A skinhead or skin is a member of a subculture that originated among working-class youths 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.
Neo-Nazism comprises the post–World War II militant, social, and political movements that seek to revive and reinstate Nazi ideology. Neo-Nazis employ their ideology to promote hatred and racial supremacy, to attack racial and ethnic minorities, and in some cases to create a fascist state.
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".
Anti-Racist Action (ARA), also known as the Anti-Racist Action Network, is a decentralized network of militant far-left political cells in the United States and Canada. The ARA network originated in the late 1980s to engage in direct action and doxxing against rival political organizations on the hard right to dissuade them from further involvement in political activities. Anti-Racist Action described such groups as racist or fascist, or both. Most ARA members have been anarchists, but some have been Trotskyists and Maoists.
The Hammerskins are a white supremacist 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.
Nicola Vincenzo "Nicky" Crane was an English neo-Nazi activist. He came out as gay before dying from an AIDS-related illness in 1993.
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.
Mulugeta Seraw was an Ethiopian student who traveled to the United States to attend college. He was 28 when he was murdered by three white supremacists in November 1988 in Portland, Oregon. They were convicted, and Mulugeta's father and son—who was six years old—filed a civil lawsuit against the killers and an affiliated organization, holding them liable for the murder.
Black Shampoo is an American exploitation film directed by Greydon Clark. Released in 1976, the comedy film is considered an example of the blaxploitation and sexploitation subgenres of exploitation film. Produced on a budget of $50,000, the film stars John Daniels as Jonathan Knight, an African American businessman and hairdresser who frequently has sex with his predominantly white female clients, and Tanya Boyd as Brenda, Jonathan's secretary and girlfriend, who was previously in a relationship with a white mob boss, who, out of jealousy towards his ex's new lover, begins to regularly send goons to trash Jonathan's hair salon. The violence escalates as the film progresses.
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."
Keystone United, formerly known as the Keystone State Skinheads (KSS), is a neo-Nazi group based in Pennsylvania. The Southern Poverty Law Center stated that the group is one of the largest and most active single-state racist skinhead crews in the United States. According to the KSS website, the group had chapters in Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Erie, Scranton, Reading, Carlisle, Allentown and other cities in the state. KSS was featured in the National Geographic Channel documentary American Skinheads. In 2008, KSS changed its name to Keystone United. The number of its members remains unknown. The group's logos are a pit bull or a bulldog bordered by a chain or a Keystone symbol in the colors of the Nazi flag.
Greydon Clark is an American screenwriter, director, producer, and actor. His career spans several decades and genres, although the majority of his work has been low-budget productions in the action/horror genres. His most recent work was writing and directing the 1998 science fiction film Stargames, in which he was also featured.
Clark Reid Martell is an American white supremacist and the former leader of Chicago Area SkinHeads (CASH), which was founded in 1985 by six skinheads under his leadership. This was the first organized neo-Nazi white power skinhead group in the United States. The group was also called Romantic Violence, and was the first US distributor of records and tapes from the English band Skrewdriver.
Format18 was a Russian neo-Nazi group based in the city of Moscow. It was led by Maxim Sergeyevich Martsinkevich, and had close relations with the political party National Socialist Society.
The Bad Bunch is an American 1973 blaxploitation drama film directed by and co-starring Greydon Clark.
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.
Frank Meeink is a former white supremacist skinhead gang member in the United States. After a three-year stint in prison, he left the racist skinhead movement and now lectures against it.
A Nipster is a young neo-Nazi who has embraced aspects of hipster culture. Historically, German neo-Nazis promoted an ultra-masculine and extreme right-wing image, preferring short hair, violent imagery and combat gear—in keeping with the white power skinhead or casual subcultures—while rejecting most modern pop culture. This has changed, with young "nipsters" embracing causes such as animal rights and environmentalism alongside historically far right positions, including anti-immigration views. Nipsters, rather than rejecting modern pop culture, seek instead to appropriate it to promote neo-Nazi ideals. This has also been seen in the New Right and National Anarchism movements.
Green Room is a 2015 American horror-thriller film written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier, and produced by Neil Kopp, Victor Moyers and Anish Savjani. Starring Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, Callum Turner and Patrick Stewart, the film focuses on a punk band who find themselves attacked by neo-Nazi skinheads after witnessing a murder at a remote club in the Pacific Northwest. The film came from Saulnier's desire to direct a thriller set in a green room.
"White Right: Meeting the Enemy" is a 2017 documentary that aired as an episode of British current affairs TV series Exposure. The documentary was directed by Deeyah Khan and produced by Deeyah's production company Fuuse.
