Katz, N. (2025). Anti-leftism as an aesthetic in white power punk. Social Movement Studies, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2025.2595346

White Power music scenes embrace both White Supremacy and the music cultures they situate themselves in. For White Power punk scenes, there is a reliance on the shaping and utilization of punk aesthetics to support their ideology. This paper examines how members of White Power punk bands in the United States and Germany utilize White Supremacist ideals and punk aesthetics to construct their scenes. The findings show that both the German and U.S. scenes emphasize an opposition to leftism as a core aesthetic. Opposing leftism serves as a driving aesthetic in three ways: it allows members to make sense of their music scenes, helps them create an ideological position that links music scenes together, and provides a discursive tool to connect their scenes with larger social issues.