By Kim Smith
Every year in Berlin there is a parade of people in the streets called the Love Parade. And just a few blocks away is the counter-parade – the Fuck Parade. The people who join the Fuck Parade are deliberately not attending the Love Parade – the Fuck Parade is a demonstration against the Love Parade. It was originally called the Hate Parade but changed to the Fuck Parade – short for ‘Fuck the Love Parade’ – when the original name was interpreted by the media as being pro-violence.
The Fuckparade is a demonstration against the restrictions posed on the music allowed at the Loveparade. The music tends towards the mainstream-chart-house end of the market and is considered commercialised.
Gabber music, a subgenre of hardcore techno in electronic music, was excluded from the Love Parade. The justification of the exclusion by the Love Parade was that the music with its fusion of techno and industrial created a dark, aggressive atmosphere. The result was that Gabber, together with Speedcore, Techno, Punk, and House were aggressively included in the Hate Parade.

The Fuck Parade has grown since its first appearance in 1997 and the aims have become more wide spread that simply insisting on the inclusion of certain music genres.
The aims of the Fuckparade are:
• To prevent the commercialisation of culture, music and public space.
• To prevent the abuse of the right for demonstration and free speech by commercial events, especially the Loveparade
• To further the consideration of subcultures in urban development and cultural policy, thereby protecting and enhancing cultural diversity
• To instill greater diversity of the media
• To protect free means of expression for demonstrations
What started out as a desire to prove that a bunch of people had the right to listen to the music of their choice, has, in just over ten years, turned into a political statement. The Fuck Parade fans are saying that they are tired of everything becoming about money; they are tired of commercial music and commercial experiences being given more media time; they are tired of anything which is slightly off centre being considered not worthy and somehow ‘less’ than their commercially popular counterparts.
And maybe this is a point of view more of us should have. We are all tacitly agreeing to live in MacDonalds version of the world because it is simply easier. If we do this, we will all land up homogenised and lacking even a shred of originality.
The Fuck Parade and all its supporters are keeping the European music industry vibrant and creative. What are we doing for our music industry?