What's often overlooked is that adopting "Nazi" imagery in the 1970s and early 80s was one of the best ways working class kids had to stick two fingers up to a fusty and stifling establishment, which, saw Churchill and later Mrs Thatcher as icons.
It certainly wasn't—in almost all cases—an avowal of belief in a National Socialist or even Fascist ideology (Skrewdriver were perhaps an exception). Such behaviour must be seem in a context of revolutionary anarchy rather than anything to do with death camps or racial purity.
The swastika of punk iconography and fashion, songs about death camps, and band names like “Joy Division,” “New Order,” “London SS,” “U2” (Nazi submarine obviously), “Theatre of Hate, “The Pack,” and “Spear of Destiny,” etc.—all redolent of England’s worst nightmare, the Third Reich—were more part of a gritty working-class bait culture, which could also be found on the football terraces, rather than a Nazi kulturkampf.
Like Oi, of which Blitz were a part, football hooliganism, and even the much misunderstood National Front, the invocation of the Third Reich was totemic rather than political, a sign of an assertive working-class street culture, rather than a love affair with Heinrich Himmler.
For this reason, rather than being opposed by the Left, Oi and other ostensibly "Nazi-esque" manifestations of White urban youth, should have been supported by the hard left as an "authentic culture" in the sense meant by Adorno and Horkheimer the leaders of the Frankfurt School. In betraying Oi, the Left essentially betrayed itself. But, hey, no problem, the kids don't and didn't care about hard Leftism almost as much as they don't and didn't care about Naziism.
When I hear
the sound of concrete and steel
I sense a rhythm
that science can't feel
I feel the beat
of our hearts as one
I hold your colour
when my vision is gone
This power is something
but the force is blind
transmitted through a network
of your own kind
as minutes tick away
and days become years
I know this old feeling
it's a substance in my tears
And the kids on the street
and the kids everywhere
and all I gotta say
is the kids don't care
When I hear
I sense a rhythm
I feel the beat
I hold your colour
When you've got me running
and you stop my machine
You try to tell me something
that has never been
When you stop me running
with my own pack
You know you got me swearing
that I'll get my own back
And the kids on the street
and the kids everywhere
and all I gotta say is the kids don't care
When I hear
the sound of concrete and steel
I sense a rhythm
that science can't feel
I feel the beat
of our hearts as one
I hold your colour
when my vision is gone
This power is something
but the force is blind
transmitted through a network
of your own kind
As minutes tick away
and days become years
I know this old feeling
it's a substance in my tears
And the kids on the street
And the kids everywhere
And all I gotta say is the kids don't care
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