I was watching a documentary on National Geographic about Neo Nazis and skinheads. They were claiming that a lot of the Nazis today have infiltrated the thrash metal, punk scene, and goth scene to try and spread their political propaganda and cause confusion, and that the media unfairly labels anyone a skinhead or dresses like one as a racist.
I was reading the history about Skinheads on wikipedia, theres some interesting differences. I'm sure everyone here is aware of S.H.A.R.P.S (Skinheads Against Racial Predjudice) or something like that.
There is also the Oi! scene, i see a lot of nazis who say "Oi!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oi!
Oi! is a working class street-level subgenre of punk rock that originated in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s.[1]
The music and associated subculture had the goal of promoting unity between punks, skinheads and other non-aligned working class youths (sometimes called herberts). The Oi! movement was partly a response to a sense 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". [2]
In the words of André Schlesinger, "Oi shares many similarities with folk music, besides its often simple musical structure; quaint in some respects and crude in others, not to mention brutally honest, it usually tells a story based in truth."[3]
Controversy
Because some fans of Oi! were involved in white nationalist organisations such as the National Front and the British Movement, some histories of rock music dismiss Oi! as racist.[2] However, none of the bands associated with the original Oi! scene promoted racism in their lyrics. Some Oi! bands, such as Angelic Upstarts, The Burial and The Oppressed were associated with left wing politics and anti-racism.[4] [10] The white power skinhead movement developed its own separate music genre called Rock Against Communism, which had some musical similarities to Oi!, but was not connected to Oi! scene.
The mainstream media associated Oi! with far right politics following a concert by The Business, The Last Resort and The 4-Skins on July 4, 1981 at the Hamborough Tavern in Southall. Asian youths firebombed the tavern, mistakenly believing that the concert was a neo-Nazi gathering, partly because some audience members had written National Front slogans around the area.[2] In the aftermath, many Oi! bands condemned racism and fascism. These denials were met with cynicism from some quarters because of the Strength Thru Oi compilation album, released May 1981. Not only was its title a supposed play on a Nazi slogan (Strength Through Joy) but the cover featured Nicky Crane, a British Movement activist who was serving a four-year sentence for racist violence.
Garry Bushell, who was responsible for compiling the album, insists its title was a pun on The Skids album Strength Through Joy. He also denied knowing the identity of the skinhead on the album's cover until it was exposed by the Daily Mail two months later.[4] Bushell, who was a socialist at the time, noted the irony of being branded a far-right activist by a paper who "had once supported Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts, Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia, and appeasement with Hitler right up to the outbreak of World War Two." [4]
Another site claims Skinheads started up in the 60's which were basically middle class kids and was not a Nazi movement but they were opposed to immigration and were involved in "Paki bashing" (Kicking out Pakistanis) but were not particularly anti-semitic at that time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkinheadA skinhead is a member of a subculture that originated among working class youths in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, and then spread to other parts of the world. Named for their close-cropped or shaven heads, the first skinheads were greatly influenced by West Indian (specifically Jamaican) rude boys and British mods, in terms of fashion, music and lifestyle.[1] Originally, the skinhead subculture was primarily based on those elements, not politics or race.[2] Since then, however, attitudes toward race and politics have become factors in which some skinheads align themselves. The political spectrum within the skinhead scene ranges from the far right to the far left, although many skinheads are apolitical. Fashion-wise, skinheads range from a clean-cut 1960s mod-influenced style to less-strict punk- and hardcore-influenced style.
History
Hoxton Tom McCourt, a revival skinhead pictured in 1977.
In the late 1950s, the United Kingdom's entrenched class system limited most working class people's educational, housing, and economic opportunities. However, Britain's post-war economic boom led to an increase in disposable income among many young people. Some of those youths spent that income on new fashions popularised by American soul groups, British R&B bands, certain movie actors, and Carnaby Street clothing merchants.[3][4]
These youths became known as the mods, a youth subculture noted for its consumerism—and devotion to fashion, music, and scooters.[5] Mods of lesser means made do with practical styles that suited their lifestyle and employment circumstances: steel-toe boots, straight-leg jeans or Sta-Prest trousers, button-down shirts, and braces (called suspenders in the USA). When possible, these working-class mods spent their money on suits and other sharp outfits to wear at dancehalls, where they enjoyed soul, ska, bluebeat and rocksteady music.[1][6]
Around 1965, a schism developed between the peacock mods (also known as smooth mods), who were less violent and always wore the latest expensive clothes, and the hard mods (also known as gang mods), who were identified by their shorter hair and more working-class image.[7] Also known as lemonheads and peanuts, these hard mods became commonly known as skinheads by about 1968.[8] Their shorter hair may have come about for practical reasons, since long hair can be a liability in industrial jobs and a disadvantage in streetfights. Skinheads may also have cut their hair short in defiance of the more bourgeois hippie culture popular at the time.[9]
In addition to retaining many mod influences, early skinheads were very interested in Jamaican rude boy styles and culture, especially the music: ska, rocksteady, and early reggae (before the tempo slowed down and lyrics became focused on topics like black nationalism and the Rastafari movement).[10][11][1] Skinhead culture became so popular by 1969 that even the rock band Slade temporarily adopted the look, as a marketing strategy.[12][13][14] The subculture gained wider notice because of a series of violent and sexually explicit novels by Richard Allen, notably Skinhead and Skinhead Escapes.[15] [16] Due to largescale British migration to Perth, Western Australia, many British youths in that city joined skinhead/sharpies gangs in the 1960s and formed their own Australian style.[17][18]
By the 1970s, the skinhead subculture started to fade from popular culture, and some of the original skins dropped into new categories, such as the suedeheads (defined by the ability to manipulate one's hair with a comb), smoothies (often with shoulder-length hairstyles), and bootboys (with mod-length hair; associated with gangs and football hooliganism).[9] [19] [8][20] Some fashion trends returned to mod roots, reintroducing brogues, loafers, suits, and the slacks-and-sweater look.
In 1977, the skinhead subculture was revived to a notable extent after the introduction of punk rock. Most of these revival skinheads were a reaction to the commercialism of punk and adopted a sharp, smart look in line with the original look of the 1969 skinheads and included Gary Hodges and Hoxton Tom McCourt (both later of the band the 4-Skins) and Suggs, later of the band Madness.
From 1979 onwards, skinheads with even shorter hair and less emphasis on traditional styles grew in numbers and grabbed media attention, mostly as a result of their involvement with football hooliganism. These skinheads wore punk-influenced styles, like higher boots than before (14-20 eyelets) and tighter jeans (sometimes splattered with bleach). However, there was still a group of skinheads who preferred the original mod-inspired styles. Eventually different interpretations of the skinhead subculture expanded beyond the UK and Europe. One major example is that in the United States, certain segments of the hardcore punk scene embraced skinhead style and developed their own version of the subculture.[21]
Heres one specifically on white power skinheads
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_power_skinheadWhite power skinheads are a racist, and often also anti-semitic, offshoot of the skinhead subculture that originated in Great Britain.[1][2][3][4]
Many of them are affiliated with white nationalist organizations such as the People's National Party (Russia), the National Democratic Party (Germany), the British National Front (United Kingdom), the National Socialist Movement, Blood & Honour, Combat 18, Hammerskins and the Creativity Movement.
History
The original skinhead subculture started in the late 1960s, and had heavy British mod and Jamaican rude boy influences — including an appreciation for ska, early reggae and soul music.[5][6][7][8] The identity of skinheads in the 1960s was neither based on white power nor neo-Nazism, but some skinheads (including black skinheads) had engaged in gay-bashing, hippy-bashing and/or Paki bashing (violence against random Pakistanis and other South Asian immigrants).[9][10]
The original skinhead scene had mostly died out by 1972, and a late-1970s revival came partly as a backlash against the commercialization of punk rock. This revival coincided with the development of the 2 Tone and Oi! music genres.[11][12][13][7][14] The skinhead revival in Britain included a sizeable white nationalist faction, involving organizations such as the National Front, British Movement, Rock Against Communism and later Blood and Honour. Because of this, the mainstream media began to label the whole skinhead identity as neo-Nazi.
The racist subculture eventually spread to North America, Europe and other areas of the world. After the movement spread to the United States, some racist skinheads in that country became involved with groups such as Church of the Creator, White Aryan Resistance and the Hammerskins (a group that then spread to other countries). According to a 2007 report by the Anti-Defamation League, groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, white power skinheads and neo-Nazis have been growing more active in the United States in recent years, with a particular focus on opposing non-white immigration, specifically from Mexico.[2]
Style and clothing
Unidentified neo-Nazi skinhead.
White power skinheads, (and non-racist skinheads), are known for wearing Dr. Martens or combat-style boots, flight jackets, jeans and suspenders (also known as braces). In contrast to the mod-influenced Trojan skinheads, white power skinheads tend to wear higher boots, T-shirts instead of button-up shirts, and army trousers or jeans instead of Sta-Prest trousers. They usually crop their hair shorter than the 1960s-style skinheads; often to grade 0 length or shaved off completely with a razor. White power skinheads generally have more tattoos than the skinheads of the 1960s, and these tattoos often feature explicitly racist content. Some wear badges, chains or rings featuring Nazi or white power emblems.[15][16] In Germany, the Lonsdale clothing brand has been popular among some neo-Nazi skinheads. This is partly because the four middle letters of Lonsdale, NSDA, are almost the same as the abbreviation of Adolf Hitler's political party, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP).[17] Punk-influenced Oi! skinheads also dress in a similar fashion as white power skinheads, minus the racist or neo-Nazi symbols.
Any thoughts about this? Seems like Nazis are hijacking a lot of things that aren't originally theres and turning it into evil purposes.
Even thrash metal (not my tastes) where they have flooded the genre with their garbage. I assumed a lot of the bands that were involved in thrash metal like Combat 84 and a few others were racist, but Oi! followers claim their not. Apparently theres only a few select racist bands by resistance records, rock against communism, and the blood & honour titles.
Topic: Not all skinheads are racist? (Read 1699 times)