In recent years, the Internet and cheap international airfares have allowed skinhead groups across the planet to communicate and organize in ways that would have shocked the original skinheads of the 1960s and ’70s, whose vision and turf was limited to the East London neighborhoods in which they grew up and lived. From Austria to Australia and Argentina to America, working-class youths can be found dressed in some local variation on the skinhead theme, espousing a crude worldview that is viciously anti-foreigner, anti-black, anti-gay, and anti-Semitic. And unlike the Klan, it is a truly global phenomenon, with skinhead gangs haunting major cities and towns in just about every white-majority country on earth. Unlike the Klan, racist skinhead culture is not native to the United States. The scowling skinhead has joined the hooded Klansman as an immediately recognizable icon of hate. The racist skinheads’ trademark style - shaved head, combat boots, bomber jacket, neo-Nazi and white power tattoos - has become a fixture in American culture. Since the first skinhead gangs surfaced in Texas and the Midwest in the early 1980s, this racist and violent subculture has established itself in dozens of states from coast to coast and has authored some of the country’s most vicious hate crimes in memory, from arson to assault to murder. The racist skinhead movement in the United States has entered its fourth decade. What follows is an examination of the history and nature of the skinhead movement, prepared with the needs of law enforcement officers in mind, a glossary of common skinhead terms, a timeline, and a gallery of insignias and tattoos commonly used by racist skinheads. As these extremists extend their reach across the country, it is vital that law enforcement officers who deal with them become familiar with the activities of skinheads nationwide.
For law enforcement, this poses a particular problem in responding to crimes and conspiracies crossing multiple jurisdictions. Organized into small, mobile “crews” or acting individually, skinheads tend to move around frequently and often without warning, even as they network and organize across regions. The products of a frequently violent and criminal subculture, these men and women, typically imbued with neo-Nazi beliefs about Jews, blacks, LGBT people and others, are also notoriously difficult to track. Racist skinheads are among the most dangerous radical-right threats facing law enforcement today.
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