HOW TO FIGHT NAZIS WITH TAMPONS & SHARPIES (Patreon)

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HALLO COMRADES

greetings from backstage in stuttgart....i just finished. it was an epic show - although i still ran into curfew issues and had to cut the end of the show, i apologize about that - and i'm delirious and exhausted. this post is also the virtual-singing-line for stuttgart...and our patron-photos from today are down at the bottom of this post. i love you.

also. ANTWERP: i'll be marching THIS FRIDAY MORNING for the CLIMATE STRIKE. PLEASE JOIN US. the info for the event is all here.  

.......................

SO.

i decided to do a ninja gig in graz, austria two days ago...in the midst of a giant traditional-dress and beer-everywhere called AUFSTEIRERN. 

they shut down the middle of the city and it’s just lederhosen and dirndls as far as the eye can see. i'm not saying that these traditional festivals are nazi. they're really not.

i AM saying that we just found out that the day of our show tomorrow in essen, germany, is also the day that some real-ass nazis have decided to march through the streets of essen.

 everyone here, my crew, my fans, are all feeling very uncomfortable about this.

when we were in graz, austria, a few days ago, we crashed headfirst into this festival.

just joy. not racism. just joy, really.

this is a photo gabrielle, one of your handy Foreign Tour Correspondents, took:

 i woke up, i walked into town and saw this in front of the supermarket.

(i took this).

that bum grab, tho.

i had decided a few days before to try to do a ninja gig in graz.

picking ninja gig spots is like it’s own weird art form. 

it was interesting: i put out the call on the patreon here for spots and it was obvious from all the suggestions that everyone wanted to be VERY FUCKING FAR AWAY from the middle-of-town action, where clearly all the local beer-drinking, traditional-dress wearing austrian revelers would ruin the fun. 

and i was like: oh hell no. 

we must GO IN. 

i even got an email from a patron who knows me, and a concerned and nervous merch-queen alex coming to me on the bus telling me that some folks on the patron facebook group were upset about my choice of location. 

did amanda know?
the city is a shitshow!
someone must tell her. 

(photo by gabrielle:)

oh, i knew. 

i knew.

here’s the thing i want to remind you all about me, and about ninja gigs. they are for me as much as you. when i’m on tour - i live in airports and a tour bus most of the time. there is precious little time to see ANYTHING. 

i also love a good collision shitshow. 

i love a clash of cultures more than i love hipster coffee, more than i love a great song about abortion. 

i love BEING IN THE PLACE WHERE THE THING IS HAPPENING. I WANT TO SEE THE THING.

so i held my ground.

......................

i am happy to report that it went perfectly. we all found each other at the meet-up point and shuffled, like an austro-international amoeba, to an empty spot on the side of the plaza. 

the night before in vienna one of the wonderful patrons who stuck around for the photo after the show brought two tracht dirndls (dresses) and donated them to whatever cause. (whoever you are, i didn’t catch your name: thank you!!!!) 

(here;s our vienna patron photo)....

jack and i donned the two dirndls and gabrielle tried one on but was like “fuck this i need to carry three cameras” so she ditched the tracht idea. 

Gaby here: This is not how I normally roll. I'm a one camera kind of girl but I wanted to make sure I had COVERAGE. So I brought my strap-on and my extra lenses and by the time the thing went down, I was neck deep in photos with no time to change. But aren't you glad I didn't? I am. I might have missed this. (Hello AnaMarija!)

AND THEN. 

we ninja'd.

dudes

i was so naïve. i thought that EVERYBODY IN GRAZ would show up wearing ironic tracht (which is, if you missed the memo, the traditional dress of this locale).

oh no. that, like, did not happen.  

noooo.

in fact, it was very obvious to me that the general feeling about the tracht was not even one of ambivalence - it was more like a kind of .... embarrassment. 

i mean, i get it. 

this is what i feel like in america when i see people wearing american flags. it’s become a kind of dog-whistle brand of apparel for rah-rah racism and superiority. 

australians, same thing. 

so i made a spontaneous decision as soon as i showed up ion my ironic dinrdl, given the 😬feeling that the dirndl seemed to elicit in the crowd of 100 or so people who came to ninja. 

i decided we would deface it. (or “decorate” it if “deface” is too harsh for you).

luckily a bunch of people had sharpies and markers on them and we were....off to the races. 

somebody wrote "fuck nazis" on my chest.

indeed.

fuck that.

the fire department and police, who had their trucks parked next to our undertaking, watched with a combination of suspicion and amusement. 

they repeatedly declined to take photos with us, we asked politely.

meanwhile....i told people to write whatever they wanted. 

open season.

people donated all kinds of decorations: a lipstick, a tampon, some tiny playing cards, some purple mascara, a menstrual pad, some “matriarchy” stickers. 

wheeee tampons.

wheee pads.

even the children participated....

wheee children.

here are some close-ups of the writing that gabrielle took later, before i showered:)

my other fave key phrases, before showering....

I love Ibiza – the Austrian right-wing government government collapsed this year after a scandal in Ibiza, where the vice-chancellor was recorded offering government contracts in exchange for favours to a supposed Russian oligarch. (Looks like the patrons are happy about that. But with an election in two weeks, that government might be getting back in.) - jack

when we were done, i looked like a deranged austrian clown. 

i loved it. 

.........................

this feminist group showed up.....parodying traditional Austrian fraternities (the Burschenschaft). 

this was the Tyrannia Chapter of matriarchal Burcchenschaft. 

they sang everyone a song. 

i gave them all free tickets to the show and donated the used deranged dirndl to their cause. 

alfred ladylike, from berlin, struck up a song. 

i drank beer and played some ukulele songs. 

the fire department (feuerwehr) finally got into the swing of things at the end of “creep” and swayed and waved their hands, festival-style, in the air from atop their truck. possibly my proudest moment of this tour. 

there were a few tense moments. i joke about the police but they were ... not psyched about what we were doing. they left us alone, but eek. 

dude. austrian police. 

also. this young, handsome guy - maybe 30 - walked by in full tracht as we were about to take our huge group photo. i think he’d been at the edges, sort of observing our wired circus. 

i asked if he’d like to be in it and he looked at me with a huge smile and said: “so you are saying this is a joke? that this tradition is like bullshit? this is what you mean? you mean to be making fun of this?” and i was like 

oh fuck. i’m going to get clocked by this guy. 

i reassured him that i loved him, loved austria, and truly, actually, really loved my dirndl. (this was not a lie). 

he believed me and took a photo with us. 

then we had to go to soundcheck. 

we took the long route home and got some pictures on the way. :)

............

the austrians were sufficiently confused by us.

...........

me in my defamed, defiled, bloody-tampon festooned dirndl and jack looking way prettier than me....we danced....

(we decided to draw the line at heading into the church in the center of town to take photos against the soaring beauty. i was like: even we have our limits, yo. i’ve gotten conservative in my old age.)

we convinced these two leder-hosen-wearing lads to take a photo. they were game.

then soundcheck, after taking some good shots against the organ and in the hall (i mean we had to) then, boom, i put on my grown-up clothes and played one of the most beautiful halls in all of austria, the stefaniensaal. 

and i have to say...even though the show itself was packed and epic and full of tears.

this photo that gabrielle took is PURE ART:

gotta say, tho, it was a minor let-down after the high of playing ukulele songs to the graz fire and police departments while looking like a deranged austrian clown covered in tampon and anti-fascist graffiti. 

but i mean - what wonderful problems. i love my fucking life, you guys. 

do you see now, why it was important to head into the belly of the beast?? 

fight fire with fire !
fight nationalism with ridiculism !
fight dirndls with drag !
fight nazis with tampons !

I LOVE YOU, GRAZ. 

you all really made my fucking day. 

never stop fighting. 

xxx

afp

-----

PS: Jack here:  this gig was brilliant and the dirndls divine, but were we really fighting Nazis? Were there Nazis there? Graz people who were there - do celebrations like this feel threatening in their nationalism, or is it just embarrassment the silliness of the day that makes you not want to wear tracht? Does anyone love lederhosen non-ironically? Back to Amanda.

I'd love to hear more from people about your feelings on this aspect of culture, and how you felt emotionally about the act of defacing a dirndl....or not. 

AND PPS here are the patron photos from stuttgart today!!! THREE LOCATIONS! because...why not....thank you all for coming tonight....please sign in here and tell me what you thought of the show. i'm reading.