Counter-Currents
3,400 words
One dictionary defines skinhead as a “racist young Caucasian man: one of a group of young Caucasian men with closely-cropped or shaven hair who often have racist or fascist beliefs, and are sometimes violent.”
The word “Caucasian” is incorrect as a synonym for white Europeans, though that is what is meant. Presumably here it implicitly excludes Jews as well, since everyone knows Jews can’t be racist or fascist.
A Scary New Subculture
A “subculture” is an ethnic, regional, economic, or social group exhibiting characteristic patterns of beliefs, behavior, lifestyle, or appearance sufficient to differentiate it from others within the larger society.
Skinhead subculture emerged within a controlled, consumerist environment in the UK associated with commercialized white idealization of black culture (e.g., Jamaican music and thuggery), a distinctive hairstyle (close-cropped hair or shaved head with absence of beard or moustache), mode of dress (boots and “braces”—suspenders—T-shirts, jeans, bomber jackets), tattoos, and, particularly, certain genres of popular music.
The skinhead practice of setting members apart by eye-catching physical identifiers—shaved heads, distinctive clothing, and so on—is worthy of mention. Such identifiers are conspicuous, for example, among the Amish, Orthodox Jews, and, formerly, hippies.
External markers are important in delineating subcultures, but a paradigm shift also occurs in the ideological and psychological realm when skinhead recruits veer from an “artificial world” they hate to join an exciting, new, and completely different one.
For perhaps the first time in their lives they experience real camaraderie with people who share their most basic convictions (even if previously only latent, inchoate, and unconscious), and no longer feel required to conceal their true feelings. After years of searching for a just cause, they suddenly feel liberated, empowered, and happy. Their identity has shifted: they became explicitly white.
Racial consciousness and identity are keys to what it means to be a skinhead. That’s why the dictionary succinctly defined the term by listing six salient features: youth, maleness, shaven hair, belonging to a group, combativeness, and Aryan racial beliefs. The only thing missing was the music.
One would think that a similar phenomenon among contemporary “Goths” would, as with skinheads, call forth some degree of racial consciousness, but it has not. For one thing, there has been no charismatic leader to catalyze and channel it.
Without Ian Stuart, skinheads themselves probably would have resembled Goths in terms of non-racialist ideology, if they had coalesced at all. Like Goths, skinheads might have remained a far more marginal social phenomenon, since the movement would not have tapped into the genuine, deep-flowing stream of suppressed racial consciousness coursing below the surface of mass society and individual consciousness.
Loss of Control
At a certain point in the late 1970s and early ’80s the Establishment inexplicably lost control of the domesticated movement as the subculture underwent a sudden, spontaneous transformation. It quickly became associated with a militant, non-Jewish racial identity among white working class youth as it spread like wildfire across Europe, North America, and Australia.
As one head-scratching racist academic asked rhetorically, without apparent irony, “What accounts for the seemingly-paradoxical transformation of the [white English youth] skinhead subculture from one organized around appreciation [actually, guided adulation] for black cultural forms to one organized around white and frequently racist forms?” (Timothy Scott Brown, “Subcultures, Pop Music and Politics: Skinheads and ‘Nazi Rock’ in England and Germany,” Journal of Social History 38 [Fall 2004]: 157–78.) (Note that some commentators contend claims of affinity between early punks, skinheads and blacks have been exaggerated.)
Back With a Bang!
Music was an essential component of skinhead identity.
Credit for placing a militant, extreme racial stamp on skinhead culture that subsequently made it famous (or infamous) is due to the outsized personality and influence of Ian Stuart Donaldson (1957–1993), the lead singer of Skrewdriver.
As Brown noted, “London’s Skrewdriver was the earliest and most influential of the ‘Nazi rock’ bands. Its leader, Ian Stuart Donaldson, did more than anyone else to forge connections between right-wing rock music and the skinhead scene, and between the skinhead scene and the radical right.”
By comparison, the contemporaneous German band usually cited as Skrewdriver’s counterpart on the continent, Böhse Onkelz, was not explicitly pro-white, and rapidly back-pedaled from its original mild stance as its fame grew. Indeed, from 1985 until its disbandment in 2005, it was essentially anti-white politically.
In England as in Germany enormous pressure was brought to bear to destroy the white skinhead movement. As Ian Stuart related in an interview:
Most of our mates that came to our gigs [during Skrewdriver’s initial 1976–79 punk rock manifestation] were political, they were either NF (National Front) or BM (British Movement) and in the end what happened was the press ordered us along with Sham 69 [a successful English punk band that’s still in existence] to denounce those people in the audience, or get banned. We refused and Sham 69 said OK. So Sham 69 became very big and we got banned from everywhere, they banned all of our adverts from the music papers and everything. All this was in 1977.
After the band broke up in 1979, Stuart resurrected the Skrewdriver name with different musicians and its now-classic nationalist, skinhead format in 1982. The new band lasted until his death in an automobile accident in 1993, with two dozen or so musicians other than himself passing through it over the years.
A Skrewdriver song celebrating the band’s rebirth at this precise moment in time, called “Back With a Bang!,” denotes the pivotal point when the Establishment lost control of the skinhead movement, which publicly assumed the explicit, militant, pro-white form imparted to it by Stuart. Subsequently, Skrewdriver transmitted the new style to Germany and beyond.
A good audio track of this song illustrated with contemporary film footage and photos exists. Although the video images have become washed out over time, the music, lyrics, and photographs together constitute a key historical document.
Because most of Stuart’s recordings suffer from poor technical quality, his words are often difficult to make out, so I’ve printed the lyrics below.
Back With a Bang!
Skrewdriver, “Back With a Bang”/”I Don’t Like You” (12″ EP, 1982) 3:45 mins.
Back with a bang now!
Do you remember in the summer
Back in 1978?
When they reckoned that the skinheads’ days were numbered
And the papers dripped with liquid hate
Being patriotic’s not the fashion so they say
To fly your country’s flag’s a crime
Society tried its best to kill you
But the spirit lives until the end of time
Chorus:
Back with a bang, now!
Back with the gang, now!
Back with a bang, now!
Back with the gang, now!
2-3-4!
Reckoned every skinhead was a bad man
Enough to make an honest man be sick
And they filled the papers with this rubbish every day
Never missed a dirty little trick
What did I say . . .
Chorus
Instrumental interlude
Chorus
And still today they keep on lying
Four years on and they still ain’t learned
That the skinhead way of life is getting stronger every day
And we are never gonna turn
Chorus
Back with a bang now!
Back with a bang now!
Back with a bang now!
Back with a bang now!
The words “Skrewdriver Security” can be seen on the T-shirts of some of the men. This was necessary because of violence, both threatened and actual.
In general, European whites appear to grasp more readily than their American counterparts the need for organized, disciplined private security. Americans no doubt still trust the police. (George Lincoln Rockwell had faith in the FBI!)
I’m aware of one major exception to this rule, though there may be others. How this individual acquired a sophisticated grasp of the problem from such an early age I don’t know. Even so, he has been subjected to never-ending harassment, threats, violence, and at least one attempt on his life. He has also been arrested and jailed on several occasions.
“It’s a Hard Road” as Ian Stuart sang.
The Importance of Non-Print Media
The centrality of music to skinhead culture highlights the vital importance of cultivating non-print media. Such media reach a majority of whites who don’t read, or wouldn’t encounter pro-white publications. Moreover, they activate and deeply engage non-rational, emotional centers in the brain in ways that print cannot.
The means of production required to create white power music itself generated a revolutionary development. It forced skins, whose songs the recording industry refused to produce because of their pro-white content, to develop an underground “mass” medium of their own.
To date, music is the only such medium whites have partially cracked, except for the Internet and, to a limited extent, novels. Motion pictures, television, and video games still remain off limits.
Political organizations or individuals who have produced white power music include England’s National Front, Resistance Records, owned successively by Canadian singer George Burdi (the company’s founder and former lead singer of RaHoWa), Willis Carto, William Pierce, the National Alliance, and a recording company owned by Jean-Marie Le Pen in France that released songs by the Choeur Montjoie St. Denis, founded in 1979 to record and preserve traditional European and French military, naval, Christian, peasants’, and workers’ tunes.
In an anti-white TV news report [3:00 mins., 1999] broadcast over a Cleveland, Ohio station shortly after William Pierce’s purchase of Resistance Records, Mark Potok, Jewish spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a powerful group that guides law enforcement and security agency initiatives to suppress white First Amendment rights and initiates private civil suits to attain the same objective, stated, “I’ve heard testimonial after testimonial of people who’ve been in this white supremacist movement and have come out later, who’ve said, “Believe it or not, the music was the single most important thing to me.”
William Pierce told the reporter, “For many people the music has a subliminal message. They’re not paying attention to the message, but it is reaching them nevertheless.” He added, “I identify with these young people. I may express myself differently, but I identify with them. They are my people.”
A bane of white activism has been the absence of support within the general population, the lack of a white “sea” within which pro-white activists and intellectuals might swim. Skinhead culture generated an aggressive, spontaneous, explicit white identity within a significant segment of European youth for the first time since WWII.
Because its constituency was so young, it held future promise. At least its demographic structure did not consign its members’ beliefs to the grave within 2–3 decades, as is ordinarily the case with conservative and right-wing groups. Due to this age situation, whites cannot generate historical continuity in values, beliefs, behavior, or organizational structure over time.
Rapid Response
The English and European Establishment quickly responded to the sudden explosion in white consciousness by persecuting skinheads through the police and judicial apparatus, deployment of violent domestic terrorists, public demonization in the mass media, and economic boycotts denying bands access to recording studios, ads for concerts, and shutting down record shops that wouldn’t censor the music. (So much for private enterprise and “free markets.”)
It established an “anti-racist” skinhead movement as a front for organizing and recruiting thugs, and to attract youth who might otherwise join the forbidden scene.
The mass media confronted the phenomenon in print, movies, and television, insinuating “appropriate” responses to audiences. This was the era of movies such as American History X (1998) and Romper Stomper (1992-Australian) starring a young Russell Crowe.
There is no question but that the original movement—a spontaneous, grassroots phenomenon—got way out of hand from the Establishment’s perspective. Brutal resort to the usual tactics rendered skinhead identity moribund, or at least less dynamic, after the 1980s and ’90s.
As simple yet widespread a phenomenon as making shaved heads fashionable alternatives to unsightly toupees or prohibitively expensive hair transplants for balding men had an enormous impact.
Today the most paranoid anti-white fanatic would not blanch at the sight even of James Edwards’ shaved pate.
Yet I can recall watching a TV interview with a young Hollywood actor at the peak of the skinhead craze who’d been required to shave his head for a role having nothing to do with skinheads. Chuckling, he vividly described how he’d stepped onto a crowded elevator and everyone aboard instinctively backed away from him in fear!
Such is the power of symbolism.
Negative Aspects of Skinhead Culture
Perhaps the most serious shortcoming of skinhead culture was the lack of discipline and proclivity for aimless drinking, fraternizing, socializing, casual sex, shouting, fighting, and loud music. Among many participants there was no serious, deep-seated commitment to our race or its survival.
Moreover, a criminally-inclined element was also attracted to the scene and lifestyle.
As a consequence, some racist skinheads committed unjustifiable acts of violence, including vicious murders. Such people are the white counterparts of society’s non-white criminals, multiplying colored gangs, Mossad assassins, Israeli and “Russian” (Jewish) organized criminals, US and European torturers and soldiers, and other pathological elements so prevalent inside and outside of government.
Rag-tag criminal dregs such as these have no place within white nationalism. They should join a gang, become policemen, or enlist in the military, where their innate sadism and viciousness would find a ready outlet.
What is required for the movement are people eventually capable of displaying exceptional toughness, determination, social courage (social more than physical, I should think), imagination, creativity, independence, and self-discipline.
For example, in Germany a (now-banned) skinhead group from the Dresden area, Skinheads Saxon Switzerland (SSS, Skinheads Sächsische Schweiz), affiliated with the National Democratic Party (NPD, Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands), provided protection for party meetings.
The Abominable No! Men
The default position of WNs, or at least the strong conservative strain within white nationalism, is reflexively anti-skinhead.
Joe Owens, a prominent British WN, has expressed this position in a number of C-C posts, though I regard him as more radical than conservative.
A Scandinavian, “Henrik Onarheim,” likewise expressed anti-skinhead views here.
There is logic to this way of thinking. As Brown, the anti-white academic, expressed it,
The origins of the skinhead phenomenon in a youth subculture organized around fashion and music makes recruitment [by right-wing racialist organizations] problematic, and not just because it is inherently difficult to bind disaffected and frequently alcohol-besotted young men into a disciplined regimen of rallies and demonstrations. Youth subcultures–organized as they are around an internal logic that reconfigures select commodities or elements of style into symbolic weapons against the dominant society–are inherently unstable.
Still, members need somewhere to go as they age.
Furthermore, no objective observer can ignore the critical role played by hippies, Yippies, anarchists, domestic terrorists (antifas, Weather Underground, Black Panthers, Symbionese Liberation Army, Red Brigades, JDL), and other “inherently unstable” youth subcultures in advancing the agendas of Jews, governments, and the anti-white ruling class generally. It would be disingenuous to pretend otherwise.
The Other Side of the Coin
One should not expect a subculture like skinheads to be, or become, a focused racialist movement.
Rather, its function is to shift the societal paradigm, and possibly serve as an initiation and proving ground for a minority of individuals possessing unusual ability that is masked, squandered or dead-ended under prevailing social conditions.
Some hard-working, capable activists have emerged from the skinhead movement.
If we truly believe that “dumbing-down” is a real phenomenon—that white people are systematically and seriously disadvantaged and degraded by the present system—it logically follows that significant human potential lies fallow within (some) people who otherwise appear to be dregs or failures. “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
A rough analogy would be the old saw about military school, the Army, or the Marines—or Christian witness or a perceptive mentor—salvaging good-for-nothings, turning their lives around, and occasionally calling forth exemplary qualities in people otherwise utterly lost.
Actor Richard Burton was saved from a life of obscurity, and possibly hard labor in the coal mines, by a sensitive Welsh schoolteacher who somehow recognized his great gifts when he was a boy. And Hitler made the interesting observation in his Table Talks that “Probably none of us is entirely ‘normal.’ How many men of our Party were regarded in their families as black sheep!”
The more relentlessly and methodically our race is degraded and discriminated against, the more common this phenomenon should logically become. As time passes, there should be more and more disguised talent and character available in unexpected places than was the case when we were masters of our own societies.
The fact that the skinhead subculture produced such individuals as Ian Stuart and Saga (the stage name of a female singer) suggests as much.
Saga, for example, displays an enormous amount of hard work, self-discipline, personal motivation, and spectacular talent combined with radical, long-term dedication to our race under trying circumstances.
Racially, her native Sweden is a totalitarian hellhole. As long ago as 1972, Roland Huntford, the Scandinavian correspondent for the Observer (UK), pilloried the country’s ruling Social Democrats as The New Totalitarians.
Sweden’s elite is unqualifiedly evil. It surreptitiously funneled billions of dollars into the coffers of murderous Black-Jewish-Communist terrorists in southern Africa, determined to violently destroy the white race in those countries. It has the blood not only of its own citizens but of thousands of white South Africans and Rhodesians on its hands.
That a questionable, teenage Swedish skin girl hanging around a record shop with her skinhead boyfriend (who introduced her to the music) could evolve into the professionally talented underground performer active today is almost mind-boggling if judged according to simplistic received stereotypes. And it was Skrewdriver’s records that inspired her.
It has long seemed to me that Jews are far better than whites at recognizing raw talent and not being put off or sidetracked by superficial qualities such as social background or surface appearances.
In response to attacks on skinheads by previous C-C commenters, one poster, “DR,” wrote, “Stop bashing the skinheads, they are the first to have the guts to go on the streets when other WN hide in their houses and wait the messiah.”
DR offered links to three video clips of demonstrations in Italy, France [2011 Nationalist parade, 5:56 mins.], and Greece [2011 torchlight parade, 5:02 mins.] to substantiate his claim.
Here is DR’s clip of a torchlight vigil and parade in Milan, Italy in April 2010 in commemoration of Sergio Ramelli:
http://youtu.be/hxUY55hUnGM [3:47]
Ramelli (1956–1975), a trustee of the Youth Front of the MSI (Movimento Sociale Italiano, Italian Social Movement), was brutally beaten to death in a sickening assault by anti-white thugs in 1975. The murder occurred after a long period of racial harassment at school and work.
I can’t confirm that the people shown in the videos represent, or formerly belonged to, the skinhead movement as DR contends, but if such is the case they can’t simply be shrugged off.
Significance
The spectacular rise of the skinhead phenomenon is thus noteworthy on a number of counts.
1. Skinhead identity was explicitly white. It generated an intimate, race-based sense of “groupness” unheard of among whites since WWII and the cultural revolution of the 1960s despite the radical, state-backed racialization of non-whites.
White people are the obsession of the ruling class. Whites are perceived by non-whites and government as white, stigmatized as white, vilified, demonized, and hated as white, degraded and humiliated as white, discriminated against as white, and yet, for some reason, do not psychologically or emotionally identify as white. This is an unlikely stunt to pull off, yet it is demonstrably the case.
2. The movement was non- and anti-Jewish. In other words, members were not vague about Jews, did not confuse them with their own race because of skin color, physiological resemblance, or social convention.
3. It was spontaneous, authentic, populist, from below.
4. It was heavily male.
5. It was young—an eternal emphasis in Jewish propaganda, media, and power-seeking that conservatives and whites never grasp the significance of. This failure is primarily due to race-based variations in time horizon. Jews exhibit a much longer time horizon than whites, who in turn display a longer time horizon than blacks. Always observe the age distribution of any audience or movement, pro- or anti- white. It’s of utmost importance.
6. It was militant, non-docile, anti-Establishment, and anti-authority. It took a dim view of cops and the deeply discriminatory legal system.
7. Its members were willing to push back against the habitual violence employed by domestic terrorists and police: they were willing to repay violence with violence.
8. Through popular music it developed a powerful new means for generating, articulating, communicating, and expanding shared identity, values, and interests, particularly among the young.
36 comments
Editor:
Quick fact check:
If memory serves, Potok says he is not Jewish.
Thanks.
What’s In YOUR Future? Focus Northwest!
Fourmyle, could Potok possibly be a race denier??
THEIR GOAL IS GENOCIDE. OURS. WHAT’S YOURS?
Junghans in blockquote:
Good point.
I suspect racially he is “J Team,” but self-identifies as – I think – Presbyterian. I know of the conversos, of course, and the focus shifted rom race to religion per se.
The source, if memory serves, was Jim Giles’s interview with him. There have been others.
This DOES demonstrate the importance of Yockey’s formulation, the Vertical Component of Race.
What’s In YOUR Future? Focus Northwest!
Hands up who would want them as neighbours?
One very important fact to correct, Sergio Ramelli hasn’t been killed because he was white nor the murder was racially-motivated. Sergio has been murdered by antifascists because he was a fascist militant. His murder took place during a period branded as “Anni di piombo” an atmosphere of radical violence organized and orchestrated by the Italian goverment and Italian secret services.
For Italian speakers, read “Noi Terza Posizione” by Gabriele Adinolfi
A very well put together article (thanks for the mention). However, the less coverage the skinhead movement get’s the better for White Nationalism and its final demise. I saw the affects the skinhead movement had on the once GRAND NATIONAL FRONT in the 1970/80’s. Any one perusing copies of BULLDOG (youth organ of the YNF) will instantly notice the gradual descent into sub- cultures surrounding various Punk Rock (heavily Jew inspired and directed http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/news/punk-rock-s-secret-jewish-roots-1.280438) and so – called skinhead bands like Bad Manners and Madness. The skinhead movement had within it its own seeds of destruction. White Nationalism cannot not swim in the sewer and expect to come out clean. We can’t copy the enemies poison in the hope of recruiting the young.
In my opinion, it’s now time to aim for an ELITE Youth Moment, devoid of silly music and counter – productive dress attire. We’ve tried all the rest and they have failed. Let’s now AIM FOR THE STARS…
I wholeheartedly concur. As a Skinhead in the 80’snew I can attest to all the degeneracy that occurred within thus rock and roll culture. I knew many skins who sold heroine and speed to their so called white brothers. Not to mention the 1/2 blacks, &1/2 jew
that were in its ranks.
As well as the pathetic attacks on homeless blacks etc. that does no good.
White Nationalism needs to address the issue of recruiting the best that are left out there amongst the white youth. With still working on club doors in and around Liverpool, I’ve been noticing the gradual deterioration of the white male. Most (not all ) white kids coming into clubs are smaller, thinner and less masculine than their previous generation were. Infact, most don’t even offer (unless in large numbers) potential trouble to door staff, should trouble flare. Most of these kids fight couldn’t sleep! How has this happened? Also, most of the girls coming in the clubs are towering (massive high heels need also be taken into account) over these weedy looking males. Believe me, we are in BIG TROUBLE!
So let’s STOP any more time wasting with embarrassing sub – cultures and face the cold reality of day. Our youth have been (through bad nutrition, breeding etc) steadily deteriorating over the past decade or so. And all White Nationalism has been able to come up with are skinheads.
Another fine essay. I like the idea that there could be great talent out there that is being supressed by the culture and is waiting to be tapped. I hope it’s true.
OT side note: Greg, if you haven’t seen it, that crank J Richards is slandering you and CC again at MR.
The trolls are getting restless. People who have no lives tend to be sadder and crankier during the Christmas season. Pay them no mind.
Without the skinhead’s movement, I would probably not be a white nationalist today. It’s the same for all my friends. Two decades later, we don’t wear boots and braces, but we continue the struggle.
Same here, DR.
In fact, re: Joe Owens’ comments about an elite youth movement, hasn’t it been your experience that only the more intelligent, committed skins made the transition, with the more superficial “booze, sex, and breakin’ necks” contingent falling out rather than evolving?
If only 5-10 percent of skins do more than live the life for a few years, (and progress beyond its limitations) that number is still more than we would have otherwise.
For all its flaws, it has contributed to the overall movement.
Some of the finest people I know are ex-skinheads, so I am loath to make negative generalizations about this subculture.
Thanks for the comments.
FC: I wonder if you’re right about Potok. It could be. If so, it illustrates again the problematic nature of relying upon phenotype and cultural indicators (here, his high position in the Jewish SPLC and intense anti-white racism) as a guide.
I thought that I had read in the past that he was Jewish. But if not, I definitely want to know it. It is inappropriate to classify people who aren’t Jews as Jews. I desire to know the true lay of the land. It brings everything into clearer focus.
That said, no matter how careful one is, mistakes will be made. It’s unavoidable
In this case, a verifiable source substantiating your belief would be very helpful.
DR: I appreciate your testimony, and the video links you provided.
Joe Owens:
Thanks for checking in! I always appreciate your comments.
I was struck by your observations about the changed (for the worse) physical condition—really, changed build and everything—of the youth you encounter today versus a few decades ago.
I had intended to comment on this, but the article was already too long so I dropped it. I was going to say that the young men in the “Back With a Bang” video shots struck me as slimmer, healthier-looking, and more energetic and vigorous than their counterparts today. Opposite to your statement of their being smaller and thinner, I was going to say today’s young men are more sluggish and obese. But perhaps that’s a US thing, or there’s a self-selection factor involved in who frequents clubs. “Less masculine” is definitely the case.
This radical, very conspicuous change is disturbing, and I’m puzzled by it. What could possibly cause such a thing in a short period of time? It doesn’t really make sense.
On top of that, the demographics are worse. The white population is declining precipitately in numbers (demographics).
So, yes, we’re in big trouble.
On another subject, I’d appreciate it if you could tell me whether you happen to know anything about a former BNP member named Simon Smith (evidently not the schoolteacher of the same name who was fired from his teaching job), who writes under the name “Simon Tomlin.”
Smith-Tomlin has self-published a book called The Fanatics about the BNP and UK Right. Do you happen to know if the facts related in the book are trustworthy? I gather he’s not actually anti-white, but may nevertheless have been somehow involved in the media recordings setting up Nick Griffin for prosecution. (I’m unclear about this.)
Basically, I would like to know whether, in your opinion, his facts are reliable, even if he’s to some extent hostile.
Thanks again for your thoughts.
I’d take what Simon Smith says with a pinch of salt.
I’ve never understood the obsession with ‘skinheads’ on the Right.
It’s no surprise that they began as worshipers of negro music, and developed “anti-racist’ and ‘anti-fascist’ forms.
Since ancient India, up through Restoration England, to Custer and the Wild West, long flowing, preferably blond hair has been the emblem of the Aryan Hero.
Shaved heads represent the Negro, due to their association with prison [along with their baggy pants, since prisons issue uniform trousers and confiscate belts] as well as the negro’s ugly and unruly hair, which men [and some women] simply shave off.
To paraphrase the late singer of the X-Ray Specs:
Oh skinheads, fuck off!
As I said above, some of the finest people I know are ex-skinheads. But I was hard-pressed to find a decent looking image to go with this article, because the most salient feature of the skinhead subculture is ugliness and uglification, both in music and dress/grooming/personal style. I just don’t think that ugliness is good to cultivate.
The one exception to this impression were the skinheads I met in France in 2001 at the National Front’s Fête du bleu-blanc-rouge. Instead of shaved heads, I saw Marine-style “high and tight” haircuts, tasteful clothes, and few if any visible tattoos. Their “squared-away” demeanor gave the men a military rather than hooligan bearing, which made them seem both less overtly threatening and more formidable.
I don’t know if this is true of all skinheads in France. But I came away thinking, “Leave it to the French to make skinheads stylish.”
Jim Giles interviewed Mark Potok, I believe toward the end of 2009. I can’t find the link to the interview.
Potok’s father was a Jew. This topic was addressed in the interview.
Long hair is magnificient but is now seen as effiminate because of glam rockers and the hippies before them. And it can be a big negative in battle. Alexander the Great didn’t allow it for his troops. Same for beards.
Grow your beard to fullness every couple of years if your situation permits. When you shave it off you’ll be amazed – your skin will be lifted up, soft, and tight. A natural face lift. Big male beauty secret and the price is right.
I don’t think skinheads misrepresent the movement for the preservation of our people. Rather, they represent badass honour, courage, and manliness, something that our WN intellectuals lack.
When push comes to shove, I’d rather have a skinhead behind my back than a foul-mouthed intellectual like Alex Linder, or a grandiloquent thinker like Jared Carter.
Praise be to skinheads who have firsthand knowledge of the congoid, having grown up in working class white neibourhoods bordering with the slums.
THEIR GOAL IS GENOCIDE. OURS. WHAT’S YOURS?
Andrew Hamilton in blockquote:
A pretty simple article quickly gets very complex in the comments section, and that is good. It shows we are thinking intergenerationally.
.
One, we tend to miss the foundation of the Skinhead “Movement.” Formerly great Britain was foundering badly economically, particularly after OPEC Oil Embargo of ’73 -’74. Really, the economy never recovered. Yes, they made out well with North sea, but that simply masked their economic and social decline in real terms.
Two, if memory serves, wasn’t this about the time George Soros came to see Whitehall, which got on bended knee before him?
Three, they were trying to Make Britain Work, in their own way. They were always Loyalist, and Royalist. They were supporting the people who were actively undermining their very right to Be British, as it were. Today, Muslim Members of Parliament far outperform the BNP’s members of Parliament. Think this is by accident?
Substantial point. Stewart catalyzed by his example what was left of working class Britain. The goths are simple kids who recognize their world is gone, and are working on artificial system to compensate – “Twilight” books and movies, and vampire videos. I think the world is “nihilism,” but a softer, kinder, gentler nihilism.
TODAY, Stewart would probably lead a group of Straight Edgers.
I think a leader of the EDL just got beaten horribly, with brass knuckles, and then stomped, by a group of “Asian youth.” That was for openers. I would suspect further such events in the future. Just a hunch. The more things change…
Not any more. It’s YouTube, parallel podcasts, or nothing.
All the more wisdom behind the formulation of Jim “Strict Legality” Giles. Everything we want to do can and must be done in an “apple pie, strictly legal, sort of way.” Period.
See ‘nihilism,” above.
This issue deserves a thread in its own right.
This was part and parcel of Rockwell’s plans for a National Youth Alliance.
It’s still possible, if we deal with the situation intelligently.
It’s all the more possible if we offer them a metapolitical framework, perhaps in the context of actively placing their lives in the delopment of a Homeland for our RACE.
“Northwest Republic” has a nice ring to it.
What’s In YOUR Future? Focus Northwest!
The small % of skins, who are fine White Nationalists, does not outweigh the damage this unfortunate phenomenon has done to White Nationalism. But yes, I’m almost sure there are many fine young people amongst then.
On a positive note regarding young people (regardless of size), a lot seem to be fed-up with non-whites more than they were a decade ago. If serious ethnic conflict were to arise (in a race war sense) then we could have a valuable ally in today’s white youth. However, this impetus could easily be lost should it become a free for all of looting and mindless violence. The underclass (streetwise and dangerous) the system has created would be unstoppable behind the banner of White Nationalism. But like I’ve previously said, it’s keeping the street urchins in check and organised. But believe me; skins will never be leading any such revolt.
We need a new kind of White Nationalist Youth to prepare for such an eventuality. One that is not odd and identifies with those it lives amongst (most skins are outcasts in their communities). It has to be a youth who is respected by those lesser mortals it needs to rally. Ones like me but a lot younger (sorry for banging my own drum).
If scum like Dominic Noonan can rally fellow scum to loot and attack the police, then I can do the same in a racial sense. Andrew Hamilton wrote an excellent piece on this. Though I agree about Noonan’s influence in doing such, I don’t subscribe it was in collaboration with far-leftists.
Mighty wrote: “Potok’s father was a Jew.”
I’ve been studying these issues for a long time and have concluded that “half” Jewish is most certainly Jewish (in most cases). There seems to be a Jewish “kernel” that can survive a number of admixtures. Maybe it’s the “Jewish revolutionary spirit” (to put it kindly) that the kernel carries. I’ve seen it too many times even in one-quarter Jews to believe the evil spark can easily be bred out of Jews.
To repeat: Half-Jewish is functionally as deadly as Jewish. Taking into account the greater opportunity for “passing,” half-Jewish may be among the most dangerous of enemies.
Yes, it’s strange – they always seem to idenitfy with the Jews or at least the aspirations of the Jewish People, which is basically the same thing. The Jews are very strong in the “micoverse” of the Genes.
Counter-example: Bobby Fischer (chess player)
I only discovered this sympathetic-to-skinheads WN song after writing the article:
Prussian Blue, “Skinhead Boy,” Fragment of the Future (Resistance Records, 2004).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa0lDZ2eL4Q&feature=related [1:29 mins.]
The girls of Prussian Blue seem to have renounced White Nationalism recently, so take it for what it’s worth.
Mr Joe Owens knows exactly what he is writing about. I know exactly how skinheads turn anything to crap by their spastic antics. Like any group, there are exceptions, and i count a few among friends and individuals of great courage and commitment, but as Owens states, in general their very presence is a thundering great bloody disaster. Better to have nothing, to fold up and go home, than have these as representative of European High Culture. I will change my opinion should I ever see a single one of the specimens attending a concert of the Symphony Orchestra. White culture? white pride? Good bloody grief!
Quite possibly skinheads, or white power music, will not significantly contribute to white survival or a white future.
But the same can be said of the Republicans and Democrats and their counterparts overseas, the Tea Party, the OWS, etc., etc. That hasn’t stopped our writers from analyzing or expatiating upon them.
Skinheads, too, are a significant sociological and subcultural phenomenon. They are relevant to the issue of race. Their identity is explicitly white—unique in itself. Jews, academics, the media, and other anti-white elements immediately recognized the significance of the movement, and stomped hard on it.
I happen to think the phenomenon is worth studying and thinking about.
Saga’s music kicked my stuffy indifference/dislike of white power rock and pop to the side of the road, making me aware of an important phenomenon I’d entirely overlooked due to . . . prejudice. Prejudice to a sound I didn’t care for, toward people and a lifestyle I didn’t identify with, and so on.
Yeah, I know, many still don’t like Saga or Stuart. So what?
I don’t care for metal music, including Saga’s. But I’m at least conscious that I’m closing my mind to it, shutting off an avenue of thought and exploration. The sound, the aesthetics, the often sickly death-darkness-negativism of it turns me off.
But as for white pop/rock music, I was wrong. Not only wrong, but wrong in a big way.
White power music as a significant non-print “mass” medium with appeal to young people alone makes it interesting to me. It’s outside the box of endless, and endlessly ineffective, magazines, quarterly journals, and conservative eat-meet-and-retreat functions.
That doesn’t mean that you, or others like you, are wrong about the music (or skinheads) FOR YOU. It means that I was wrong about such things for ME. (Actually, I never felt any huge animus toward skinheads.)
As for listening to Jewish-Asian-white orchestral productions from Europe’s High Culture era (long gone, there’s no high culture now—it’s all backward-looking), that’s fine for those attracted to it.
I happen to come from a white working-class background with no exposure to such things during my formative years. Nor was I instinctively drawn to them.
While I’ve transcended my background in many ways (e.g., an inclination for reading and intellectual pursuits, present from my youngest days) I never did develop an appreciation for classical music. I don’t say that proudly; it’s just a fact.
I was never a fan of mainstream pop/rock music either, even when everyone else my age was. I never owned audio equipment or a collection of rock LPs.
Whites aren’t Jews. They aren’t a homogenous clump or hive. They differ phentoypically, psychologically, religiously, ideologically, and aesthetically.
And they differ a lot, not a little. One size does not fit all.
Well said
When the number of skinheads attached to a movement becomes disproportionate, due to the temptation to recruit on the basis of numbers rather than quality, and their presence invariably wrecks a movement – due to their own stupidity – then the matter becomes something other than that of mere internet theorizing.
Perhaps the New Zealand situation is different from other countries, but the legend of the skinheads’ mighty fighting prowess is more likely to be manifested in a drunken brawl among themselves than towards political enemies; unless one counts the utterly gutless beatings and even killing of some hapless, lone Asian youngster as an example of the Aryan warrior ethos.
FYI, Season 1 of the show Gangland has an episode about skinheads. It depicts skinheads in the worst possible light, of course, emphasizing the thugs, criminals and murderers in the movement. But it also discusses the roots of the movement in the UK, its ties to the punk scene, Screwdriver and the importance of music in general within the sub-culture. It also mentions the Klan, the NA, the White Aryan Resistance, and has interviews with Mark Potok and Tom Metzger. It’s available on Netflix.
Even with this emphasis on the criminal nature, the gangland producers had to go all the way back to 1988 for a story about a skinhead-related murder, quite unlike the episodes on black/latino gangs, who kill more in a day than decades of skinhead violence.
Comments are closed.
If you have Paywall access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.
Note on comments privacy & moderation
Your email is never published nor shared.
Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.
Paywall Access
Edit your comment