter-protests at rallies in support of Mumia Abu Jamal, and called for Mumia to be ‘put to death now’ and that he should ‘fry’. This prompted anti-racists to expose their activity at the rally. KSS had also been distributing flyers scape-goating minority communities for various murders.

A segment has Carney and his crew of Neanderthals distributing a flyer outside a baseball game – the flyer (not available on KSS site though) was an ‘American Jobs for American Workers’ flyer – not a kick in the arse off the flyers being distributed in the initial phase of this year’s Lindsey Oil Refinery strikes.

A portion of the documentary shows a bunch of boneheads and associates, including Carney training ‘MMA’ at their own specialised neo-nazi gym, complete with swastikas and assorted fascist paraphernalia on the walls. The ‘trainer’, Jason Tankersley (Maryland Skins), speaks about discipline and appears to be attempting to distance himself and his associates from the traditional image of the drunken nazi skinhead mob – he’s grown his hair out, eschews drugs, and has gone as far as to organise a booze-free St Patrick’s Day celebration (more on this idiocy in a bit). A little googling shows him as a typical bonehead, bomber-jacket wearing, swazi-flag-weilding bonehead.

I found out through another Libcom poster, that there was a reasonably high-profile pro-MMA fighter who was openly sporting a swastika tattoo and calling himself a ‘white nationalist’, Melvin Costa. The possibility of anarchist MMA fighter Jeff Monson going toe-to-toe to him was raised here, and while it’d be amazing to see Monson rip his head off, the huge weight discrepancy means it’ll probably never happen (Costa’s 205lb, Monson’s about 50lb heavier!).

When I’ve heard about white-power twats training MMA I’ve often wondered where the hell they’re allowed to train – I doubt racism would be tolerated in most gyms, and certainly any I’ve ever trained at have been pretty diverse in terms of make-up (black, white, asian, eastern european), even in Ireland. I’d like to think any gym I know would tell twats with swastika tattoos to go fuck themselves. I’ve seen the topic of whether openly neo-nazi fighters should be on MMA fightcards and it brought me to this article about one of Tankersley’s fighters (Doug Sonier) getting his ass handed to him. In the run up to the fight detailed, people had been cheering his opponent to end it quickly, and he duly did, putting the neo-nazi twat out in the first round – here he is having a little cry.

Lastly, that booze-free St Patrick’s Day celebration that Tankersley had organised. The footage of it’s pretty hilarious. Picture a fat nazi skin, playing acoustic guitar and putting on a faux-Irish accent, singing ‘The Wild Rover’, in a room with a ‘no booze allowed’ notice. The re-branding of white-power as ‘european heritage’ is laughable in its stupidity. ‘Tankersley’ isn’t even an Irish name, you stupid twat.

So yeah, basically just pissed that fucking twats are aping shit that I generally found to be positive and free of this racist shit. I wanna quote one of my favourite Gorilla Biscuits songs “Degradation”:

Tell me who’s pure. Tell me who’s right.
Tell me the last time you fought a fair fight.
A loser’s way to find some friends,
you look like a skin but that’s where it ends.
True, they’re always at our shows,
It doesn’t mean we fit in with their hatred and racism shit.
They ruin our name, you know what I mean.
Racial supremacists degrade ou
r scene.
–
You know you can kiss my ass before I read your zine.
There’s no good side to this white power scene.
Kids beat down for standing up.
Your turn will come because we’ve all had enough.
You look like kids we know. You’re not welcome here.
You don’t like music and we don’t like fear.
I guess it’s your right to be proud that your white.
Are you here for music or just to pick fights.
–
Don’t fool yourself cause you don’t fool me.
It’s not just blacks you hate, it’s everyone you see.
Rich, poor, young, and old, whoever’s in your way.
What a boring life, hating every day.
–
YOU’VE GOT NOTHING BUT HATRED!

Note: no fascist sites are linked to in this post