why is it exactly that in the case of someone like Boyd Rice it's appropriate to reel off all the reasons why we shouldn't take him seriously (he likes tiki bars! Jell-o molds! pranks!), but not a single one of the myriad, rather serious IMO, reasons we might not be interested in giving him a financial/subcultural leg up, like the fact that he sat in on Tom Metzger's (yeah, the guy in charge of White Aryan Resistance) cable access show in the 80s and very unprankishly talked about how his music, as well as that of many other key bands of the neofolk genre, fit with Metzger's program...any chance we can link that on Youtube? or mention the fact that another pillar of this scene, Sol Invictus (mentioned in the opening line of your article), is led by a musician who as an active neofolk scenester once belonged to the UK's actively racist National Front party, and even after issuing a begrudging apology for such years down the road when pressed by pesky PC types, saw fit to keep selling backstock of his band Above the Ruins, who were comp buddies with Skrewdriver (have a look yourself on Discogs)...and that he was also a founding member of Death in June? or does all that not fit with the point you're trying to make about neofolk being essentially "non-political"?

see, I know there are explanations around these things and all the other accusations that could (and in a lot of cases should) be leveled at musicians in this subgenre, because I've long been a fan of much of the music and observer of many of the artists...there comes a point, though, where anyone with half a brain, half of the capacity for independent thought that so many dodgy neofolk musicians like to claim their detractors don't possess, will be hard-pressed to take it as read that this very stylistically narrow subgenre (hardly comparable in scope or diversity IN ANY WAY to rock or the blues, despite the analogies drawn in your article) would have ever sprung to life if not for a persistent fascination with fascist iconography - the fact that there have been exceptions and reactions within the style to this overwhelming tendency does not change it, and it cannot be held with any degree of critical rigor in the same light as Siouxsie or Sid's brief, if tasteless, use of the swastika in their post-apocalyptic bricolage

it's unfortunate that I'm responding with these concerns in the context of an article about OTWATM, because I have no particular political bone to pick with that project and quite enjoy the music, and anyway these things are beside the point...mostly I am disappointed with this article's reductionist and somewhat deluded primer on the broader phenomenon of neofolk, clearly intended for the uninitiated...I'm on a soapbox by now, so suffice it to say that a style of music dealing more often than not with political aesthetics and political history, whether those of the Axis powers in WWII (again, overwhelmingly the case, which this article acknowledges) or those of any other persuasion or period, no matter the level of poetic abstraction at work, can hardly be called "generally non-political" without something being more than a little amiss

if for the sake of argument we want to say that neofolk comes under more fire than it warrants, then we must next be honest about the fact that it is in this predicament because, as much as it can be identified as a cultural phenomenon of any sort, it harbors some very unique problematics...and claiming that these problematics exist with a proportional intensity in any other style of music is, frankly, wrongheaded and irresponsible journalism