SKINHEADS IN AMERICA - SKINHEADS IN AMERICA - SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER

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SKINHEADS IN AMERICA - SKINHEADS IN AMERICA - SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER
Skinheads In
                         l aw e n f o r c e m e n t s p e c i a l r e p o r t

                                 America
                   Racists On The Rampage
includes: Racist Skinhead Movement History • Timeline • Glossary • Portraits •
Symbols • Recent Developments

         Skinheads In America
          A P u b l i c a t i o n o f t h e S o u t h e r n P o v e r t y L aw C e n t e r

                           Racists On The Rampage

      Racist Skinhead Movement History • Timeline • Glossary
            Portraits • Symbols • Recent Developments
           a p u b l i c a t i o n o f t h e s o u t h e r n p o v e r t y l aw c e n t e r
SKINHEADS IN AMERICA - SKINHEADS IN AMERICA - SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER
KEVIN SCANLON
SKINHEADS IN AMERICA - SKINHEADS IN AMERICA - SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER
SKINHEADS IN AMERICA
Racist skinheads are one of the potentially most dangerous radical-right threats facing
law enforcement today. The products of a frequently violent and criminal subculture,
these men and women, typically imbued with neo-Nazi beliefs about Jews, blacks, ho-
mosexuals and others, are also notoriously difficult to track. Organized into small, mo-
bile “crews” or acting individually, skinheads tend to move around frequently and often
without warning, even as they network and organize across regions. For law enforcement,
this poses a particular problem — responding to crimes and even conspiracies crossing
multiple jurisdictions. As these extremists extend their reach across the country, it is vital
that law enforcement officers who deal with them become familiar with the activities of
skinheads nationwide.

What follows is a general essay on the history and nature of the skinhead movement, pre-
pared with the needs of law enforcement officers in mind. After that, we reprint recent
reports on the contemporary skinhead movement in America, including an overview of
the latest developments, portraits of 10 particularly frightening leaders, and a gallery of
insignias and tattoos commonly used by racist skinheads.

This booklet was prepared by the staff of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence
Project, which tracks the American radical right and also publishes the investigative
magazine Intelligence Report. Contributors included Susy Buchanan, Anthony Griggs,
David Holthouse, Brentin Mock, Laurie Wood and Alexander Zaitchik. It was edited by
Holthouse and Intelligence Project Director Mark Potok.

                                   I N T E L L I G E N C E

                                  PROJECT                    TM
SKINHEADS IN AMERICA - SKINHEADS IN AMERICA - SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER
SKINHEADS

2 intelligence report special edition
SKINHEADS IN AMERICA - SKINHEADS IN AMERICA - SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER
IN AMERICA
                i. introduction
                The racist skinhead movement in the United
                States has entered its third decade. Since the
                first skinhead gangs surfaced in Texas and
                the Midwest in the early 1980s, this racist
                and violent subculture has established itself                                            ing-class counterpoints to foppish
                                                                                                         mods, long-haired hippies, mohawked
                in dozens of states from coast to coast and                                              punks and made-up goths.
                has authored some of the country’s most vi-                                                 The skinhead style first emerged
                cious hate crimes in memory, from arson                                                  as part of a non-racist and multira-
                                                                                                         cial scene. White skinheads took on a
                to assault to murder. The racist skinheads’                                              persona that reflected admiration for
                trademark style — shaved head, combat                                                    and kinship with a new generation of
                boots, bomber jacket, neo-Nazi and white                                                 working-class West Indian immigrants
                                                                                                         into the United Kingdom. Like the Ja-
                power tattoos — has become a fixture in                                                  maican immigrants of the time, the first
                American culture.                                                                        skinheads were clean-cut, neat, and
                                                                                                         sharp-looking compared to the shag-
                The scowling skinhead has joined the          America have darkened with steady          gier youth styles of the period. (White
                hooded Klansman as an immediately             post-World War II immigration from         skinheads eventually lost their affinity
                recognizable icon of hate.                    Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, a       for Jamaica as Rastafarian fashions
                   Unlike the Klan, racist skinhead cul-      nativist backlash has appeared in both     became ascendant, with their overtones
                ture is not native to the United States.      mainstream and extremist forms. The        of black pride and pan-Africanism.)
                And unlike the Klan, it is a truly global     skinhead movement is the most violent         Many early white skinheads were
                phenomenon, with skinhead gangs               and ideologically crude form of this       vaguely nationalistic and “proud to be
                haunting major cities and towns in just       backlash. Depending on the country,        British,” but their deepest loyalties lay
                about every white-majority country on         racist skinheads may have shadowy          with their childhood chums and the
                earth. From Austria to Australia and          ties to radical parties participating in   local soccer team, not the “white race,”
                Argentina to America, working-class           electoral politics. Skinhead groups in     as professed by today’s racist skin-
                youths can be found dressed in some           the U.S. lack such connections, but for    heads. While known for their youthful
                local variation on the skinhead theme,        those unlucky enough to encounter          aggression, petty criminality, and soc-
                espousing a crude worldview that is           them on a darkened street, this does       cer stadium violence, this activity was
                viciously anti-foreigner, anti-black, anti-   not make them any less fearsome.           seen as borne out of economic hard-
                gay, and anti-Semitic. In recent years, the                                              ship and a general spirit of bully-boy
                Internet and cheap international airfares     ii. origins                                rebellion — not blind race hatred. In-
                have allowed skinhead groups across           The first skinheads emerged in the late    deed, the first skinhead music was reg-
                the planet to communicate and organize        1960s as just one of the many distinct     gae and ska, both black musical forms;
                in ways that would have shocked the           youth cultures that flowered in post-      the earliest targets of white skinheads’
                original skinheads of the 1960s and ’70s,     war Britain. Taking elements of Eng-       anger and homemade weapons were
                whose vision and turf was limited to the      lish “mod” and Jamaican immigrant          each other and rival soccer fans.
                East London neighborhoods in which            fashion, these working-class London           But a split between racist and non-
                they grew up and lived.                       youths crafted an identity in self-con-    racist skinheads was apparent and
                   The growth of the racist skinhead          scious opposition to the middle-class      began deepening soon after the style
                movement has mirrored the rise in             “longhairs.” At various points in their    was born. By the early ’70s, skinhead
KEVIN SCANLON

                non-white immigration to the West.            early development, English skinheads       attacks on South Asian immigrants in
                As the skin hues of Europe and North          positioned themselves as tough work-       London — the infamous sport of “Paki

                                                                                                              intelligence report special edition 3
SKINHEADS IN AMERICA - SKINHEADS IN AMERICA - SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER
bashing” — had become an international       iii. skinheads in the u.s.                   But Martell had merely proven he was
news story. These violent skinheads had      The neo-Nazi skinhead phenomenon             ahead of his time, and his defeat was
not yet acquired the trappings of neo-       spread quickly to the United States. By      local. When he first started recruiting
Nazi costumes and ideology, but they         the early 1980s, skinhead activity was       for CASH, there were likely fewer than
were already acting like Hitler’s goon       reported in Texas and the Midwest,           200 racist skinheads in the United Sates.
squads, the brown shirts. One skinhead       among other places. But the movement         By 1989, when he was convicted of home
explained a typical “Paki bash” to a Time    only started gaining national attention      invasion, aggravated battery, and rob-
magazine journalist in 1970: “You go up      during the last third of the decade. It      bery and sentenced to 11 years in prison,
to them and bump into them, and then         was then that skinhead gangs like the        there were an estimated 3,000.
you nut [forehead bash] them right, and      Dallas Hammerskins made a splash                A major force behind this national
then you hit them, and as they go down       with violent racist attacks on immi-         growth spurt was Tom Metzger, a Fall-
you give them a kicking, bash them with      grants and blacks.                           brook, Calif.-based former Klansman
an iron bar, and take their watches and          The most important skinhead gang in      and longtime leader of the neo-Nazi
rings and things like that.”                 raising the American movement’s early        group White Aryan Resistance (WAR).
    More than 50 such attacks were           profile was Chicago’s CASH (Chicago          Around 1986, Metzger formed WAR
reported within a span of weeks in           Area Skin Heads), which made national        Youth and launched an organized
1970, triggering street protests by Brit-    headlines with a brutal 1987 crime spree     skinhead outreach campaign. Together
ish South Asians. A definitive break         that involved assaults on six Hispanic       with his teenage son, John, Metzger
between racist and non-racist skins          women, swastikas painted on three            sought to ground the dispersed move-
had occurred.                                synagogues, and numerous incidents of        ment in ideology and direct its wild
    During the early to mid-’70s, Eng-       vandalism to Jewish-owned business.          and chaotic youthful energy into build-
land’s skinheads went into temporary         The leader of CASH was an ex-con and         ing smart, well-trained, and obedient
decline. They experienced a revival          former member of the American Nazi           street cells around the country. In
in 1976, when a new generation of skin-      Party named Clark Martell.                   1988, Tom Metzger organized the first
heads started earning a fresh reputa-            In the mid-1980s, Martell played the     major hate rock festival in the U.S.,
tion for violence through attacks on         role of a skinhead Johnny Appleseed,         Aryan Fest, in Oklahoma. (The annual
punks, homosexuals, and immigrants.          performing around Chicago with his           festival, now under the management of
    Fueling these attacks and cementing      punk band Romantic Violence and pass-        Volksfront, a skinhead group based in
the new racist skinhead identity was         ing out American Nazi Party newslet-         Oregon, remains a main event on the
increasing association with two neofas-      ters and copies of National Socialist        annual skinhead social calendar.)
cist political parties, the National Front   Skinhead magazine between his band’s            It was also in 1988 that Metzger’s
and the British Movement. The latter,        sets. Martell’s neo-Nazi recruiting          efforts bore their most bitter fruit. In
founded by long-time neo-Nazi Colin          drive caught the attention of Chicago’s      November, WAR Youth representative
Jordan in 1968, did the most to stamp        numerous “traditional,” or non-rac-          Dave Mazella visited Portland, Ore.,
a swastika on the racist sector of the       ist, skinheads, including a number           to train and guide members of a local
skinhead movement. The British Move-         of African Americans. (According to          skinhead crew, East Side White Pride.
ment ran candidates in the 1974 U.K.         Chicago punk lore, the city’s skinhead       During this visit, a group of Portland
general elections who espoused neo-          scene was founded by black, non-racist       skins under Mazella’s tutelage attacked
Nazi ideas and wore swastikas while          skins). Enjoying the advantage of vastly     a group of Ethiopian immigrants in the
handing out party literature featuring       superior numbers, anti-racist crews          middle of a street with steel-toed boots
the image and words of Adolf Hitler.         such as Skinheads of Chicago (SHOC)          and a baseball bat. One of them, gradu-
In 1975, the British Movement gained         routinely ganged up on CASH skins at         ate student Mulugeta Seraw, died from
a charismatic leader in the form of          shows and in the streets. “They grew out     his wounds. Although Metzger would
Michael McLaughlin, who reached out          of what we are — the punk scene — so         later lose a bruising $12.5 million law-
to the racist skinheads and appealed to      it’s up to us to combat them,” a member      suit brought against his organization
their sensibilities and skills by empha-     of the Chicago Anti-Racist Action (ARA)      by the Southern Poverty Law Center
sizing violence and street-level hate.       skinhead crew told the Chicago Tribune.      and the Anti-Defamation League — a
    Between the arrival of Michael               By the time Martell and the other five   suit that effectively wrecked WAR
McLaughlin in 1975 and the election          CASH skins were arrested for a grue-         as an organization capable of putting
of Margaret Thatcher as British prime        some 1987 attack on a former member,         skinheads into the street — he contin-
minister in 1979, the first hardcore neo-    CASH had been more or less beaten            ues propaganda efforts to this day from
Nazi skinheads were born.                    into submission by anti-racist skins.        a new base in Indiana. But Metzger’s

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current operation is limited to a news-     movement continued to grow and was           announcing that the group was separat-
paper, an “Aryan update” telephone          responsible for hundreds of racially         ing itself “from the racist movement.”
hotline, and a website (resist.com) that    motivated crimes around the coun-            The announcement explained: “We do
is largely devoted to racist and anti-Se-   try. It was also during this period, in      not see anything positive being accom-
mitic “humor.”                              1997, that Denver police officer Bruce       plished, for our nation or our people,
    The murder of Mulugeta Seraw was        Vander Jagt became the first American        by participating in the white racial-
hardly unique during the American           police officer killed in the line of duty    ist movement as it stands. We have
skinhead movement’s growth years.           by a racist skinhead.                        attempted to change this movement
Indeed, there were scores of brutal            Hammerskin dominance failed to            from within and have not succeeded.
skinhead assaults around the country        outlast the decade, however. As early        It is our opinion that a large number
during the late ’80s and early ’90s,        as 1999, Hammerskins around the              of the people involved in the greater
including the cold-blooded murders          country were complaining in private          movement are paid informants, social
of black men in Birmingham, Ala., and       and on message boards about the              outcasts, and general losers in life.”
Arlington, Texas.                           heavy-handed and “elitist” leadership            The third decade of skinheads in
    Those responsible for these mur-        style of the organization’s top officers.    America thus finds skinhead groups in
ders included members of the dreaded        The number of HSN chapters dropped           disarray but hardly in decline. The num-
Confederate Hammerskins, a confed-          off, with new regional groups rising         ber of skinhead groups has trebled in the
                                                                                         last four years, totaling some 60 by early
The scowling skinhead has joined                                                         2007. These new groups are defined by a
                                                                                         violent gangster ethos that is only partly
the hooded Klansman as an imme-                                                          informed by racist and neo-Nazi ideology.

diately recognizable icon of hate.                                                       iv. music & culture
                                                                                         Along with exposure to extremist po-
                                                                                         litical parties and hate literature, music
eration of skinheads founded in Dallas      up and loudly asserting their indepen-       has always been a key element in the
in 1987. After spreading throughout the     dence. Chief among these renegade            growth of the racist skinhead subcul-
South, Hammerskin-affiliated gangs          skinhead groups were, first, the Outlaw      ture. This is appropriate, as the original
began appearing on the east and west        Hammerskins, and then the Hoosier            skinhead scene was based around clubs
coasts in the early 1990s.                  State Skinheads in Indiana and the           playing ska and reggae. The hard-driv-
    It was out of these geographi-          Ohio State Skinheads, which in 2004          ing rock-and-roll favored by today’s
cally disparate Hammerskin gangs            merged to form the Vinlander Social          racist skinheads both exploits and
that Hammerskin Nation (HSN) was            Club, a.k.a. the Vinlanders. In 2005,        channels the youthful energy of mem-
formed in 1994. The idea was to unite       the Vinlanders hosted the first Blood &      bers and potential teenage recruits.
all of the regional Hammerskin groups       Honour USA Council, a unity meeting              The importance of music in building
into a national and even international      of regional skinhead crews also known        the racist skinhead scene was appar-
force, with affiliated chapters in Eu-      as the Council of 28 (because B is the       ent by the late ’70s, when a hate-rock
rope. And for a while, the plan worked.     second letter of the alphabet and H          scene exploded alongside the punk
Hammerskin Nation established itself        the eighth), in Ohio. It is at this annual   rock movement, spreading lyrics that
as the most powerful skinhead organi-       gathering that skins would, according        were anti-immigrant, anti-black, and
zation in the country during the mid-       to the Vinlander web site, “meet yearly      anti-Semitic. Groups such as Skrew-
and late ’90s. At its peak, HSN directed    with other crews and exchange ideas          driver, Skullhead, and No Remorse
nearly 30 chapters and ran a success-       and debate direction and tactics.” And       forged a common skinhead culture in
ful record label, publishing house,         drink lakes of beer, of course.              sweaty, beer-soaked, makeshift concert
and website. The HSN symbol of two             Incredibly violent, full of swagger,      halls, with lyrics professing broth-
crossed hammers swept the skinhead          and loathe to take orders from any-          erhood among whites and violent,
scene. And an annual meeting and            one, the Vinlanders were thought to          uncompromising antagonism to out-
concert, Hammerfest, was launched           represent the future in a more decen-        siders of all kinds. The early hate-rock
in 1999, allowing HSN members from          tralized skinhead scene. But in the first    skinhead scene in Britain coalesced
around the world to meet and organize.      weeks of 2007, Vinlander founder Brien       around what were known as the “Rock
Throughout this period of Hammer-           James, a particularly violent racist,        Against Communism” (RAC) concerts,
skin ascendancy, the racist skinhead        posted a notice on the group’s website       the first of which was held in Leeds in

                                                                                              intelligence report special edition 5
SKINHEADS IN AMERICA - SKINHEADS IN AMERICA - SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER
1978. RAC shows were organized in           recruiters for the movement in history.      reference and even annual events. The
opposition to the earlier “Rock Against     (Burdi has since renounced hate and          ease with which interested parties can
Racism” concerts, a series of musical       embraced Eastern mysticism.)                 access hate literature and music online
events meant to counter growing racist          The first label to seriously challenge   has also given rise to the phenomenon
currents in English culture. A sub-         the dominance of Resistance Records was      of the “internet Nazi” — young fellow
genre of punk that often veered toward      Minnesota-based Panzerfaust, named af-       travelers who are not part of organized
racism was known as Oi!, which soon         ter a Nazi-era German anti-tank weapon.      skinhead gangs but who profess al-
became global (if not completely accu-      Before imploding amid a scandal involv-      legiance to the movement’s code and
rate) shorthand for skinhead music.         ing the non-Aryan heritage of its founder,   support purveyors of skinhead para-
   By the mid-1980s, a racist skinhead      Anthony Pierpont, Panzerfaust was best       phernalia with online orders.
culture defined by loud hate-rock,          known for a failed 2005 plan to distrib-         The country with the worst skin-
cases of cheap beer, bloody “boot par-      ute 100,000 hate-rock sampler CDs in         head problem today is Russia, where it
ties” directed against immigrants and       schoolyards across the nation.               is estimated there are tens of thou-
others, and the flagrant display of neo-        The impact of U.S. hate rock is not      sands of active neo-Nazi skinheads, in-
Nazi iconography and paraphernalia          limited to the United States. Since the      cluding thousands in the capital alone.
had spread to Western Europe and            production, performance, and distribu-       In recent years, immigrants, students
North America. Although focused on a        tion of such music is illegal in many        and even senior embassy staff from
skinhead gang in Melbourne, Australia,      countries in Western Europe, the U.S.,       Asian and African nations have been
the 1992 Russell Crowe film “Romper         with its First Amendment guarantees of       the victims of assaults and murders on
Stomper” paints a particularly vivid        free speech, has become a main provider      the streets of Moscow.
and well-researched picture of the day-     of music to skinheads internationally            As in Western European countries,
to-day life of skinheads immersed in        (just as U.S. computer servers host most     Russian skinhead violence often dovetails
this culture. (A later film that explored   European hate sites in order to keep         with soccer hooliganism. A 2002 report
the racist skinhead culture, this one       their owners clear of European anti-         in The Nation described the trend:
set in California, was 1998’s “American     hate legislation). This relationship was         “In the past few years a curious syn-
History X,” starring Edward Norton.)        built in part by the outreach programs of    thesis of the soccer hooligan and skin-
   The importance of music in grow-         Resistance Records under George Burdi,       head movements has been observed
ing the worldwide skinhead movement         who used to offer Eastern Europeans          steadily gaining strength in the city.
cannot be overstated. William Pierce,       CDs at 90% discounts, as well as free        It’s no longer uncommon in Moscow
leader of the neo-Nazi National Alli-       license to reproduce the music.              to see crowds of 300-400 soccer fans
ance until his death in 2002, under-            The center of gravity for hate-rock      — dressed in the black bomber jackets
stood well the potential impact of hate-    today is probably “RadioWhite,” an on-       and black boots popularized by German
rock. “Music speaks to us at a deeper       line white power music Internet radio        skinheads — loitering on the streets in
level than books or political rhetoric:     station that maintains multiple 24-hour      the city’s outer regions, and not always
music speaks directly to the soul,” said    music feeds. Other new media plat-           on the same nights as soccer matches.”
Pierce, author of the seminal hate-lit      forms — including social networking              Some of these skinheads, the article
novel, The Turner Diaries.                  sites like MySpace and video file-shar-      notes, have been seen wearing the
   Putting this insight into practice,      ing sites like YouTube — are being used      armbands of the neo-Nazi Russian
Pierce purchased the ailing hate-           by racist skinhead groups to recruit and     National Unity party, suggesting links
rock label and distributor Resistance       expose others to their views.                between street hate and organized
Records in 1999 and built the company                                                    political parties. Such links are sus-
into a major force in the world skin-       v. the international scene                   pected to be common in many Western
head movement. Resistance Records           The connections between racist skin-         European countries, where radical par-
had been originally founded in 1993         heads in the U.S. and Europe are not         ties participate in electoral politics, in
by George Burdi, a young Canadian           limited to hate-rock catalogs. With          recent years with sobering success.
skinhead who also started the band          the rise of the Internet, groups scat-           Across Europe, radical parties are
RAHOWA (an acronym for Racial Holy          tered across the globe have been able        on the rise, exploiting fears over im-
War), which was one of the most popu-       to communicate and link up as never          migration. In several of these coun-
lar and influential hate-rock bands of      before, transforming the skinhead            tries, associations have been traced
the period. Bernie Farber of the Cana-      movement from an exclusively neigh-          between skinhead gangs and parties
dian Jewish Congress has described          borhood-based phenomenon into a              with representatives in regional and
Burdi as one of the most effective          global culture with common points of         national bodies. 

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SKINHEADS IN AMERICA - SKINHEADS IN AMERICA - SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER
KEVIN SCANLON

intelligence report special edition 7
SKINHEADS IN AMERICA - SKINHEADS IN AMERICA - SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER
AS THE POWER OF THE CENTRALIZED HAMMERSKIN
       NATION DECLINES, A RISE IN INDEPENDENT SKIN
       CREWS MAY BRING A NEW ERA OF VIOLENCE
8 intelligence report special edition
MOTLEY
 CREWS
  L
                      ast Memorial Day weekend, three racist
                      skinheads stood side-by-side to pose for
                      a photo at the Imperial Klans of America
                      compound near Dawson Springs, Ky.,
                      where the IKA hosts the annual white
                      power gathering Nordic Fest. Two of them
                      — Eric Fairburn and Brien James, both
                      founders of the Hoosier State Skinheads —
  flipped off the camera while holding a red, white, and black
  flag upside down. The flag displayed the marching ham-
  mers symbol of Hammerskin Nation, a coalition of regional
  skinhead groups that dominated the United States skinhead
  scene for almost a decade. By posing with the flag upside
  down, Fairburn, James, and their accomplice declared the
  reign of Hammerskin Nation finished. Lest there be any
  mistaking their intent, the skinhead in the middle, a member
  of the Keystone State Skinheads, held his arms downward,
  fists closed, a deliberate inversion of the Hammerskin Nation
  signal of crossed arms up.
      The photo is a remarkable symbol of the rapid and treach-
  erous balkanization under way among organized skinheads
  in America, as well as a telling indicator of how the skin-
  head scene in this country, now more than ever, is less the
  revolutionary political movement its adherents claim than
  a disjointed criminal subculture. The skins in the photo are
  behaving like gangbangers, not race warriors. They’re “diss-
  ing” the Hammerskins, their fellow Aryans, right down to
  the gang signs.

                             intelligence report special edition 9
These trends parallel an alarming resurgence in skinhead
activity nationwide, which continues to intensify. At the be-
ginning of 2002, there were 18 skinhead crews active in the
United States, most of them under the control of Hammer-
skin Nation. That count has now more than tripled to 59 ac-
tive crews, only six of which belong to Hammerskin Nation.
    As the power of the Hammerskins has waned, the skin-
head scene has entered a free-for-all phase, with new and
unaffiliated local, state, and regional crews proliferating
rapidly. More and more of these newcomers subscribe to the
ultra-violent ethos and disorganized crime profiteering of a
chaotic band of Midwest-based gangster skins known as the
Vinlanders.
    While there’s no skinhead census, and no official statistics
on skinhead-specific crime, cops on the street that specialize
in tracking skins say the facts are clear. “Skinhead activity
has easily doubled in the last couple of years, and the Vin-
lander influence is huge,” says Matt Browning, a detective
with the Mesa, Ariz., police department who has investi-
gated white power gangs in his region and their nationwide
                                                                                      Picking a fight: By posting this photo
connections for 10 years, including two years undercover.
                                                                                      on the Internet, members of the
“They’re more violent, they’re more technically savvy than
                                                                                      Vinlanders Social Club were issuing a
before in terms of using the Internet to organize, and, while                         direct challenge to the waning power
they’re still motivated by race and politics, it’s also about                         of Hammerskin Nation.
money now.”

Bloodshed and Retaliation
The ongoing devolution of the skinhead scene began with
what will live in infamy in skinhead lore as “the pool cue and                 be a “prospect” for one year, then a “probate” for six months.
blowtorch incident.” It happened in mid-1999, when Ham-                        All this time, and forever after, they were required to pay
merskin Nation’s power was peaking, with about 600 Ham-                        $10 a month in dues to their local chapter, and $10 a month
merskins distributed across five regional divisions. To be-                    to Hammerskin national leaders in Dallas, who asserted do-
come a Hammerskin, a skinhead who wanted to join had to                        minion over skinheads nationwide, portrayed Hammerskin

RACIST       SKINHEADS
a timeline of the movement
                                                                         CIRCA                                 CIRCA
CIRCA
1969                                EARLY
                                                                         1982
                                                                         Racist skinheads begin to appear
                                                                                                              1986
                                                                                                               Romantic Violence, also known as
 The original skinhead subculture
 explodes among urban, working-
 class youths in Britain, combin-
                                    1980s                                in U.S. in significant numbers.

                                    British skinhead scene factionalizes. White
                                                                                                               CASH (Chicago Area Skinheads),
                                                                                                               takes form as one of the first true
                                                                                                               racist skinhead gangs in the United
 ing style elements drawn from      power skinheads develop a separate subculture                              States, followed in short order by
 white “Mods” and West Indian       based on the white nationalist music of “Rock                                    the Confederate Hammerskins
“Rudeboys.” Though tinged with      Against Communism” bands like Skrewdriver,                                          in Dallas.
 soccer hooliganism, traditional                           Skullhead, and No
                                                        corbis/bettman

 skinhead culture is not racist                            Remorse who opposed                                          Former California Klan
 (to this day, there are black                             the “Rock Against                                            leader Tom Metzger forms
“trad” skins).                                             Racism” concerts of anti-                                    the Aryan Youth Move-
                                                           racist skins.                                               ment, a skinhead division of
                                                                                                                     his white supremacist group
                                                                                                                   White Aryan Resistance (WAR).
10 intelligence report
level and nature of skinhead criminal activity in this country
                                                                      and abroad.
                                                                          The order was simple: Hammerskin leaders had deter-
                                                                      mined that a certain Hammerskin was no longer worthy of
                                                                      membership due to his persistent sexual propositioning of a
                                                                      fellow member’s wife. They directed the Indiana Hammer-
                                                                      skins to seek out this offender, inform him of their decision,
                                                                      and then “remove” his Hammerskin “colors,” meaning any
                                                                      patches, pins or other markers indicating his affiliation.
                                                                          Looking back, the Dallas shot callers may wish they’d
                                                                      been more specific on the meaning of “remove.” When a pack
                                                                      of five Indiana Hammerskins tracked down the offender,
                                                                      they not only roughed him up and tore off his colors, they
                                                                      held him down, burned off his Hammerskin tattoos with a
                                                                      blowtorch, and then shoved a pool cue up his rectum.
                                                                          The Hammerskin leaders were outraged and banished
                                                                      the attackers for exceeding their orders. Basically, the five
                                                                      Indiana skinheads were punished for being too violent. Eight
                                                                      of the other Indiana Hammerskins turned in their patches
                                                                      in protest of the punishment and together, the 13 former
                                                                      Hammerskins formed a new, rogue crew they called Outlaw
                                                                      Hammerskins, which represented the first serious challenge
                                                                      to Hammerskin Nation authority.
                                                                          From their very beginning, the Outlaw Hammerskins
                                                                      represented a new breed of racist skinhead. They avowed
                                                                      white power, yet listened to black gangsta rap. They had neo-
                                                                      Nazi tattoos, yet dripped with gold chains. They wore Doc
                                                                      Martens, but also gold teeth. They formed close ties with the
Nation as elite, and enforced strict codes of conduct.                Hell’s Angels, working security at the outlaw biker gang’s
   Early that summer, these leaders issued a direct order to          events (the father of Jeremy Maske, one of the founding
the members and two probates of the Indiana chapter of the            Outlaw skinheads, was the president of the Indiana chapter
Northern Hammerskins that set in motion a cycle of blood-             of the Hell’s Angels at the time).
shed, retaliation, and dissent that continues to shape the                Within a few months, the Outlaw Hammerskins had
                                                                                       ap wide world photo

      1988
      Skinhead violence
                                                                                                             Members of the Confederate Hammerskins
                                                                                                             patrol Robert E. Lee Park in Dallas, beating
                                                                                                             any non-white they come across. The gang
      erupts across the                                                                                      is ultimately linked to 40 crimes, includ-
      United States, with                                                                                    ing the vandalism of a Dallas synagogue.
      scores of violent                                                                                      Police foil a plot by armed Hammerskins
      attacks and murders                                                                                    to destroy Jewish businesses on Nov. 9,
      recorded over the next                                                                                 the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the
      four years.                                                                                            Nazi pogrom also known as the “Night of
                                                                                                             Broken Glass.”
      Tom Metzger and son          A flying chair breaks the nose
      John organize the            of television talk show host                                              Ethiopian immigrant Mulugeta Seraw is
      first hate rock festival,    Geraldo Rivera during a brawl                                             beaten to death by members of East Side
      Aryan Fest, which is         between skinhead gang leaders                                             White Pride, a Portland, Ore., gang with
      held in Oklahoma.            and African-American activists on the set of                              close ties to WAR.
                                  “The Geraldo Rivera Show.”
                                                                                                                  intelligence report special edition 11
Eastern Hammerskins member
                                                                                                    Bob Himes, who runs a Pennsylva-
chapters across Indiana and                                                                         nia tattoo shop, displays a body
Wisconsin. Their creed was “take                                                                    covered in skinhead iconography,
it to the extreme.” If another skin-                                                                including the crossed hammers
head crew mocked them for being                                                                     (right) that symbolize Hammer-
“whiggers” (white “niggers”),                                                                       skin Nation.
Outlaw Hammerskins would beat
them down. If attacked with fists
and feet, Outlaw Hammerskins would retaliate with bats                Falling Hammers
and knives. If a rival pulled a knife, an Outlaw Hammerskin           On Memorial Day weekend 2000, less than a year after the
pulled a gun.                                                         Outlaw Hammerskins formed, three vanloads of Outlaw
    “We do remain open and hospitable to other racialists             Hammerskin hooligans showed up at the Imperial Klans of
who pass through our cities and states. However, we do                America compound, looking to start trouble at Nordic Fest,
not tolerate disrespect,” they announced on their website.            which at that time was heavily attended by Hammerskin Na-
“Meaning we don’t talk shit. There is no ‘next time.’ We’ll           tion skinheads. The Outlaw Hammerskins skins were heavily
light you up on the fucking spot.”                                    armed, and when IKA security refused to allow them into

1991
In June, more than 60 Aryan         1994                                    1997
                                                                            Bruce Vander Jagt becomes the first American police officer
National Front (ANF) skinheads      Regional Hammerskin factions unite      killed in the line of duty by a racist skinhead when he’s gunned
and Klansmen march through          under the common banner of Hammer-      down in Denver by 25-year-old racist Matthaus Jaehnig after
downtown Birmingham in a                   skin Nation (HSN).               a high-speed chase. The next week, a
dramatic show of force.                                                     dead pig bearing Vander Jagt’s name is
                                             Skinhead gang leader Randall   dumped outside a Denver police sub-
                                             Lee Krager (left) forms        station, and Denver skinheads Nathan

  1992                                       Volksfront in Oregon.          Thill and Jeremiah Barnum murder a
                                                                            West African immigrant they encounter
   In April, members of the
   skinhead gang ANF murder a
   homeless black man in Birming-
                                          1995
                                          Southern California skinhead
                                                                            at a bus stop. Thill later tells a reporter
                                                                            that he killed Oumar Dia because he
                                                                            was “wearing the enemy’s uni-
   ham, Ala., after attending a           Randall Rojas beats a homeless    form” — his black skin.
   Hitler birthday party.                 black man to death behind a
                                          fast-food restaurant.
                                                                                                            Nathan Thill
12 intelligence report special edition
the festival, they fired a volley of shots into the air, putting       have continued the Outlaw Hammerskin tradition of openly
Hammerskin Nation on notice.                                           challenging and disrespecting Hammerskin Nation and its
    The following year, Outlaw Hammerskins showed up in                only ally, the Portland, Ore.-based regional crew Volksfront.
force at Nordic Fest, making it clear the event was no longer              Two of these new, unruly crews, the Hoosier State
Hammerskin Nation’s exclusive skinhead stomping ground.                Skinheads and the Ohio State Skinheads, rose directly from
In part because of this loss of face, Hammerskin Nation                the ashes of the Outlaw Hammerskins. The Hoosier State
membership numbers began to wither. Today, Hammerskin                  Skinheads were co-founded by former Outlaw Hammer-
Nation is more like Hammerskin Hamlet. It’s down to about              skins Brien James and Eric Fairburn (see profiles, p. 50 and
150 members. “Hammers have been dropping their patches                 p. 49). James and Fairburn also attended the first meeting
all over the place,” says Detective Browning. The decline of           in Central Ohio in 2003 of the Ohio State Skinheads, whose
the Hammerskin Nation has been fueled by the insurrection              founders include other former Outlaw Hammerskins. (Ohio
of the Outlaw Hammerskins, lawsuits filed by hate crime vic-           State Skinheads now has three local chapters in Ohio).
tims, and widespread discontent with Hammerskin Nation’s                   The largest statewide crew now active is the Keystone
elitism among working-class, anti-authoritarian racist youths.         State Skinheads, which formed in September 2001 in Har-
    Still another big factor was the collapse of Panzerfaust           risburg, Pa. (One of its five founders, Steven Smith, is a
Records, a hate rock music company that distributed popular            former Aryan Nations member who was recruited into the
Hammerskin Nation-affiliated bands like Max Resist, Bound              neo-Nazi movement while an Army soldier stationed at Fort
for Glory, and the Mid-Town Boot Boys. Panzerfaust’s owner,            Bragg, N.C.) The Keystone State Skinheads now has nine
Anthony Pierpont, poured hundreds of thousands of dollars              chapters across Pennsylvania and sponsors regular concerts
into Hammerskin Nation festivals and legal battles after he            and “white power picnics.” Its logo is a pit bull or bulldog in
founded the label in 1998, but had to scuttle the company              a circle made of chain against a red, black, and white back-
last year after the Intelligence Report revealed he’s of Mexi-         ground (see logos chart, p. 56).
can descent. (Despite being a “mud person,” Pierpont is still              The Ohio State Skinheads, Hoosier State Skinheads, and
active in the business side of organized hate. His most recent         Keystone State Skinheads are all also part of the Vinlander
venture is manufacturing T-shirts for National Socialist               Social Club, a.k.a. the Vinlanders, a skinhead “warrior clan”
Movement commander Jeff Schoep and National Alliance                   devoted to drinking, fighting, and a racist variant of Odinism,
chairman Erich Gliebe; see related story, p. 11).                      a form of ancient paganism once practiced by Vikings. Fair-
                                                                       burn, James, and other Hoosier State and Ohio State Skin-
Rise of the Regional Crews                                             heads founded the Vinlanders in 2004; today, that group has
Infighting caused the Outlaw Hammerskins to implode in                 about 200 full members. Unlike Hammerskin Nation, which
2002, but by then they’d made an indelible mark on skinhead            requires even probationary members to renounce their al-
culture. Instead of leading to a return to power for Hammer-           legiance to any other skinhead crew, the Vinlanders allow
skin Nation, the demise of the Outlaw Hammerskins sparked              and even encourage dual membership. A Vinlander can be an
the still-ongoing surge of independent, regional crews that            Ohio State or Hoosier State Skinhead, and vice-versa.

                            1999
                            Florida skinheads attack interra-

1998                        cial couples, killing a woman and
                            a child in two separate incidents.
Independent Nazi Skins
gang leader John “Polar
Bear” Butler ambushes
                            Five ousted members of the
                            Northern Region of Hammerskin
                                                                         Shane McCormick     2001
                                                                                             Midland Hammerskin Shane McCormick
and kills two Anti-Racist
Action members in the
desert outside Las Vegas
                            Nation form a renegade outfit
                            they call Outlaw Hammerskins.        2000
                                                                   While Hammerskin
                                                                                             (above) stabs a black man in a Missouri
                                                                                             restaurant.

on the Fourth of July.      Hammerskin Nation reorganizes          Nation remains the        Hammerfest attendance drops to 220
                            and throws its first Hammerfest,       nation’s largest skin-    as HSN’s elitist posturing and relentless
                            the group’s signature hate rock        head organization,        attempts to dictate the rules of skinhead
                            festival, in rural Bremen, Ga.         the number of HSN         culture in the U.S. breed widespread
                            More than 600 skinheads from           chapters drops from       resentment.
ap wide world photo

                            across the country attend.             27 to 19.

                                                                                                  intelligence report special edition 13
“Everyone [in Arizona] wants to be Vinlander now,” says
Detective Browning. “The Vinlanders have very quickly gone
from a little skinhead group in the Midwest to a national
force with a great web presence. The bigger they become, the
more power they have, and they’re getting bigger.”
    On Oct. 22, 2005, on the Logan, Ohio, property of Ohio
State Skinheads member Kevin Kislingbury, the Vinlander
Social Club hosted the first official Blood and Honour coun-
cil, a unity meeting of regional skinhead crews also known
as the Council of 28. The meeting was attended by at least
60 representatives of more than a dozen skinhead crews,
including Hoosier and Ohio State Skinheads, Keystone State
Skinheads, the New Jersey Skins, the Canyon State Skins
(Arizona), and the Maryland Skins (one of the fastest grow-
ing state crews), as well as the Imperial Klans of America
and the National Alliance.
    Conspicuously absent at the Blood and Honour council
was anyone representing Hammerskin Nation or Volksfront.

Recruitment Commerce
According to the minutes of the meeting, the council mem-
bers decided they would meet once a year in the future, and
that any group “meeting the council criteria” would send
two representatives. They also established a “uniform code
of appearance and conduct” for “large scale public actions,”
and designated the neo-Nazi National Alliance as their of-
ficial “political outlet.”                                        patches, and other paraphernalia to countries where such
    The former Outlaw Hammerskins also reversed them-             items are banned. But when the Outlaw Hammerskins broke
selves on the issue of hate rock, according to the minutes,       away, they announced they would have nothing to do with
deciding by majority vote to “explore the option of holding       the shady business of hate rock or recruitment commerce.
events for the general public for profit.” This was a major       With the exception of the Keystone State Skinheads, the
shift. Hammerskin Nation and Volksfront have a long his-          council crews had all followed suit.
tory of organizing hate rock festivals to raise money and also       So what changed their minds?
of channeling hate rock CDs and neo-Nazi flags, shirts, pins,        Perhaps the hate rock company representatives who also

      2002
       Skinhead Kevin A. Johnson beats a      2003
       man to death outside the Courtesy      The number of skinhead chapters nationwide more than doubles, due mostly
       Diner in St. Louis while spewing       to the rapidly increasing strength of independent, regional skinhead crews,
       anti-Semitic epithets, although his    most notably the Hoosier State Skins
       victim is not Jewish.                  (Indiana and Illinois), the Ohio State
                                              Skinheads, and the Pennsylvania-based
       The Outlaw Hammerskins implode         Keystone State Skinheads.
       due to infighting.
                                              Kurtis William Monschke, head of the
       HSN’s power continues to wane.         Washington state chapter of Volksfront,
                                              helps three other racist skinheads use
       Hammerfest attendance                  baseball bats and rocks to beat to death
       dwindles to 150.                       a homeless white man in Tacoma.

                                                                                           Kurtis Monschke
14 intelligence report special edition
RACIST SKINHEAD GLOSSARY
                                                                                          14/88: Common white supremacist              Hammerskins: A nationwide skinhead
                                                                                          code. 14 stands for the “14 words”           syndicate, also known as Hammerskin
                                                                                          slogan coined by David Lane, who is          Nation, with regional factions and chap-
                                                                                          serving a 190-year sentence for his          ters that once dominated skin subculture
                                                                                          part in the assassination of a Jewish        nationwide.
                                                                                          talk show host: “We must secure the          HSN: Hammerskin Nation.
                                                                                          existence of our people and a future for
                                                                                          white children.” 88 means “Heil Hitler,”     HFFH: “Hammerskin Forever Forever
                                                                                          as H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.   Hammerskin.”

                                                                                          28: Shorthand for Blood and Honour, a        Hang-around: A young person who
                                                                                          skinhead group.                              associates with skinheads but is not yet
                                                                                                                                       a probate (see below), akin to a gang-
                                                                                          38: Confederate Hammerskins, the             banger “wannabe.”
                                                                                          southern faction of Hammerskin Nation
                                                                                          (see below).                                 Probate: A “member in waiting” who is
                                                                                                                                       on probation for a set amount of time
                                                                                          Boot party: Beating a victim to the          before he or she becomes a full-fledged
                                                                                          ground then stomping and kicking him         member of a skinhead crew.
                                                                                          or her with steel-toed boots.
                                                                                                                                       RAHOWA: Short for “Racial Holy War,”
                                                                                          Braces: Suspenders.                          a slogan that originally came out of the
                                                                                          Crew: Skinhead gang or faction.              neo-Nazi Church of the Creator; also the
                                                                                                                                       name of a defunct band.
                                                                                          Colors: Marks identifying affiliation; can
                                                                                          be tattoos, patches on jackets, etc.         Red laces: Bootlace color indicating the
                                              attended the Council of 28 convinced                                                     wearer has shed blood for the skinhead
                                              the skinhead leaders there that if they     Curbing, curb job: Breaking a victim’s       movement. Racist skinheads will often
                                              would just put down their mead drink-       jaw or neck by forcing his or her face       randomly attack non-whites to “earn”
                                              ing horns and pick up their thinking        against a street curb and kicking the        their red laces.
                                              caps, they could make serious money.        back the of the victim’s head; popular-
                                              “The Vinlanders have the backing of         ized in the 1998 cult movie, “American       Spider web tattoo: Racist skinhead
                                              the hate rock record labels now, the        History X.”                                  “badge of honor,” often worn on the
                                              labels are bringing money to the table,”                                                 elbow, indicating wearer has committed
                                                                                          Dr. Martens (a.k.a. Doc Martens): Brand      murder for the skinhead movement.
                                                                                          of durable boots popular with skinheads
                                                                                          as well as young people in all walks of      SHARP: Short for Skinheads Against
                                                                                          life, though skins lace the boots differ-    Racial Prejudice, commonly known as

                                                    2004
                                                                                          ently (see “straight-laced”) and wear        SHARP skins, who often battle racist
                                                                                                                                       skins.
                                                                                          either red or white laces (see below).
                                                     Non-Hammerskin crews                                                              Skinbyrd: Female skinhead.
                                                                                          Homey sock: Pool ball in a sock wrapped
                                                     continue to evolve and unify.        in tape so it doesn’t split open when        Straight-laced: A complex boot-lacing
                                                                                          used as a weapon.                            system favored by racist skins who lace
                                                    Members of the Hoosier State                                                       their boots in horizontal, straight lines
                                                    Skins and Ohio State Skinheads        Featherwood: Female skinhead.
JANET JENSON / [Tacoma, WASH.] NEWS-TRIBUNE

                                                                                                                                       rather than X or cross patterns.
                                                    — including several former Outlaw     Five words: “I have nothing to say.”
                                                    Hammerskins — form the Vin-                                                        White laces: Bootlace color identifying
                                                                                          Skinheads are exhorted to give this stan-
                                                    lander Social Club, also known as                                                  a skinhead as being “white power,” as
                                                                                          dard response to any and all media and
                                                    the Vinlanders, a skinhead “warrior                                                opposed to a non-racist (“traditional”) or
                                                                                          law enforcement inquiries.
                                                    clan” devoted to drinking, fight-                                                  anti-racist skin.
                                                    ing, and a racist form of Odinism,    Fred Perry: Brand of polo shirt favored
                                                                                                                                       ZOG: Shorthand for “Zionist Occupation
                                                    a pagan religion once practiced by    by skinheads.
                                                                                                                                       [or Occupied] Government,” reflecting
                                                    Norse Vikings.                        Fresh cut: A newly indoctrinated             the neo-Nazi conspiracy theory that the
                                                                                          skinhead whose head has recently been        American government is secretly con-
                                                                                          shaved for the first time.                   trolled by a powerful Jewish cabal.
                                                                                                                                         intelligence report special edition 15
entirely of Polish-speak-
                                                                                                                ing immigrants).
                                                                                                                   Skinhead criminal
                                                                                                                activity in the United
                                                                                                                States is still far less se-
                                                                                                                vere than in Moscow or,
                                                                                                                for that matter, Prague
                                                                                                                or Paris. But as inde-
                                                                                                                pendent crews continue
                                                                                                                to proliferate, and the
                                                                                                                ultra-violent skins of the
                                                                                                                Vinlanders and similar
                                                                                                                groups vie with the left-
                                                                                                                overs of Hammerskin
                                                                                                                Nation, it seems likely
    Billy Roper (right), a former National                                                                      that skinhead activity
    Alliance official who now heads White                                                                       here will grow, as it has
    Revolution, has repeatedly tried to                                                                         recently after about a
    bring racist skinheads into the                                                                             decade in remission.
    mainstream of the radical right.                                                                               So far, most of the
                                                                                                                serious violence has
                                                                                                                been contained within
                                                                                                                the white power world
says Detective Browning.                       to supply them with merchandise they                             (for example, the vicious
    White power music, after all, is a         otherwise couldn’t have.                        beating the Vinlanders gave a National
more lucrative underground trade in               For these reasons, U.S. skinheads            Socialist Movement speaker and two of
Europe than dealing in hashish, ac-            wield huge influence overseas, espe-            his comrades at this year’s Nordic Fest).
cording to Interpol. The demand for            cially in Germany and the former Soviet         But as any gang cop knows, the most
American skinhead music is tremen-             Union, where there are 30,000-50,000            dangerous member of a street gang is
dous there both because there are              skinheads in Moscow alone, according            not the “O.G.” (“Original Gangster”) with
far more skinheads and because it’s            to Russian police. They terrorize and kill      a well-established street reputation, but
illegal for hate rock bands to perform,        non-whites and Jews at a rate unimagi-          the newbie looking to do whatever it
record, or even rehearse in most Eu-           nable in this country. In Russia, skin-         takes to make a name for himself and his
ropean countries. So while skinheads           head culture, much of it exported from          gang. The skinhead scene in this country
in Europe for the most part consider           the U.S., has brought death and destruc-        has become a land of the white power
their American counterparts to be              tion for a generation. (There is also some      up-and-comers, each of them a human
drunken buffoons — and with good               European influence on U.S. skinheads.           hand grenade, just looking for an excuse
reason — they are dependent upon the           For example, the Burnden County                 to pull their own pin. 
disorganized crime of U.S. skinheads           Hooligans, a New Jersey crew, consists

                                                                                    2006
                                                                                     Skinhead resurgence parallels rise in
                                                                                     skinhead-related criminal activity.

      2005
       The Vinlanders host the first official Blood and Honour Council, a unity meeting of
       regional skinhead crews also known as the Council of 28 (B is the second letter of
       the alphabet, H is the eighth; hence, 28 stands for Blood and Honour). The council is
       attended by at least 60 members of more than a dozen white supremacist groups.

16 intelligence report special edition
the
godfathers
ONCE, RACIST SKINHEADS WERE REGARDED AS TOO EXPLOSIVELY
    VIOLENT TO BE POLITICIZED. TWO FORMER KLANSMEN
   CHANGED ALL THAT FOR GOOD

   W

                                                                                                                                       ap wide world photo
                   hen young racists across the United
                   States began emulating white-pow-
                   er British skinheads in the 1980s,
                   it soon became apparent they had
   neither the discipline nor the charismatic leader-
   ship of the Nazi SS soldiers they idolized. They
   were loose cadres of ultra-violent outcasts, prone
   to poorly planned bursts of vicious, high-profile
   criminality, who found themselves as shunned by
   the leaders of established white supremacist orga-
   nizations as they were by mainstream society.
      That began to change after two Klansmen-
   turned-neo-Nazi leaders — Tom Metzger in the
   mid-to-late 1980s, followed by Bill Riccio in the
   early 1990s — showed that it’s possible, at least for
   a while, to harness skinhead rage in the service               Former Klan leader Tom Metzger
   of a larger racist cause. Where other hate group               was one of the first Americans
   leaders saw drunken, unmanageable miscreants,                  to see in racist skinheads the
   Metzger and later Riccio saw disaffected but                   potential “shock troops” for a
   malleable foot soldiers in need of a father figure             coming race war.
   — potential “shock troops” in the coming race war.
      Like drug kingpins who use gangbangers to
   sling crack, these two merchants of hate enlisted
   and organized racist skinheads to do the dirty work of            deemed necessary, brute force and intimidation. But these
   the white power movement. By doing so, they shifted the           two self-appointed guidance counselors for neo-Nazi
   way racist skins are viewed by adult hate group leaders.          youth also unwittingly demonstrated the collateral dam-
   While skinheads are still as likely as they ever were to get      age skinheads cause their handlers when they learn their
   drunk and beat each other up or spontaneously commit a            lessons all too well.
   random murder, it’s become the standard for neo-Nazi or-
   ganizations like the National Socialist Movement and the          TOM METZGER
   Creativity Movement to seek out and recruit skinheads.            With his black cowboy hat and brash swagger, Thomas
      Metzger and Riccio showed the potential value racist           Linton Metzger has carefully cultivated an outlaw image
   skins hold for the white power movement in terms of               over his 30-year-career as a racist. The tough-talking
   generating publicity, fundraising, recruiting, and, when          television repairman and former California grand dragon

                                                                                              intelligence report special edition 17
of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan          alliance with American Front (one of the   two other ESWP skins pleaded guilty
was the first major racist leader in the    first skinhead crews to develop chap-      to murder, the Southern Poverty Law
United States to invite skinheads into      ters in multiple states), Metzger wasn’t   Center sued both Metzgers on behalf of
the organized white supremacist fold.       choosy. In 1988, he and his son John       the victim’s family and won a $12.5 mil-
    Metzger’s youth outreach efforts        threw the first-ever hate rock festival,   lion wrongful death verdict that ruined
even predated the arrival of racist         Aryan Fest, which was open to all skin-    the Metzgers financially.
skinhead culture in the U.S. in the         heads. Skins from all over the country         While the money trouble and public
early 1980s.                                traveled to the festival in Oklahoma.      scrutiny forced Metzger to stop network-
    In 1979, when teenager Greg             From that point on, Metzger was a          ing directly with skinheads, he main-
Withrow created a furor by starting a       sought-after speaker at rallies and con-   tained the WAR hotline and kept publish-
“White Students Union” at his north-        certs sponsored by a variety of crews.     ing white supremacist pamphlets.
ern California high school, Metzger             One of Metzger’s most devoted fol-         In 1993, then 17-year-old Richard
took Withrow under his wing, ulti-          lowers was Dave Mazella, a California      Campos was arrested for a series of
mately transforming Withrow’s fledg-        skinhead who took part in the traveling    firebombings in Sacramento, Calif. His
ling organization into the Aryan Youth      skinhead circus Metzger put together       targets included the house of a Sacra-
Movement (AYM), a junior-                                                                           mento city councilman, an
varsity version of Metzger’s                                                                        NAACP office, the office of
own organization, White              “Operate like a Nazi submarine! Use your the Japanese American Citi-
Aryan Resistance (WAR).              periscope! We have to infiltrate! Infiltrate zens League, a synagogue,
Metzger then began insert-                the military! Infiltrate your local                       and a state anti-discrimina-
ing AYM’s teen newsletter           governments! Infiltrate your school board! tion office. Investigators
into WAR newspapers.                                                                                found that Campos had
    When the first domestic
                                            Infiltrate law enforcement!”                            called the WAR hotline to
crop of racist skinheads                                                                            listen to Metzger’s messages
began sprouting in the early-to-mid         for the talk shows. “Tom Metzger was       34 times in a single month just before
1980s, White Aryan Resistance and the       like a father to me,” Mazella later said.  he carried out the bombings, which
Aryan Youth Movement quickly moved          After their nationally televised ap-       Campos had credited to the “Aryan
to become the first hate groups where       pearances, Metzger promoted Mazella        Liberation Front,” a domestic terror-
skinhead culture and exploits were          to vice president of AYM, where he         ist organization of which he was the
celebrated rather than shunned. “I was      reported directly to John Metzger.         only member. Campos told police he’d
the first in the country to recognize           When word reached WAR’s Fall-          become “racially aware” after reading a
skinheads and befriend them” Metzger        brook, Calif., headquarters that in-       White Aryan Resistance flier. Campos
told a reporter in 2004.                    dependent skinhead gangs in the            was tried as an adult, convicted, and
    Metzger tailored his pitch to suit      Pacific Northwest were rapidly gaining     sentenced to 17 years in prison.
the skins’ affinity for rebellion, por-     strength, Metzger dispatched Mazella to        Since the civil judgment against
traying his group as anti-authoritarian     Portland, where the WAR emissary used      him, Metzger has advocated “lone
and pro-working class. “WAR wears no        videotapes of his talk show shenanigans    wolf” white supremacist activism,
uniform, carries no membership card,        to get in with the members of East Side    which is leaderless and covert. A lone
takes no secret oath,” he said.             White Pride. John Metzger also sent        wolf, according to Metzger, “gathers
    Metzger and a handful of skinhead       ESWP a letter of introduction that read    intelligence and carefully digests and
protégés made the rounds of television      in part, “You’ll get a feel of how we work develops this information into thoughts
talk shows, defining skinhead culture       when you meet Dave Mazella.”               and suggestions.” Then he acts.
for the shocked audiences of Oprah              In Portland, Mazella arranged for          Metzger, who recently moved to
Winfrey, Geraldo Rivera and Phil Do-        ESWP members to talk to Tom Metzger        Warsaw, Ind., continues to speak at
nahue. He established a 24-hour WAR         directly on the phone, and drove the       skinhead rallies, although his organiza-
telephone hotline, with outgoing racist     Portland skins around in his van to lo-    tion is now little more than a publisher.
messages scripted for skinheads, and        cal high schools, where they distributed   In January 2004, he addressed a crowd
supplied early skinhead crews with          AYM papers. He led them in violent         of about 100 skinheads at a hate rock
free bundles of WAR and AYM publi-          attacks to prove his bona fides.           festival outside Phoenix that was orga-
cations to distribute on their own turf.        On Nov. 12, 1988, three weeks after    nized by the Portland, Ore.-based skin-
These tactical moves were intended to       WAR’s emissary arrived in Portland,        head crew Volksfront. “Don’t operate
make all racist skinheads and poten-        ESWP skinhead Ken Mieske beat to           like a battleship,” he shouted. “Operate
tial skinheads feel part of a growing       death an Ethiopian immigrant. The first    like a Nazi submarine! Use your peri-
national phenomenon.                        person Mieske called after the murder      scope! We have to infiltrate! Infiltrate
    While he formed a particularly close    was John Metzger. After Mieske and         the military! Infiltrate your local gov-

18 intelligence report special edition
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