A skinhead or skin is a member of a subculture that originated among working-class youth in London, England, in the 1960s. It soon spread to other parts of the United Kingdom, with a second working-class skinhead movement emerging worldwide in the late 1970s. Motivated by social alienation and working-class solidarity, skinheads are defined by their close-cropped or shaven heads and working-class clothing such as Dr. Martens and steel toe work boots, braces, high rise and varying length straight-leg jeans, and button-down collar shirts, usually slim fitting in check or plain. The movement reached a peak at the end of the 1960s, experienced a revival in the 1980s, and, since then, has endured in multiple contexts worldwide.
Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice (SHARP) are anti-racist skinheads who oppose white power skinheads, neo-fascists and other political racists, particularly if they identify themselves as skinheads. SHARPs claim to reclaim the original multicultural identity of the original skinheads, hijacked by white power skinheads, who they sometimes deride as "boneheads".
Ian Stuart Donaldson, also known as Ian Stuart, was an English singer and neo-Nazi. He was the front-man of Skrewdriver, a punk rock band which, beginning in 1983, became one of the first Nazi punk bands. Donaldson raised money through white power concerts with his Blood & Honour network.
Blood & Honour is a neo-Nazi music promotion network and right-wing extremist political group founded in the United Kingdom by Ian Stuart Donaldson in 1987. It is composed of white nationalists and has links to Combat 18.
Rock Against Communism (RAC) was the name of white power rock concerts in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and has since become the catch-all term for music with racist lyrics as well as a specific genre of rock music derived from Oi! The lyrics can focus on racism and antisemitism, although this depends on the band.
The Hammerskins are a neo-Nazi group formed in 1988 in Dallas, Texas. Their primary focus is the production and promotion of white power rock music, and many white power bands have been affiliated with the group. The Hammerskins were affiliated with the record label 9% Productions. The Hammerskins host several annual concerts, including Hammerfest, an annual event in both the United States and Europe in honor of deceased Hammerskin Joe Rowan, the lead singer of the band Nordic Thunder.
Sol Invictus are a British neofolk band formed by Tony Wakeford in 1987. Wakeford has been the sole constant member of the group since its inception, although numerous musicians have contributed and collaborated with him under the Sol Invictus name over the years.
Anthony Charles Wakeford is a British neofolk musician, who primarily records under the name Sol Invictus. He is also a member of the punk rock band Crisis and a co-founder of Death in June.
White power skinheads, also known as racist skinheads and neo-Nazi skinheads, are members of a neo-Nazi, white supremacist and antisemitic offshoot of the skinhead subculture. Many of them are affiliated with white nationalist organizations and some of them are members of prison gangs. The movement emerged in the United Kingdom between the late 1960s and the late 1970s, before spreading across Eurasia and North America in the 1980–1990s.
A Nazi punk is a neo-Nazi who is part of the punk subculture. The term also describes the related music genre, which is sometimes also referred to as hatecore. Nazi Punk music generally sounds like other forms of punk rock, but differs by having lyrics that express hatred of some ethnic minorities, Jews, communists, homosexuals, anarchists, and other perceived enemies. Most other punks reject Nazi punks.
Rock-O-RamaRecords was a Cologne-based German independent record label that operated between 1980 and 1994, established and run by Herbert Egoldt. Though initially dedicated to releasing and distributing left-wing or apolitical German and international punk and hardcore, Rock-O-Rama became a leading label for white power rock and Rock Against Communism from the middle of the 1980s. Following a 1993 police raid, Egoldt closed the label in 1994 under the threat of legal action from German authorities.
Skrewdriver were an English punk rock band formed by Ian Stuart Donaldson in Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire, in 1976. Originally a punk band, Skrewdriver changed into a white power skinhead rock band after reuniting in the 1980s. Their original line-up split in January 1979 and Donaldson reformed the band with different musicians in 1982. This new version of the band played a leading role in the Rock Against Communism movement.
Rebelles Européens was a French independent record label that operated between 1987 and 1994, specialising in white power rock and Rock Against Communism. Based in the port city of Brest, the label was founded by Gaël Bodilis, a member of far-right groups including the Front Nationale Jeunesse, Troisième Voie, and PNFE. Rebelles Européens was, alongside German label Rock-O-Rama Records, a key player within the international white power skinhead music scene during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Unlike Rock-O-Rama, whose owner was apolitical and commercially minded, Bodilis primarily conceived of Rebelles Européens as a means for spreading neo-fascist ideology, and denied any interest in the profitability of his enterprise. Rebelles Europeéns was notable for its brazen inclusion of Nazi and white-supremacist symbols on album covers; Robert Forbes and Eddie Stampton suggest that the label "seemed to operate without regard to the law". After a pause on production in 1993, Rebelles Europeéns went out of business in 1994, with Australian label White League reissuing a small number of their releases on CD in 1995.
Oi! is a subgenre of punk rock that originated in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s. The music and its associated subculture had the goal of bringing together punks, skinheads, and other disaffected working-class youth. The movement was partly a response to the perception that many participants in the early punk rock scene were, in the words of The Business guitarist Steve Kent, "trendy university people using long words, trying to be artistic... and losing touch."
No Remorse are an English white power rock band formed in London in 1985. They were one of the most prominent neo-Nazi skinheads bands of the Rock Against Communism scene. The band was led by Paul Burnley between 1986 and 1996, and by William Browning and Daniel "Jacko" Jack from 1996 onwards, following a factional dispute within British white nationalist politics.
White power music is music that promotes white nationalism. It encompasses various music styles, including rock, country, and folk. Ethnomusicologist Benjamin R. Teitelbaum argues that white power music "can be defined by lyrics that demonize variously conceived non-whites and advocate racial pride and solidarity. Most often, however, insiders conceptualized white power music as the combination of those themes with pounding rhythms and a charging punk or metal-based accompaniment." Genres include Nazi punk, Rock Against Communism, National Socialist black metal, and fashwave.
Christian Marco Picciolini is an American former extremist who is the founder of the Free Radicals Project, a global network working to prevent extremism and help people disengage from hate movements. He is the author of a memoir, Romantic Violence: Memoirs of an American Skinhead, which details his time as a leader of the white power movement in the U.S. An updated version of the story was published in 2017, titled White American Youth: My Descent into America's Most Violent Hate Movement--and How I Got Out. His book Breaking Hate: Confronting the New Culture of Extremism (2020) looks at how extremists recruit the vulnerable to their causes.
Far-right subcultures refers to the symbolism, ideology and traits that hold relevance to various politically extreme right-wing groups and organisations. There are three kinds of subcultures within far-right movements to distinguish: subcultural parasitism, subcultural creation around ideology and subcultures that are networking with far-right movements.
Europe of 100 Flags is a concept developed by Breton nationalist Yann Fouéré in his 1968 book, L'Europe aux Cent Drapeaux. It proposes a redrawing of European borders in a way that more resembles a map of the region during the Middle Ages, including the creation of states for Basques, Bretons, and Flemings. These regions would be designed to promote regionalism and European federalism as a replacement for nationalism, and redefine extreme European boundaries more strictly in terms of ethnically homogeneous "authentic" historic regions. These individually ethnically "pure" states would then be incorporated under a "post-liberal-pan-European framework".
