Skinheads

In the mid-1980s, neo-Nazi skinheads emerged as the new face of racial hatred in the United States. Sporting close-cropped hair or shaved heads, suspenders, steel-toed boots, and Nazi-themed tattoos, these youth vaulted to the forefront of public concerns about racism, largely because of their commitment to violence and their confrontational style.

The skinhead subculture began in England in the late 1960s, emerging as an affirmation of British working-class values and style. Unlike other youth subcultures of the day, skinheads rejected trendy upscale fashion, opting instead for an exaggerated working-class uniform—simple button-down Fred Perry or Ben Sherman shirts, “sta-prest” trousers or denim jeans, suspenders (or “braces”), and Doctor Marten work boots. The ideology of early skinhead groups was a reflection of their clean-cut style, strictly adherent to a version of proletarian values that emphasized traditional masculinity and territoriality. Interestingly, the first skinheads lacked the explicitly racist ideology of their successors. In fact, they embraced the rocksteady and ska music and rude boy styles imported by Jamaican immigrants. Early skinheads also embraced violence, quickly gaining a reputation for assaulting hippies, homosexuals, Pakistani immigrants, and any other group that offended their sensibilities. In this sense, their close-cropped or shaved heads served a practical purpose, giving their opponents nothing to grasp during a fight. It was the skinheads' violent propensities, especially their targeting of innocent civilians, which led to considerable outrage. Following a crackdown by the London police in 1972, the skinhead subculture faded.

The transformation of this working-class subculture into a hate group occurred in the early 1980s when England was gripped by economic struggles and anti-immigrant sentiment. Within this political climate, the ultraconservative National Front Party was revived, promoting a fascist and racist ideology to the disenfranchised working class. This ideology gained a foothold in the skinhead subculture through its incorporation into aggressive punk-influenced music. Specifically, the band Skrewdriver, founded in 1977 by National [Page 747]Front organizer Ian Stuart Donaldson (later Ian Stuart), merged rabid neo-Nazism with the hard-edged sounds of punk and the sing-along nationalism of British pub songs, establishing a new musical genre: White power rock. In the early and mid-1980s, Skrewdriver inspired a number of other White supremacist bands and helped establish a global network of venues for White power rock shows. The music and the scene served as a powerful recruiting tool and indoctrination system for the National Front and other White supremacist movements. As White power rock spread and the subculture expanded, skinhead violence in England and throughout Europe increased dramatically.

Music was also central to the development of the neo-Nazi skinhead subculture in the United States. After Skrewdriver signed with Rock-O-Rama, a West German record label specializing in White supremacist music, their albums (as well as those of similar bands) were exported to the United States, as were copies of Blood and Honour, a fanzine-like publication produced by Stuart that celebrated White power rock. The aesthetics of this music—its simplicity, fast pace, and aural “rage,” as well as its emphasis on hypermasculinity and violence—were similar to those of the American hardcore music scene, which provided bands access to an audience of alienated young White males. It was from the ranks of the American hardcore scene that early skinhead groups, like Chicago's Romantic Violence (widely recognized as the first skinhead gang in the United States), drew their soldiers.

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