SKINHEADS IN AMERICA
Like the Hitler Youth of the 1930’s, racist Skinheads are the shock troops of a new white supremacist movement.They aim to wrest control of the U.S. government (which they see as controlled by “Jews and like-livered conservatives”) in order to begin their holocaust of Africans, Asians, Jews, Gays and Latinos.This ideology is shockingly similar to the Hitler regime.
Established hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, the White Aryan Resistance or Aryan Nations have emphasized their effort to bring Skinheads within their ranks.In Pulaski, Tennessee, where the Klan was established in 1865, Skinheads show up at rallies where they are hailed by Klan leaders.The Klan has traditionally marched there on Martin Luther King Jr. day, in protest of the slain civil rights leader being honored with a national holiday.
In the mid-1980’s, gangs of shaven-headed youths sporting neo-nazis insignia and preaching violence against Blacks, Jews and other minorities emerged a s a menacing presence in a number of cities around the United States.
In 1988 there were 20-25 such Skinhead gangs with a total membership of 3500 operating in 21 states (excluding a larger group of passive sympathizers) compared with only 300 in 1986.They are alienated racist youngsters – mostly of the working class – who glorify violence and who have committed numerous crimes around the country.
Skinhead activity marked by racism, anti-semitism or linked to organized hate groups exists from Florida to California.One of the more active Skinhead groups of late has been the Old Glory, or National Socialist Skins of Georgia.Based in Atlanta, they have succeeded in establishing a level of organization more sophisticated than most Skinhead groups, having ties to skin heads in different parts of the country.
Many of the Skinhead activities have been marked by criminal charges ranging from disturbing the peace to murder, by distribution of racist propaganda, and by participation in Klan or neo-nazi rallies and demonstrations.
The skins have no music scene of their own in America.(British band, Skrewdrivers has never been allowed into the United States and domestic white-power bands are wooden amateurs who lack broad appeal.)The skins who detest leftist peace punks, crash their clubs, sometimes taking a razor blade to the locks of a longhair or ripping an anti-racist button off a peace punk’s shirt.”
“American Skinheads are as likely to be middle-class as working poor.But in their respects they are no so different from ethnic gang members.They tend to come from broken homes, and a high proportion were abused as children.They are creatures of dysfunction, casualties of a Burger King economy with no room at the top.”
“They are the first generation of white kids who don’t expect to live better than their parents,” says Leonard Zeskind, research director for the Center for Democratic Renewal.“These kids have come to social consciousness in the age of Reagan, when affirmative action is a bad word and race relations are going backwards. They’re alienated and fed up, and no one has reached them except the right-wing crazies.”-- (Rolling Stones, May/June 1989)