White power skinhead
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White power skinheads, also known as racist skinheads and neo-Nazi skinheads (but derided as boneheads by anti-racist skinheads),
Definition
Skinheads
Scholar Timothy S. Brown defines the skinheads as a "style community", that is to say a "community in which the primary site of identity is personal style", which allows innovative configurations to be made in new geographical and cultural contexts, or around opposing political ideologies – as in the dichotomy between racist and anti-racist skinheads.[4] From a group perspective, John Clarke, a professor who studied skinheads in the 1970s, has noted that the "skinhead style represents an attempt to recreate the traditional working class community, as a substitution for the real decline of the latter which started in the 1960s."[5]
White power skinheads
According to Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg, the white power skinhead movement, which emerged within the skinhead subculture from the late 1970s onward, can be defined by "racism; proletarian consciousness; an aversion to organization, dismissed in favor of gang behavior; and an ideological training that began with or is based on music." They have mostly emerged from working-class backgrounds, except in Russia, where they have mostly emerged from the educated, urban middle class.[6]
History
Origins in England
The original
The identity of the 1960s skinheads, however, was not based on
The leading politician
Emergence of the white power skinheads
The skinhead scene had mostly died out by 1973. Around 1977, a second wave started to emerge from the disintegration of the
Music played a key symbolic role in the political polarization of the skinhead subculture.
In July 1981, the "Southall Riots" were sparked when hundreds of skinheads were welcomed at an Oi! gig which was performed in a predominantly-Asian suburb of London. Some skinheads began to attack the neighboring Asian stores, and 400 Asians later responded by burning the venue with paraffin bombs while the skinheads were fleeing with help from the police.
Political links and radicalization
From the late 1970s the National Front (NF), a British neo-fascist party which was losing ground in electoral politics, began to turn toward the skinhead movement to obtain grassroots supporters among the working class. The Rock against Communism (RAC) genre, relaunched in 1982 by Skrewdriver leader Ian Stuart Donaldson in association with the National Front, appeared in reaction to the Rock against Fascism movement.[36][37][25] To draw new adherents, the National Front attempted to use the white power music scene to re-frame its message from overt hate of foreigners and minorities to self-love and collective defence of white identity. Donaldson and the National Front founded a record label named White Noise Club, which released Skrewdriver's album White Power in 1983, the eponymous song becoming "the most recognizable neo-fascist skinhead song".[38][37] In 1987, a music festival was organized by National Front member Phil Andrewon on Nick Griffin's Suffolk property, and was attended by hundreds of racist skinheads from across Europe who gave the Nazi salute and sang along a chorus that demanded "white power for Britain".[39]
A split within White Noise Club led to the establishment of
In 1990 the
Internationalization
Racist faction of the skinhead subculture began to appear in the first half of the 1980s in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, West Germany, Austria, the United States, Canada, and Australia; and by the mid-1980s in France, Belgium, Denmark, and Switzerland.[45] During the 1990s, the movement rapidly grew in the West and began to spread more intensively towards Eastern Europe, Russia in particular.[46][47] Before the Internet came to be widely available after the mid-1990s, white power skinhead music played a key role in the international diffusion of white supremacist ideologies within a highly fragmented racist movement. In many European countries, merchandising – and sometimes illegal racist or Holocaust-denying material – was sold via mail-order or during the touring of bands.[48][49]
Measuring the number of white power skinheads is made difficult by the lack of a formal and organized structure, the issue of overlapping memberships, and a tradition of silence set up to cultivate the mystique of their clandestine activities and to prevent the police from estimating the size of local groups. In 1995, around 70,000 of them were estimated to be present in 33 countries (half being "hard-core activists", the others friends and associates), including 5,000 in Germany, 4,000 in Czechia, 4,000 in Hungary, and 3,500 in the US.[50] By 2002, 350 white power music bands were active the US and Western Europe,[51] and as of 2012, about 138 racist skinhead organizations operated worldwide.[52]
Europe
In most European countries, the racist skinhead subculture became polarized on the far-right between 1983 and 1986, and shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 in Eastern Europe, where it has been particularly strong since the transition to capitalism.[47] The white power music scene rapidly embraced the growth of the Internet, which allowed them to bypass local European hate speech laws and further develop their international networks.[48] In 2013, Hammerskin Nation (HSN) managed to bring together over 1,000 skinheads from all over Europe at a Nazi rock gig organized in Milan.[49]
In Germany, the hard rock band
In France, the white power skinhead movement was structured around Jeunesses Nationalistes-Révolutionnaires (JNR), founded in 1987 by
Russia
The Russian white power skinhead subculture takes its roots in the
The movement remained unnoticed in the general public until the early 2000s, when acts of violence began to multiply.[60] Skinheads attacked a Vietnamese hostel in October 2000, an Armenian school in March 2001, led a pogrom at the Yasenevo Market on Hitler's birthday in April 2001, then a second pogrom in the Moscow underground transit system in November 2001, which resulted in 4 deaths.[63] Despite some common grounds with Vladimir Putin's nationalist agenda, skinheads remain opposed to vestiges of authority in the country. The skinhead subculture presents itself, in the words of scholar Peter Worger, as an "ultra-nationalist alternative to Putin’s state-sanctioned patriotism."[60] The neo-Nazi Russian National Unity group, in contrast, as known to have enrolled young members from skinhead gangs.[66] The Federal Law on Counteracting Extremist Activity, adopted in 2002 after the skinhead pogroms, was rarely enforced by the police and skinheads are rather prosecuted for murders associated with hooliganism and everyday-life conflicts than for hate speech and racist violence.[66]
Some of the skinhead groups are autonomous, while others are linked to the US-based organizations Blood & Honour and Hammerskin Nation.[2] Contrary to most other countries, the Russian skinhead subculture has attracted members from all income levels,[67] and they have tended to come from the educated middle class in the urban centres.[6] In 2004, there were about 50,000 self-identified skinheads in the country, with groups active in approximately 85 cities.[58][2] Up to 2,000 rioters linked to the Russian skinhead movement have participated in an anti-Chechen pogrom in 2006.[2]
Under serious police pressure, the number of racist acts and Neo-Nazis started to significantly decline in Russia from 2009.[68]
United States
In the 1980s and 1990s, many young American neo-Nazis and white supremacists, often associated with the Ku Klux Klan, joined the growing US white power skinhead movement.[41] By 1988, there were ~2,000 neo-Nazi skinheads in the United States.[69]
The first identifiable neo-Nazi skinhead group was the short-lived Chicago's Romantic Violence, established in 1984 by 25-year-old
At the time of his death in 2002, National Alliance leader William Luther Pierce, who regarded music as an opportunity to reach a young audience and counteract mainstream cultural productions, had become the world's largest white power music producer thanks to his label Resistance Records.[72] In 2004, the white power label Panzerfaust Records launched a "Project Schoolyard USA" to distribute sample CDs to middle and high students across the United States.[73]
In the United States, most white power skinhead groups are organized at either the state, county, city or neighborhood level; the Hammerskin Nation is one of the few exceptions, due to its international presence.[74] A 2007 report by the Anti-Defamation League says groups such as white power skinheads, neo-Nazis, and the KKK have been growing more active in the United States, with a particular focus on opposition to illegal immigration.[75] The Aryan Brotherhood has grown in some parts of the United States by swallowing whole skinhead gangs.[76]
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) noted in 2020 that the skinhead movement had "almost no young recruits" in the United States. The SPLC writes, "Image-conscious white nationalist groups and militant neo-Nazi groups are attracting the younger generation, while new racist skinhead groups are emerging only from the fragments of existing groups. No group is recruiting in significant numbers."[52] Sarah Lawrence College journalist Chelsea Liu identified their fashion style as one possible reason for the decline, seeing it as "increasingly obsolete" and noting the alt-right's preference for casual clothing.[77]
Anti-racist skinhead opposition
Since the emergence of white power skinheads in the late 1970s, anti-racist forces within the skinhead subculture, sometimes called "Red Skins" when associated with left-wing politics,[78] have sought to resist the white power skinheads, who they often deride as "boneheads".[1][2]
Anti-racist skinheads generally emphasize the multicultural roots of the original skinhead subculture, and the authenticity of the skinhead style, which developed outside of the political realm.[79] They oppose the views of white power skinheads, for whom the skinhead subculture emerged from a "pure white", working-class cultural and social context, emphasizing the "Paki-bashing" of the late 1960s to allege that the original skinheads as "white separatists".[49]
The
Style and clothing
Early skinheads typically wore steel-toed combat boots or Doc Martens, thin red suspenders, Crombie coats, sheepskin bomber jackets, blue jeans, mohair suits, in addition to a shaved head or very closely-cropped hair.[80][81]
The Anti-Defamation League writes that although steel-toed workboots are typical of both racist and anti-racist skinheads, white power skinheads commonly fit their boots with white- or red-coloured laces to signify their affiliation to the subculture. These laces are usually done in a "ladder" style: laces are done horizontally instead of crossed. In a few gangs, these laces must be "earned" through acts of racist violence against a "perceived enemy of the white race".[82]
In the early 2000s, the
White power skinheads also tend to bear
Ideology
The central themes of white power skinheads revolve around "the
The early-20th century
According to Camus and Lebourg, the Nazifying imagery of white power skinheads was "at first largely provocative", and sometimes a way for the proletarian youth "of responding to the sacralization of the memory of World War II".[89] Pollard also notes that "adolescent rebellion", involving a desire to be different by rejecting prevailing societal norms by using shocking imagery (like the wearing of Nazi regalia by motorcycle gangs in the 1960s and punk rockers in the 1970s), probably plays some part in the decision to wear neo-Nazi or racist symbols, or even to adopt the ideas they embody.[94] References to Nazism have also been less significant in countries like Italy or Hungary, where fascist figures like Benito Mussolini and Ferenc Szálasi still exert a strong cultural influence on the local far-right.[92]
Lifestyle
Puritanism
White power skinheads see both the permissive society and the sexual revolution as "perversions", and they generally promote an image of "clean-living, drug-free, heterosexual, working-class males". Homophobia and rejection of any form of drug-taking (except tobacco and alcohol) are common traits found across skinhead groups. According to historian John F. Pollard, this "puritanical" stance takes its roots in the anti-permissive way of life of the original skinheads who rejected the mod and hippie subcultures.[95]
A central element of this puritanism is the skinhead idea of "naturalness"; their aim is to "eliminate all abnormalities like, homosexuals, lesbians and other kinds of 'sick' and 'deviant' people". Skinheads'
Women are a minority among the white power skinhead movement. In Britain, France and Germany, they rarely attend events. Female presence at gigs is however more frequent in Italy, and entire families have been seen attending the Aryan and Nordic Fest in the United States.[96] Despite a widespread misogynistic culture and a general absence of commitment to female equality, some skinhead women have rejected the traditional gender roles and can act as aggressively as their male counterparts.[97]
Marginality
Skinheads present themselves as an excluded or martyr group repressed by the "police state" of liberal democracies. Blood & Honour and Combat18 have promoted conspiracy theories about the death of Ian Stuart Donaldson, suggesting that he was the victim of a political "assassination". The common skinhead motto "hated but proud" expresses the closed, excluded, but feared lifestyle of white power skinheads.[88]
These young proletarians turn neither to the left, which according to them is more inclined to defend the "immigrant delinquent" than "the hard-working white guy", nor to the [mainstream] right, whose conservatism is alien to their own mind-set and mode of life. For them, "the system" has abandoned the little guy, and gangs constitute a countersociety of pleasure and solidarity. [...]. In every country, the White Power movement shows what happens when entire swathes of marginal populations are abandoned to economic violence.
Jean-Yves Camus & Nicolas Lebourg (2017), Far-Right Politics in Europe, Oxford University Press: pp. 108–109.
Odinism
Notable organizations
In popular culture
Music groups
- Kolovrat
- Landser
- No Remorse
- Skrewdriver (originally a non-racist punk rock band)
- Skullhead
Films
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Video games
- Ethnic Cleansing (2002)
- Manhunt (2003, known in-game as the Skinz)
- RoadKill (2003, known in-game as "Talons" and "Dreg Lords")
See also
Notes
- ^ The Combat 18 manifesto from the early 1990s called for the shipping of "all non-Whites back to Africa, Asia or Arabia alive or in body-bags, the choice is theirs", and the execution of all "queers", "White race mixers", and "all jews who have actively helped to damage the White race and to put into camps the rest until we find a final solution for the eternal jew."[44]
- ^ In Siberia, 7–11% of the military recruits were illiterate in 1997. According to the Department for the Prevention of Violations of the Law by Minors, a subsidiary of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, 1/3 of school-age offenders did not have a primary education in the spring of 1999.[61]
- ^ No Remorse: "Jew-boys need cyclone [sic] B; queer-boys need cyclone B nigger-boys need cyclone B"; Warhammer: "Die Jew, Die".[92]
References
- ^ a b c Brown 2004, p. 159.
- ^ a b c d e f Camus & Lebourg 2017, p. 105.
- ^ "Aryan Prison Gangs" (PDF). Southern Poverty Law Center. Archived (PDF) from the original on July 18, 2021.
- ^ Brown 2004, p. 160.
- ^ Clarke 1976, p. 99.
- ^ a b Camus & Lebourg 2017, p. 108.
- ^ Pollard 2016, pp. 399–400.
- ^ Clarke 1973, p. 10.
- ^ Marshall 1991, pp. 12, 21–29.
- ^ a b c d Tarasov 2001, p. 46.
- ^ Brown 2004, pp. 157–158.
- ^ a b Clarke 1973, p. 13.
- ^ a b Cotter 1999, p. 116.
- ^ a b Marshall 1991, p. 21–29.
- ^ Camus & Lebourg 2017, p. 102.
- ^ Clarke 1973, p. 11.
- ^ a b Brown 2004, p. 161.
- S2CID 143681971.
- ^ Ashe, Virdee & Brown 2016.
- ^ Weinraub, Bernard (9 April 1970). "Attacks Terrorize Pakistanis in London". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 July 2021.
- ^ Moore 1993, pp. 33–39.
- ^ a b c Brown 2004, p. 162.
- ^ Shaffer 2013, p. 468.
- ^ Marshall 1991, p. 19.
- ^ a b c d e Camus & Lebourg 2017, p. 103.
- ^ Clarke 1973, p. 14.
- ^ Pollard 2016, p. 400.
- ^ Brown 2004, pp. 158–159, 163.
- ^ Brown 2004, pp. 158–159.
- ^ Cotter 1999, p. 117.
- New York Times
- ^ Brown 2004, pp. 162–163.
- ^ Brown 2004, p. 163.
- ^ Groundwater, Colin (June 10, 2020). "A brief history of ACAB". GQ.
- ^ "ACAB". Anti-Defamation League.
- ^ a b c Brown 2004, p. 164.
- ^ a b Shaffer 2013, p. 412.
- ^ Corte & Edwards 2008, p. 5.
- ^ Shaffer 2013, pp. 458–459, 476.
- ^ Shaffer 2013, p. 478.
- ^ a b c d Pollard 2016, p. 402.
- ^ Shaffer 2013, pp. 460, 469.
- ^ Shaffer 2013, pp. 479–480.
- ^ Pollard 2016, pp. 408–409.
- ^ Tarasov 2001, p. 49.
- ^ Cotter 1999, p. 111.
- ^ a b Camus & Lebourg 2017, p. 104.
- ^ a b c Corte & Edwards 2008, p. 6.
- ^ a b c Pollard 2016, p. 405.
- ^ Cotter 1999, pp. 112–114.
- ^ Corte & Edwards 2008, p. 4.
- ^ a b "Racist Skinhead". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved February 17, 2020.
- ^ Goodrick-Clarke 2001, p. 198.
- ^ a b Tarasov 2001, pp. 50–51.
- ^ Camus & Lebourg 2017, p. 109.
- ^ Tarasov 2001, p. 51.
- ^ Camus & Lebourg 2017, pp. 105–106.
- ^ a b Worger 2012, p. 271.
- ^ Tarasov 2001, pp. 44, 52.
- ^ a b c Worger 2012, p. 269.
- ^ Tarasov 2001, pp. 55–56.
- ^ Tarasov 2001, pp. 52–55.
- ^ a b Worger 2012, p. 272.
- ^ Worger 2012, pp. 272–273.
- ^ Tarasov 2001, p. 54.
- ^ a b Worger 2012, p. 275.
- ^ Worger 2012, p. 270.
- ISBN 9781474410434.
- ^ Bishop, Katherine (June 13, 1988). "Neo-Nazi Activity Is Arising Among U.S. Youth". The New York Times. Retrieved 2019-03-13.
- ^ Cooter 2006, p. 149.
- ^ Pollard 2016, pp. 403–404.
- ^ Corte & Edwards 2008, p. 12.
- ^ Corte & Edwards 2008, p. 13.
- ^ Encyclopedia of Gangs 2007 Archived 2009-08-07 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Immigration Fueling White Supremacists". CBS News. 6 February 2007.
- ^ "Aryan Brotherhood". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 2020-06-17.
- ^ Liu, Chelsea (December 10, 2017). "On Dressing Like a Skinhead". The Phoenix – Sarah Lawrence College. Archived from the original on November 24, 2019. Retrieved February 17, 2020.
- ^ a b Tarasov 2001, pp. 48–49.
- ^ a b Brown 2004, p. 170.
- ^ Ventsel 2014, p. 264: "This early [1960s] skinhead era was brief but influential. In the few years before the decline, skinheads emulated their own style of Doc Martens boots, braces, Crombie coats, sheepskin jackets, and mohair suits, in addition to the classic feather cut hairstyle, mini skirt costumes, and fishnet stockings for girls. The style fetishism of the early skinheads was extremely elitist and similar to the mods, details and brands were important."
- ^ Cooter 2006, p. 147: "Accordingly, at this early stage, the arresting fashion of choice for group members, which would indeed be an emblem for the Skins for more than 20 years, was already visible. The most distinguishing feature of their style of self-presentation was a shaved head or very closely-cropped hair, which not only was practical in the increasing numbers of physical altercations involving Skins, but also was originally meant to be reactionary against both hippie and wealthy, elitist cultures prevalent at the time (Hamm 1993). Other aspects of their dress typically included blue jeans, thin red suspenders, a bomber jacket, and steel-toed combat boots or Doc Martens (Anti-Defamation League N.d.b)."
- ^ "Boots and Laces". Anti-Defamation League. Retrieved February 17, 2020.
- ^ Cleaver, Hannah (22 February 2001). "German Nazis' dress code angers British firm". The Daily Telegraph. London. Archived from the original on 2022-01-12.
- ^ a b Asthana, Anushka (9 April 2005). "Neo-Nazi teenagers fight in British boxing's No 1 brand". The Times. London.
- ^ Ventsel 2014, p. 271.
- ^ Cooter 2006, pp. 152, 154.
- ^ Pollard 2016, p. 408.
- ^ a b Pollard 2016, p. 411.
- ^ a b c d e Camus & Lebourg 2017, pp. 108–109.
- ^ a b Pollard 2016, pp. 413–414.
- ^ a b Pollard 2016, p. 415.
- ^ a b c Pollard 2016, p. 414.
- ^ Pollard 2016, pp. 408–409, 415.
- ^ Pollard 2016, p. 418.
- ^ Pollard 2016, p. 406.
- ^ a b Pollard 2016, p. 407.
- ^ Blee 2002, pp. 144–149, 178–182.
- ^ Pollard 2016, pp. 409–410.
- ^ a b Pollard 2016, p. 410.
- ISBN 978-3-030-25169-7.
- ISBN 978-0-313-35953-8.
Bibliography
- Ashe, Stephen; Virdee, Satnam; Brown, Laurence (2016). "Striking back against racist violence in the East End of London, 1968–1970". Race & Class. 58 (1): 34–54. PMID 28479657.
- ISBN 978-0-520-93072-8.
- Brown, Timothy S. (2004). "Subcultures, Pop Music and Politics: Skinheads and "Nazi Rock" in England and Germany". Journal of Social History. 38 (1): 157–178. S2CID 42029805.
- ISBN 9780674971530.
- Clarke, John (1973). "Football Hooliganism and the Skinheads" (PDF). Stencilled Occasional Papers. Department of Contemporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham. ISBN 978-0704404892.
- Clarke, John (1976). "The Skinheads and the Magical Recovery of Community". In Jefferson, Tony (ed.). Resistance Through Rituals : Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. HarperCollins Academic. ISBN 978-0-203-22494-6.
- Cooter, Amy Beth (2006). "Neo-Nazi Normalization: The Skinhead Movement and Integration into Normative Structures". Sociological Inquiry. 76 (2): 145–165. S2CID 144299471.
- Corte, Ugo; Edwards, Bob (2008). "White Power Music and the Mobilization of Racist Social Movements". Music and Arts in Action. 1 (1): 4–20. ISSN 1754-7105.
- Cotter, John M. (1999). "Sounds of hate: White power rock and roll and the neo-nazi skinhead subculture". Terrorism and Political Violence. 11 (2): 111–140. ISSN 0954-6553.
- ISBN 978-0-8147-3237-3.
- Marshall, George (1991). Spirit of '69 : a Skinhead bible. ST Publishing. ISBN 1-898927-10-3.
- Moore, Jack B. (1993). Skinheads shaved for battle : a cultural history of American skinheads. Bowling Green State University Popular Press. ISBN 0-87972-582-6.
- S2CID 151502563.
- Shaffer, Ryan (2013). "The soundtrack of neo-fascism: youth and music in the National Front". Patterns of Prejudice. 47 (4–5): 458–482. S2CID 144461518.
- S2CID 144644768.
- Ventsel, Aimar (2014). "'That Old School Lonsdale': Authenticity and Clothes in German Skinhead Culture". In Cobb, Russell (ed.). The Paradox of Authenticity in a Globalized World. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 261–275. ISBN 978-1-137-35383-2.
- Worger, Peter (2012). "A mad crowd: Skinhead youth and the rise of nationalism in post-communist Russia". Communist and Post-Communist Studies. 45 (3–4): 269–278. ISSN 0967-067X.
Further reading
- Borgeson, Kevin; Valeri, Robin Maria (2017). Skinhead History, Identity, and Culture. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-315-47479-3.
- Futrell, Robert; Simi, Pete; Gottschalk, Simon (2006). "Understanding Music in Movements: The White Power Music Scene". The Sociological Quarterly. 47 (2): 275–304. S2CID 143261429.
- Love, Nancy S. (2016). Trendy fascism : White power music and the future of democracy. State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-1-4384-6205-9.
- Young, Kevin; Craig, Laura (1997). "Beyond White Pride: Identity, Meaning and Contradiction in the Canadian Skinhead Subculture". Canadian Review of Sociology. 34 (2): 175–206. ISSN 1755-618X.