Fred Radtke: Graf Writer or White Vigilante?

The Iron Rail blog has a compelling post dating back almost a year on Fred Radtke aka Gray Ghost, who is notorious for painting over New Orleans spray can art and other forms of graffiti as well as conventional signs and posters.

It was signed under the pseudonym, "the mighty d-block" and is written under the assumption that Radtke himself is a "writer" who "gets up". While this is certainly a rather unconventional way to think about Radtke, d-block fails to realize that one can't apply graf writer categories and logic to an activity that is in opposition to the basis and politics of graffiti and graffiti art. This should be obvious, and for a blog with anarchist sensibilities I'm pretty surprised to see an individual endorsement of what we would consider as antithetical to anti-racism and is instead an activity that is complicit with the State and essentially white supremacist if not outright fascist.

For those interested in our general appreciation of graffiti, check out LBoogie's post from last March. LBoogie writes, "graffiti has been the megaphone for working class youth, and all they need is a can of spray paint and a blank surface (and sometimes not even that)." Youth of color were at the forefront of a specific form of graffiti in NYC in the 70s that eventually had a global spread. This was more or less consistent with the growth of hip-hop and its corresponding ethos of opposition to neoliberalism, white supremacy, and the coming to power of the Rainbow Coalition.

While we would disagree with those who have tried to mechanically fit graffiti into explicit attacks on the State and capitalism, we still would argue that implicit in graffiti (and sometimes explicit) is a rejection of official society. More importantly than its negativity (negation) is its reclamation of individuality in a society that has sought to destroy any vestige of such in the name of value production and State power.

What the individual writer thinks of his or herself is unimportant; our consciousness is a contradictory thing. Some writers are not able to articulate why they get up. It is a compulsion they feel. But when taken as a totality with all other forms of graffiti, we see a critique and an expression of alienation. Who knows where Radtke's real sentiments lay. I'm pretty confident that he would be in good company with the Algiers Point white community who during Katrina murdered at least a dozen black men with impunity. The State has yet to investigate, let alone charge anyone with the murders. But perhaps Radtke is a dude that generally has no problems with black folks. After all, he is pretty indiscriminate on what he chooses to paint over. However, Radtke is not an island and we have to situate him in a historical context in order to understand what he and his actions represent.

We know how the State has continued to respond to graffiti in explicit attacks on people of color. This goes back as far as Orange Crush. But it was not the only organized force to respond to graffiti. There has also been a history of white vigilantes responding in their own ways. Of course, white vigilantes have been doing more than just responding to graffiti, but have a long history of attacking people of color under the guise of "fighting crime".

Like the racist Katrina shooting deaths, Radtke gets a free pass by the State to continue his political crusade, Operation: Clean Sweep. "Sgt. Joe Narcisse with the NOPD previously said they have no intention of stopping Radtke or charging him with destruction of private property.

'What he’s doing is work that the city would be doing itself provided we had the resources and manpower,' Narcisse said. 'He’s not doing anything that we aren’t asking him to do.'"

I'm not sure which is more frightening, the fact that the white supremacist State turns its head from Radtke, or that it says it doesn't have the resources to remove graffiti itself.

Radtke's activity is more consistent with white vigilantism. He's determined, because the State is unwilling, to fight the depraved colored hordes who have brought us down from national greatness. He is an "Omega Man" that locates the decay and barbarism of the world not in the attacks on the working class and people of color, but on people of color themselves. That is an instinct towards fascism.

To support Radtke for "getting up" isn't breaking the holy laws of hip-hop graffiti. I could give a fuck about that. But to frame Radtke as a graf artist, or to argue that somehow what he is doing is compatible with the general ethos of graffiti, is like confounding the murder of black men by those crackers in Algiers Point as fighting crime. I'm not trying to bait d-block, but just because Huey Long railed against capitalism, that didn't make him anti-racist.