this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2025
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George Michael touching on the "fascist" element of Joy Division...
They did invoke some of the paraphernalia or fetishism - "y'all forgot about Rudolf Hess", who was the subject of their song "Warsaw", at the beginning and end they recite Hess's prison serial number - and their name itself was the name of a brothel frequented by nazis, we are told.
But that doesn't mean the lads were fascist, at all. Their city still had many visible scars of the blitzes thirty years prior, the seeming total defeat and trial of the nazis was still a personal issue in Manchester, "personal" as in "payback time, mยฐfยฐs", plus it all made for an epic, edgy and morbid spectacle.
Curtis worked at a government health clinic, treating epilepsy patients, that's what the lyrics for "She's Lost Control" are about, and that type of government is not the kind of work one can associate with a fascist mindset.
I feel like Joy Division certainly did flirt with fascist imagery. I wasn't around at the time, but I'm aware that within punk and post-punk there was the idea of stripping meaning and power from controversial imagery and symbolism by overtly using and subverting that imagery. Arguably, I don't think that approach worked. But I feel a large part of the way bands like Joy Division used this was based on that ideal. The band name was deliberately taken from the name of a sexual slavery wing of a Nazi concentration camp, though.
Also, I think Curtis was a bit of a contrarian. It seems like he enjoyed getting a rise out of people and the establishment at the time.