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mama put my guns in the ground -- I can't use them anymore
July 17, 2011 8:02 AM Subscribe

...after enrolling in public school and moving to Montana — a predominantly white state, albeit one with a decidedly hippie-ish vibe — Lamb and Lynx decided they simply no longer believed what they’d been taught. Prussian Blue, five years later. Previously, previously.
posted by gerryblog (105 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite

What a great story. I was just trying to explain Prussian Blue to someone the other day and really couldn't make it make sense. I guess it didn't make a lot of sense to the girls, either. This article is good because it doesn't tie it all up in a simple narrative. They're 19, they grew up in a fucked up way, and now their lives and beliefs are complicated. I like that.
posted by Nelson at 8:09 AM on July 17, 2011

The girls turned out sort of awesome, albeit through some damn difficult times. I hope their health improves and they become happy, zany hippies whose minds have been to some pretty strange places.
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:10 AM on July 17, 2011 [4 favorites]

Good for them. It's got to be hard to come around to that kind of thinking when you're steeped in a community that's extreme to the opposite. Hopefully they can continue on and grow up awesome.
posted by rmd1023 at 8:10 AM on July 17, 2011

Pot cures racism!
posted by b1tr0t at 8:12 AM on July 17, 2011 [53 favorites]

As they toured Germany, Denmark and Czechoslovakia

No, I'm pretty certain they didn't.
posted by dunkadunc at 8:14 AM on July 17, 2011 [15 favorites]

“They’re 19,” [their mother] said. “I think when they have children of their own, they’ll come to the same conclusions I have.”

The big, inquisitive eyes of a newborn in one's arms. A baby taking her first steps across the living room. Those first words formed with the greatest of concentration. The first day of pre-school. The first report card.

Nothing like these moments to make you realize that the Zionist World Order is slowly building a mind control ray.
posted by griphus at 8:17 AM on July 17, 2011 [93 favorites]

Reading through the older threads, it's striking just how close delmoi came to the solution:

(Just to clarify, I said that there are those who would argue that taking children away from parents who believe in recreational marijuana use, not parents who indoctrinate their children, i.e. force them to smoke weed)

posted by gerryblog at 8:18 AM on July 17, 2011

I dunno. That seemed like a reporter looking for a happy ending when the reality is much more complicated. I'm glad they're no longer white supremacists, but boy does that sound like a not-fun situation. One of them still lives with, and is financially dependent on, her white supremacist mother, who has not changed her views and who believes that her daughters' change of heart is just a phase. I'm sure they still deal with the effects of having been very publicly associated with views that 99.99% of the American public finds really vile. (And it's got to be hard to hide that. They have distinctive names.) It sounds like there are a lot of things (bad health, limited education and job prospects) which are going to limit their ability to really move on. It's really heartening to hear that they're no longer espousing their former views, but I still worry that their parents really did a number on them.
posted by craichead at 8:19 AM on July 17, 2011 [10 favorites]

On a more serious note, I was weirdly touched by this story, almost to the point of tears. I vividly remember the original stories and threads about those girls and hoping something like this would happen, and now it has.
posted by gerryblog at 8:21 AM on July 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

That seemed like a reporter looking for a happy ending when the reality is much more complicated.

But you only know about the complicated reality in the first place because the reporter put it in the story. I really don't think that's a fair criticism of the piece.

In an event, it's a happy ending like any other happy ending -- happy, that is, until Westley relapses again, and Fezzik takes a wrong turn, and Buttercup's horse throws a shoe. There are a lot worse ways this story could have turned out.
posted by gerryblog at 8:25 AM on July 17, 2011 [3 favorites]

*ahem*

The neo-nazi scene is full of really screwed-up people and a surprising number of posers. What's abnormal is the people who stick with the skinheads and dress up funny movement. The ones that blend in with society tend to stay for life, but the more theatric, the less committed.
posted by warbaby at 8:28 AM on July 17, 2011

But you only know about the complicated reality in the first place because the reporter put it in the story.

Sure, but the story is framed as "former Nazi tween rockers have change of heart" not "former Nazi tween rockers break down crying because of stress of being forced by poverty and ill health to live with white supremacist mother."
posted by craichead at 8:30 AM on July 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

CVS: Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome: First, eww, and secondly, what a poor choice for a name of a drugstore chain.
posted by Gilbert at 8:32 AM on July 17, 2011 [9 favorites]

“There are dangerous people in White Nationalism that don’t give a f***,” Lamb added, “and they would do awful things to people who they think betrayed the movement. We’re stepping on eggshells.”

Every choice these girls made, and every choice they make now, should be seen in that light.
posted by ocschwar at 8:33 AM on July 17, 2011 [19 favorites]

This is a story of possibilities, and I wish them great luck.

(Although, even as a lover of western Montana - if it weren't for a complicated turn of events my family would be living in Whitefish right now - I have to say that Montana is not exactly a hotbed of multiculturalism. Not even close, even.)
posted by Benny Andajetz at 8:34 AM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

...asked whether the Holocaust happened, Lynx replied, “I think certain things happened. I think a lot of the stories got misconstrued. I mean, yeah, Hitler wasn’t the best, but Stalin wasn’t, Churchill wasn’t. I disagree with everybody at that time.”

Interesting after all the reversals.
posted by Huck500 at 8:51 AM on July 17, 2011 [4 favorites]

The girls turned out sort of awesome, albeit through some damn difficult times. I hope their health improves and they become happy, zany hippies whose minds have been to some pretty strange places.

They've been to Helena bucket.
posted by hal9k at 8:51 AM on July 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

Benny, as a former Montanan, that line about a "hippie-ish" Montana really set off warning bells for me, too. There are a couple of places (notably Missoula) were you could say that, but the state as a whole leans red.

I'm also not convinced that the girls are much better off in terms of how their thinking process works: For instance, asked whether the Holocaust happened, Lynx replied, “I think certain things happened. I think a lot of the stories got misconstrued. I mean, yeah, Hitler wasn’t the best, but Stalin wasn’t, Churchill wasn’t. I disagree with everybody at that time.”

That, along with a fascination for astrology and weed, sounds more like dropping out than changing your views.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 8:51 AM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Yes, ocshwar. And I thought this, too, was compelling:

During several of our conversations, [Lamb] burst into tears as she agonized about how to balance her love for her mother with her desire to let the world know that the girls have moved on.

These girls made a hard decision and I'm personally really proud of them for doing so.
posted by six-or-six-thirty at 8:51 AM on July 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

Huh, I lived in Montana for four years and - I am not exaggerating in any way - I can count the number of black people I saw on one hand. I rarely heard racist speech about blacks because there were none. Native Americans, OTOH ... a lot of people had plenty to say about them. Familiarity breeds contempt and all that.
posted by desjardins at 9:00 AM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm also not convinced that the girls are much better off in terms of how their thinking process works: For instance, asked whether the Holocaust happened, Lynx replied, “I think certain things happened. I think a lot of the stories got misconstrued. I mean, yeah, Hitler wasn’t the best, but Stalin wasn’t, Churchill wasn’t. I disagree with everybody at that time.”

That point of view is better-formed than Otherizing Nazi Germany, refusing to address Stalin's basically-equal villainy, and regarding Churchill as a secular saint. Allying ourselves with Stalin was the exactly right thing to do for that war, but the idea that Stalin didn't torture and kill comparable numbers of innocents is completely laughable. As for Churchill, he was a great leader, but all was not gumdrops and/or lollipops. Just ask Gandhi.

On the other hand, describing Hitler as being "[not] the best" makes me wish the next clause was something like "but oh, did he love to dance."
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:00 AM on July 17, 2011 [14 favorites]

Pot has also helped the twins rekindle the creative impulses they once channeled into their music. They’ve both taken up painting — astrological themes, mostly — and Lynx restores furniture. They hope to enroll in college, and intend to dedicate themselves to making medical marijuana legal in all 50 states.

Hah!

Pot and public education: the gateways to liberalism.
posted by codacorolla at 9:03 AM on July 17, 2011 [6 favorites]

Exactly Sticherbeast. And Ghandi wasn't all marshmallow and unicorns either, ask black South Africans.
posted by Not Supplied at 9:05 AM on July 17, 2011 [3 favorites]

Coming from her background admitting that certain things happened is doing ok for her age.

I don't know. I think that's actually kind of classic Holocaust revisionism, which is the lite, polite version of Holocaust denial. Sure, bad things happen, but bad things always happen during war, and the evidence for there being gas chambers is really not very good, and the Jewish media is blowing things way out of proportion, etc. etc. etc.
posted by craichead at 9:07 AM on July 17, 2011 [3 favorites]

I don't know. I think that's actually kind of classic Holocaust revisionism, which is the lite, polite version of Holocaust denial.

Coming from a 19 year old hotel chambermaid who is helping care for her post-cancer-treatment sister, I'll take it as an admission that she doubts the twaddle her mohter fed her, but has not had the time to come to anything approaching an education about it.
posted by ocschwar at 9:10 AM on July 17, 2011 [16 favorites]

I hear you, craichead, but considering their age and upbringing (and all the other crap life has thrown at them), I get the sense that they're on the way up, not the way down, when it comes to broadening their horizons.
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:12 AM on July 17, 2011

You also have to consider that Montana is a state wherein Holocaust education in public schools is not explicitly addressed. So who the hell knows if they have a grasp on what it is that was supposed to have happened outside of those vagaries.
posted by griphus at 9:16 AM on July 17, 2011

Say what you will about the tenets of national socialism, at least it's an ethos.
posted by scalefree at 9:18 AM on July 17, 2011 [4 favorites]

Sorry, saying "certain things happened" in response to the question "Did the Holocaust occur?" is at best an evasion. Now it's possible that they didn't want to go on record because of their mom, but they really didn't answer the question.

And saying "Churchill wasn't so great either" implies a moral equivalency that's just wrong. Yes, you can put Stalin in the same boat, but it's still begging the question.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 9:18 AM on July 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

Griphus, I attended public school in MT, and I learned about the holocaust. Just because it's not written into state law doesn't mean that the state is run by deniers.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 9:20 AM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Someone needs to update their Wikipedia page.
posted by k8t at 9:25 AM on July 17, 2011

Have you attended public school since the institution of No Child Left Behind? The entire concept of "public school education" has undergone a massive revision, and considering this position Montana is in, I wouldn't be surprised if they had trouble finding funds for proper, non-gloss Holocaust education.
posted by griphus at 9:25 AM on July 17, 2011

Pot and public education: the gateways to liberalism.

this is why the legalizers have such a hard time: conservatives did a great job of linking marijuana to "dirty hippies" and "the breakdown of society." liberals felt they couldn't defend "evil drugs" so they had to show that they were just as tough as conservatives. now no one can back off.

as for public education, consider the drive to privatize.
posted by Maias at 9:27 AM on July 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

No, I'm pretty certain they didn't.

There was a British tour planned, but it got cancelled.
posted by atrazine at 9:27 AM on July 17, 2011

This blog Facebook stalked them last year.
posted by k8t at 9:30 AM on July 17, 2011

I hate to say it, but "Dresden" is an awesome name.
posted by Kitty Stardust at 9:32 AM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

They were deluged with hate mail — some of it, ironically, from people professing equality and brotherhood.

WTF? It's "ironic" that people who "profess equality and brotherhood" would have a problem with people who advocate genocide? I guess that's why Glen Beck etc. say that "librulz are the most intolerant of all!"
posted by PlusDistance at 9:41 AM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Someone needs to update their Wikipedia page. Someone (ahem) did.
posted by gerryblog at 9:42 AM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

I hate to say it, but "Dresden" is an awesome name.

Yes it is...but context, Kitty, context.
posted by PlusDistance at 9:42 AM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

WTF? It's "ironic" that people who "profess equality and brotherhood" would have a problem with people who advocate genocide?

"Having a problem" with their hatred isn't ironic. Expressing that opposition to hate as more hate is.
posted by scalefree at 9:47 AM on July 17, 2011

If I heard most people say that, well, sure WWII happened, but maybe not everything we heard about was true, and all the leaders were imperfect, like Hitler and Churchill -- yeah, I'd think that's just a marginally better way to say "I am a Holocaust denier". But from teenagers who started out as real, actual Holocaust deniers, from teenagers who got all their education from Holocaust deniers? That's a good start. It's still just a start, but they're 19. One of them has a really crappy disease (that someone I went to high school with had, who also found that only pot helped, though I was under the impression that she liked pot well before she got CVS, but maybe I am wrong) and is living with her racist mother, one of them is working a not particularly awesome minimum wage job, both of them were spokeskids for racist stuff . . .

When they're 25 or 30, we'll know if this start led anywhere, but I don't think saying it wasn't enough of a change is really fair to them. Most of us start change slowly, not all at once.
posted by jeather at 9:49 AM on July 17, 2011

Ripe for a Sofia Coppola biopic.
posted by jabberjaw at 9:54 AM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

(Kitty Stardust, sorry if this came across as scolding. I meant it to be funny -- I had the same reaction as you did.)
posted by PlusDistance at 9:57 AM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Even Hitler took baby steps.
posted by Sailormom at 10:00 AM on July 17, 2011

This is good news. I figured this would happen, but more dramatically, with one of the marrying Dennis Rodman and the other k.d. lang. But, hey, this is cool, too.
posted by jonmc at 10:07 AM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Unless they were 1 at the time I don't think they toured Czechoslovakia.
posted by Pruitt-Igoe at 10:10 AM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

asked whether the Holocaust happened, Lynx replied, “I think certain things happened. I think a lot of the stories got misconstrued. I mean, yeah, Hitler wasn’t the best, but Stalin wasn’t, Churchill wasn’t.

What an evasive answer, especially considering that they didn't perform songs glorifying the philosophies and actions of Stalin and Churchill. And as for "“I think certain things happened. I think a lot of the stories got misconstrued," weak denial is still denial.

The Hitler/Stalin equivalence is a common tactic, and it's bullshit. Stalin's evil was the mundane, personal variety: he saw himself as the queen of an ant colony and he did everything he could to maintain his position and force the colony to grow while being totally indifferent to everyone's well-being except his own. It's the classic "terrible dictator" story, the only thing staggering about it is the scope. Hitler, in contrast, wasn't content to merely consolidate and grow. He also used that power to attempt to eradicate and erase from history entire ethnic and sexual groups and whom he personally disliked. If you say that Stalin and Hitler are equals, either you haven't thought this through or secretly you admire what Hitler was trying to do but you're mindful of what others might think.

As for equating Churchill to the pair, fuck that shit. What an ignorant thing to say.

Holocaust denial, Hitler apologism-- They're still Nazis despite the "I cherish diversity" script. Fuck them. I hope they get what they deserve.
posted by Mayor Curley at 10:21 AM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

I thought the article hinted well at their challenges and conflicts while also acknowledging how the girls have grown up. I wish them the best.
posted by meinvt at 10:22 AM on July 17, 2011

We all get what we deserve Mayor Curley even you.
posted by Sailormom at 10:26 AM on July 17, 2011 [8 favorites]

Noones saying her views are right..just coming from her background and now at 19 they like diversity they're doing ok. I don't think she's using a tactic to equate hitler with others, just trying to figure it out and it's more healthy in the long run than blindly following an opposite view.
posted by Not Supplied at 10:34 AM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Griphus, I attended public school in MT, and I learned about the holocaust. Just because it's not written into state law doesn't mean that the state is run by deniers.

This is drifting off topic, but I went to public school in Illinois, where Holocaust education is mandated by law (they were the first state to do so, I believe). I'm racking my brain, but I don't think the Holocaust was mentioned more than tangentially after the fifth grade. (Small disclaimer: I didn't take eighth grade social studies, which would have been where the Holocaust was covered, time-wise.) Not in AP Modern European history, not in AP US History, nothing really beyond 'And, oh yeah, the Holocaust was going on.' Given that people in my AP US History class didn't know anything about the First World War (and they had had eighth grade social studies), I can't imagine my school produced anyone with an understanding of the Holocaust more sophisticated than they had in the fifth grade.
posted by hoyland at 10:34 AM on July 17, 2011

I should make it clear that I don't blame them for anything and I hope everything works out for them. I just think the actual article makes it sound like their situation is a lot more complicated and precarious than either the article's framing or the bulk of the responses here make it sound.

(Part of me thinks that all the people who were titillated by their story when they were kids should now pool together to help them out now. Because boy did a lot of media outlets profit off of pointing and staring at them, and I don't think they benefited from the attention at all.)

just trying to figure it out and it's more healthy in the long run than blindly following an opposite view.

Oooookay.
posted by craichead at 10:38 AM on July 17, 2011

For instance, asked whether the Holocaust happened, Lynx replied, “I think certain things happened. I think a lot of the stories got misconstrued. I mean, yeah, Hitler wasn’t the best, but Stalin wasn’t, Churchill wasn’t. I disagree with everybody at that time.”

As others have said, this has to be seen in the context of their having been kept so ignorant (and not just ignorant in the sense of not happening to have knowledge; ignorant in the sense of having actively been fed the Big Lie) and their current lives of trying to figure out the world in a place that's still pretty isolated. It takes time to shed an entire backwards worldview and to develop a reality-based understanding of the world, history, science, etc.

As an example: when I was in my mid-20s, I knew a guy (about the same age) who came from a very isolated fundamentalist Christian background. He had rejected fundamentalism sometime in college, and after graduating went on to become a union organizer and a progressive activist, involved in labor issues, abortion rights, ending the death penalty, etc.

However: he still couldn't quite accept evolution. He knew logically that the Biblical story of creation probably wasn't the truth, but having grown up effectively illiterate when it came to science, evolution was just too big to take in at the time, its implications for his previous worldview too shattering.

I would guess that for Lamb and Lynx, the Holocaust may represent something similar. The sheer magnitude of it is overwhelming, all the more so (I suspect) when to fully accept its existence will imply a level of moral culpability on their part for having played a role in promoting its denial (not to mention what it will say about their mother and her continuing Little White Europe scheme).

But I think it's possible to still be hopeful for them. They seem to be intrinsically open-minded; I have a hunch that given a few more years of emotional maturation, if they are actually exposed to the right information -- The Diary of Anne Frank, seeing interviews with survivors, etc. -- they might start to come into the reality-based world on this score as well.
posted by scody at 10:40 AM on July 17, 2011 [7 favorites]

When someone is 19, sick, minimally employed, sheltered, and quite possibly the target of a violent racial supremacist movement, I think you have to take their stated positions as a point on the journey rather than a final destination. I mean, to go from "Hitler was the BEST!" to "Wait, Hitler wasn't the best" is already a pretty big reversal.

It's like if I decided to walk from my home outside of Seattle to the White House, and three weeks later I was only in Spokane, and you said "Haw Haw you're not in Washington DC, you're still in Washington State!" Well yes, but I've walked three hundred goddamn miles already, and I'm headed in the right direction.
posted by KathrynT at 11:00 AM on July 17, 2011 [46 favorites]

This is one of those stories where it's nice to hear of a sorta-good ending, but the details now surfacing about their childhood and family dynamics leaves a lingering halo of creepy. "Good" is not the feeling I'm left with after reading that, but yet…
posted by LMGM at 11:02 AM on July 17, 2011

WTF? It's "ironic" that people who "profess equality and brotherhood" would have a problem with people who advocate genocide?
"Having a problem" with their hatred isn't ironic. Expressing that opposition to hate as more hate is.

I respect the opinion that hate shouldn't be greeted with hate, but this is only "ironic" if you oversimplify.

"They hate people who hate" is not all that can be said to describe this situation. If I hate people because of something that they have no control over and that shouldn't matter in any case -- for example, if I hate people because they're black, or gay, or whatever -- that is fundamentally different than someone who hates me because I hate people because of something that they have no control over, that harms no one, and that shouldn't matter anyway.

Moreover, if I actively work to spread my hatred to the world as far as possible, that's fundamentally different than someone hating me for doing so.

And in this case, you had both in combination: people who actively worked to spread their hatred to the world as far as possible, with that hate being over something that those hated have no control over, that harms no one, and that shouldn't matter in the first place.

It may be wrong to hate the haters for those things, or it may be counterproductive, but it's not "ironic", unless you boil all nuance down to simply "they both hate".
posted by Flunkie at 11:03 AM on July 17, 2011 [3 favorites]

So, if I understand correctly, they were Holocaust deniers, but their band was named after the residual effects of Zyklon B used in gas chambers? O...K...
posted by ShutterBun at 11:18 AM on July 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

Come on Mayor Curley. Give these girls a break. They are accused traitors by creepily dangerous right wing racists. Don't you think it makes sense that they may possibly be couching some of their comments? The philosophical changes they are making take a little more nerve than sitting at a keyboard accusing them of not altering their thoughts adequately to please us.

No. If you say "I think certain things happened. I think a lot of the stories got misconstrued. I mean, yeah, Hitler wasn’t the best, but Stalin wasn’t, Churchill wasn’t," you're a Nazi with a working knowledge of public relations.

Here is the sticking point:

If she doesn't have affection for Hitler, why is she refusing to acknowledge the scope of the Holocaust?

If Hitler's shit to you, you don't say stuff like "I don't think the Holocaust was as bad as people say."

That is essentially what she said, and if Hitler is anything more than shit to you, you're a Nazi.

Nazis can be valued as movie villains or fertilizer. They do not deserve PR rehab pieces in newspapers. If she's eventually going to come around to being a human being, she should keep her Nazi mouth fucking shut until she's willing to fully concur that Hitler is especially disgusting, and Nazi atrocities were real.

If the twins do that, then you can construe my "I hope that they get what they deserve" as earnest good wishes.

posted by Mayor Curley at 11:20 AM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

It may be wrong to hate the haters for those things, or it may be counterproductive, but it's not "ironic", unless you boil all nuance down to simply "they both hate".

The irony comes from who was sending the hate mail, namely "people professing equality and brotherhood". You can't hatefully profess equality and brotherhood. Hence, irony.
posted by scalefree at 11:21 AM on July 17, 2011

If she doesn't have affection for Hitler, why is she refusing to acknowledge the scope of the Holocaust?

Because she co-wrote a song with the jailed leader of a neo-Nazi terrorist group. Walking away from that culture is a very tricky thing, you're literally taking your life in your hands by doing it at all.
posted by scalefree at 11:24 AM on July 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

The irony comes from who was sending the hate mail, namely "people professing equality and brotherhood". You can't hatefully profess equality and brotherhood. Hence, irony.

I don't know about "brotherhood," but I also wonder if the hate mail used the exact word "brotherhood." I think you can hatefully express the idea that people of all races and ethnicities should be equal and that those who think otherwise are mistaken. As much as some people would like to pretend it's so, hating someone for being a Jew is not the same as hating someone because they think it's ok to kill Jews.
posted by craichead at 11:26 AM on July 17, 2011

I'm just glad we found something in all this to fight about.
posted by gerryblog at 11:40 AM on July 17, 2011 [17 favorites]

I don't know about "brotherhood," but I also wonder if the hate mail used the exact word "brotherhood." I think you can hatefully express the idea that people of all races and ethnicities should be equal and that those who think otherwise are mistaken.

Well obviously you can because a bunch of people did, but when you do then others get to point out that it's ironic because hatred and brotherhood don't belong together.

As much as some people would like to pretend it's so, hating someone for being a Jew is not the same as hating someone because they think it's ok to kill Jews.

You keep trying to defend against an argument I haven't made.
posted by scalefree at 11:41 AM on July 17, 2011

"That is essentially what she said, and if Hitler is anything more than shit to you, you're a Nazi."

But I drive a Jetta!

"Nazis can be valued as movie villains or fertilizer. They do not deserve PR rehab pieces in newspapers. If she's eventually going to come around to being a human being, she should keep her Nazi mouth fucking shut until she's willing to fully concur that Hitler is especially disgusting, and Nazi atrocities were real."

Banality of evil, man. Hyperbolizing the Nazis is only moderately useful.

(I do not actually drive a Jetta. I drive a Focus, which was made by a company that sympathized with Nazis, not actual Nazis.)
posted by klangklangston at 11:42 AM on July 17, 2011 [4 favorites]

You can't hatefully profess equality and brotherhood.

Of course you can. Again, it may be counterproductive or even wrong, but it's not irony except when viewed through a simplifying lens.
posted by Flunkie at 11:46 AM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

I'm just glad we found something in all this to fight about.

Seriously. Good lord.
posted by codacorolla at 12:03 PM on July 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

I hope they get what they deserve.

If there is a god to listen, I pray one thing: please, do not deal with any of us as we deserve
posted by tyllwin at 12:43 PM on July 17, 2011 [9 favorites]

The hippie-ish Montana thing really stuck out to me too. It seems that the writer is doesn't know or is trying to hide why they moved to NW Montana, which is clearly because that area (NW Montana and N Idaho) is a hotbed for white supremacists. It seems a little like the writer is trying to make their transformation into more than it really is.
posted by ssg at 1:05 PM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

The mere fact that they let that Czechoslovakia bit make the cut makes the article seem sloppily written.
posted by dunkadunc at 1:27 PM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

I agree with Mayor Curley that these don't really sound as if they've abandoned the extreme right altogether, and it's quite naive to pretend otherwise. However, this doesn't mean they are personally evil people. They are two still very young girls, indoctrinated from their infancy in a circle that's, as they themselves suggest, pretty dangerous to leave. At this stage, however, their political beliefs don't appear to be their biggest problem, or ours, for that matter. Let's reserve our indignation for the genuinely evil character in this story, that is, their manipulative mother.

I think that most people in this thread are saying the same thing - and in effect, that article is even making the same point: it's a weird story with a silver lining.

Throwing around words like "evil", even in regard to the mother, seems like more of the same sort of stuff that got these girls singing hate speech in the first place. It's a black-and-white modernist perspective on human behavior that erases everything except for you (the good) and the other (evil). I'm not making some "liberals are the true fascist" argument (mentioned up thread), just saying that once you reduce life to a binary system of morality your make it exceedingly easy to dismiss other people.

The concept of good and evil is one that's constantly frustrating for me.
posted by codacorolla at 1:28 PM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

My dad is from Montana. He didn't see a black person until he moved to California, or so the story goes. I guess we're all lucky he didn't come out racist due to lack of exposure to other races or something.

But having visited western Montana up and down the state in my childhood, I'm thinking, "HIPPIE-ISH?! WHERE?!?!?" No waaaaaaaaaaaay.

Anyway, I feel sorry for these girls with their health issues (especially if they have to depend on their still-racist parents for help), but I'm glad to hear they're thinking differently, at least.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:41 PM on July 17, 2011

You have to give their parents credit. They made damn sure that when their little girls entered that standard teenage rebellion phase, they'd have a truly obvious something to rebel against, and they made sure that the path of least resistance in their rebellion would lead them toward becoming decent and worthwhile human beings. That must have been difficult to maintain for all those years, but they did it for their children's sake. A truly selfless and laudable bit of parenting.

I can't look. Do they look like they're buying it?
posted by Naberius at 1:51 PM on July 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

Next week in The Daily: an interview with Uncomfortable Steve, Lamb's & Lynx's One Black Friend.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 3:20 PM on July 17, 2011 [6 favorites]

Perhaps after their upbringing, Montana seems like hippy land to them?

Glad these girls are starting to think for themselves.
posted by luckynerd at 3:54 PM on July 17, 2011

Stalin's evil was the mundane, personal variety.

I'm going to guess the distinction, if distinction is is, was lost on the tens of millions of victims, especially those who did not know him personally.

And note I say if - there are those who find his victims lists more focused than you do. He did categorize on bases other than king of the ant hill. (Some ant hill!)

But I'm at a loss regardless. It almost sounds as if you're defending the guy, as you did Lenin , another murderous bastard, a man whose crimes are somehow mitigated because of ...."industrialization"?

Mass murder is mass murder. Nobody gets a pass. Your blind spot on this one truly baffles me.
posted by IndigoJones at 4:14 PM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

"The Hitler/Stalin equivalence is a common tactic, and it's bullshit. Stalin's evil was the mundane, personal variety:"

Wow! I wonder how mundane his evil was to the millions intentionally starved to death in the Holodomor or the hundreds of thousands (millions?) worked to death in the gulags or to the 1,000 people shot per day during the Great Purge. Mundane indeed.
posted by MikeMc at 5:13 PM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

But I'm at a loss regardless. It almost sounds as if you're defending the guy

Yeah, I can see how you might think that when I use flattering terms like "Stalin's evil."

And note I say if - there are those who find his victims lists more focused than you do.

Every year some anticommunist writes a book accusing Stalin of something ludicrous like killing 60 billion people or the Sharon Tate murders. Arguing that killing of Kulaks falls equals genocide falls into that category. As for the Holodomor it was depraved indifference, not systematic culling of people. I can't make you see the difference if you don't want to.

This discussion's derailed enough. I'm not getting into Lenin.

At some number level, dead is indeed dead. But motive matters. Fascists are the lowest form of life.
posted by Mayor Curley at 5:20 PM on July 17, 2011

Wow, I was really cutting edge when I posted about this in 2004. I didnt realize I was giving them cancer and shit, though. Sorry about that!
posted by fungible at 5:24 PM on July 17, 2011

Fascists are the lowest form of life.

People who rate other humans on scales like these give me the creeps. Fascists included.
posted by hermitosis at 5:30 PM on July 17, 2011 [2 favorites]

Wow! I wonder how mundane his evil was to the millions intentionally starved to death in the Holodomor or the hundreds of thousands (millions?) worked to death in the gulags or to the 1,000 people shot per day during the Great Purge. Mundane indeed.

Dictators tend to kill masses by hoarding and misappropriating and have their opponents executed, you see. It's sort of a trope.

I meant "Mundane" in the sense of "the same awful shit that dictators have done since the dawn of time," not suggesting that the people don't matter. As you probably knew, but ignored to use the worst possible context. So thanks for that cheap tactic.
posted by Mayor Curley at 5:30 PM on July 17, 2011

"As for the Holodomor it was depraved indifference, not systematic culling of people."

That's an opinion that many, particularly in Ukraine, do not share.

"This discussion's derailed enough."

True enough. I hope the girls get their shit together.
posted by MikeMc at 5:30 PM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

You can't defend Stalin (or Mao, for that matter) any more than you can Hitler. They both killed massive amounts of people for their beliefs, both political and religious. The only difference with Hitler is that he killed people based on their ethnicity, which I guess they're unable to lie about.

To be honest I'm not sure if the Great Purge (or the Cultural Revolution in China) was ever ethnically based, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was in some areas.

Either way, killing millions of innocent people is killing millions of innocent people. Don't defend Stalin. While the girls were overly dismissive of Hitler's crimes and I don't think they've yet accepted just how horrid the Holocaust was, anyone downplaying the Great Purge or the Cultural Revolution are inviting the same kind of revisionist history.
posted by unknownmosquito at 5:43 PM on July 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

I have extracted the money quote for all who could not be bothered to read the article:

"
“I have to say, marijuana saved my life,” Lynx told me. “I would probably be dead if I didn’t have it.” She discovered pot while recovering from her cancer treatments. She’d been prescribed morphine and OxyContin, which she quit cold turkey. One day when she was having a bout of nausea, a friend offered her a toke. She was reluctant at first. The girls’ biological father had been “a druggie” when they were young, Lynx said.
"

(on preview I see that my browser converts an italic courier quotation mark to a solid rectangle which is odd)

Also holocaust teaching in my public school experience. It would have been included in world history (10th grade) and/or u.s. history (11th grade) in the world war 2 segment. We started at year zero in week one and got to the second world war with around a week left in the school year. If they covered the holocaust (I cannot recall if they did or if they did not) it would have been for around a minute.
posted by bukvich at 5:59 PM on July 17, 2011

Also: I loaded the post in chrome and where firefox renders a courier quotation mark as a solid rectangle, chrome renders a quotation mark!
posted by bukvich at 6:16 PM on July 17, 2011

[Please do not drag other people's posting histories into new threads. Thanks. ]
posted by restless_nomad at 6:36 PM on July 17, 2011

So does anyone else think that their chronic health conditions are due to inbreeding depression associated with trying to keep them as "aryan" as possible? I'm betting that in 100 years the nazi ideal of the master race is going to be someone with translucent skin, thin blond hair, one giant blue eye in the middle of the forehead, and a wicked case of Habsburg Jaw.

Could we, please not talk like that?

I'm an Israeli Jew and I'm finding that distasteful. One of them got cancer during her teen years. The other is literallybusting her back as a hotel chambermaid to support the mother and the sick sister. And they both have to balance a desire to cut loose from Nazis and the all-too-real risk that the same people who lusted after them when they were performing will stalk and hurt them. They're done with doing anything I could demand they stop doing. Any further demand sent their way has no weight if it doesn't come with money to help them out of their current predicament.
posted by ocschwar at 6:57 PM on July 17, 2011 [14 favorites]

These young women are attractive and intriguing. Anyone wanna take a bet on how many weeks until the reality show is announced? I wouldn't normally wish that fate on anyone, but they've been exploited all their lives with nothing to show for it except ghastly reputations that make them essentially unemployable. What's a little more exploitation when the alternative is cleaning hotel rooms in Montana? So, Lamb & Lynx Take Manhattan?
posted by Scram at 1:09 AM on July 18, 2011

Yeh, they could put them in a New York apartment with a black person and a white supremacist and record the hilarious antics.
posted by Not Supplied at 1:13 AM on July 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

"My sister and I were home-schooled," Lynx pointed out.

Well, that explains it.
posted by krinklyfig at 1:34 AM on July 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

*snort*

Right, krinklyfig. Everyone educated in our fantastic public schools is perfectly non-racist and well-educated.

At age 19, I still kinda thought Ronald Reagan was a sweet old man, and cried sympathetically when he gave his farewell speech.

So I have hope for these two.
posted by RedEmma at 8:35 AM on July 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

Am I the only one who thought of Twin Peaks when I saw the photo at the top of that article?
posted by The World Famous at 9:45 AM on July 18, 2011

Mayor Curley is right. Not only are they probably still Nazis, anyone who monitors organized racism knows that a faux-change of heart is not only typical, but an actual strategy articulated within the movement to dupe outsiders. IIRC and the Nazi music production scene revolving around Resistance Records/the National Alliance specifically discussed moving to a policy of infiltrating mainstream cultural scenes back in the mid-90s.

You'll only know for sure if they become outspoken anti-racist activists, period. Until that point, they're snakes.
posted by mobunited at 11:25 AM on July 18, 2011

IIRC and the Nazi music production scene revolving around Resistance Records/the National Alliance specifically discussed moving to a policy of infiltrating mainstream cultural scenes back in the mid-90s.

Sort of a funny position considering that George Burdi, founding president of Resistance Records and member of RaHoWa, is now in a multiracial world music group called Novacosm. Years later, he has yet to smuggle White Nationalism into the Trojan horse of funky world music beats. Irrespective of whether or not you have any urge to put Burdi on your Christmas card list, there's absolutely no evidence that his existence is some sort of racist long con.
posted by Sticherbeast at 11:32 AM on July 18, 2011

Years later, he has yet to smuggle White Nationalism into the Trojan horse of funky world music beats.

Check their hi-hats, that's usually where the White Noise lurks.
posted by b1tr0t at 1:12 PM on July 18, 2011 [1 favorite]

Holocaust denial, Hitler apologism-- They're still Nazis despite the "I cherish diversity" script. Fuck them. I hope they get what they deserve.

Not that I have any love for neo-Nazis or racists in general, but...

You know, at some point, when someone actually questions their previously held ideology, is it not enough to give some credit for that?

No, I guess it's easier to take to the soapbox and pluck at the lowest hanging fruit. "They're evading the question" bla bla bla "...holocaust deniers". It's so much easier to assume someone we've deemed a lesser will never rise above that, than to accept that reprehensible people might change for the better.

Look, how often do we ever, personally, witness anyone question their beliefs, or admit to taking an opposite tact to strongly-held concepts? I'd argue that's a rare thing; even rarer if you discount those you figure are just saying the right thing when questioned on distasteful beliefs.

There's little impetus for either of these girls to do a 180 on their white power ways. From the sounds of life isn't so shit-hot for either of them. That said, given their circumstance, admitting "some things happened" is leaps and bounds of improvement over touring as a musical act called Prussian Blue, and singing slightly more musically inclined -- and sincere -- versions of "Hitler Was a Sensitive Man".

In short: pick your battles.
posted by Dark Messiah at 6:45 PM on July 18, 2011

Sort of a funny position considering that George Burdi, founding president of Resistance Records and member of RaHoWa, is now in a multiracial world music group called Novacosm.

Explain exactly how this is relevant considering that:

1) Resistance and the National Alliance is still around.
2) Those kids are still racist.

I know the part where those kids are still racist is a problem in the narrative you're trying to construct, but they're still racist.

As for George Burdi, after assaulting a woman in Ottawa and cashing in on organized racism, he is remarkably evasive about taking responsibility for either. He's merely a coward, so fuck him.
posted by mobunited at 8:26 PM on July 18, 2011

Irrespective of whether or not you have any urge to put Burdi on your Christmas card list, there's absolutely no evidence that his existence is some sort of racist long con.

Oh, I'm sure George did no more damage than he needed to in order to guarantee that a business devoted to purveying racist trash continued to operate by selling it off instead of dissolving it. (Of course, he was also associated with a paramilitary group that nearly killed a couple of people, but he glosses over that part.)

But before that, he used to talk openly about groups like Prussian Blue representing *exactly* a long con. His dream back in 94 or so was to create a racist clone of the Cranberries for just this purpose, and this is exactly the playbook being used now.

Shit, does it not fucking compute that when somebody used to be a virulent Nazi propagandist, "Welp, the world is a funnier place than I thought!" does not cut it as a convincing personal life goddamn transformation?
posted by mobunited at 8:33 PM on July 18, 2011

Right, krinklyfig. Everyone educated in our fantastic public schools is perfectly non-racist and well-educated.

Hmmm. I don't recall saying that.
posted by krinklyfig at 1:45 AM on July 19, 2011

Well, you are blaming their racism and idiocy on being homeschooled. This despite the fact that every study that's been done on homeschoolers says they're, as a whole, better socialized and better educated than the traditionally schooled.

Sure. Their mother isolated them and certainly used keeping them out of school as one method of doing so. But it would be just as accurate to say that their mother pushed them into a belief system for her own agenda, and used the social groups she was a part of to do so. There are some very rare people who are socially, politically and/or religiously isolated who claim to be homeschooling as a way to emotionally or physically abuse their children. A hallmark of that is educational neglect. For someone who is so on the fringe, educational neglect is almost a given. She didn't homeschool them so much as she neglected to educate them on things that most of us would think were basic truths about history and how the world works. This is not homeschooling--and most state education regulatory bodies would see it as such. I'm sure if their family hadn't been such migrants, some state agency would have pursued some query about that. If they had been properly homeschooled, they'd probably be capable of holding jobs that could sustain them. I'm sure she taught them to read and write and do basic arithmetic. But as any homeschooler knows, facilitating a child's natural curiosity about the world is their primary duty. Squelching that curiosity seemed to be this mother's aim. Luckily (and as per usual) she failed.
posted by RedEmma at 8:48 AM on July 19, 2011

"Nazis can be valued as movie villains or fertilizer. They do not deserve PR rehab pieces in newspapers. If she's eventually going to come around to being a human being, she should keep her Nazi mouth fucking shut until she's willing to fully concur that Hitler is especially disgusting, and Nazi atrocities were real."

"Fascists are the lowest form of life."

This thread has gotten really scary... Eliminationalist rhetoric is disgusting in all of its forms.
posted by Blasdelb at 6:44 PM on July 19, 2011 [1 favorite]

Well, you are blaming their racism and idiocy on being homeschooled.

No, I was actually being glib. I don't have any proof that homeschooled kids are racist.

What I have noticed is that homeschooled kids drive like this. Public school kids drive like this.
posted by krinklyfig at 12:15 AM on July 20, 2011

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