AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE BURDI, EX-LEADER OF RAHOWA
Veriyhteys (Blood Connection / Bloodline) is the information channel of the Finnish counterculture. Our collective focus mainly on Finnish music and politics, but often in the European context. This is why it’s justified to publish this interview in English because it has interest to all white activists.
Mr. Burdi, I interviewed you about 22 years ago and much has happened since then. Those who were in the movement at that time are particularly interested in knowing what you think about things now. This year, Rahowa’s third album Ueberfolk, as well as an interview with FSN from Germany in the early summer, has attracted general interest. However, we haven’t heard much about you since the last decade, so why did you decide to give interviews right now?
I have never decided to stop giving interviews, and have been open to questions from movement people since my departure. In fact, I have refused dozens of mainstream media interviews and only been willing to do alternative interviews over the past 20 years. I have done a few interviews during that time.
The “RAHOWA” release of Überfolk material is a bootleg, released without my permission, using demo tracks that had been circulating the internet. I no longer release material under the RAHOWA name. The actual Überfolk debut album will be a double LP and will be released in early 2018.
What do you think about the interviews that you gave after leaving the movement? Were they proper or did you ever feel that the mainstream media is using you and removing things from the context to spread their own agenda?
The mainstream media ALWAYS spins everything to fit their own agenda. There were so many things I said taken out of context that it led to my decision to never do a mainstream interview again. As a result, I haven’t done an MSM interview since 2003.
That having been said, I did make many statements that were considered shocking and provocative at the time, and most of my criticism is with people who are motivated by hatred of the world and life itself within the white peoples movement. I do not accept these self-styled leaders – I was once one too – who claim to speak for white people yet who do so in a way totally misrepresenting our ethos, values, traditions, and good qualities. My leader overflows with love for his people, for his culture. He loves children, and animals, and isn’t capable of brutality. He believes in the laws of nature, acts in harmony with dharma, and is a humble servant of God and his fellow man.
When you left the movement you didn’t proclaim it as an enemy or started a career as a multiculturalist Leftist agitator. What do you think about the American White Power musicians who, after leaving the band, were openly proclaimed enemies of the White movement and began to preach anti-white ”anti-racism” and multiculturalism such as Christian Picciolini of Final Solution & White American Youth and Arno Michaelis of Centurion?
I can accept that Christian and Arno have become left-wing in their views, as long as they can accept that I never stopped being right-wing. You don’t have to be leftist to be “anti-hate” or “non-racist”. I also accept that especially in the U.S., there are many violent idiots parading around as part of the “white movement”. These people deserve to be criticized for their views and conduct in strong terms. What I find hard to accept, however, is the idea that all organizing by white people for their group interests is “racism” and “hate”, which conflates massive historical forces into a narrow psychological “defect of humanity.” It characterizes all white group identity and organizing as “hate”, which is a massive mistake. If the only way that white people are permitted by society to organize for their group interests is categorized as hatred, then a psychological siphoning occurs where only people sufficiently frustrated enough to wear these labels and the resulting social stigmatism step forward. It’ s a sort of anti-selection. Then these elements create a doomsday mentality where there is no recourse other than mutual destruction.
Let’s talk about your early political and musical career. Before joining the Rahowa in the early 1990s, you worked actively in the Church of the Creator (COTC) movement. What sort of organization was it about? Have you ever met Ben Klassen (1918–1993), the founder of the movement? It looks like the movement is still working in the world, albeit with the name Creativity Movement.
Yes, the Creativity Movement was my entry into the white movement. I met Ben Klassen and spent a few months working at his North Carolina “school for gifted boys”, along with Ron McVan of Temple of Wotan. The organization was anti-Christian, but also anti-spiritual, atheistic, and full of hatred for the real and perceived enemies of the white race. Ben Klassen had a good idea about creating a religion for white people, but he was far from the right man for the job. His own personal worldview was so absent of spiritual light that this was reflected in the cold, clinical, materialistic view of race and culture espoused in the White Man’s Bible. He tore down the Christian faith, but put in it’s place something void of spiritual depth, more ghastly and self-defeating.
Ben Klassen defended healthy lifestyles and wrote also health books like Salubrious Living, co-written with Arnold Devries. As far as I know you’ve been a vegetarian for a long time. What kind of lifestyle do you recommend?
I have been vegetarian/vegan for 26 years, since the age of 21. I stop short of calling myself totally vegan because I eat 2-3 eggs per week, laid by my own chickens. But I don’t believe eating dairy is healthy for anyone, unless it is raw milk from an organic cow treated with compassion and care, and even then only for people who are growing – young people and athletes. Dairy causes mucous production in the body: one teaspoon of dairy produces one cup of mucous in the bowel. This mucous clogs up sinuses and lungs, as the body must then expel it. I recommend a lifestyle of yoga, meditation, daily walks, strength training (best to do push-ups, chin-ups, lunges, and jumping, minimize the dumbbells/barbells), and eat an all-organic diet. If you eat meat it should be wild game, or 100% grass fed. It is imperative that grains & cooking oils be organic, as they are frequently laden with deadly health-destroying glyphosate (Monsanto’s RoundUp herbicide), which fortunately is not used in Europe (to my knowledge.)
One of the best interviews about you after the break up of Rahowa appeared in the magazine called Punk Planet (issue 48, March & April 2002). It reveals that while you were working at COTC, you were also dealing with world-famous revisionist Ernst Zündel, who died very recently (August 5, 2017). You said in that interview: ”I was at Ernst Zündel’s one time and there was some mention of skinheads, and Zündel was spewing some very negative attitudes about skinheads – that was the first time I heard about them”. In the same magazine you also said that you heard first time Skrewdriver from the tape that Zündel had received from one of his supporters. It seems that Skrewdriver got you to set up Rahowa. Obviously Zündel had a great impact on you at that time. What kind of thoughts these comments and facts are raising now?
Ernst Zündel was very opposed to the whole skinhead scene, as were the dozens of Germans I met as a volunteer at his Samisdat headquarters. In fact, Ernst finally threw me out of his home in 1991 after I formed RAHOWA. He heard the lyrics to the first album, Declaration of War, and said that I was dishonouring the memory of Hitler and the Third Reich by spreading a false Hollywood Nazi image that had nothing to do with National Socialism. He said that the system would take me out as a fall guy after building me up, and that I would bring nothing but pain and suffering with my music. That encounter with Ernst and the loss of my connection with him over my lyrics was one of the many signposts along my journey that made me reject the race-hate. In fact, in 1994 while running Resistance Records, I made a decision not to republish RAHOWA’s first album due to it’s lyrics, and 1995’s Cult of the Holy War was a great departure from the tone of the first album.
Organizing the White Power concerts was certainly difficult at this time. How many gigs did you do? Did you ever play outside of your hometown Toronto or outside of Canada?
RAHOWA played about 15 concerts in total. Once the band got bigger it was near impossible to play a show without violence and the opposition of the police. So at that point we focused on releasing records and distributing them. Live shows always had terrible sound systems, got moved around as venues always cancelled, got pelted with eggs and rocks by Antifa. In general, it was a complete frustration. We played most of our shows in Toronto and the cities nearby. Travelling with the band was damn near impossible, crossing borders was a pain.
How would you compare your first cd Declaration of War (1993) to your second album Cult of the Holy War (1995)? Although the second album is more respected, I know that your first release have also its own fans.
Musically, they are very different albums. Declaration of War is more RAC style music, written as sing-along anthems, good music in the Skrewdriver style. Cult of the Holy War was a more serious record. It attempts to capture the history and emotions the European people in more epic and classical musical creations.
I have read that Resistance Records started by accident. Thanks go probably to legendary French RAC publisher Rebelles Européens. Could you tell the readers about the birth history of Resistance Records?
Rebelles Européens signed RAHOWA after hearing our 4 song demo, in around 1990. They mailed us a money order for a few thousand dollars, to pay our recording expenses. About 6 months later we shipped them our finished recording of Declaration of War, and it was return by the post office with a note “box closed. no forwarding address.” Their phone number was no longer in service. We had an album, but no label to release it. So originally Resistance was formed to only sell RAHOWA, but it grew fast from there.
By the way, how did the Resistance Records cds sell? Did quality and sales match each other?
From 1993 to 1997, Resistance sold approximately 100,000 CDs combined from all bands. There was a definite connection between quality of production and musicianship and sales. Top sellers were Bound For Glory, Fortress, No Remorse, Berserkr, Centurion, and RAHOWA.
Looking back, which Resistance Records discs you would have wanted to leave unpublished?
I wouldn’t have published the albums with racial epithets. So, no first RAHOWA, no Aggravated Assault, Centurion or The Voice. More Fortress, Bererkr, Bound For Glory, and bands like Shutdown.
When you finished Resistance Records, you sold it to the grey eminence of the American extreme right named Willis Carto (1926–2015). He sold the company to another great actor of the movement, Dr. William L. Pierce (1933–2002). Was the trade with Carto profitable for you? Because you left the movement, did you see the moral problem that the buyer of your record company will continues to spread ideology that you discarded?
Well your question is valid, but only because your timeline has some blind spots. I was paroled in 1997 with 3 years of legal conditions that prevented me contacting anyone in the movement, or dealing with the affairs of Resistance Records, or even seeing band RAHOWA members. I had to comply with these conditions, because they were eager to throw me back in jail. It was during this time that the record company was sold to Carto and then to Pierce. An associate of mine took care of the negotiations and the transactions, and I was not involved nor accepted any funds. But at this time I had not yet “left the movement”, I was just on forced hiatus. However, later on I was indifferent to what Resistance was releasing, it was just a brand at that point and bore little resemblance to the label I formed a decade previously.
On the interview that you gave to German YouTube channel FSN you said that you still value bands like Bound for Glory. However, you don’t like hatecore bands like Angry Aryans that spread violent racial hatred. What annoys you in hatecore bands?
When you use low-vibration lyrics, when you highlight the lowest common denominator amongst your real & perceived opponents; you lower your own vibration to that level. Better instead to cultivate the highest aspect of your spiritual expression, and to also cultivate this even within your enemies. An Aryan is a spiritual warrior, a noble warrior, not a hater.
Why is there no more record companies in North America like Resistance Records in the 1990’s?
I think the better question is where are the good bands with the good records? The labels really only exist because music needs releasing. In today’s scene it’s like the labels need to build the musical acts themselves, which is totally inorganic. When a band has a following they are a good financial risk to at least make enough sales to cover expenses.
What was your main reason to break Rahowa and leave the movement in 1997? It was not just a political decision?
People make easy interpretations that my time in jail had something to do with my leaving the movement. The only way that it did was my parole and probation forbid me from any contact with the movement for three years. My “change of heart”, my soul-searching, my rational examination of my life and ideas, occurred during these three years. My reasons for leaving were not political, nor did I reject all of the ideas of the movement philosophy. But I set out in my mind to follow myself, “to thine own self be true”, and felt even that if I was a one-man movement, I was only going to belong to the type of movement that believes in the brotherhood of man, believes that we European people can be masters of our own lives, have our own land and celebrate our culture, and be friendly ambassadors of our way of life. I believe that when a person develops a connection to their spiritual core, that this more accepting and inclusive Weltanschauunng emerges organically. Indeed, the entire challenge is to strip away the prejudices of the modern ideas of “progress” and nihilism, and to reveal the law of nature manifest in the individual and in the nation.
What do you think about the criticism you received when you left the movement?
I was under no false impressions that people in the movement would understand me or wish to still be my friends after my departure. But I felt that what I had to say was worth putting everything I had built on the line and detonating it. For the most part, however, I just moved on with my life and disconnected myself from the movement, and also from all of mainstream and sub-culture life. I eventually moved out of the city, to the country, no television, no news websites, I just totally turned off the world and went inward for about 15 years, to discover within myself what was missing, to find answers to my spiritual seeking. I did a huge amount of reading during this time.
When and why did you get to jail? Were you in contact with the Aryan Brotherhood during the sentence? What was it like to be in jail? Now when Finland has become “multicultural”, the prisoners have also segregated into different ethnic groups. Apparently, this is more rule in Canada and the United States than an exception?
Canadian jails during the 1990s were quite easy, and if you minded your own business people left you alone. There was no Aryan Brotherhood where I was. When I arrived in jail they created an all-white dormitory for me, so that there was no racial incidents. So the rest of my fellow prisoners were happy to have me, as it meant we got to play the music and watch the TV shows we wanted, and that the whole dorm was homogeneous culturally. So we entertained ourselves with playing card tournaments, hockey pools to bet on NHL games, even a little bit of skit acting. That was my time inside, four months of bad food, smokey air, and some temporary friendships.
What happened to Rahowa’s former members? Do they still think in the same way as in the 1990s? How do other members react to your departure?
I’m in touch with the original lineup from Cult of the Holy War, with the exception of Jon Latvis. Jon and I do not talk, but I wish him well in life. They did not agree with my departure, nor did I give them a personal explanation at the time. They have in time mellowed out, and we are on good terms. The keyboardist Carl Alexander is still one of my closest friends.
Are you still in contact with old band members and political comrades who were active in that time?
I did not stay in touch with any of the pro-white musicians from the old scene, however I did continue to correspond with many political comrades. I received hundreds or maybe thousands of emails from people in my decade after leaving, many of them friendly, many hostile. Keep in mind that 99% of the people that came through the white power movement ended up leaving it for many of the same reasons I did, but many of these people retain a core idea of racial identity and cultural protection. I never tried to lecture people or change their thinking. I was intellectually honest with them and just explained my thinking. Even when people wrote angry emails, I would always respond with kindness, and that usually turned the conversation into something productive.
At the turn of the millennium, you founded a multiracial band called Novacosm. What was the idea and purpose of the band? Was it an ideologically multiculturalist band?
When I put together Novacosm I just wanted to do a non-political musical project, to write songs about my experiences and ideas. It is ironic that it became a political statement on it’s own, having a multicultural lineup, but that was never the intent. The intent was to spend time with some great musicians who also happened to be excellent human beings, to write some songs, and play a few shows, and have fun. We did some recordings but never crafted the sound we had envisioned.
Why did you want to record in 2007 the new Rahowa material, now published as Uebervolk cd? Had the songs been made already in the 1990’s? Did you think that Rahowa’s story has not ended yet? And did you give a permission to Rage Records to publish that material?
Calling any of these songs “new Rahowa material” is just a total misrepresentation. None of these songs were co-written with any Rahowa members. All of these songs were written post-1997, and the vast majority of them were written from 2007-2017. I did not give Rage Records permission, nor did they request it, and they released demo tracks in the half-stages of development. Am I angry about it or do I worry about losing money or anything like that? No. My only objection is artistic (the songs were not recorded properly for a release) and the mis-labelling of the material as Rahowa. The new band is called Überfolk, which is a different spelling, and that will help clear some of the confusion and help separate the real release from the demo song bootleg.
Ueberfolk cd was supposed to be Rahowa’s third release already in the 1990’s. The musical concept then went under the name “Experimental Neofolk”, so the album that released in this year does not deviate much from that label . Are you satisfied with the album?
Actually the Überfolk project was going to be a side project to Rahowa, released as a separate band name. Rahowa’s third album was to be entitled “The Iron Dream”. Yes, the musical style continues with the intended neofolk direction, although the lyrics are quite different than they would have been, although still exploring similar themes.
The booklet of the new album tells that in the 1990’s Rahowa was planning to create a fourth album titled “The Iron Dream”. Is this true? What kind of music it would have been?
As said previously, The Iron Dream would have been the name of the third RAHOWA album. We really liked the combination of classical music, folk and metal, and although many bands have attempted this and done it well, the musical vision of The Iron Dream is something that I haven’t heard previously, even in the two decades following Cult of the Holy War. At least not that I’ve heard.
What happened to the old unreleased Rahowa songs? Did you offer these songs to the other wp / rac bands?
There weren’t many unreleased songs, but there was a scrapbook full of lyrics, maybe 15-20 ideas, some not very complete. I sent these lyrics to Nordland Records in Sweden, Saga used some of them. I wrote the lyrics to the song “Camp of the Saints” that Saga and her band wrote the music to. “I sit and pour the finest wine, into a crystal glass of mine, with the Brandenburg concerto keeping time. A little farewell toast to give, to a culture with no will to live, the Western world adrift amidst the flood.”
Have you listened to versions of other bands from Rahowa’s songs? What is your opinion about them?
For the past 20 years, I have totally turned off the modern world. I used the internet for some business, but not much. I don’t have cable television, don’t read newspapers or even the news. Believe it or not, I hadn’t even heard of Black Lives Matter or the European migrant crisis until about September 2016. I was surprised to see almost two million views for Saga’s version of Ode to a Dying People. Then I discovered dozens of other versions of Ode that I didn’t know existed. Some of them are really great too. As I wrote it originally on acoustic guitar, it sounds best as a ballad or acoustically, in my opinion. But a notable mention must go to Vinterdis.
Have you followed or listened to nationalistic music in recent years? If so, what are your favourites?
Although I haven’t heard a lot of the various bands, to me there is nobody doing it better than France’s Les Brigandes. Great songs, entertaining music videos, and most importantly a true and honest cultural revival surrounding the group.
The part 2 of the interview will be out soon. Stay tuned!
(Edit: You can read part 2 from here)
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