The Vinlanders Social Club (VSC) was formed in 2003 by associates and previous members of the skinhead group Outlaw Hammerskins. [1] In 2010, the Phoenix Police Department, with assistance from the local branch of the Anti-Defamation League, arrested several members of the Arizona chapter. [2] Following his departure from the Hammerskins, Eric “The Butcher” Fairburn and Brien James began the Hoosier State Skinheads group, while Steven Smith with four other ex-members formed the Keystone State Skinheads. These two groups in conjunction with the Ohio State Skinheads joined forces in 2003 and formed the VSC. [3]
In 2007, James posted on the VSC website that the group was going to "separate itself from the racist movement". [4]
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.
Phoenix is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona, with 1,662,607 residents as of 2024. It is the fifth-most populous city in the United States and the most populous state capital in the country.
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.
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 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.
Thomas Joel Bopp was an American amateur astronomer. In 1995, he discovered comet Hale–Bopp; Alan Hale discovered it independently at almost the same time, and it was thus named after both of them. At the time of the comet discovery he was a manager at a construction materials factory and an amateur astronomer. On the night of July 22, Bopp was observing the sky with friends in the Arizona desert when he made the discovery. It was the first comet he had observed and he was using a borrowed, home-built telescope.
Iron Cross was an American Oi! / hardcore punk band from Washington D.C. They played a rough form of Oi! and were the first band in the US to adopt the skinhead look and the Oi! musical style. Some of its members had close ties to the Washington hardcore punk subculture, due to its relationship with other hardcore bands, with Ian Mackaye, and with Dischord Records. Singer Sab Grey was one of the many roommates in the Dischord House in Arlington, Virginia. The band's name, and the fact that most of its members were skinheads, led to accusations of fascism, which Grey and others in the band and the original D.C. skins, always denied, declaring that they "hate Nazis".
ACAB, an acronym for 'all cops are bastards', is a political slogan associated with those opposed to the police. It is commonly expressed as a catchphrase in graffiti, tattoos and other forms of imagery in public spaces and online. The slogan is sometimes numerically rendered as '1312', with each digit representing the position of the corresponding letters in the English alphabet.
The Diocese of Phoenix is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, in western and central Arizona in the United States. It is a suffragan diocese of the ecclesiastical province of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.
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.
Agent Orange is an American punk rock band formed in Placentia, California, in 1979. The band was one of the first to mix punk rock with surf music.
"The Fourteen Words" is a reference to two slogans originated by David Eden Lane, one of nine founding members of the defunct white supremacist terrorist organization The Order, and are accompanied by Lane's "88 Precepts." The slogans have served as a rallying cry for militant white nationalists internationally.
The history of Arizona encompasses the Paleo-Indian, Archaic, Post-Archaic, Spanish, Mexican, and American periods. About 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, Paleo-Indians settled in what is now Arizona. A few thousand years ago, the Ancestral Puebloan, the Hohokam, the Mogollon and the Sinagua cultures inhabited the state. However, all of these civilizations mysteriously disappeared from the region in the 15th and 16th centuries. Today, countless ancient ruins can be found in Arizona. Arizona was part of the state of Sonora, Mexico from 1822, but the settled population was small. In 1848, under the terms of the Mexican Cession the United States took possession of Arizona above the Gila River after the Mexican War, and became part of the Territory of New Mexico. By means of the Gadsden Purchase, the United States secured the northern part of the state of Sonora, which is now Arizona south of the Gila River in 1854.
Laveen is a community in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States, situated eight miles (13 km) southwest of Downtown Phoenix, between South Mountain and the confluence of the Gila and Salt rivers. Parts of Laveen constitute an unincorporated community in Maricopa County, while the remainder falls within the city limits of Phoenix, constituting the city's "Laveen Village" an urban village within the city of Phoenix. Laveen Village is split between District 7 and District 8, both notable as minority-majority districts for the city. Although Laveen has been home to "pastoral alfalfa, cotton, and dairy farms" since the 1880s, housing and commercial developments have been increasingly urbanizing the area.
Unit 88 was a neo-Nazi organisation founded in Wellington by Collin Wilson and later based in Auckland, New Zealand. They were most active from 1997-1998 and are now defunct.
FC Barcelona is a professional multi-sports club based in Barcelona, formed in 1899 by a group of Swiss, Catalan, German and English footballers led by Joan Gamper. It has been part of the Spanish top-flight, La Liga, since the league's inception in 1928, winning it 27 times, along with a record 31 Copa del Rey and 5 UEFA Champions League victories.
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.
The Boixos Nois is an ultras supporter group organised around the La Liga football club FC Barcelona, based in Catalonia. Founded in 1981. However, during the 1980s the group's political position shifted. For many years, the Boixos Nois enjoyed a close relationship with FC Barcelona until president Joan Laporta banned their presence at games in 2003.