U.S. Skinhead Violence On The Rise: Watchdog Group

Taken from Yahoo News, Oct 20, 2006
By Matthew Bigg

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Violence by skinhead gangs in the United States is on the rise because of splits in the extreme right movement, a U.S. watchdog group said on Friday.

The Hammerskin Nation gang has long dominated the skinhead scene, but in the last two years other gangs like the Outlaw Hammerskins and the Vinlander Social Club have rebelled against them, said Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project.

"When these small groups are trying to prove themselves you see an upsurge in extreme violence," said Potok who estimated that tens of thousands of people belonged to U.S. skinhead gangs.

"The remarkable thing of this rebellion is that it is a rebellion of the ultraviolent against the extremely violent," said Potok.

The gangs consist mainly of young white men and some women who are bonded around music, racist ideology and violence, according to the center, which is based in Montgomery, Alabama, and has tracked far-right groups for decades.

"The skinhead scene is both growing and is very much destabilized (because of splits in its ranks) and that presents a danger to the public," Potok said in an interview after the center published a report on skinhead gangs.

Skinheads became active in the United States in the early 1980s. Their violence reached a peak between 1988 and 1992 before falling off because of a crackdown by law enforcement agencies.

The gangs are mainly active in cities like Los Angeles, Portland, Salt Lake City, Denver, Boston and in the Midwest. The groups have links to similar gangs in Europe.

They are increasingly mixing with neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan groups, but pose no political threat because they are not linked to any mainstream party or organization, Potok said.

He said disaffected young people are initially attracted to the movement through music, which they usually hear on the Internet, and are later recruited at concerts before adopting the gangs' racist views.

There are also gangs of anti-racist skinheads, Potok said.