Lamb and Lynx Gaede are no ordinary American twins. Their mother, April, teaches their brother the alphabet as "A is for Aryan, B is for Blood - our ancestors fought and spilled their blood so the white nation could be free." She encourages their band, Prussian Blue, to write songs about "white pride" and dressed them up in Hitler smiley face t-shirts when they were barely into their adolescence. Some three years ago they were visited by poke-a-bigot TV documentary presenter Louis Theroux, last night UK television broadcast the results of James Quinn's follow-up visit.
It doesn't take a genius to see that the twins, now somewhat older than in the famous picture shown, are tired of their racist image. They are, in their own words, "drained". Their mother, April, is anything but. A formidable, frightening woman, she claimed to have had what her critics would call more "enlightened" feelings about blacks, contrary to her Mexican-shooting, neo-Nazi father, until she was attacked by a black man and almost raped. You can see the pain and fear hidden under her standoffish exterior; at the point at which she herself was developing her own opinion and bravely beginning to disagree with her bullish, ignorant parent, this deeply unfortunate and violent event happened and she ran straight onto the path of "white pride".
In April's world, definitions are vague and unstructured. What does she believe in? White pride. What does that mean? No-one is sure, but she insists her definition of racism is different to that of her critics, and she's not a "white supremacist". Yet the only "friends" of Lynx and Lamb that Quinn was allowed to film were a neo-Nazi punk band, and a sickening penpal, David Lane, (who died in prison during the course of a life sentence for hate crimes shortly after the filming of the documentary) who stated that he was beginning to shift his view of the fourteen-year-olds from that of father-daughter to that of "fantasy sweetheart".
Misinformation seems to be the hallmark in the Gaede family. A curious DJ invites Prussian Blue, a band named after a chemical that Holocaust-deniers claim proves people were not killed, onto her show to quietly, rationally question their beliefs. She is frightened by the worrying dogma coming from beautiful girls, not tattooed skinheads easily disregarded by an image-conscious society. The girls hesitantly um and ah through their doctrine, staring at their sternly nodding mother, and offering up that "during a war, people are desperate for fuel, so they wouldn't have taken so much time to do something nasty". In other words, Hitler was fighting a war across Europe, so it would have been silly to stop and kill off Jews along the way. Because practicality was a hallmark of a man who plunged headlong into a long, wintry Russian campaign. Their ignorance of basic facts is betrayed almost instantly by referring to "six million people"; the fact that their mother focussed only on the Jewish Holocaust tells us plainly that none of them even know that the actual number of dead in the Holocaust was closer to ten million, the vast majority of which were, after all, white, Jews included.
What scared me, ultimately, was not the radical anti-Prussian Blue response, which is positive, but the way it manifested itself, which is just as scary as the fascist claptrap these reluctant, confused girls are now regretting peddling on behalf of their damaged mother. A young, white man says "they ought to have their asses kicked; someone should kill them" without a trace of irony. The anti-hate campaigning that follows them across America is hardly surprising, but it's none too cleverly handled. Directing violence at those who encourage hate in a tit-for-tat attempt at revenge is pretty bloody stupid. April Gaede clearly loves nothing more than being a martyr, claiming that every death threat and protest is a "gold medal" because she's obviously "doing something right". We need to fight hatred and intimidation with education and contempt, not with death threats and martyrdom.
With any luck, Prussian Blue will escape the destiny April has planned for them and their toddler brother, Dresden. Their grandmother claims "this Nazi shit" has "ruined her life" and although she's genuinely frightened her own husband will shoot her as proudly as he shot "six Mexicans", she has already created a plan with Lynx and Lamb for them to go and make a quiet, non-hating life together when the girls are "of age". Already, their music has switched from defences of Rudolph Hess to slightly sappy songs about boyfriends; boyfriends they won't have while their mother makes them the focus of ridicule and violence.
If the only thing we have to fear is fear itself we have to tackle it where it begins; with education, not tit-for-tat hatred and indifference.
Alex Roumbas is the Deputy Editor of Shiny Shiny. This article can also be found on her personal review blog, CultureFootle.