A Decade Later, Unsettling Memories of a White-Power Band
When I first heard about Page’s connection to the band, I quickly re-read the piece. Had he been in the band then? It appeared he wasn’t. To make sure, I dug out the number of a source in the white power music scene, somebody I hadn’t spoken to since 2001.
The hatecore community isn’t that big. The Anti-Defamation League estimates there are only about 140 hate-metal bands in the United States today. Sure enough, the source had met the shooter.
“Wade Page, when I met him, was a nice guy,” he said, as if we were talking about a parent on the playground. “He was a musician who more or less filled in. I don’t think he was in [Definite Hate] for any length of time.”
Did the source, who said he feared for his safety and didn’t want his name in the newspaper, agree with what Page did?
“I don’t,” he said. “It accomplished absolutely nothing and he lost his life with it.”
Years ago, the white supremacist movement adopted hate rock as a way to help spread its extremist message. And in the world of white thrash, Resistance Records was king. The record label was run by the National Alliance, the separatist organization founded by William Pierce, whose work would later inspire Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. Pierce had a PhD in physics and no interest in punk rock. But he did believe in the power of hatecore.
“Imagine what we could do with these millions of aimless young white people if we owned MTV,” he told a National Alliance meeting in 1998.
