Skinhead behavior. Skinhead subculture

Very often on the streets you can meet young people calling themselves skinheads. The word “skinhead” can be divided into two English “skin head” and is translated as “shaved head”. Compared to other informal movements, representatives of this subculture have the most complex and developed ideology.

Unfortunately, modern young people have lost the true purpose that the founders of this culture had. And nowadays, most skinheads adhere to rigid racist views, often fixated on fascism and nationalism. Although, there are also groups that adhere to a more peaceful, anti-fascist ideology.

Here is a list of existing directions of this movement:

• traditional skinheads - appeared in response to deviations from the original skin culture; they take the founders of this movement as an example. Traditional skinheads listen to music in the style of ska, reggae, rocksteady (all other styles prefer rock and patriotic music);
• S.H.A.R.P. - Skinhead Against Racial Prejudices - this direction is against racial prejudice;
• R.A.S.H. - Red & Anarchist Skinheads – these representatives support the ideas of socialism, communism and anarchism;
• NS-skinheads - Nazi-skinheads / Boneheads - Boneheads (also called right-wing skinheads) - preach National Socialist ideas, right-wing and far-right views on politics and other values;
• Straight edge skinheads - sXe Skinheads - people who believe that bad habits such as alcohol, smoking and drug addiction are bad. This group is for a healthy lifestyle.

What do skinheads look like?

1. Distinctive signs of skinheads:

• “Celtic cross” (an image of a cross placed in a circle);
• classic German swastika;
• skull and crossbones.

2. Skinhead clothing. Preference is given to the military style - everything to make it comfortable to move. Boots are also usually military boots with thick soles. Since we started talking about shoes, I’ll note that the color of the laces is of no small importance. By the laces you can determine whether you belong to one direction or another.

3. Skinhead hairstyles. As you probably already guessed, this is a clean-shaven head, but simply a very short haircut is also allowed.

4. Skinhead tattoos. The themes of tattoos are very diverse. These can be inscriptions and abbreviations, as well as ordinary patterns. Some tattoo their bodies with fascist swastikas or any other designs with a racist-Nazi theme.

Skinhead ideology

Most skinheads are racists and nationalists, and everything that follows from this is their main ideology: love for representatives of their nation, their culture and hatred for others.

Well, in the end I will answer the question “how to become a skinhead?” If you are close in spirit to the ideology of skins, then feel free to change your image and look for similar friends. Just never forget that all your actions must be legal.

First, you need to remember the most important thing - a skinhead and a fascist are not the same thing. Many people think so, but it is not true. Being a skinhead means feeling proud and passionate. Be yourself. This article is about the culture and history of the skinhead movement.

Skinheads arose in the late 50s - 60s (no exact date) as a fusion of cultures between the white proletariat of England and immigrants from Jamaica and the West Indies who called themselves "Rood Boys". The ratio of numbers between whites and coloreds remained unclear for certain periods, but the subculture was undoubtedly an example of cultural pluralism. The Rude Boys were fans of ska music - the predecessor of reggae (if you heard of Bob Marley, he played reggae), a fusion of American rhythm and blues and Caribbean rhythms. On the English side, the first to whom the hot Jamaican music found a response were the mods, who also hung on rhythm and blues and soul music. Skinheads arose on the basis of these two movements.

With the merging of cultures, skinhead music began to develop as a mixture of rhythm and blues, soul and Jamaican music. Thus, by the mid-60s, Jamaican music became the most important music for the skinhead scene, as the music entered into wide circulation. The music went through many changes in the late 60s, evolving from ska to rocksteady to reggae. Skinheads who listened to reggae were the most numerous from 1968 to 1972. The music industry took notice and the shelves of record stores began to be filled with skinhead music: Skinhead Train "Laurel Aitken", Crazy Baldhead "the Wailers", Skinhead Moondust "the Hotrod Allstars" and much more. The most famous group to this day is the blacks “Symarip”, who released the album “Skinhead Moonstomp” on “Trojan records”.

Fashion was a pretty important part of skinhead culture. Fashion grew out of the legacy of the hard mods - a subculture of the London proletariat from the East End of the mid-60s. The hard, clean style of the Mods was partly a reaction to the sexless style of the hippies and the slovenliness of the clothes of long-haired American rock and roll fans.

Their hair was usually about half an inch (1.5 cm) long; they were not completely shaved then. This hairstyle also had its practical benefits; she did not require either shampoo or a comb, and she could not be grabbed during a fight.

They wore polo shirts, black trousers with suspenders or light blue jeans, and black felt “donkey” jackets that did not tear either in the factory or in a fight. While most wore heavy steel-toed work boots and jeans to work, for nights out they dressed in tailored suits with silk handkerchiefs, ties and shoes. In the dance halls they mixed with the ore boys from the West Indies.

Their sophisticated style did not mean that they were polite. Skinheads often took part in anti-social activities such as beating up hippies and brawling in football stands. Their enmity with the hippies was based on the fact that the hippies, with their long, dirty hair, bells and sandals, claimed to be white middle-class outcasts, while the skinheads were proud of their working class, mixed cultural background and more formal style.

The first skinheads were almost an anti-hippie movement. They didn't like long hair. Short hairstyles showed that they were proud of their appearance. Hippies didn't do that.

In 1972, two new musical influences appeared on the skinhead movement - dub reggae and rock. Dub reggae was of little interest to most skinheads and their long attachment to Jamaican music began to wane. With the advent of dub, heavily infused with Rastafarianism, artists who did not want to move to this new standard of the reggae scene were almost forgotten.

Such famous ska artists as Laurel Aitken, Prince Buster and the Skatalites were all abandoned before the advent of the 2-Tone era. There were even attacks on Lee Perry, the father of all modern Jamaican music, for his active anti-rasta campaign. The skinheads continued to dance to the simple rhythms of ska and rocksteady. Reggae was hardly listened to because of its fossilized, slow, otherworldly beats. Although, if marijuana had influenced skinheads as much as it had affected Rastafarians, the situation might have been different.

Reggae's place was soon taken over by a new form of rock and roll when a group of white skinheads from Wolverhampton called Slade became very popular in 1973, playing what was then called pub rock, a precursor to Oi! Having released two skinhead singles “Slade”, they sold to a major company and went into glam rock. Then it was time for punk. Popular groups such as the Sex Pistols, the Clash and the Damned attracted huge audiences, including many middle-class teenagers.

Skinheads decided to differentiate themselves from this audience by continuing to listen to Ouch! bands such as Sham 69, Cock Sparrer and 4 Skins. It is quite difficult for an unaccustomed ear to distinguish Oops! from punk, that music comes from traditional pub singing, but much, much faster. The words of the first Oh!, like punk, songs were directed against the stupid complacency of flabby rock, completely sold out to corporations.

By 1977, skinhead culture was having problems with the fascist National Front, which, using youth who had adopted the more pro-military elements of skinhead fashion, began to create a rift in the culture. The far right sought to split the traditional skinhead movement in Britain, using economic problems that penetrated it from outside.

It was a time when many working-class youth were unemployed and completely disappointed in their future. The fascists proposed a “simple solution”: blame all the problems on immigrants.

A group of former skinheads with their faces tattooed with swastikas, who greeted observers with a "Sieg Heil!" gesture, joined the revival of the British right led by Margaret Thatcher. The right encouraged anti-immigrant (thus anti-black, i.e. racist), anti-communist, and anti-Semitic views.

In response, skinheads, true to their traditional culture, created the 2-Tone movement. To combat the influence of White Power ideas, most 2-Tone groups consisted of a mixture of white and black members, and the entire movement was based on racial and cultural integration. Although some 2-Tone bands were either all-white, like Madness and the anarchist group The Oppressed, or all-black, like The Equators, they all shared the same cultural and musical ideas.

The National Front saw the Two-Tone movement as a threat to their influence in skinhead culture and they began to go out of their way to use violence in an attempt to disrupt the 2-Tone groups' performances. The Specials' latest "Ghost Town" EP, a commentary on this violence, spent 8 weeks at the top of the UK charts. But it was useless, since by the beginning of 1982 most of the 2-Tone groups had broken up.

Skins in the USA

The first skinheads appeared in the United States in 1977, where they were initially considered an aggressive, but not particularly politicized variety of punk. Collectives like Agnostic Front and Warzone did a lot to create an American version of skin culture that was even more democratic.

They brought hardcore to the skins' list of musical priorities. The music of these groups to this day unites punk and skin cultures, people of different nationalities and races. Among the American skins were black, Hispanic and white youth. Many organized their own ska and hardcore bands. Then they all advocated unity; any person with a shaved head was perceived by them as a brother.

Over time, the skinhead cult gained momentum in the United States and they, and not old England, began to set the tone on the skinhead scene. A lot of good and not so good ska and streetpunk bands appeared, and the 3rd wave of ska and ska-punk added fuel to the fire.

Skinhead culture has regained its former power, but this time all over the world. This had both its pros and cons. The main disadvantage is that at the moment the majority of American skinheads are so-called apolitical skins, which are actually a product of the media and the system, they have nothing of the true spirit of the working class - they are just children of the American dream, wearing skinhead clothes clothes.

Thanks to developed media technologies, depoliticization and the general Americanization of modern society, this image of a skinhead has taken root in the rest of the world, but there were still people who were not satisfied with this state of affairs.

Skinheads against racial prejudice

By 1985, just as in England, fascism had taken root in American skinhead culture, with the help of Nazi figures such as Bob Heick, leader of the Nazi group The American Front, who staged Nazi skinhead riots in San -Francisco in the summer of that year.

Skinheads distinguished each other with the words "baldies" for left-wing anti-racist skinheads and "boneheads" for white-power Nazi skinheads. The boneheads didn’t have their own scene, since Skrewdriver (the most famous fascist rock band) was never allowed into the states; there were only local white-power bands that didn’t really know how to play. Boneheads instead attacked punk clubs, some of them carrying razors to trim too-long hair or cut anti-racism badges off punk jackets.

In cities such as Minneapolis and Chicago, punks and skinheads (or "boldies") banded together to directly confront the Nazis. It was the same in England, where punks and ska-skins united. In January 1989, anti-racist and left-wing skinheads from more than 10 cities gathered in Minneapolis to create the Anti-Racist Skinhead Organization of North America. By the end of the week, “The Syndicate” was created and joint anti-Nazi actions were planned.

The two cities of Chicago and Minneapolis became the center of anti-racist skinhead activities in 1987, when a group of bigdies opposed the neo-Nazi group White Knights. After a campaign of physical confrontation, the White Knights were expelled from Minneapolis, which reduced the group to a bunch of inveterate racists and their leader, a member of the KKK.

The January skinhead meeting in Minneapolis was predominantly white, although there were also African-American, Native American, Latin and Asian skinheads. The average age of the participants was 19 years. Their desire was to promote the belief that skinhead culture has something to offer people of all races.

While racial issues in skinhead culture were exaggerated by the media, class issues were completely hushed up by them. The skinhead movement quite clearly pinned its hopes on the united actions of the working class. The Nazis, having distorted the class question, appealing to racism, are capable of fooling the heads of the proletarian youth.

The hatred of the rich that exists in many American neighborhoods can be easily exploited by revolutionary class politicians as well as by Nazis like Tom Metzger and his racist, anti-Semitic organization White Aryan Resistance. But while the boneheads were merely Metzger's puppets, the Syndicate acted independently.

Although the number of anti-racist skinheads, thanks to the once again gaining momentum in the music of SKA (third wave of ska), was constantly growing, the media stubbornly imposed on ordinary people the image of a skinhead as a thick-headed Nazi stormtrooper. In the end, this forced the anti-Nazi skins to take action and they founded the anti-racist organization “S.H.A.R.P.” in San Diego. (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice), in addition to the Syndicate.

SHARP began in New York in 1987. At the time, the prevailing opinion in the press was that all skinheads were White-Power Nazis. This attitude was largely caused by the bourgeois tabloid press. A small group of skinheads and punk sympathizers decided to create a group that operated as a media machine, spreading a variety of messages about how not all skinheads are the same, that we have different ideals and beliefs, personal and political.

SHARP members began doing radio and television interviews, spreading their message, which was initially disbelieved by the media-brainwashed population. However, in most cases these members were received courteously, even if their message was, sometimes, ignored.

However, the main exception was the Geraldo Rivera show in 1988. During its recording, one of John Metzer's henchmen (son of KKK leader and head of the White Aryan Resistance Tom Metzer) threw a chair, breaking Geraldo Rivera's nose. . After this incident, the media began to feel completely free. Morton Downey Jr. Even went so far as to carve a swastika into his own forehead in order to boost the ratings of his own show.

At this time, White-Powers were well known in New York, holding their own meetings and giving interviews. Although the names of some of their organizations are still used around the world, most of them are lost in local history. Some members of SHARP began to create their own sub-organizations, dissatisfied with the nonviolence of the basic ideas of SHARP. They believed that fists were the best response to hatred.

In the winter of 1989, the original organization disbanded. There were several reasons for this, including internal disagreements, but the main reason was the sharp decline in White-Power activity in New York. Many White-Powers left the city in search of a more hospitable political climate, moving to the South and West. Many simply grew up and stopped publicly expressing their personal beliefs.

S.H.A.R.P. Ideas did not die, many people liked them and groups of sharp skins began to appear all over the world. It was brought to Europe by Roddy Moreno from the English anarcho-Oi!-gang “the Oppressed”, since then boneheads have not felt very comfortable wherever there is S.H.A.R.P. - skins.

Later - on January 1, 1993, members of the “Mayday Crew” (R.I.P.), the left wing of the skinhead crew located in New York, with the support of skinheads from Ottawa, Minneapolis, Chicago, Cincinnati and Montreal, founded “RASH” (Red & Anarchist Skinheads), although there have always been skinheads who supported leftist political views (“Oppressed”, “Red Skins”, “Oi Polloi”, “Red London”). At the moment, RASH exists in most countries in Europe and America.

In 1994, Gavin Watson published a photo album “Skins” with photographs of the life of a small community of skinheads from Gavin’s circle and himself.

Conclusion

You can write endlessly about skinheads and fashion, skinheads and politics and other things, in this article we only gave a general idea of ​​skinhead history and culture.

Lately we have been hearing more and more about skinheads. They are talked about on TV screens and described on the pages of newspapers and magazines. And in such a huge amount of information it is very difficult to understand, to find a real answer to the question “skinheads - who are they?” Are they dangerous to society? What are their main ones? Let’s try to answer these questions together today.

What is a subculture

Representatives of a certain youth subculture are teenagers who dress in their own way, listen to certain music, and have their own jargon. They have their own pattern of behavior. They always arise spontaneously and, most often, try to oppose themselves to the older generation.

Representatives of subcultures are not always aggressive, cruel, etc. The fact is that upon closer acquaintance with serious publications and books telling about skinheads, an understanding arises that the picture painted in our imagination by media representatives is very far from reality.

Skinheads are a subculture that arose spontaneously

The word “skinhead” itself came to us from the English language. Translated, it means “bald head” (“skin head”). At first, Western youth became interested in this trend. Over time, teenagers from other countries also joined the movement, and eventually it spread throughout the world. Already in the sixties of the last century, everyone knew the subculture continues to exist to this day. It is worth noting that a subculture, as such, is neither an ideological nor a political organization. Only in rare cases can it be associated with any movement or party.

Russian skinheads

Today this subculture is very popular in our country. Skinheads first appeared in Russia in 1991. They became students of Moscow technical schools and vocational schools, teenagers living in the capital and Leningrad.

Are Russian skinheads different from Western skinheads? Who is this? Ordinary youth united spontaneously? Not really. Despite the fact that the economic crisis in our country was even worse than in England after the war, the skinhead movement in Russia did not appear naturally. Our teenagers are greatly influenced by Western mass culture. This precisely explains the fact that the offspring of ordinary mechanics and electricians sported suspenders and dockers’ boots from England.

Russian skinheads differ in some other ways. The subculture, which arose under Western influence, makes them shout about their people and country in foreign languages, waving American Confederate and German flags. True, this is done by representatives of one of the subspecies of this subculture - boneheads.

Skin directions

Like any other, this youth subculture has several directions. Skinheads are different. There are red skins that have their own website and even publish their own magazine, called “Blown Up Sky”. A separate direction is anti-fascist skins. Representatives of this movement even guarded concerts of rap artists, whom neo-Nazis consider their sworn enemies. This event is called skin security.

However, very little is said about the various directions of this subculture to almost anyone. Television announcers, journalists, publicists, everyone who likes to discuss the topic of fascism, neo-Nazism and racism, prefer not to mention the fact that there are anti-fascist skins. Therefore, in Russia (and in the West too) the most famous are boneheads.

Boneheads in Russia

So, everyone knows skinheads. Who is this and why are they being talked about in all the media? Their entire behavior and lifestyle are copied from Western models. They dress and look at life in the same way as their Western “brothers”, listen to the same music and prioritize the same life values. However, there is still a difference. Skinheads (boneheads) in Russia include not only the American Anglo-Saxon white-skinned people and European peoples, but also Slavic peoples (primarily Russians) as Aryan nations.

It is worth noting that Russian skinheads are seriously mistaken. The subculture in Europe is different from ours. In other countries, skinheads completely disagree with the idea that Russians can be classified as an Aryan nation. After all, for them we are “racially inferior.”

However, both Western and Russian boneheads are under the care of other, “adult” organizations. They are skillfully managed by representatives of the far-right and neo-Nazi movements.

Appearance

Every subculture has its own external differences. Skinheads, who are sometimes intimidated, are simply following certain traditions. This is what, by their standards, a real skin should look like:

1. A real Aryan with blond hair, a straight thin nose and gray eyes. Of course, there may be slight deviations from the main type. For example, the eyes may be light brown or blue, or the hair may be slightly darker than light brown. However, the general background must be preserved.
2. The head should be completely shaved or cut very short. Their hairstyles are not like the hairstyles of bandits or policemen. A skinhead's hair is the same length all over his head. Bangs, strands, etc. are not allowed. The main purpose of this hairstyle is to prevent the enemy from grabbing your hair in a fight.
3. Almost 100% of skinheads have a thin build. It is simply impossible to meet a representative of this subculture who is obese.
4. Wear only functional clothing. First of all, skinheads are recognized by their high military boots. Preference is given to the famous "Grinders". These shoes serve as a kind of weapon. Sometimes they wear, but more often they prefer, black skinny jeans, rolled up to their boots. The belts have heavy buckles. Some guys wear suspenders. The jackets are black, made of slippery fabric, without a collar.
5. On a skinhead you will never see baubles, neck chains, or piercings. Even if a guy puts on a pendant in the form of a swastika, you should know that this is not a real representative of the skinhead subculture. In this form, he is no longer a fighter. Not to mention that it's hard to get into a fight when you have pierced ears, lips, nose, etc.
6. A real skinhead does not drink, does not smoke and will never use drugs. Meanwhile, skins often decorate bare skulls and temples with aggressive tattoos

These are the main signs of a representative of this subculture. Something may vary, but in small, insignificant details.

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Classmates

Recently, both on TV screens and on the pages of newspapers and magazines, there has been a lot of talk about “skinheads” (we put this word in quotation marks, since the real subculture of skinheads is very different from the image of them that is imposed by the media). Moreover, from the stories of journalists, more aimed at stirring up emotions than at a truthful and detailed explanation, it is difficult to understand: who are they, how many are there, what real danger do they pose to society? Meanwhile, the skinhead subculture has been quite well studied by Russian and foreign scientists - psychologists, cultural scientists, sociologists, political scientists (but the opinions of these specialists are not covered in the electronic media and are not known to the general public). There are many detailed studies of this kind available on the Internet. Let us mention at least the work of M.V. Vershinin "Youth subcultures: skinheads ”, which contains a detailed account of the history and current stage of development of the skin movement. Having familiarized yourself with them, you never cease to be surprised: how far is the image of skinheads that the media create from reality and you inevitably ask the sacramental question: who benefits from this?

Who are skinheads?

Skinheads (from the English words skin head - literally: bald head) are a trend in the Western and then international youth subculture that arose in the 60s of the twentieth century and still exists. It should be immediately noted that youth subcultures are not political or even ideological organizations, although sometimes they are associated with individual parties and movements. A subculture is a unique way of life that presupposes certain patterns of behavior: style of clothing, music, hairstyle, its own jargon that is incomprehensible to others. Subcultures arise spontaneously and, as a rule, oppose themselves to the world of adults. Examples of subcultures, besides skinheads, are hippies, punks, rappers (fans of music in the style of RAP (rhythmic American poetry), “metalheads” (fans of the musical style “heavy metal”), etc.)

The skinhead movement had several stages, each of which was characterized by its own specifics. Initially, skinheads were a movement of young people who came from working-class neighborhoods, who themselves worked on the docks or in factories, or even frequented the labor exchanges (the post-war economic crisis in England regularly supplied more and more young people to the skinhead movement). Unlike other spontaneous youth movements - for example, the dudes, they did not seek to imitate the clothing and manners of the youth of the bourgeois classes. On the contrary, skinheads cultivated a kind of “proletarian pride”, trying to emphasize that they were the children of factory, plant and port workers. Hence the short hairstyle - it is unsafe for workers to wear long hair, it can be pulled into the machine, mandatory suspenders and boots - like English dockers, a passion for the “proletarian drink” beer - while the “majors” or “hippies” preferred strong alcohol, marijuana and chemicals drugs, the cult of “proletarian sports - primarily football (skinheads became famous for brawls after football matches). The greatest liberties that skinheads allowed themselves were short skirts for their friends (skin girls), who were also simply and neatly dressed and had short hair. The first skinheads listened to American rhythm and blues music, then reggae music that came from Jamaica. From this alone it is clear that initially the skinheads did not have the slightest racial prejudice, because both of them were “colored” music. Moreover, in the ranks of the skinheads of the 60s there were many boys and girls with black skin!

The Skins of that time were mostly apolitical. If they showed interest in political ideologies, it was most likely to the left, as befits representatives of proletarian youth. Thus, a tattoo with a crucifix was popular among them, under which there was the inscription: “The capitalists crucified him.” Those of the Skins who did participate in politics preferred the Labor Party as a workers' party.

The second wave of the skin movement came in the 70s. The clothes are changing a little: now they are jeans and an American pilots' jacket, musical fashion - punk and music in the style of "Oil" are replacing reggae. But most importantly, the politicization of the movement begins, it splits into the right, with which today all skinheads are usually identified (and completely wrongly!) and the left. The birth of right-wing or brown skins was the result of intense propaganda among street youth of English ultra-right illegal parties - primarily the National Front and the British National Socialist Party. Neo-Nazis from such skins began to form street fighters of neo-fascist parties for fights with communists and anarchists and for attacks on “coloreds”. It was these “new skinheads” who began to apply tattoos in the form of a swastika or Celtic cross, use Nazi salutes, and chants with racist and anti-Semitic content. Since their actions - beatings and murders of blacks and Asians - attracted the greatest attention from the media, the average person mistook them for skinheads as such.

Much less was noticed and noticed a little later by the left wing of skinheads - the so-called “red skins” (redskins). With a similar appearance - paramilitary uniform, short hair, they profess anarcho-communist views. Their slogan: “skinheads against racism and capitalism.” They often have fights with brown skins and not always in favor of the brown ones. Red skins also participate in the anti-globalization movement; its street fighters fought on the barricades in Seattle, Genoa, and Davos. The demands of the red skins are an end to the predatory exploitation of Third World countries by " golden billion "as a minimum and a world socialist revolution as a maximum. Naturally, not only people with white skin color can join the red skinheads. The Red Skins consider themselves - and not without reason - to be the true successors of the skinhead movement of the 60s, since they see in it an expression of the energy and worldview of proletarian youth. They perceive “brown skins” as marginal groups that do not have the right to appropriate the name and external attributes of skinheads.

Close to red skins are SHARP skins (SkinHeads Against Racial Prejudice - “skinheads against racial prejudice”), a movement that arose in New York in the 80s. Without being anarcho-communists, they also oppose racism and for the equality of all peoples.

It should be noted that the classic, apolitical skinheads, “bisons” of the 60s and their young supporters also did not recognize the ultra-right and began to call them nothing more than “boneheads” (“bone heads”, or loosely translated - “stupid”, “ brainless"). Experts in youth subcultures also believe that there is nothing in common between boneheads and skinheads, except for some elements of clothing (for example, for youth subcultures, the most important attribute is their favorite music, but boneheads and skinheads listen to different music: boneheads - heavy metal, skinheads - reggae or Oil -punk). Therefore, it is not accidental that experts concluded that boneheads are an artificially formed and alien direction in the skinhead movement, while real skinheads, as befits a youth subculture, arose spontaneously (M. Vershinin). By the way, among specialists the concept of “skinhead” is usually applied to this entire youth subculture, and those whom the media call “skinheads,” that is, neo-Nazis, are called boneheads.

In Russia, skinheads appeared in 1991, among students of the capital's vocational schools and technical schools, and generally among young people in the “dormitory areas” of Moscow and Leningrad. Unlike the West, our skin movement did not arise entirely naturally (although there was an economic crisis similar to the one that broke out in England after the war, or even worse), but under the influence of Western mass culture. That is why the children of Moscow and St. Petersburg turners and mechanics wear the boots and braces of English dockers, and not caps and overalls, like their fathers. If they shout anything about Russia and the Russians, it is more often in English, waving either the German flag or the flag of the American Confederates (of course, they mean boneheads). All types of skins are also represented in Russia. There are red skins (they even publish their own magazine - “Blown Up Sky” and have a website on the Internet - “Redskins.ru "), there are anti-fascist skins (who have repeatedly organized skin security - a kind of skin security for concerts of rappers - the eternal enemies of neo-Nazis). But few people know about them. The official television of the Russian Federation, like in the West, which verbally opposes racism and neo-Nazism, diligently suppresses the existence of anti-fascist skinheads and actually “promotes” boneheads with its stories...

The clothes, looks, and favorite music of Russian skinheads – all of this follows Western models. The only difference is that Russian boneheads consider Aryan nations not only the peoples of foreign Europe and the Anglo-Saxon white population of the USA, but also the Slavs and in particular the Russians (alas, they do not know that their Western “brothers by race” absolutely disagree with such conclusions and treat to the Slavs as “racially inferior”). Just like in the West, Russian boneheads are “patronized” by “adult” ultra-right organizations like the People’s National Party of Ivanov-Sukharevsky, trying to turn them into their stormtroopers. Naturally, some boneheads join the ranks of ultra-right organizations, but the bone movement as such remains a fairly autonomous entity.

Russian skinheads in general and boneheads in particular do not have a single organization. They are a collection of disparate and unrelated groups (on average 10-15 people each), which do not always and not everywhere engage in beatings and murders; often the matter is limited to drinking beer and listening to heavy rock and break up just as easily as arise. True, in November 2002, the boneheads tried to hold a Russian congress in the capital, timed to coincide with the birthday of the cult figure of the Western brown skins, Ian Stewart (400 people arrived at the congress), but this attempt was stopped by the police. The number of boneheads in Russia is generally small. According to 2003 data, there were 15,000 people throughout Russia, in Moscow with a population of 7 million - about 5,000, in St. Petersburg - about 3,000 (by this year, 2006, their number, of course, has increased, but not significantly and is unlikely exceeds 20,000 in Russia). As a rule, our boneheads are students of high schools, vocational schools, and, less often, universities. The overwhelming majority are the so-called “pioneers,” street fighters who are not very sophisticated in ideology and are only good for drinking beer, listening to rock music, hanging around the streets and starting fights. Without the ideologists of the movement, they do not pose a great danger, because their ardor itself can easily dissipate and the movement will disintegrate. There are no more than a few hundred ideologists and leaders of boneheads. There are no more than a hundred of them in Moscow. They publish samizdat magazines (“Under Zero”, “Street Fighter” (Moscow), “Russian Fist” (St. Petersburg)), create Internet sites, prepare and distribute training manuals on street fighting. The names are indicative: “Hooligan style of hand-to-hand combat”, “Use what is at hand”, “Fight as it is”, as well as quotes from them: “... Razor blows along their trajectory resemble glancing blows with a fist... ...eyes, skin of the forehead (bleeds heavily - blinds), neck, large arteries of the arms and legs, stomach.... ...the muscles of the peritoneum, often covered with a thick layer of fat, are pierced by a powerful circular blow... ...there are no invulnerable places for a razor... ...and it heals slowly, unlike wounds inflicted by a blunt weapon...".

It should also be noted that boneheads are mainly grouped in two capitals - Moscow and St. Petersburg (about 90% of brown skins are located there). They carry out their actions regularly, but against the backdrop of general criminal statistics, the crimes they commit are, as they say, a drop in the bucket (which, naturally, does not negate the need for moral condemnation of each such act, especially since for relatives and friends of the victims these statistics are weak comfort). This can be seen, for example, according to the Polit.Ru website (“Radical nationalism in Russia and counteraction to it in 2005 (annual report of the information and analytical center “Sova”)”) For the entire 2005, boneheads (whom anti-fascist analysts incorrectly call skinheads) There were 366 beatings that resulted in injuries and 28 murders. At the same time, according to electronic media (“article “Criminal Russia "on the website of the Perm branch of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation) according to the report of Prosecutor General Ustinov on the crime level in the country, in 2005, about 30,000 murders were committed in the Russian Federation (it should be noted that in reality there were, of course, more: according to electronic media, less than half are registered crimes). So, out of 30,000 murders committed in the Russian Federation in 2005 (according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which are clearly underestimated), only 28 were committed by “skinheads” (according to human rights activists who, on the contrary, are interested in exaggerating the “degree” of extremism). This is about one thousandth of a percent - a value that sociologists usually do not take into account due to its statistical insignificance (it is included in the so-called “percentage of error”). Nevertheless, this thousandth of a percent is constantly in the field of view of the media, while all other crimes are not only hushed up, but no one particularly “promotes” them.

Skinheads in the distorting mirror of the media

So the reality is that:

— skinheads are heterogeneous and include completely apolitical, anti-fascist, and even anarcho-communist groups;

— skinheads are a youth subculture and, by definition, cannot coincide with criminal groups. The concept of subculture is broader; as already mentioned, it presupposes a way of life (it may seem that the very facts of the beating of Africans and Asians by at least some skinheads refutes this thesis, but this is not so. To clarify, we can give the following example: the hippie subculture does not exclude and even welcomes the use of soft drugs (primarily marijuana). Naturally, some of the hippies are therefore involved in the sale of marijuana and are therefore associated with the drug mafia. But this does not at all mean that the drug mafia and the hippie movement are actually the same thing);

— skinheads are not a political party, although they have contacts with ultra-right parties and movements (“Slavic Union”, “National People’s Party”). Belonging to a party implies only ideological agreement. A member of RNE, for example, can be both a lover of folk music and a rock lover, as long as he shares the ideas of Russian nationalism. For boneheads, as for all youth groups, music is the main distinguishing principle. A bonehead can't be a bonehead if he doesn't listen to hard rock. In addition, the party arises artificially, at the will of its creators, the skin movement arises spontaneously, from groups of idle workers or unemployed youth;

— boneheads have nothing to do with Russian traditional culture and traditional Russian nationalism at all (unlike, for example, Black Hundreds, who, indeed, are trying to revive the Russian national movement of a century ago). Russian skinheads in general and boneheads in particular are the product of the transplantation of Western mass culture phenomena onto our soil (just like rappers, Rastafarians, Hare Krishnas, Mormons, etc.). If there had not been the fall of the Iron Curtain, the guys from the outskirts of Moscow and St. Petersburg would not have watched “Fight Club”, would not have heard “black metal”, and there would be no “skinheads” in Russia. This is evidenced by their very appearance, copied from Western boneheads, the manner of calling themselves nicknames in English or German (Hans, Martin, etc.), the set of their favorite rock bands, mostly German- and English-speaking, and finally, dislike to blacks in a country where there have never been areas with a black population and tensions between whites and blacks have no social roots;

- boneheads are scattered, small in number, grouped mainly in capitals, the crimes committed by them make up a tiny percentage of the total number of the same crimes committed for other, non-ideological reasons.

The media paints us a completely different image of “skinheads”:

— Skinheads are presented exclusively as neo-fascists of the most primitive kind. All sorts of reports on TV news programs depict drunken teenagers stupidly shouting Nazi slogans and insults towards non-whites, all of which journalists present as “skinhead parties.” Some journalists go so far as to say that “skinheads” can be dressed in any way they like, and not necessarily in “bomber jackets” and army boots and may not even be shaved (!), thus, skinheads are identified with any nationalist hooligans and are generally dismissed as framework of youth subcultures (!). At the same time, the author of these lines has never heard television journalists mention the existence of red skinheads or anti-fascist skinheads. There is either blatant lack of professionalism or a deliberate suppression of facts;

— The media does not distinguish between members of radical nationalist parties and the skinhead movement. Thus, at the beginning of April 2006, when anti-skinhead propaganda reached its apogee on TV, the NTV channel broadcast a story about the admission of Ivanov-Sukharevsky to membership in the organization. Despite the fact that the young people were dressed in neat shirts and trousers reminiscent of the NSDAP uniform, it was implied that the viewer was skinheads (although the only thing that reminded them of them was their short hairstyles);

— skinheads are portrayed as a formidable and extremely dangerous force for society. Statistics on murders committed by boneheads or simply neo-Nazi militants are not provided; dry numbers are replaced by emotional stories about the cruelty of beatings. The number of “skinheads” voiced by TV and radio journalists is many times higher than the figures we find on the Internet, in official reports of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in the works of specialists in youth subcultures, and even in the reports of human rights activists.

From all this, it is obvious that M. Vershinin was completely right, who argued that the media, with a persistence worthy of better use, are creating a political bogeyman out of the skinhead movement - a heterogeneous, small, imitative and purely adolescent phenomenon.

We would only add to this that such a media policy not only misleads society, but also contributes to the quantitative growth of such “skinheads” as the media portrays them. Describing the atrocities of skinheads, the media, hypocritically declaring themselves “fighters against fascism,” form such an image of a skinhead that he turns out to be the most attractive to teenagers, to whom the “adult world” is not turned on its most pleasant and best side. “Skinheads” are portrayed as strong, brave, invincible and elusive, they can beat anyone and not be afraid of retribution, even if they are arrested by the police, they supposedly get off with “a slight fright.” As for the condemnation of the inhumanity and xenophobia of the “skins”, these are the terms of the “adult” world, alien to them, and, moreover, proclaimed by liberal journalists, defenders of a regime that has brought little good to the workers and their children. So, the result of the fight against the skinheads of the liberal media is imitative actions on the part of young people, who learn about everything from television programs. Previously, they were just “gopniks”, drinking beer in the entrances, fighting among themselves, now, having watched NTV and ORT programs about skinheads, they “play skins” - the way they are represented in the media (about the suspenders of English dockers and Oil-punk they had never even heard of it). Sometimes these “games” end in blood. Journalists receive the coveted sensation, begin to expose skinheads with even greater enthusiasm, and everything repeats itself...

3. Who benefits from this?

The question of Roman law: “look for who benefits” is more than appropriate in this case. Obviously, both in Russia and abroad there are powerful political forces that are interested in inflating the myth of evil Russian nationalism, and in creating such a small and manageable, but very noisy and odious phenomenon. We will not argue that these forces directly “order” journalists to write false and provocative stories about “skinheads.” Most likely, here we are not dealing with external, repressive censorship, as in Soviet times, but with internal self-censorship of journalists - media workers know in advance what their new owners want and are trying to please them, creating more and more ideological myths. But be that as it may, without the support of a certain segment of society and the political elite, such large-scale operations to manipulate public consciousness, and even with the use of central mass media, are not carried out.

It’s easy to outline a short list of who benefits from inflating the topic of Russian nationalism:

Further, these are our Russian radical liberals, who are also not averse to speculating on the topic of “Russian fascism.” After all, firstly, this meets the interests of their masters from the West and coincides with their own calls for the destruction of the Russian Federation as the last stronghold of the empire. In addition, this coincides with their spiritual impulse to throw mud at the Russians as often as possible, because our liberals are almost completely irrational and notorious Russophobes. Finally, this looks like a blow to President Putin, who supposedly cannot cope with the threat of “Russian fascism.”

Internal Russian nationalists and separatists also benefit from the hysteria around “Russian nationalism,” since their dream is the separation of its national regions from Russia. And for this, the demonization of Russians in the eyes of residents of the national regions is very, very necessary, which is served by provocative stories about skinheads in the liberal media (especially since the bond of separatists from the outskirts and liberals in Moscow was formed during the time of the first Chechen company, in which Kovalev and Kiselev and their comrades acted as “information support” for Dudayev and Basayev).

And, no matter how paradoxical this may sound, it is also beneficial for Putin’s regime. Of course, like any state, it is not interested in social order being “shaken” by gangs of neo-Nazi teenagers, but it is interested in creating such a feeling among ordinary people. The more ordinary people will appreciate Putin and his “United Russia” members, who, although not ideal, are still better than fascist lawlessness.

Thus, no matter how you look at it, inflating the propaganda show about skinheads is only beneficial for everyone. Naturally, with the exception of the people of Russia. But the above-mentioned players of the political “chessboard” do not care about the people.

Vakhitov R. With all the richness of feelings and emotions that a person experiences in relation to his neighbor, there are not so many ways to express them. But some of them contain […] Read carefully: In the economics section, quotes 1,3,6,7 - 2000, the rest - 2012. In the “politics” section, citations 2,3,5,8 are from 2000 and 2001, the rest are from 2012. In the "miscellaneous" section […]