Nazi Punks Fuck Off! | |
Cover: | Dead Kennedys - Nazi Punks Fuck Off cover.jpg |
Type: | single |
Artist: | Dead Kennedys |
Ep: | In God We Trust, Inc. |
B-Side: | Moral Majority |
Released: | November 1981 |
Recorded: | 1981 |
Studio: | Möbius Music (San Francisco) |
Genre: | Hardcore punk |
Length: | 1:03 |
Label: | Alternative Tentacles |
Producer: | Oliver DiCicco |
Prev Title: | Too Drunk to Fuck |
Prev Year: | 1981 |
Next Title: | Bleed for Me |
Next Year: | 1982 |
"Nazi Punks Fuck Off" is a song by American punk rock band Dead Kennedys. It was released in November 1981 through Alternative Tentacles as a 7-inch single with "Moral Majority" as the B-side. Both are from the In God We Trust, Inc. EP, although the EP version is a different recording from the single version. The single included a free armband with a crossed-out swastika. The design was later adopted as a symbol for the anti-racist punk movement Anti-Racist Action.
The song is a blunt indictment of the rise of far-right punk subcultures such as Nazi punk or the white power skinhead movement, which had begun rioting at punk shows in the late 1970s. The appropriation of fascist iconography had been common in punk for some time, often ironically, but the irony was not always clear to the extent that it began attracting the organized far-right to punk concerts.[1] Jello Biafra's lyrics condemn the infighting among punks for weakening the prospect of rebellion and hold of the far-right agitators that "in a real Fourth Reich, [they'd] be the first to go."
In the opening of the In God We Trust, Inc. version of "Nazi Punks Fuck Off", lead singer Jello Biafra mentions English producer Martin Hannett, who had worked with Joy Division and Buzzcocks, accusing him, tongue-in-cheek, of having "overproduced" the recording.[2] Hannett, in fact, did not work with the Dead Kennedys.