Racist Skinheads Understanding the Threat

LAW ENFORCEMENT SPECIAL REPORT Intelligencepublished by The souThern poverTy law CenTerReport ROLL CALL VIDEO ON Racijst skINhEADs EnclosEd RACIST SKINHEADS UNDERSTANDING THE THREAT racist skinhead movement history // GLOSSARY // timeLine // symboLs Intelligence Report intelligence report eDITOR Mark Potok intelligence project Director Heidi Beirich Senior eDITOR Skinheads Booth Gunter Staff writerS Ryan Lenz, Leah Nelson, Evelyn Schlatter chief inveStigator in America Joseph Roy Sr. Senior intelligence analySt Racist skinheads are among the most danger- Laurie Wood information manager ous radical-right threats facing law enforcement Michelle Bramblett today. The products of a frequently violent and reSearch analyStS Anthony Griggs, Janet Smith criminal subculture, these men and women, typ- program associate ically imbued with neo-Nazi beliefs about Jews, Karla Griffin reSearcherS blacks, homosexuals and others, are also noto- Angela Freeman, Karmetriya Jackson riously difficult to track. Organized into small, DeSign Director Russell Estes mobile “crews” or acting individually, skinheads Senior DeSigner tend to move around frequently and often with- Valerie Downes DeSignerS out warning, even as they network and organize Michelle Leland, Scott Phillips, Sunny Paulk across regions. For law enforcement, this poses a web proDuction Caroline Zilk particular problem in responding to crimes and conspiracies crossing multiple jurisdictions. As meDia anD general inquirieS Mark Potok these extremists extend their reach across the law enforcement inquirieS Joseph Roy Sr. SubScription requeStS Karla Griffin country, it is vital that law enforcement officers Southern Poverty Law Center 400 Washington Ave. • Montgomery, AL 36104 who deal with them become familiar with the (334) 956-8200 • www.intelligencereport.org activities of skinheads nationwide. Published by The souThern PoverTy law CenTer’s What follows is an examination of the history inTelligenCe ProjeCT and nature of the skinhead movement, prepared with the needs of law enforcement officers in Southern poverty law center preSiDent mind, a glossary of common skinhead terms, a J. Richard Cohen timeline, and a gallery of insignias and tattoos Southern poverty law center founDerS Morris Dees commonly used by racist skinheads. Joseph J. Levin Jr. Southern poverty law center boarD of DirectorS Howard Mandell, Chair Alan Howard, Marsha Levick, Will Little, James McElroy, Vanzetta McPherson, James Rucker, Ellen Sudow, David Wang The Intelligence Report is published quarterly by the staff of the Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center and provided free of charge to law s BI enforcement officials, journalists, scholars and others. The Southern Poverty or Law Center is supported entirely by private donations. No government funds are involved. © 2012 Southern Poverty Law Center. All rights reserved. mark peterson/C 2 intelligence report special edition SKINHEADS IN AMERICA The racist skinhead movement in the United them on a darkened street, this does not make them any less fearsome. States has entered its fourth decade. Since the first Origins skinhead gangs surfaced in Texas and the Midwest The first skinheads emerged in the late in the early 1980s, this racist and violent subcul- 1960s as just one of the many distinct youth cultures that flowered in postwar ture has established itself in dozens of states from Britain. Taking elements of English “mod” and Jamaican immigrant fash- coast to coast and has authored some of the coun- ion, these working-class London youths try’s most vicious hate crimes in memory, from crafted an identity in self-conscious opposition to the middle-class “long- arson to assault to murder. The racist skinheads’ hairs.” At various points in their early development, English skinheads posi- trademark style — shaved head, combat boots, tioned themselves as tough working- bomber jacket, neo-Nazi and white power tattoos class counterpoints to foppish mods, long-haired hippies, mohawked punks — has become a fixture in American culture. and made-up goths. The skinhead style first emerged The scowling skinhead has joined the the 1960s and ’70s, whose vision and as part of a non-racist and multira- hooded Klansman as an immediately turf was limited to the East London cial scene. White skinheads took on a recognizable icon of hate. neighborhoods in which they grew up persona that reflected admiration for Unlike the Klan, racist skinhead cul- and lived. and kinship with a new generation of ture is not native to the United States. The growth of the racist skinhead working-class West Indian immigrants And unlike the Klan, it is a truly global movement has mirrored the rise in into the United Kingdom. Like the phenomenon, with skinhead gangs non-white immigration to the West. Jamaican immigrants of the time, the haunting major cities and towns in just As the skin hues of Europe and North first skinheads were clean-cut, neat, and about every white-majority country on America have darkened with steady sharp-looking compared to the shaggier earth. From Austria to Australia and post-World War II immigration from youth styles of the period. (White skin- Argentina to America, working-class Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, a heads eventually lost their affinity for youths can be found dressed in some nativist backlash has appeared in both Jamaica as Rastafarian fashions became local variation on the skinhead theme, mainstream and extremist forms. The ascendant, with their overtones of black espousing a crude worldview that is skinhead movement is the most violent pride and pan-Africanism.) viciously anti-foreigner, anti-black, and ideologically crude form of this Many early white skinheads were anti-gay, and anti-Semitic. In recent backlash. Depending on the country, vaguely nationalistic and “proud to be years, the Internet and cheap interna- racist skinheads may have shadowy British,” but their deepest loyalties lay tional airfares have allowed skinhead ties to radical parties participating in with their childhood chums and the on L groups across the planet to communi- electoral politics. Skinhead groups in local soccer team, not the “white race,” an C s cate and organize in ways that would the U.S. lack such connections, but for as professed by today’s racist skin- n VI ke have shocked the original skinheads of those unlucky enough to encounter heads. While known for their youthful intelligence report special edition 3 aggression, petty criminality, and soc- and words of Adolf Hitler. In 1975, the reported in Texas and the Midwest, cer stadium violence, this activity was British Movement gained a charismatic among other places. But the movement seen as born out of economic hardship leader in the form of Michael McLaugh- only started gaining national attention and a general spirit of bully-boy rebel- lin, who reached out to the racist skin- during the last third of the decade. It lion — not blind race hatred. Indeed, heads and appealed to their sensibilities was then that skinhead gangs like the the first skinhead music was reggae and skills by emphasizing violence and Dallas Hammerskins made a splash and ska, both black musical forms; the street-level hate. with violent racist attacks on immi- earliest targets of white skinheads’ an- Between the arrival of Michael grants and blacks. ger and homemade weapons were each McLaughlin in 1975 and the election The most important skinhead gang in other and rival soccer fans. of Margaret Thatcher as British prime raising the American movement’s early But a split between racist and non- minister in 1979, the first hardcore neo- profile was Chicago’s CASH (Chicago racist skinheads was apparent and Nazi skinheads were born. Area Skin Heads), which made national began deepening soon after the style headlines with a brutal 1987 crime spree was born. By the early ’70s, skinhead Skinheads in the US. that involved assaults on six Hispanic attacks on South Asian immigrants in The neo-Nazi skinhead phenomenon women, swastikas painted on three London — the infamous sport of “Paki spread quickly to the United States. By synagogues, and numerous incidents of bashing” — had become an international the early 1980s, skinhead activity was vandalism to Jewish-owned business. news story. These violent skinheads had not yet acquired the trappings of neo- Nazi costumes and ideology, but they were already acting like Hitler’s goon squads, the brown shirts. One skinhead explained a typical “Paki bash” to a Time magazine journalist in 1970: “You go up to them and bump into them, and then you nut [forehead bash] them right, and then you hit them, and as they go down you give them a kicking, bash them with an iron bar, and take their watches and rings and things like that.” More than 50 such attacks were reported within a span of weeks in 1970, triggering street protests by British South Asians. A definitive break between racist and non-racist skins had occurred. During the early to mid-’70s, Eng- land’s skinheads went into temporary decline. They experienced a revival in 1976, when a new generation of skinheads started earning a fresh reputa- tion for violence through attacks on punks, homosexuals, and immigrants. Fueling these attacks and cementing the new racist skinhead identity was increasing association with two neofas- cist political parties, the National Front and the British Movement. The latter, founded by longtime neo-Nazi Colin Jordan in 1968, did the most to stamp a swastika on the racist sector of the skinhead movement. The British Movement ran candidates in the 1974 U.K. general elections who espoused neo-Nazi ideas on L an and wore swastikas while handing out C s n party literature featuring the image VI ke 4 intelligence report special edition The leader of CASH was an ex-con and with his teenage son, John, Metzger After spreading throughout the South, former member of the American Nazi sought to ground the dispersed move- Hammerskin-affiliated gangs began ap- Party named Clark Martell.

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