Skinheads are not (just) Nazis | Culture

“Boots and suspenders / slaps in the bar / shaved heads / and shouts of unity.” These are the lyrics of a song by Decibelios, pioneers of the subculture skinhead in Spain, which appeared on the album Chicken souppublished in 1984. A good summary of what it means skinhead: the shaved head, the outfit, the music, the love of bars, the fun… and the street violence.

This youth style was established in Spain in the eighties, when the so-called “urban tribes” (a term repudiated by academics) came in droves after the death of the dictator, forming an amalgam of punks, goths, mods either rockersin the Movida madrileña and other subsidiary movements. It was freedom. There, in a second phase, emerged what skin as a derivation of punk, often confused with it, without knowing where one ended and the other began, as illustrated in the famous comics Pedro Pico and Pico Venain which Carlos Azagra narrates the drunken and radical adventures of two colleagues, one punk and the other skin.

Five years later, and especially during the nineties, a good part of the skinheads They aligned themselves with the extreme right and formed neo-Nazi bands that dominated the media spotlight with their racist violence: it was associated in the popular imagination, perhaps irremediably, skin fascism. The murder of the Dominican domestic worker Lucrecia Pérez (in addition to the countless daily beatings and intimidations perpetrated by the skinheads) was the most notorious crime of that neo-Nazism. The crime happened at the end of 1992, annus mirabilis of Spain before the world, and is collected in the recent documentary series Lucrecia: a hate crime (Disney+), by David Cabrera and Garbiñe Armentia. But the skinheads They are not just Nazis.

“It skinhead The movement appeared in Great Britain around 1969, a date that is considered to be the founding date, in the breeding ground of the white working class and young people of Antillean origin. It is a multiracial style in which two universes come together and begin to exchange experiences,” says historian Carles Viñas, which illustrates its origins far removed from the racism and xenophobia that later permeated the movement. skinswho came from a subculture background mod call hard mod, They wore Dr. Martens boots, rolled-up trousers and braces, bomber jackets or Harrington jackets, Lonsdale T-shirts or Fred Perry polos, which exuded a certain aggressive elegance. Nowadays, almost all of the attire can be found in El Corte Inglés, but when the style arrived in Spain, it was necessary to work hard to complete the outfit.

“The artisanal background was distorted, and the aesthetics have been absorbed by the system, which has a great capacity to assimilate the transgressive and offer it on the market, ending its subversive meaning,” says Viñas. His music was Jamaican: reggaehe skahe rocksteady, like the catalogue of the Trojan Records label, iconic for the movement, unexpectedly cheerful, warm and melodic styles for those tough guys from the cloudy working-class neighbourhood. Later, at the end of the seventies, it would be associated with a substyle of punk called Oi!, more hooligan, where bands like Sham 69, Cock Sparrer, The 4 Skins or Cockney Rejects stood out. Their lyrics dealt with the problems of the working class, camaraderie, police abuse and partying to the cry of “oi, oi, oi!” Violence was always present, “related to territoriality, the defence of territory against rival bands, of other youth styles (they hated, above all, hippies, to whom they were diametrically opposed) and also linked to a certain idea of ​​masculinity”, explains the author.

Viñas, a professor at the University of Barcelona, ​​has dedicated himself to studying movement from his specialty: his latest book, recently published, is Shaved heads (Verso Libros, with a prologue by Kiko Amat and an epilogue by Fermin Muguruza), where he explores the arrival and development of the subculture in these latitudes; although in the previous one, Skinheads. Global history of a style (Bellaterra, 2022), studied the roots of the movement and its impact from an international perspective. His work is part of the line of study of subcultures initiated by the sociologist Stuart Hall and the famous Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, led by Richard Hoggart, at the University of Birmingham in the 1960s. See the volume Rituals of resistance: youth subcultures in post-war Britaincoordinated by Hall and Tony Jefferson and published in Spain by Traficantes de Sueños.

The skinheads fascists

“The beginning of the relations of the skinheads “These are the most common forms of youthful transgression: the extreme right was seen in Britain between the late seventies and early eighties, when they were attracted by the British Movement and the National Front (of a fascist and neo-Nazi nature). It is also a form of youthful transgression: parents and grandparents had fought against the Nazis in World War II,” explains Viñas. Curiously, punks had also used Nazi symbolism (such as the swastikas of Sid Vicious, of the Sex Pistols), although in a banal and merely provocative way (except for those Nazi-punks against whom Jello Biafra shouted in a song by the Dead Kennedys).

The Nazi skinhead, with his powerful aesthetics and sociopolitical dilemmas, has been seminal for the seventh art, since American History X (Tony Caye, 1998), with the indelible image of Edward Norton shaved and with a swastika tattooed on his chest, iconic of contemporary cinema, or This is England (Shane Meadows, 2006), until Warrior (Blood and honor) (David Wnendt, 2011), passing through the Spanish Scorpion in love (Santiago Zannou, 2013, based on a novel by Carlos Bardem), among many others.

This relationship with the dark side is finally exported to Spain, where the skinheads, in addition to joining the football fan groups (Ultras Sur, Frente Atlético, Boixos Nois), form organizations such as Bases Autónomas, of a curious anarcho-fascist character, which in publications such as The Black Death, Cirrhosis either Let’s get them! They displayed Nazi symbols and celebrated the anarchist Buenaventura Durruti. Young leftists were labeled as slobswho had to be hunted down, and some members of the organization ended up implicated in the murders of political enemies or homeless people.

As a reaction to this drift, there were groups of skinheads left-wing groups such as SHARP (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice) or RASH (Red and Anarchist Skinheads). From these sectors the Nazis were nicknamed boneheadssomething like airheads. A third group saw in apoliticism a way of reclaiming the essences: concerts, bars, colleagues, fun. “The skinheads The original British, being of working-class extraction, probably voted Labor… if they voted at all. But politics was secondary,” says the essayist.

The ‘de-demonization’ of the far right

The movement skinhead The neo-Nazi movement of the 1990s failed to build a serious political alternative and was seen for what it was: a criminal phenomenon. “There was very little political training, there was no desire for discipline and the objectives were different: reproducing anti-immigration slogans, displaying emblems, symbols and little else,” says the historian. We are now experiencing another far-right boom, but things have changed: young people on the far right no longer seem to be part of a defined subculture.

Their aesthetics often go unnoticed: you don’t see as many shaved heads and jackets anymore. bomber. If in France the normalization of the extreme right is described as “de-diabolization”, the youth extreme right has been “de-diabolized” (already the creation of the National Democracy party, in 1995, was trying to achieve a more respectable image, following the path of Le Pen in France or Fini in Italy) and has abandoned the aggressive and stigmatizing aspect of what skinheadwhile far-right politicians, wearing suits and ties, occupy seats in the Congress of Deputies. “It is a phenomenon of tilting,” concludes Viñas, “when the far-right does not have institutional representation, it gains visibility in the street. When it does, it is not so interested in that street belligerence.”