Skinheads Clash With Races - And Each Other -- Music, Fashion Shared - Not Always Hate

A leader of a neo-Nazi skinhead group that painted swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans on synagogues in two Boston suburbs and chased young African-American girls with baseball bats was sentenced last year to 46 months in prison.

About 700 skinheads attended "white power" concerts New Year's Eve in Cleveland and Portland, featuring such bands as Aggravated Assault and Intimidation One.

And in Huntington Beach, Calif., two racists are accused of the shooting death of an African-American man who was walking to a carry-out restaurant.

Since emerging in this country in the mid-1980s, racist skinheads have become a pervasive and troubling social phenomenon. Over the past eight years, at least 40 slayings have been attributed to them, 34 of them since 1990, according to the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. Racist skinheads also have been held responsible for thousands of assaults, firebombings and desecrations.

They are teenage and 20-something toughs. Their outward trademarks are cropped hair, flight jackets, swastikas and other supremacist insignia, and steel-toed Dr. Martens boots. Their subculture of bigotry, aimed at racial and religious minorities and homosexuals, is loosely derived from Third Reich philosophy, fueled by heavy beer-drinking and throbbing music on themes of racial separatism.

Skinheads clash on race

At the same time that violent attacks by race-based skinheads have increased, there have been mounting confrontations between racist and non-racist skinheads as the latter try to quash the white supremacist element while preserving their own iconoclastic look and alternative music.

Hate watchdog groups say the availability of firearms in the United States has made racist skinheads in this country among the most dangerous segment, along with those in Germany, of the widespread movement that began in Europe. American racist skinheads, who increasingly target immigrants, are considered the most violent segment of the American extreme right.

"In general, skinheads have replaced the Ku Klux Klan as the most violent edge of the organized racist movement and the far right as a whole," said Floyd R. Cochran, a former national spokesman for Aryan Nations in Hayden Lake, Idaho, who turned against the white supremacist movement three years ago and now monitors racism.

Violence disorganized

"The violence, however, does not tend to be organized," Cochran said. "It tends to be sporadic and committed by skinheads who become intoxicated on alcohol and hate music and act upon those feelings."

These skinheads have come under increased scrutiny following the recent racially motivated slayings of an African-American couple in Fayetteville, N.C., near Fort Bragg. The victims were shot in the head at close range while strolling down a dirt road just after midnight.

Three white soldiers, who told police they were neo-Nazi skinheads and had set out that night to harass African Americans after drinking at a strip bar, have been charged in the case. One of the suspects, Pfc. James Burmeister, 20, kept a large Nazi flag draped over his bed and white supremacist literature in his room off-post.

The slayings prompted the Army to probe extremism in its ranks worldwide. A report is due March 1. Fort Bragg launched its own inquiry into the 82nd Airborne Division, where the three suspects were assigned, and found seven more soldiers it determined were racist skinheads.

Although skinheads have grabbed headlines for their hate acts and Nazi leanings, the subculture as a whole is splintered and constantly at odds with itself.

Skinheads are in many ways tribal, divided into factions that are identified by the colors, patches and tattoos worn by their members. Racist skinheads, for instance, often thread their boots with white or red laces to signify white supremacy. Some members also bear "88" insignia denoting Heil Hitler (H is the eighth letter of the alphabet).

The deepest rift within the skinhead subculture has occurred between the racist skinheads and the non-racist, or "traditional," skinheads, who include a wide range of minorities and are generally less chauvinistic toward women. Neither side, however, considers the other to be true skinheads. The non-racists disparagingly refer to the racists as "boneheads," who in turn consider their foes "race traitors."

For the non-racists, the appeal of the skinhead lifestyle lies in its hard-edged regalia, camaraderie and brand of music: mainly ska, which is similar to reggae, and oi, which sounds somewhat like punk. Their music is devoid of racist lyrics and mostly apolitical.

Still other skinheads describe themselves as independents. They do not belong to any camp and wear no identifying colors or insignia.

"Calling all skinheads Nazis is like a Klansman calling all black people muggers," said Wingnut, 25, a non-racist skinhead from the District of Columbia who is half African American and was adopted as a child by African-American parents. "It's a bogus stereotype."

Fashion, music, peer validation

"This is far from a monolithic movement," said Brian Levin, associate director of Klanwatch at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., which tracks hate groups. "Skinheads are made up of a spectrum of individuals ranging from non-racists to diehard bigots to those who see the movement less in terms of ideology than in terms of fashion, music and peer validation."

Non-racist skinheads have earned reputations for violence when dealing with their racist counterparts, who they say are too incorrigible to understand the evils of bigotry. "I hate Nazis. If I see one of them I try kicking him, giving him the boot," said Bobby Mahoney, 18, a non-racist skinhead from Alexandria, Va.

Other non-racists have turned to the Internet. "You say you're proud of being white? Why? You had no control over what race you are. Be proud of achievements, not race," read one recent posting on the news group alt.skinheads.

But the enmity between the two camps, often ignited by drinking, has sometimes turned deadly. In August 1992, for instance, a pair of neo-Nazi skinheads in Olympia stabbed and beat to death a 17-year-old, non-racist skinhead who was part Asian American and part white.

Racist skinheads, who also target American Indians, generally exist in loosely knit cells. But watchdog groups said Detroit-based Resistance Records is trying to provide these skinheads with a singular voice for the first time through its music, World Wide Web page and Resistance magazine, a publication that some liken to a Rolling Stone magazine for skinheads.

Resistance is the largest U.S. distributor of white hate music, promoting more than a dozen such bands. Thomas Halpern of the Anti-Defamation League said music is crucial to the racist skinhead movement because it is the main recruitment and propaganda vehicle.