Skin Heads

Look around the room. Do you see someone who is different than yourself? Unless you are in a room alone I would like to think you answer is yes. It’s ok to be different, or at least that is what we are told. Do you hate them for being different from yourself? I would presume not. But there are people who believe anyone who different in anyway is wrong. These people tend to hold the name Skinhead, Neo Nazi,  National Socialist, Bonehead, Red anarchist, Skin Byrd, or SHARP. The taste of violence has been the appetite for skins all over the world for more than 70 years! Where did the subculture that was once about style go so wrong? 

Skinheads have their origin in the various youth subcultures in London beginning during the post-WWII era around 1953. The phenomenon started with fashion. Young factory workers began shaving their heads to keep it from being caught in the machines. Then racial, social, and economic conditions in Britain got worse, the white factory workers were by far hit the hardest. The open door immigration policy on behalf of Britain is why they were hit so hard. Third world NON-white groups of people began to flood Britain and took the jobs of many white factory workers. In retaliation the white youth began to beat up ALL non-whites.

Pakistanis were the largest group flooding England at this point. When the young factory workers realized that the “muds” aka Pakistanis where taking their jobs they began to ride around looking for Pakis to bash. Black workers began to join in on this hate as well after many of them began to loose their jobs to the immigrants as well. 

Not every skinhead is consider to be racist or for that matter full of hate. Depending on the type of colors of clothes can help people differentiate a good or bad skinhead. According to the book “Sex, thugs, and rock and roll” racist skin heads aka boneheads have shaved heads, wear suspenders with jeans or military trouser, sometimes with a white collared shirt. White and black are the colors of shoestrings and suspender that boneheads wear. Usually they served military time and hate Jews and Israelis. 

A SHARP or straightedge skinhead is non-violent and usually drug free. They bear the colors red or blue in their shoestrings and suspenders. Usually they have shaved heads or buzz cuts, bleach stained blue jeans, and blue polo’s with flight jackets.

By the year of 1977 the subculture had naturally moved to America. The first reported skinheads were found in Chicago, Illinois. C.A.S.H was the acronym they went by which meant Chicago Aryan Skin Head. They first appeared thanks to the band the Sex Pistols who traveled from England to go on tour through America. 

Of course there is one question that comes to mind when most think of skinheads. Why do they hate the Jews so much, or just hate so much in general? The answer to that question comes easy and guilt free from the month of a bonehead himself, “ Love and hate go hand in hand. If you love your family, then it’s natural instinct to protect them. Anyone who threatens it, should be demolished. So when the parasitical race of Jew is a direct threat to the White Race, whom we love dearly, therefore we hate them for their actions directed against us.”  Cognitive dissonance is typically how people skinheads believe. 

A question that is often raised by skinheads is what is so wrong with being white and proud? It’s ok to be black and proud, or Jew and proud, but if you’re white and proud your a Nazi fascist. This can be denounced by adding that there is nothing wrong with being proud of your race as long as your not harming or putting down someone else ethnicity. 

Punks and skinheads. Related or not? The real definition of punk if you look in the dictionary is one in prison who enjoys homosexual acts. With that being said, there is no relation between punks and skinheads. Which is one often misconception. To most skinheads punks are hippies with Elmer's glue in their hair. They often fill the place of a Jew in a skinheads mind for violence. 

Of course when group of people join together for a common cause one group usually tends to gain more members and publicity then the others. In the skinheads cause it happens to be the Hammer Skin Nation made for and by skinheads only. Almost exclusively young white males inclined to violence and white supremacy. Murder, beatings, vandalism make group by far the most respected and feared skin head group. International unity is an important Hammer Skin goal. 

The name and symbol of the Hammer Skin Nation came from The Wall, a 1979 album by Pink Flyod. The wall tells the story of Pink, a rock singer who becomes a drug addict, loses his grip on reality and turns to fascism. Pink reforms a song in which he expresses a desire to line all of the “queers”, “jews”, and “coons” in his audience “up against the wall” and shoot them. In obvious references to the Holocaust, he sings of the “final solution” and “waiting to turn on the showers and fire the ovens.” The swastika is replaced by Pinks symbol: two crossed hammers, which he boast will “batter down” the doors behind which frightened minorities hide form the fascist supporters. 

Being racist is not a way of life. It’s a choice. A choice that is often made to easily and decided just so someone can fit in with a group of people. Style and culture can lead to bad things if taken too seriously; don’t base your mind on what someone else is doing better yet make your mind up for yourself.