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The idea to write this piece of buffoonery came to us recently, after the situation concerning our band, little by little started getting more and more stressful as well as chaotic due to an external campaign designed to damage and even sabotage the activity of the band. Real propaganda in every sense against us and totally based on biased falsities would like to inform our fans and people in general that Kirlian Camera indeed, is a neo-nazi and racist band. Even from the beginnin of our activity with our present name there were inherent problems but recently the "democratic hand" (or at least presumed so) which is hostile towards us has shown an admirable determination in trying to spread informations which can harm us. Songtexte It is clear that we are fed up of being considered "criminals" by various political groups who flaunt traditions of democratic struggle as well as vast cultural knowledge but are not even able to report precise news about us, in fact they choose, wich success the way of pure defamation. It is strange to think that all this happens without any checks and the first people to be amazed by this are ourselves and our public. It is strange to think that this "New Holy Inquisition" is supported by very notable entities such as the large circulation media, but all of this is happening and there are no doubts about this. The need to write this strange and unusual communiquè is therefore the result of the negation of our most basic rights, among which the right to free speech, since almost nobody agrees to let us refute the declarations about us, denying us space in the media which is instead only allowed to our opponents. Let's look at a few examples... In edition 17 of the German weekly "Der Spiegel" on sale from the 26 April 1999, four pages were dedicated to the Littleton massacre in Colorado which happened in spring this years where two students called Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed twelve of their school mates and wounded a number of others. One can understand the interest of various media and information organizations. What is not so understandable however, is the fact that a certain German sociologist called Alfred Schobert, once interviewed by Mr. Martin Wolf, declared that the members of Kirlian Camera go around blissfully giving nazi salutes in public and spreading propaganda on the subject. Mr. Schobert seems intent on demonstrating that bands like ours are to be held at least partly responsible for events such as the one in Littleton and makes false statements in a major national and international publication like "Der Spiegel", which in turn denies via fax the right to reply of one of our external representatives who asked for the possibility to refute such statements. The reason for this refusal seems to come from the fact that several eye witnesses claim to have seen us give "nazi salutes" in public. This is not possible, since a fact of this kind has never occured, and what's more, the use of the plural form would tend to involve all members of the group. It may have happened only in a couple of occasions that only Angelo Bergamini showed a "salute" indicating belonging both to the extreme left as well as the extreme right, not to mention various religious doctrines and in particular the Christian one. Someone might have noticed something in the beam and hand motion above the beam which occurs when one wants to modulate the sound of the Roland MC-505 synthesizer (which has a device which is similar to the old Theremin on it). This is a confused movement which is similar to the gesture in question, but it is beyond any doubt that no nazi salute has ever been given on stage. What Mr. Schobert and his friends are trying to demonstrate is very serious. Very serious indeed because it is completely distorted and truly persecutory. We are not here to apologize or to profess a political faith, rather we are here to formally ask that these people be limited in their attemps, carried out in bad faith; therefore we are also here to claim the right of the public to unbiased information. Those who have been asking us for for awhile to take a definite political slance to calm the ever increasing number of accusations and threats (even death threats) against our band. No, we are not here to take a stance since the right to a secret vote exists and every citizen can exercise this right in a country presumed to be democratic. We would not like to discover that for KC this right has been denied. Indeed, we do not think that our political beliefs (if they should exist) are relevant and we repeat our intention to demonstrate that an "official position" in one direction or another is not our obligation, and this should not lead to us being considered racist, as other self-proclaimed "democratic" organizations would like to happen. Not long ago, on the 2nd of August 1998 we held a concert in Berlin and we were informed that a person from a radio station (whose name we still don't know because of the usual accomodating silence) had encouraged the listeners not to come to our show as we were to be considered "neo-nazi and racist" again. Our singer-collaborator and friend Nancy Appiah (pseudonym of Grace Osei) who is dark skinned and was born in Ghana doesn't understand much about European politics but she knows that nobody in this band has ever shown her a lack of respect or given her problems because of the ethnic race she belongs to. She has played with us live and recorded with us in the studio, even appearing a few times in our official group line up, as photographs could demonstrate. It is therefore strange that nobody has ever noticed her! Yey, at present, we are one of the very rare European groups, in our musical area, which works with a "coloured" collaborator also when playing live. Maybe we are the only ones at present. Why, therefore, do those interviewers who ask us leading questions about our presumed racism, almost never remember Grace and the fact that our in "incriminating track" called "Erinnerung" we sing lyrics by the Jewish-German poet August Stramm?!? Let's say there existed a case of us being extreme right-wing... But how have we shown ourselves to be intolerant, racist and anti-semetic, since even our ex-guitarist / keyboard player Paul David Sears, involved officially with the band from 1982 to 1985 was Jewish, as was our ex-producer Allan Goldberg who worked with us from 1982 to 1987...?!? Could it be that they are all masochistic?!? In KC there has always been space for any race or ideology without any restriction. We have always demonstrated in a concrete sense, how people with different ideological views and from different races can live together and actually have a close relationship based on true respect and friendship. We have been one of the few to be so active in this sense. Therefore, we were a little surprised by the anti-KC demonstration held in Utrecht in Holland at the end of October 1997, where we had gone to play. Somebody told us that it had been organized by the antifascist organization "Antifa", but personally we wouldn't be in a position to confirm it. The above-mentioned organization may do it themselves since it seems that wherever possible... they try to sabotage our concerts, circulating strange declarations about us via the various channels of information available today, eg. e-mail, fax, etc. Clearly, we give the Antifa organization the possibility to reply or explain better and confirm the suspicion that we may be part of an extreme right-wing organization. If we were to have this reply, then we could be aware of all the so-called crimes committed by us, and if they were to be revealed once again to be inexistant, then maybe it would be the case to point out, even legally, that someone is really going beyond the limits allowed by the law, assuming that at this point someone still cares about what the law says, as we are tempted to think. Once again antifascist organizations are threatening the peaceful progress of our European tour in Autumn of this year and already one can see the first results: our appareance at the Duer festival (Belgium) which should have taken place on 10th July 1999 was cancelled due to fears about public disorder. If this were true, one would be facing a veiled... threat, so we will try to shed some light on this umpteenth little alarming chapter. The fear to find oneself in front of a worrying and sinister enemy must certainly have prompted the article by a certain Fabrizio Marcheselli in the Italian daily newspaper "Gazzetta di Parma" published on 8th January 1998, where one gets the sensation that KC are actually, a neo-nazi band. Marcheselli, after an interview based on questions to Angelo Bergamini, carefully omitted certain points made by the group member concerning three directions like Babenko, Visconti and Fassbinder (who they have never been fascists and, on the contrary, have often showed appreciation of left-wing politics). These points were of real appreciation. Once again, the videos projected by us during the performances turned out to be to worrying politically, with their quotes of Tarkovskij, Pasolini, Leni Riefenstahl, Liliana Cavani and others, and by the various film clips, including even a well-known top model, probably considered by some to be the reincarnation of Eva Braun! Recently, an organization called "Grufties Gegen Rechts" declared on the Internet that our videos are inspired by the nazism and our band is used to give "nazi-salutes" in public (?!?!?). The fax-addresses of this group are +49.(0)421.3777511 (Bremen / Germany) and +49.(0)381.454310 (Rostock / Germany). We apologize to whoever has bought this CD for deciding to insert this information in what should be, in our opinion "a normal means of spreading music", but there was little alternative choice since very few people give the space to reply in, as already mentioned. Maybe it's better if ideas circulate and people don't accept "the silence game" to which it sometimes seems we are condemned. We know that seldom, has a group before now, opted for such a radical choice and we accept responsability and we will face the consequences, however damaging they may be for the existence of Kirlian Camera itself. But we want our public to be aware of what is happening and finally know the reason why sometimes they have to go home without our concert having taking place. If they told you that we had measles you mustn't believe them unless we subsequently confirm it ourselves. This communiquè therefore seeks to represent a particular stance taken and a declaration of war (not bloody) against whoever is organizing the latest inquisitions, and restate the right to respect for any political or religious orientation as well as whoever adopts a position, or to express the concept better, "for who takes positions which are not tolerated by the Modern Inquisition". This war started a long time before us. This communiquè is a declaration of adhesion to that war. Aus Songtexte Mania