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Popular Culture, Populism and the Figure of the ‘Criminal’ On the Rising Popular Support of Outlaw Bikers and Anti-Establishment Resentment

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Crime, Deviance and Popular Culture

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture ((PSCMC))

Abstract

Outlaw motorcycle clubs, especially the iconic Hells Angels, have been a powerful figment of popular culture since the 1950s. Over the decades, they have morphed into strong transnational organizations engaged in their own self-commodification, and have been labelled as organized crime groups posing considerable security threats by law enforcement. This book chapter focuses on how these organizations engage the superimpositions of fact and fiction in order to mobilize new supporters. It attempts to answer the question of why more and more people in Europe align themselves ideologically with the outlaw bikers, support them, and share their anti-establishment resentments—against the ‘weak’ state, ‘official’ media or politicians. Interplays between fact and fiction are one facet of mainstreaming deviant subcultures that can help us understand this phenomenon.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As an example, the popular Facebook page Regierung gegen Rocker nicht mit uns (government against outlaw bikers, not with us) may serve as a good example. Every week a denouncement of a media article appears on the page, arguing that journalists are ‘duped’ by popular culture, believing the police (whose only interest, so it is claimed, is to produce an easy and visible enemy to keep themselves in the business), while reminding the reader of the corruption and other scandals within the police itself.

  2. 2.

    The movement is said to number around 200,000 bikers, who ‘protected’ Trump during his presidential inauguration. Bikers for Trump (est. 2015 by Chris Cox) is active in supporting Republican politicians across the United States, willing to implement Trump’s policies, and is geared towards supporting the 2020 re-election campaign. Bikers for Trump mobilized in particular around the anti-establishment, libertarian and patriotic message, which smoothly overlaps with their self-identification as forgotten white social underdogs on one hand, while mobilizing the rebellious potential of classical biker popular culture, priding itself on showing the middle finger to the ‘system’ as well as bourgeois moralities and political correctness. For more see the official website: https://www.bikersfortrump2020.com/about.

  3. 3.

    See interview with Chuck Zito here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTM8-4lRAAU (accessed 29 March 2018).

  4. 4.

    The idea that you must be it, in order to understand, is also challenged by this maxim—one that we should be keeping in mind especially in these times when claims to knowledge grounded in mere ‘identity’ are quick to replace research and knowledge production. Identity may result in a certain familiarity; however, this familiarity must be distinguished from knowledge at all cost.

  5. 5.

    This becomes particularly pronounced in identity politics which can to a certain degree be viewed as partially produced by this new media regime: where credibility, legitimacy and authenticity are less and less a matter of achievement, expertise and so on, but increasingly only reduced to visual markers such as skin colour, ethnic origin, gender identity and—no less—subcultural belonging.

  6. 6.

    For more see https://www.instagram.com/bjoernaffa/?hl=nb or http://www.bjoernaffa.ch/ (accessed 15 March 2018).

  7. 7.

    Just for a comparison, this is the same amount as the philosopher Slavoj Žižek on Facebook. Other, far more established Hells Angels in popular culture, such as Chuck Zito or David Labrava, have considerably less followers (around 30,000 each).

  8. 8.

    Based on my own experience, there are certainly members who vote for the party and spread the party message actively online, and in person. However, it is difficult to pass judgements on behalf of the whole organization. There is a diversity of individual opinion when it comes to politics, and we should resist imagining it as necessarily a united force. This does not mean that clear links do not exist, for instance, the daughter of Wolfgang Heer, a Hells Angel who was together with Hanebuth in the security business, Bettina Heer running for AfD in Walsrode in 2016. (For more, see http://www.taz.de/!5321660/ accessed 20 March 2018.)

  9. 9.

    Reference to Andrea Nahles, SPD (Social Democratic Party). For more about the report that points to the fact that despite the official ‘economic growth’ of Germany, the income inequality is on the rise, and that the real income of the bottom 40 per cent of the society was in 2015 less than during the mid-1990s, see http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2017-04/andrea-nahles-armutsbericht-2017-loehne (accessed 22 March 2018).

  10. 10.

    For reference, see http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41121761 (accessed 22 March 2018).

  11. 11.

    For the original in German, see https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1657068421003422&id=494898167220459&substory_index=0 (accessed 31 December 2017). For a report in Vice on the applause for the post by AfD, see here https://www.vice.com/de/article/j5vavk/neue-karriere-hells-angels-boss-frank-hanebuth-verbreitet-jetzt-hass-im-netz (accessed 28 March 2018).

  12. 12.

    https://www.rt.com/shows/the-world-according-to-jesse/ (accessed 1 April 2018).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Tereza Kuldova

  2. University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Tereza Kuldova

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  1. Tereza Kuldova
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Correspondence to Tereza Kuldova .

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  1. School of Law, Criminal Justice & Computing, Canterbury Christ Church University, Canterbury, UK

    Dimitris Akrivos

  2. School of Law, University of Essex, Colchester, UK

    Alexandros K. Antoniou

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Kuldova, T. (2019). Popular Culture, Populism and the Figure of the ‘Criminal’ On the Rising Popular Support of Outlaw Bikers and Anti-Establishment Resentment. In: Akrivos, D., Antoniou, A.K. (eds) Crime, Deviance and Popular Culture. Palgrave Studies in Crime, Media and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04912-6_10

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