Neo-Nazi Arrested in New York State Allegedly Produced "War Trance"

A man arrested on accounts of multiple weapons and drug charges has now been connected to a white supremacist-created subgenre of dance music known as "war trance," according to The Daily Beast. Edward Perkowski Jr. 33 years old, was arrested earlier this month at his home in Long Island by Suffolk County when police seized Nazi propaganda, drugs, assault rifles, bomb-making directions, and over $40,000 in cash; he is facing 25 years of jail time.

Prior to Perkowski's arrest, he was allegedly producing music as DJ Ghost of the Reich, uploading videos to YouTube since 2009 to a channel on which he described himself as the "first of its kind the original War Trance DJ." He reportedly previously sold an album called Judenfrei (a Nazi term which means "free of Jews") on a military surplus website; he has uploaded tracks to his channel as recently as three months ago. Other DJs working in the call themselves DJ Nazi Scum, DJ Panzerfaust, DJ White Pride, DJ Jermania, and DJ Adolf.

"All they're looking for in a strategic sense is for you take one more step," sociology professor Robert Futrell, co-author of American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movement's Hidden Spaces of Hate, told the The Daily Beast. "It's like saying 'Hey, white people, if you could just understand what we're about, you'll be enlightened and want to become one too. Music is a tool to draw in new recruits."

"What's happened is that the White Power Music genre has subdivided into about 20 or 30 subgenres," said SPLC's senior fellow Mark Potok. "So at this point almost every kind of popular music has a kind of analog in the hate music world."

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