Skinheads: Do shaved skulls reflect new look of fascism?

Scan page 3

SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 1989 3 On Nov. 13, 1988, Mulugeta Seraw, an Ethiopian man, was beaten to death in Portland, Ore., by members of the East Side White Pride skinhead group. Earlier in the year, on Feb. 28, Scott Vollmar was stabbed and killed by a skinhead in Campbell, Calif., after he defended a Black friend.

On Jan. 7, 1988, skinheads in San Diego attacked a group of Vietnamese immigrants. On Dec. 20, 1987, two skinheads in Florida stabbed and beat to death a homeless Black man while he was sleeping.

In July 1987, skinheads confronted a 54year-old Black woman in San Jose. She was told that she would have to pay a "nigger toll" to get past. Then the skinheads said, "We're going to string you up in that tree."

Racist attacks by skinheads are increasing around the United States. Gangs of teenagers sporting clean-shaven skulls and steel-toe boots are a common sight now in major cities across the country.

Many people are asking themselves where these thugs came from and how much of a threat they represent. Can we say good-bye to the hooded robes of the Klan and say hello to the shiny heads of the skinheads? Is this fascism's new look?

Skinhead style came to the United States along with the Punk movement from Britain in the late 1970s. Unlike Britain, where these movements were made up of frustrated working-class youth, punk and skinhead style appealed primarily to middle-class young people rebelling against the commercialized, polyester culture and styles dominant in late 1970s America.

These styles expressed a cultural rebellion primarily. When punks or skinheads considered themselves political, it was usually as radicals and "anarchists"_ opponents of the status quo.

"White pride"

In Britain, the skinhead movement by that time had already developed a reactionary character, attacking immigrants and allying itself with right-wing and racist organizations such as the National Front.

While there were reactionary and racist elements among American skinheads, they remained in the minority. In the aftermath of the economic downturn in the United States, this situation began to change in the mid1980s.

Skinheads began to turn against radicals and others in the punk scene and began promoting "white pride" and "Aryan values." They opposed abortion as a "threat to the white race." Gangs of skinheads started forming organizations, some of national scope, which attacked "enemies of the white race," including Blacks, Jews, gays and lesbians, and leftists.

Bands from Britain singing racist garbage became popular with American skinheads. One of the more popular skinhead bands, Skrewdriver, sings:

Put up a fence, Close down the borders, They don't fit in In our new order.

Nigger, nigger, get on that boal Nigger, nigger, row!

Nigger, nigger, get out of here, Nigger, nigger—80, 80, go!

Aryan Youth Movement

In October 1985, a group of skinheads attended a gathering of racist organizations in Cochoctah, Mich. This was the first time that American skinheads attended a gathering of this type.

Skinheads who refused to go along with this orientation were often physically beaten out of the scene. In Cincinnati today, one observer noted that there are some parts of the city where non-racist Punks and skinheads can no longer walk at night.

More sophisticated elements in the far-right and neo-fascist movements saw potential in these skinhead gangs and sought to help and guide their organization. Tom Metzger, head of the White Aryan Resistance (WAR), admired the developing racist skinhead movement in England and saw the potential to turn the American skinheads into a new dynamic, activist layer of the racist movement which could attract youth.

Metzger and his son John have organized the Aryan Youth Movement and are trying to unite the fragmented skinhead organizations into one united neo-fascist youth movement. So far, Metzger has been modestly successful in winning existing skinhead organizations to his political program.

The Center for Democratic Renewal in Atlanta puts the current organized skinhead population at 3500, up dramatically from an estimated 300 in 1986.

"It's our game!"

What is the skinhead program and why is it attracting people? Many of the Skinhead leaders, in particular the ones associated with Metzger, put forward a more demagogic version of fascism than the KKK.

Just as Hitler and Mussolini appealed to the German and Italian "people" against the "foreign and Jewish bankers and corporations," Metzger and the skinheads claim, "This is a working class movement...the white-wing. ... Our problem is with monopoly capitalism. You take the game away from the left. It's our game!" (speech by Tom Metzger at Aryan Nations Congress, July 1987, printed in The Monitor, April 1988)

A leaflet circulated by "WAR Skins" in Hollister and Gilroy, Calif., expressed this same sentiment in typical bonehead style: "Skinheads are tired of the system screwing them over!" (San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 3, 1988)

Fascism plays on people's frustration with the existing system, and tries to give itself a radical anti-capitalist tone. This is the way it develops a mass character and appeal.

Metzger, for instance, opposes U.S. intervention in Central America and supported the fight of the P-9 strikers in Austin, Minn. He invokes with favor Jack London's socialism as well as his racism, the traditions of the Industrial Workers of the World, and even Lenin's concept of a revolutionary organization!

These neo-fascists claim to oppose both capitalism and communism. They claim that their main enemies are the "traitors to the white race" in government and corporate America and they call for a "white civil war." One skinhead group, The American Front, organized a "white workers' day" demonstration in San Francisco on May 1, 1988, which attracted 50 people.

Attacks on capitalism's victims But the "working class" rhetoric is not borne out by the facts. In practice, the actions of these skinheads and neo-fascist organizations are not directed against those who rule the country but against the victims of capitalist exploitation and oppression.

Skinheads aren't on labor picketlines fighting the boss, they're in trendy neighborhoods beating up homeless people. According to Rolling Stone (Dec. 1, 1988), "the typical skinhead victim is unarmed, outnumbered, and often defenseless."

The Aryan Youth Movement's newspaper carried a report on the lynch-mob attack on a young Black man in Howard Beach, N.Y. The paper saluted the "revolutionary efforts...for hunting down and causing the death of Negro Michael Griffith." Here we have a clear picture of their vision of the "white revolution"-racist thugs running over an unarmed Black man.

In addition to individual attacks on Blacks, gays and lesbians, homeless people, and the elderly, skinhead groups regularly attack Black political events. Tom Metzger urged his followers to disrupt a Martin Luther King Day event in Fontana, Calif., in 1988.

The growth of the skinheads and other potential fascist organizations in recent years is a symptom of the increasing uneasiness felt by most Americans over their future.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, 90 percent of all bank and savings-and-loan economists predict an economic slump by 1990. The skinheads and similar groups are playing on people's fear and despair. They are attempting to channel these grievances and direct them against scapegoats among the oppressed.

Their unstated goal is to demonstrate to the ruling class that they can be counted on in a crisis situation. They would provide the shock troops in attacks on civil liberties, on social-protest movements, and strikes.

As social conditions worsen, the skinheads will have more human material to recruit from. The task of labor and socialist movements in the United States is to provide people with a positive alternative to capitalism and a movement with the strength to make that vision a reality. This will pull the rug out from under the skinheads.

In the meantime, it's necessary to unite all the victims and potential victims of the skinheads and other proto-fascists into a force that can't be intimidated by thugs. some significant anti-skinhead actions have taken place recently, but in many cases the potential for an organized response to the skinhead threat has not been tapped.

In Cincinnati, Ohio, organizers of an antiskinhead campus demonstration on Dec. 3 called the event without any serious attempt to involve existing Black and other student organizations. To its credit, the demonstration succeeded in attracting 200 young people.

Nevertheless, relatively small and narrow demonstrations will not be effective as the current social polarization increases and skinhead-type movements become more of a threat.

Broad, mass actions are necessary to expose the skinheads as the cowards and thugs they really are. This strategy must be implemented now if the anti-skinhead movement is to avoid being isolated from its potential allies.

While it would be premature to see the skinheads as a major movement or threat at the present time, they represent a challenge that will grow if the economy starts to fall apart. The skinheads give us a glimpse of capitalist America's future. What better incentive to fight for a socialist America!